The value of a book

One of the greatest parts of Peace Corps is the open-endedness, and the fact that we can work on any side project we see fit. A few months ago, I approached my school´s principal about creating a library for the students. I have never seen a story book in anyone´s house, and until this year, the student´s weren´t even allowed to bring their textbooks home after school. Panamanian education is still on the rote memorization mode. Children copy from the board, fill in blanks, and have little chance to be creative. Because of this, and a lack of resources, many kids read below-level. The school allocates its small funds to the bare necessities, and the children come from poor families who make big enough financial sacrifices geting their children to class each day.

Kids haven´t had the chance to love to read.

I am asking for your help, to make a small donation to my project with the International Book Project. They collect donated books, and ask us to raise only the cost of shipping. If I raise $200, a 35-pound box of Spanish-language books will be sent and we can start the library. The principal has promised me a space in a spare room and her support to keep the library going after I´m gone. When the books arrive, I will organize a work day with parents to prepare the room, and set up a schedule for book lending.

You all know me personally and know that reading is a big part of who I am, and a huge part of my Peace Corps service. I´ve started reading stories to kids in my neighborhood with some books I´ve bought, and their interest is genuine and lasting.

¨But Cati, how can Peter Pan fly? Can we fly?¨

No one´s read to them before, and most of them have never seen story books. The potential value of the library is obvious.

If 20 people make a 10-dollar donation, I´ll meet my goal. Here is how you can donate:

You may donate by sending a check to:

International Book Project
1440 Delaware Avenue
Lexington, KY 40505.

You may also donate online via credit card by going to www.internationalbookproject.org and clicking on the “Donate” banner at the top of the page. Please indicate in the memo of the check or the notes section of the online giving screen that the donation is made on behalf of Catherine Basham, Peace Corps Volunteer. All donations are tax deductible.

Thank you to everyone who donates. I´ll be sure to send pictures when the books arrive.

We Heart Seminars

In the last month, I´ve helped out with three seminars in three separate volunteer sites. We PCVs have become savvy to the fact that our community members respond better when we call something a ¨seminar¨ instead of a charla, and invite a few other volunteers along to help out over the course of a few days. I think they like the idea of a one-time commitment and a more formalized environment of a seminar or workshop . Oh, and the free food. The PCVs always get a kick out of the fact that participants LOVELOVELOVE the visiting volunteers when they seem so luke-warm about the ones in their own sites sometimes.

In mid-July, my friend Dan held a two-day health seminar for the women in his community. I came for the second day to do a charla on S.T.I.s and HIV/AIDS.

Here is a woman receiving her certificate of particpation:



More interestingly, Dan has a monkey:



This is his house:
From there, I headed straight to the Comarca, and after a 90-minute hike, arrived in Aleah´s site to help with a water seminar. They are becoming very popular activities for EH-volunteers. Over the course of a few days, we educate water committee members on virtually everything they need to know about their systems--the nuts and bolts of how the water travels through the tubes, how to clean the tanks, how to repair damages, how to decide on a quota, how to run better meetings, you name it. Aleah has a beautiful site on a ridge, and this is the view from her house (sooo jealous):

One of my favorite participants:

Another PCV Dan, leading a session on thermoforming-- a method of molding tube using hot vegetable oil. Creates tighter fits and is safer than the more popular burning-PVC-over-open-flame method.


Then, last weekend, I went to other PCV´s Myles site, close by here in Bocas, to do a PML with his junta local and water committees. Here I am talking about how to work in teams!



On my side,I have been continuing with the sex-ed and life skills charlas with the 8th and 9th graders in my school. It´s going well, and they´ve impressed me with their candor and willingness to ask questions. More on this to come.

I´ll be bringing whoever I can convince to go from my community to a water seminar in nearby Punta Peña for them and three other volunteer sites in mid-September. They are daunted by the overnight stay and the four-day length, but with my diligent persuasion techniques,I hope to wrangle in a precious few. Sigue la lucha...

One Year In

On August 12, I completed one whole year in Panama. I think back to the day I left the States, and I remember how little I knew. I agreed to come to a country for 27 months with only a vague understanding of where I would be, what I´d be doing, and under what sorts of conditions. Since then, all of those blank spaces have been filled in, but thousands of new question marks have arisen.

I never looked at the Peace Corps as a change-the-world kind of opportunity. I was realistic about what my impact could be, especially when working against a cultural inertia that one person can´t possibly turn around. But one year in, and with nearly ten months spent in site, I still feel a little disappointed. If you asked my community what I´ve done, I am unsure they´d have much to say. And as my friend Austin points out in a post more eloquent than mine, what little we have done is for people who don´t have a word for ¨thank you¨ in their native langauge.

Peace Corps is a 27-month commitment, and that is largely because development work is slow and awfully hard. I just didn´t imagine that I would spend so much time asking myself if it was even possible.

We´ve been told the one-year mark is a hard one, and it has proven so. These last few months have left me feeling frustrated and confused. There´s the ¨work¨aspect. My community is unmotivated, but they criticize me wondering why latrines haven´t appeared out of thin air yet, all expenses paid. Agency support has been limited or non-existant, despite a lot of effort on my part. This professional aspect is easier to deal with, in a way. I anticipated the difficulty.

But a larger portion of this discontent is more personal, a general tiredness with myself and my life here. All I think about is Peace Corps, my work, my community, and where I fit in that context. In this term of service which is supposed to be quite selfless, I find myself exhausted by how much I think about myself. Part of that is because there is no else. I am one person in a community of people who will always be a distance away from me. No matter how many great conversations we have, or how much I feel like I have some real, genuine friends (and I do), something always happens that reminds me of that expanse between first world and third world, between my life and theirs. How defeating and lonely it feels that there are some things I can never understand about them, and more things that they will never understand about me. In these cases, I am speechless, but it´s not the Spanish that fails me. It is an intraversable cultural, economic, and educational gap. That´s hard for one person to go through, but I get tired of thinking about it all the time. I wish I could change the channel, take a break and think about something else. But there is nothing else. This experience swallows you up.

So when times are difficult, it´s extremely unpleasant. But the other side of this coin is that this has been the fullest year of my life. I have had experiences that will affect me forever, how I view things, what I want to do, and where I want to do it. Even though some things have been difficult, I consider them all positive, a net gain. And I still have moments of euphoria when I think, I can´t believe how beautiful this is or I can´t believe this is my life.

I´ve spent a year in Panama. I expected things to be a lot clearer by now; I expected to know more, be more confident in what I was doing, and be able to summarize everything in a neat little package. I see now how impossible that will always be. It´s too big, too complex, and subject to change. I remain optimistic. I know I will leave here happy I came. I will have an impact in my community, and it would be nice if they thought so too. But if they don´t? This isn´t supposed to be about me anyway.