Un poco de todo

Art? Como no. I visited Kayla in her new community. It has lots of things for turists to do. Obviously.

Before applying the medicinal mud to our faces the guide told us, "There is no difference between the dark and the light mud. They are the same. The dark mud is for exfoliating, the light mud, for sensitive skin." What he didn't realize was that the mud was really war paint, if you are so inclined.

Finally I made my last trip up to Cerro Tula. Home for almost two years. Maybe one day I will be able to describe what it is like to leave. Anything I write now sounds lame, kitschy. So I'll leave it for another day. Here are my photos from my despedida numero dos, the sequil. The kids were both hyper and shy with all the preparations going on.

Cremating the kitty. Just kidding! I was sad that Chami remembered me. He started meowing and wasted no time jumping up into my lap. It had been over a month since I had seen him last, he looks healthy and the family seems to like having him around, a good sign that they won't give him to someone else or tie him to a tree in the middle of the forest if he takes a liking to chickens... He did have a gimp leg, but he'll get over it. Sweet little thing.

Kayla and Ben came by to Cerro Tula for the occasion.

The entrega de obsequios (gift giving) was very formal we held this position while everyone with cameras on their cell phones took pictures. My host mom had made me a skirt with a nagwa pattern and a charcra that says A W Bedi , I'm not sure what the AW is for.

The finale of the despedida was a traditional Panamanian music called Décima acompanied by guitar. Benjamin, left, began by saying, "I wrote this song especially for Bedi, for all the work that she has done here." The first words of the song are as follows: Aye! Dark skinned brunette of my life....
My wonderful host family: left to right. Maricela 24, me, Gilberto, Paula, , Ana 7, Milka (Nini) 9, Jessica 4, Lilly 5, Jesenia 7.

Bellow are pics from Isla Coiba, a giant island on the pacific coast. Former home to a high security prison. Current home of lots of beautiful beaches and wonderful snorkeling.

Saying Goodbye- Part one

1-2-3 Say... nothing

Last weekend I hiked into site, for what I figured was the last time, with my backpack stuffed with 25 lbs of rice, 10 lbs of beans all the makings for a thank-you meal for my community plus 5lbs of hard candy and a piñata supposedly formed after Barney but really resembling a pink marshmellow. The past 4 months or so of splitting myself between my community and the volunteer coordinator job had left me with a desire for closure. I wanted to say goodbye and thank you to my community and leave behind the nagging need to spend time there.

I was mildly suprised that no one in my community had taken a larger role in planning my despedida, but chalked it up to my absence the last couple of months. So I planned the party sola, my host mom said she´d do all the cooking.

The morning of I opened my doors and sold all my belongings. A radio, old karosin lamps, socks, mirror, bed, pots pans spoons. Most went for mere coins, and I felt a little like I was playing store.

I helped my mom cook by cutting onions. She always gives me that job. We joked that the food would be good and salty due to the gringa´s tears.

To my suprise about 60 people showed up ( I hadn´t expected nearly as many). We played some games the kids broke the piñata and scrambled around for the candy covered in flour. I think the adults enjoyed it as much as the kids did. ¨Down low. It´s on the ground!¨they´d yell when the piñata was too high for them to reach. Then they´d slap their theighs and laugh as the kids wacked the ground with the stick.


I made a little speech thanking my communtiy, encouraging them to continue en la lucha to achieve their goals. I told some stories about stupid things I had done that garnered some laughs. then I envited others to speak, if they so desired.

Everyone spoke in Ngabere, and too bad, I didn´t understand much. But I had the context, right? Probably good things were being said, a lot about god and... gringas. My friend Rosa, the grandma above (harmless right), also stood to speak. I smiled and nodded as she spoke in Ngabere, pretending, as I always do, to understand. But this woman is hated by nearly everyone, and she is rather spiteful, but she and I have always gotten along. Basicly, she likes to talk shit in very public places. So it crossed my mind to be concerned. But, eh, what could be done at this point?

She gave me a charca for my cell phone, a slobbery kiss that was like she was licking my cheek and said in spanish, You are like my daughter! Then she sat down.

Later that night my host mother, knowing I hadn´t grasped a word, filled me in. She had taken advantage of the moment to insult all who were there, calling them her enemies and worse. Later her grown daughter and another woman got in a fist fight. I didn´t see it, fortunately. So I just laughed about it with my mom in the kitchen.

Later that night I sat in the darkening kitchen as my host mom cut off the green rinds of bananas and threw them in the pot over the fire. I tried to stamp all those smells permently on my nostrils. I ate one last wonderful meal with them in the dark. Three of my six host sisters lay stretched out on the table where I ate, passed out after the day´s activities. The youngest, Lilly lay in the fetal possition on her stomach with her little rump pushing into the air and her chubby face smooshed against the table. We ate by flashlight. Boiled green bananas with beans. And I tried to thank them for two years of making me their family. But Ngabe culture is not a culture of thanking. Earlier that day, as I had dished up 60 plates of food and handed them to my friends not one person said thank you. Not one! And I didn´t think anything of it. There is no Ngabe word for thank you. So perhaps, hopefully, it is just implied. Understood.



I went to bed thinking, ¨well, that was a good end. It will feel good to leave.¨

But wait! my host father is planning a secound good-bye party in July. So I get to do it all again. Which, aside from being funny, isn´t that bad after all.

A High Point

Volcan Barú: The highest peak in Panama

The past two years have left me acustomed to beautiful mountain vistas. And really, I´ve climbed and desended more mountains during that time than I ever had before, or should I say than I ever had to before. Going to work, or to the school, or to a store that sells lentils or to check my email doesnt mean hiking when living in the global north. But having that said, I am a mountain snob. What really qualifies as a mountain? Is it really a mountain if you can climb it from foot to top in less than four hours? In less than a day? I guess if it´s the tallest thing around... ( cultural sensitive note: I have never told a Panamanian that their mountains would be mere foothills if asked to stand by the Rocky Mountains.)

Ha! I am so ignorant! I should not post the above paragraph. But I think it´s kinda funny. oops. I stand corrected. While I was writing I was looking up the hight of Panama´s highest point (Volcán Baru: 3,474 metres (11,398 ft)) and the altitude of the highest peak on the Wasatch front. I assumed our peaks towered over the Panamanian volcano. But Mount Nebo (which I don´t recall having heard of before), the Rockies´highest peak, hits only 11,928 ft! I can´t be very smug bout 600 ft. I should brush up on my geography. God, I say that like every day.

Anyway, some friends and I climbed el volcán a couple days ago. We began the hike around 10:00pm, thanking our lucky starts that it wasn´t raining. The moon was almost full and when we weren´t shadowed by trees we walked without flashlights. The trail up followed a steady incline and only once did we lose the trail (accidently turning into a stinky cabbage field with a creepy tin shack). In a little under 6.5 hours we reached the top, after stopping in an old shack to huddle out of the wind. It was the coldest I have been in Panama. We arrived at the summit, marred by about 20 telephone towers, some buildings and a generator, at 4:30am and wandered around for someplace to wait the next hour and a half. Kat and I found ourselves huddled in a doorway where the wind broke and called everyone over. I made a poorly timed joke that the more people that leaned against the door the better, if anyone creepy were inside they wouldn´t be able to come out. A moment later someone did push out against the door. We all screamed, and then screamed again as a very sleepy man appeared. He just looked at us and led all 9 of us into a room with several bunk beds and walls plastered with girly photos. He climbed back into his bed and fell asleep and we sat down to snooze on the floor. It was weird, but very nice of that poor, sleepy watchiman to let us in out of the cold.

The sun came up, we watched it. It was a clear morning and we could see to both coasts, the carribean and the pacific. It was beautiful, but still frigid, so we didnt linger long before heading down.


This is a picture of a sheep/kalalilly feild on the way down.

Count down

On Tuesday I packed up my bags and my host sister and I walked to the road. I will officially leave my house on the 5th of June, but I won´t be back to Cerro Tula until then, when we have my despedida, which promises to be an interesting afair.

Last lasting impressions:

Chami is staying with my host family. He recently knocked up the poor little kitty to the left. But they look happy enough.

A beautiful evening coming down my road.

Somewhere on the

Last supper: Intestines

My new home:

2010-04-25

On Friday I looked up at the sky and swore. What I wouldn’t do for some (insert explicit here) rain. It had been puro verano, pure summer. Everybody was parched, making several trips daily to the stream to fill up gallons and take back to the house. Lines form of women waiting to wash their clothes and children. After 2 years in Panama I’m still not very patient when it comes to waiting for water. But that evening I was sitting in a neighbor’s house when all of the sudden the light changed. Everything turned yellowish-pink and the sky between the white clouds looked electric blue. I commented on the color and this is what my neighbor said:
“Ahh. Yes. It’s a sign. A sign of a change. It will rain. Or it will not rain. It could do either thing. But it is a sign of one of the two. “
He was right. Uncanny. On Saturday the skies opened up and they have been since, everyday from 1pm to the early morning, in true rainy-season style.
I spent 10 days in my community recently. I haven’t spent so much time there in months, due to other things that have been going on. And it will probably be the last time I will spend so much time on my steep ridge. It was a perfect cross section of everything I’ve experienced as a Peace Corps volunteer. Here are some random thoughts. Not all have much value.
• You know how sometimes you hear your voice on a friends answering machine and think, “oh god. Tell me that’s not what I sound like.” Children have a similar quality when throwing your voice back at you. When walking through my community and yelling out hello’s and how-are-you’s to people almost all the children answer me in what I believe is an imitation of my apparently, very high-pitched, pre-pubescent-male voice. Strange. Could the sound waves generated by my vocal cords truly bend so much in their path from my mouth to my ear that I don’t even realize I sound just like a sassy nincompoop?
• One would think (and one would be mistaken) that when someone was giving important information to a gringa, who obvious to everyone does not understand much Ngabere, like, “don’t walk down there, there is a man bathing and he is naked and it would probably be very embarrassing for the both of you were you to interrupt him and thus see his private parts, so why don’t you not walk down that creek path?, that they would repeat it in your common language: Spanish. Fortunately for the sake of this-will-be-funny-when-I-tell-it-to-my-friends stories nobody values this type of translation. Much to the chagrin of the bathing men in my community.
• Little kids can be super cute when they are forcing their mouths around the strange foreign words “head, shoulders, knees and toes”. I think it’s because most of them are missing their two front teeth, but they can’t hide it because their lips are stretched into grins.
• My kitty deftly slit a whole in the roof of my mosquito net, on which he was sleeping, and landed on my bed, which he has always coveted. He and his fleas accommodated themselves on my cushy sleeping bag and fleece and enjoyed the day. I came home to hear Chami mewing in that way cats do when they are distressed. I couldn’t find him for a while. He’s proud of his new skylight. I’m not so sure.
• It must be time for me to move out. All the giant spiders, scorpions, cockroaches, crickets, ants, biting ants, and yes, stick bugs, are moving in.
• It must be time for me to move out. Everybody and their dog’s surrogate father want my belongings. It is going to be difficult to mitigate my footprint in my community.

I´ve finished my 19 latines, the picture is from the last one. I still need to make 6 more seat molds, then I´m really done. If your reading this chances are I'm missing you!

The strangest thing that has happened to me in two years....

I'm home. As in the United States of America. It's weird. Like this: my cat is unbelievably fat. It was 1am when I finally walked through my back door, after 2 years. I was at the table eating something when one of our cats waddled into the kitchen. I almost choked. Brett picked him up under the arms; I'm not sure who it was more uncomfortable for, the cat or my brother's lower back. He gently shook him so that his enormous white belly rippled. "Oh, Pip, you look great!" he said to the cat. Then he looked at me, "He's been on a diet." I nearly died. I couldn't even look at him. The fact that Pip can jump from the floor to the couch defies the very law of gravity. The people of my community would probably be unable to identify him as a cat. This picture is for my fellow PCVs, who will appreciate how grosera my fat cat is.

I've been emotional, teetering between uncontrollable giggles and tears. At one juncture I was in a bathroom having a laughing fit and I looked in the mirror and really thought, “Oh my God. I’ve cracked."

I have so many clothes! Why? It just makes dressing so complicated. And my brother wears really tight pants. (This is a test Brett; you say you read my blog!) The two things seem unrelated, but they are. I not only dress like it’s still 2007, I find new fashions repulsive. As I asked my brother, what would you do if you had to walk through water and you wanted to roll up your pants but couldn't due to the fact that that your jeans are so tight you can't pull them 3 inches above your ankles? Although, come to think of it, stream/river crossings aren't all that common in Salt Lake City.

Eggs and sugar are really white.

Fridge magnets? Mini wine baskets and cookie trays and cats you can dress like a colonial mistress, and finally a fork with 3 of its prongs bent forward labeled "diet fork". Question mark.

I am really awkward. But this isn't really new, only intensified.

The strange silence of the city. It’s so quite here inside my house. The only noise is the electrical hum of the heater or the computer monitor. The fridge. No scratching chickens, crowing roosters, screaming children, bees buzzing through my house that are so big my Panamanian mother calls them an “air bus”. It’s all very sterile.

I still jump when I hear something rustle. Before I left I shook 10 4in cockroaches out of my backpack only to discover later that I had missed the ant colony in the front pocket. This morning I shook out my slippers.

But it’s good to be here. Today I think I will go blow my mind at whole foods. I hope nothing remotely funny happens.

So much has happened in the last month

Since I have last updated my blog I have built 9 latrines, hiked across the continental divide and ended up on a river that leads to the carribean, held meetings with communities who have requested volunteers, had our Close of Service conference cumulating in a discoteca inside a renovated school bus and vacationed with Rachel. whew. Its alot to sum up. so maybe pictures will do a better job. God, and internet, willing.

School is back in session. So every day around 1 a steady flood of kids pass by my pouch. Rachel showed them how to trace leaves with the flat side of a crayon. I handed them some scrap paper ( a latrine manual actually). I figured they would use the blank side to draw. But instead they colored the tiny illustrations of the construction and, yes, the correct use of a latrine.

My latrine project has been a challange from the begining. But to my suprise the closer we get to completing it the more seamless the work becomes. (it may have been dangerous to put that in print.) All 9 families now have the latrine floors, and they have all been moved over the 3 meter hole. Not one broke! The men involved, none of whom had ever worked cement before are now expertos and are really proud of what they have accomplished. The women, like Maritza above, are particularly grateful.

Many people wrote my Ngabe name (Bedi) on their latrine, perhaps bringing to fruition my joke that in the future, long after I have gone home, people will think of me....when they are pooping.

After moving the last of the latrines over its prospective hole I sat with a weathered old man named Fransisco and his toothless wife who had just given me a ripe banana and a cup of sweet coffee. " You know," he said. "Once they came and took a list of names of people who needed latrines." He's talking about some other agency. "They never came back. The second time they took names again. They didn't come back either. It was the same the third time. and the forth time. And the fifth time. (I though he was going to keep counting.) Then the sixth time you came. And now we are finally seeing it happen." So no regrets there.

Melissa scaling a steep cement staircase on a riverside cliff on our hike across the continental divide.

At the top of the mountains the river is hardly a spring, but throughout the 2 days it grew to a raging river, changing color and temperment with every curve.

Chochino Kati!

One of the little villages along the way that we spent the night in.

We crossed any number of sketchy bridges made of everything from logs tied with vines to old metal pipes.

Another river crossing: zip line style! We saw one women put her baby in a bag, tie the bag to the seat and send the baby over the river solo!

Finally after a total of 26 hours of hiking, all of us feeling a little feverish and ill in the stomach, climbed on a dugout canoe with a motor and headed down the Cricamola river towards to ocean. What a trip.