Happy Thanksgiving

Happy turkey day to everyone stateside. I´m in a beautiful hotel in the mountains near Panama City, where 60 some odd volunteers gathered to cook, eat and party together. The cooks did an awesome job, and the meal was complete, including cranberry sauce and pie. Now most of the volunteers have hit the road to their sites, but a couple of us are staying for one more night.

A huge storm cell has been beating down on Panama for a little over a week. All the volunteers from the Bocas del Toro region had to be evacuated and are now involved in releif efforts based in Chiriqui. Thousands of people have lost homes and the impact a disaster like this has on sustanance farmers is hard for me yet to imagine. Poor communities who eat what they grow have nothing, and those who sell thier goods have lost their products. Roads and bridges have washed away and entire communities are underwater. I should be able to arrive to my site tomorrow afternoon, but it depends how my road is. The country director talked to us this morning and said this is the biggest safety and security threat he has seen in his 10 years of service. The biggest concern I have for my community is that the beans they have spent the last month planting will be damaged, or that the excessive amounts of water will cause landslides... but the real problems have hit over the mountains in Bocas del Toro. My friend Kate left her community to attend a training the day before the storm hit her site. 24 hours later 16 spots on the road had washed out, leaving it inpassable, leaving all other Bocas volunteers stranded. She called a community member who told her nearly all the Cacao they had harvested was spoiling because of the humidity and that many banana trees were uprooted. The coming year is going to be really rough. Panama is not on the hurricane route and hasnt been hit by one in over 10 years, but this storm nearly turned into one 4 days ago. 12¨of rain are expected to fall withing the next week, and then the storm cell should move on.

On a lighter note- I´ve been out of site for a week and a half in our in service training. I didn´t recieve the information that I wanted but it was great to see everyone for the first time in 5 months. I think I have some ideas of how to continue working... the Panamanian summer is on its way, and I´m hoping that my community has more time to work on some of the techniques in which they have expressed interest, but have always been ¨too busy¨.

It is so hard to go back after leaving for a while. For the first time in 5 months I´ve shelved some of the anxiety and worries that I´ve woken up with every morning. I went and saw a movie, I took hot showers, if it was raining I didn´t go outside... this morning we went to an artisan market and bought souveniers like tourists. It all felt so good and I hardly thought about the life I will return to tomorrow. It feels a little like it did the first time. But something is changing a little bit. Ok, this is going to sound really cheesy, and I blame it on my buddist book I´ve been reading. I still feel anxious,and it is still uncomfortable but it is becoming so familiar that it almost feels like an old friend, or at least an aquaintance.

I miss everyone! And I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving. I probably won´t write again until Christmas.