Country girl in the city.

Just made my first city trip with some amigas. It´s been great to touch base with them. And to eat fruit. And to pee in the middle of the night without making the muddy trip to the latrine. The shock is there. I cried when I took a hot shower. well, it had been an emotional two weeks anyway. and crossing the street poses all sorts of challanges that I haven´t delt with in, well, months. But I am sure the real culture shock comes when how you live in site becomes normal. Regardless, Kate and I found oursleves rendered useless in the supermarket with so many choices.

During the past two weeks I´ve continued to restle with inner demons, and I think I´m championing them until I get hit with a day when I don´t have anything to do. THen I go a bit crazy, but it passes. And it´s really good for me.

I have since planted a secound school seed bed, hopefully this one does better. To do better only 4 seedlings need to come up. My standards are lowering. My plants in my garden continue to rot, leading my host family to believe that all gringos talk to plants, no, PLEAD with plants.

I´ve been stood up more than I´ve been met up with recently. But thats normal, so I stood up my English class the other evening when it was raining. I felt pretty guilty, but only until it turned out that no one came either. Looks as though I´m getting the hang of things.

My host brothers took me to harvest corn severel days ago. Again I was struck by the amount of effort put forward to even produce minimal amounts of food. the ears of corn are small and white. I can´t help but wonder if the caloric output need to produce food is is greater than obtained through eating it.

I miss you all so much! I´ve been reliving alot of old memories lately, and alot of you waltz through my dreams in really unexpected ways... keep doing it! I like seeing you!

Lo Bien, Lo Mal, y lo Feo

The gorgous beach which is my refuge an hour and a half from my site by car.
IF you come visit me we will make a trip.

I am trying to get shots that illustrate the grade on which these farmers are farming. It´s hard to really get the scope of it in a photo. But it´s steep...

See what I mean? The corn planted here looks almost plain, but its not.

I finally unsheathed my camera today. It may have been a mistake. But they really do have few oppertunities for taking family photos. So I took this for them, standing in front of the Evangelical church.

This one I took for myself. Right as the shutter clicked on the previous photo they swarmed me for a glimps of the view finder. But before showing it to them I snapped one more. Yes the little boy is wearing a plastic bag on his head, I think they had just put some type of medicina on his head to treat a bot fly (lays larva in your skin).

What a couple of weeks. Honestly, I sit in front of this computer and I dont know where to start. Here is a list of some funny, cool and uncool things that are happening.

The uncool:
I walk around, pasearing from house to house, trying to get to know people. I sit down. We laugh a bit about this and that, and plenty that I dont understand. And then they ask me if I have money to give them, or that I have a camera, or if I want to take their youngest son with me. ¨No really. Take him.¨ ¨But... I... don´t you...?¨I stumble. ¨No,¨ they answer. ¨You just take him. At least when you leave to go allá

My plants are dying. That is only if they came up. Most of them didn´t. That is all I have to say about that.

The Cool:
I´m slowly making some friends. Mostly women, it´s not really acceptable for me to just go hang out one on one with any man of any age. I even had someone ask me if I was ¨with¨ my host dad yesterday. Anyway, friends... basically just people where i go and hang in their thatched hut kitchen and they help me make my chacra (bag). There is one house in particular that I enjoy visiting. They always give me alot of food, which makes me feel a little uncomfortable since I am always the only one eating. Lat time I took with me a lb of sugar to share coffee with them. They were very appreciative, then proceeded to give me crema de maiz (corn meal) bollo (tamale, more or less)a fried egg and a bowl of rice and beans. It was funny, because all day I had been contemplating how little I am giving, and how much more they will always be able to, or insist on giving me.

I went on a hike last week with the school kids and an old man who guesses his age at 85. The teacher organized the hike to give the kids the oppertunity to pick this old guy´s brain about the way things were before. The maestro explained to the kdis that they should be learning from the abuelo, asking him questions about how things were before. I wondered if they would stay quite like the ngabes so often do, or if they would be too cool like American kids their age. But to my suprise they began asking questions which led to stories about estos días (them days)when men still hunted tigers and it was dangerous to walk alone because of the abundance of threatening wildlife. The abuelo acted out his stories, crouching low as the tiger, using his walking staff as a spear, barking like a dog.
We continued walking and arrived later at Cerro Pelado (Peeled Peak), so named for the giants who used to live there, naked or peeled. Eventually we arrived at a mountain spring surrounded by old forest amoungst the feilds and hills of pasture grasses, just a pocket or how it was. Stick crosses adorned by small offerings- a miniture chacra, 2 bows and arrows made from bark and string, surrounded the spring. The kids drank and washed their hands and faces. Abuelo asked me if I had yet drank from the medicinal pool. I explained that as a gringa I have to be careful with spring water. ¨I have to filter my water,¨ I told him. ¨Untreated water makes me sick.¨ ¨But we are on Cerro Dios (God´s Peak),¨he assured me. ¨This spring never dries, even in the summer. There is water way down there, and way over there, but where does this water come from? This spring is blessed by god. It won´t make you sick.¨ ¨Of course not,¨ I agreed. But I didn´t drink.

The funny:
A certain old coffee producer in my community has been a great guide. He comes every sunday to take me around the community introducing me to the coffee growers in the area. He´s a little man, maybe 5´1´´ with a thin mustach and a round face that is smooth and rinkled and the same time. He is missing many teeth but still has a distinguished air of experience about him. Last sunday he walked into our kitchen wearing the typical work attire: rubber boots, dark trousers and an old T-shirt. But he had added something special to the outfit todaÿ: A poofy, black news boy hat studded with sparkly sequins. I think it is the same one that Brittany Spears wore early on in her career as teeny bopper pop star. I almost ran for my camera. But instead I just complemented him and asked him where he got it. ¨You know. In town.¨

One Month Wrap-up

It´s become increasingly difficult to update this blog, not just for the obvious reasons like, for instance, lack of computer, internet and electricity, but also because my first month in site has been a rollercoaster. Actually it´s been more like one of those rides that takes you up really fastonly to drop you into freefall, leaving your stomach in your mouth and your head.... somewhere else. It´s hard to sum it up.

The hardest relization thus far was the discovery -day 1- that for the first time in my life, I have no one to affirm that I am doing enough. I have no professor to grade my article, no swim coach to tell me I did all I could, no boss to appreciate my hard work, not even my mom to tell me I´m pushing myself too hard. I´ve been aware in the past that I have always thrived on postive feedback (perpetual brown noser? maybe)but I never realized how much I have depended on it. So here I am setting my own pace in a place where there is no pace. One day I might spend 6 hours in a meeting that started 4 hours late and listen to nothing being accomplished. The next I may go work in the field with my host family for 8 hours without food, drink, shade or rest.

So, I´ve been talking to myself alot. Sometimes the ngabes hear, but I dont care. I tell myself I´m doing a good job, that its ok to call it a day, that I can make it to the latrine before the next wave of diareah and nausia catch uo with me. Go Andi, go!

A quick list of things I´ve been up to lately:
1) learned how to say ¨you are stronger than me¨ ngabere - appropriate when a man passes me on the trail carrying 200lbs of rice on his back.
2)Cooked successfully, rice and beans (arromumabeh) over a cooking fire for my host siblings when their parents were gone.
3)worked in school garden
-built soil retention barriers
-planted nitrogen-fixing plants in the clay, i mean soil
-planted tomato and pepper seedlings
-given classes to school kids in English and about sustainable agriculture. poor kids, how boring
-built my own house garden. the fence in ugly, but i´m no carpenter
-cut my right hand with my machete (first peace corp scar!)i´m not sure how. I still cant remember what I was doing with my machete in my left hand
-learned how to sew nagwa (traditional women dress). it is also ugly, but it makes people laugh and I joke about how it should only be worn after dark.
-survived 3 arguous panamanian meetings ngabe style. 6 hours long, nothing accomplished. I tell myself I am doing penence for being type A.
-Walked around the community getting to know the people. Telling kids its rude when they ask me if I´m wearing panties and no, i dont have money to give them.
-stared down 4 horned cows for their manure. I thought they were going to trample and gore me, but really they were just interested in what I had in my sack. I think they were dissapointed when they discovered it was what they had just excreted.
-carried said excretement (about 25lbs) on my back uphill for an hour in blistering heat. I sweated, the shit sweated and the juice ran down my back and legs and into my rubber boots. It was a first.

It´s a ride all right. WIth high highs and low lows. but I´m learning alot, about my community, about myself. more later, entonces.


Just some pretty views of my ridge-line community


My future house, and my current room in my host familys house


My Host family´s house in terrential downpour, and my host siblings


My two gardens, the school garden and my home garden.