La Vida Panameña

Feliz Navidad, un Prospero Año y Muchas Gracias!!

2009-12-29T12:12:00.000-08:00

A modern Christmas... Lights, Generator, and a holiday flick: Preditors Attack!

Inivitees sit quitely and eat their holiday meal. But it's a subdued affair.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannakah, and Happy New Year to everyone!

First and foremost... I want the thank all of those of you who have donated to my latrine project and the youth conference! The latrine fund is full, so as soon as the Peace Corps Washington office does the paper work I'll be off to buy cement and rebar. When we actually get going I will put up pictures of the 15 families we're helping and the whole dirty process of making cleaner latrines. Thank you thank you thank you!

Ay a la vida. Panama is like a convection oven today. At least in this internet cafe they have a fan blowing the scalding air around. Outside the heat slams you to the ground. It is impossible to towel off in the shower before you start sweating again. A year and a half seems to be the total time it takes for a previously wrinkleless gringa to turn wrinkly. I am, unfortunately, not joking. And days like to day you can feel skin damage in the air.

I spent Christmas in my community. Unseasonal rain has been falling, spreading ash-like funguses all over everyone's planted beans. Usually this time of year the red soil has turned to a fine dust and deep cracks break the trails desert-style. I welcomed the rain since I was sick with a cold and most of Christmas Eve I spent curled in my bed falling in and out of fever dreams as the rain pounded on the roof. I drempt that my ears were full for rice. On Christmas day I made a pumpklin pie in my pressure cooker, beaded little flower braclets with my little sisters and helped chop 25 onions for the big party my host parents threw that evening. I cried.

Cutting onions is an international joke.

Later that night I sat in the kitchen with my host family and their family that had come from afar for the party. They visiting family members were loath to talk to me (actually they were just nervous and shy), particularly the attractive nephew of my host mother. He just mumbled uninteligable responces to my questions until I gave up. I was akward myself. I tired to tell the story of Christmas but couldn't really remember. And I keep bumping into the baby that hung from the ceiling in the netted bag (it's a ngabe cradle). Just spacially I am not used to having to navigate babies. I ran into the sleeping babe several times, each time it woke and started crying. Not a silent night. Finally, feeling like a threat, I removed myself from the kitchen and went to sit with the invitees who had gathered under the solar drier. But it wasn't really the festive event I had imagined. Most people just sat huddled amongst their families and ate quitely. Finally my host dad came and handed out the popcorn I had made for the movie. (He powered up the gas generator for the occasion). What movie? The grinch? Those little claymation rodolf/santa ones? no. Just "When Preditors Attack" a garrish film with slasher re-re-re music as cheetas, lions and tigers ripped apart their prey. The filmers really hit their stride right about when National Geographic photographers would have hit the "stop" button. Most of the film showed the big cats up to their ears in intestine. Nice sound effects, too. Do not get me wrong! I am glad I was there! And I think it ment alot to my host family that I stayed with them for the holidays.

I am headed back up tomorrow to spend New Years with my Panamanian family. I've been really busy finding new communities for future volunteers and visiting our more recent additions to the PCV comarca family.

Thanks again for helping with the projects, I am very excited to get started!

Neither here nor there, but definately still in Panama

2009-12-16T14:03:00.000-08:00

In October I had the oppertunity to apply for a job here in Peace Corps called Regional Leader. A Regional Leader (RL) offers fellow volunteers support in the form of rutine annual and safety and security visits, works closely with governemntal agencies and travels around the province looking for and meeting with communities interested in hosting a Peace Corps volunteers. When I thought about possibly taking the job I wrote out dorky lists of pros and cons. The lists were always short and mostly looked like the following...
PROS
It will give me a sence of productivity (something I have missed to the point my teeth ache here in Panama)
CONS
My community will no longer be my one and only commitment

I knew I would be traveling more and that I would be spending less time in my mountain top village. The idea was comforting in some ways, I used to feel so isolated and lonely at times I counted the hours as they ticked slowly by. But I also knew that I would be giving something up, really my only chance to live as one of my community members. In the end, at the time I had to make the decision I was lonely and frustrated and needed a change. I applied for the job and I got it (I share it with another volunteer, also named Andrea). I still live in my community (most RLs move to their provincial capital).

Two months later I am better able to understand what I´ve signed up for. It´s not to say that I´m not happy. I really like the busyness, I like the hiking, the new communities, and providing support to new volunteers who are struggling with things I struggled with. But I haven´t been in my community for more than 3 solid days in a row this month, and I´m tired.

Today I went to my host brother´s graduation. They asked me to be his godmother (Here godmother´s walk their godson down the isle of graduation). I had to rearrange my visits to see several volunteers to make it but it was worth it. I walked him down the isle, and I felt like I was participating in some mass wedding with really cheesy music. Think ¨Toys¨. I had no idea what to do so I watched the pairs of students and madrinas that walked down the isle ahead of us. It was evident I was to hold his hand. He was so nervous, pobrecito , I had to reach around his back to grab his sweaty hand, which he held really rigid. I will say just this... You think American graduations are drawn out and flowery (insert questionmark, stupid spanish keyboards.) But imagine seeing the first member of your family graduate from highschool. It must be pretty cool.

My 6th to last month is nearly over and it is evident how fast they are going to flip by, especially if I keep up this pace. The grass is always greener on the other side and it is what it is, but I´m feeling twinges of regret that I´m not just a regular volunteer that can focus 100% on my community. On the other hand (which would that be, like, number 6, maybe) I tried that take for a year and a half.

Kate and Jannel came to build an oven in my community for my host sister Maricela, who loves to experiment in the cocina. We sang christmas songs as we hiked up our skirts and mixed the sand and red clay with our toes. All my favorite women from the community showed up, which was great since I hadn´t even announced it as something they should come to. They came on their own to get muddy and learn how to bake bread using only mud. I have some great photos but this damn internet is so slow.

Headed out to do a volunteer visit tomorrow and some site development. Then back up to the mountain for Christmas and New Years. Happy Holidays. I am thinking of all of you! (Snow... I include you in that statement!)

We need your help!

2009-12-09T14:47:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays!
I am going to shamelessly ask for your money. Tis the season! (but if for you, Tis is NOT the season, no worries. Money matters back home sound scary!)

Here in Peace Corps Panama I am co-vice-president for the Gender and Development Comitee. Every year the Comitee hosts a youth conference/camp for 50 some odd youths from all over the country. During the conference we cover a number of topics ranging form self-esteem, making life choices, values, morals and goals as well as safe-sex and HIV/AIDS. Panama's HIV numbers rank in second amoungst Latin American countries, and 20% of pregnancies are adolescent, so these topics are of great importance. The camp is a lot of fun for the kids (ages 13-18) and kids who have gone to past camps talk to the volunteers in their community about how much they learn. The Lions Club of Panama has donated the housing for the camp, but we've writen a grant to cover mainly transportation, food and supplies. The cost of the camp is large (due to the 50 participants). If you'd be interested in donating and helping the camp happen it's easy!
Go to : http://peacecorps.gov and click on the "Donate Now" side bar. Search by "Panama" or "Gender and Youth Conference" or "Newman A" or "525-132".

Direct link:
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=525-132

Thank you so much! Happy Holidays!

Andi Newman
p.s. I appologize to those of you who are also on my parents email lists. It may mean that I have shamelessly asked for your money more than once. And that's annoying...

Happy Turkey Day!

2009-11-27T14:47:00.001-08:00

Rain and Nutmeg... Even in Panama it's time for Thanksgiving

2009-11-09T13:08:00.000-08:00

Painting the Pollera dancers for the parade

The misty slopes as seen from my community's "main street"

Kayla and I met up at the beach for a quick in-transit reunion.

Deluge every day at 12 until sunset, sometimes late into the night. There is something so special about the rainstorms here. They are unlike anything I could have imagined after spending my formative years in dry Utah and Colorado; even the never ending rain of the Northwest doesn't compare. First the fog creeps down from the road and clouds everything but the red trail from view. The wind starts to rustle and flap through the big plasticy leaves (a very diferent sound from the low howel of wind through the pines). Then the rain comes and you can here it climb up the side of the mountain for about 45 secounds before it really hits. It gives my little sisters time to bring in the clothes that are thrown up on the zinc roofs and over barb wired fences. I lay in my hammock and wonder at the might of nature. It has successfully silenced the clamour of my closest neighbors. NOT an easy feat. The kids are home by themselves these days while all the adults rush to plant 800lbs of kidney beans in their steep feilds before the rains stop. They entertain themselves by banging metal things with other metal things, and screaming "MAAAAAAma VEEEEEENga. MAAAAAAAAma VEEENga." over and over and over. But with the rain drumming on the tin roof, the loudest white noise you'll ever hear, I can hear none of it. I snuggle with my cat and read books. When the summer comes he will be covered with fleas, and our naps together might have to end.

It gets chilly at night and I sleep with sweatpants, sheets, a fleece blanket and a sleeping bag. It's the humidity that makes your bones quake; I don't think the temperature ever drops bellow 68 degrees. But the mist and the rain makes me think of fall back home, cinnamon and nutmeg and pumpkin pie with too many cloves. Sometimes the radio from someone's house belts out a christmas jingle advertisment and I slide into snowy daydreams. But that real nip in the air isn't here. That cold that gets into your toes and lays on top of your skin. It's strange, I could swear I should be that cold, but it isn't. It is almost like seeing food but not smelling it because you have a cold, as if a certain sense is missing.

All us volunteers are headed to chilly Chiriqui for Thanksgiving it is going to be great! Kudos for Ashley and Brandon Gries for all their hard work to make it happen. Nobody wants that job, and they volunteered! (weird)

I'm nearly ready to jump into what promises to be a crazy 3 or 4 months: Site Development for future volunteers, a latrine project, and a kids camp for 50 youths from all over the country.

Ay Ay Ay.

Mission Vetiver accomplished. (Not really "accomplished" but "poco a poco" ). I finally was able to make the trip with some of the bean planters to get seeds of a special grass for soil conservation terrace construction. It was a long process. Believe it or not, a year! But we planted them using a Level-A and hopefully in the years to come they will see the terraces forming naturally and notice the difference in soil quality when it hasn't all washed down the mountain to paint the river red. I hope to implement it in a number of farms in different communities as well.

Yesterday I had a great night with my bud Lisa in good 'ol David. We saw the Micheal Jackson movie. Wow. And I got popcorn. Enough said. It was wonderfull. We ate dinner at "the casino". Nachos. Served to us by waitresses in VERY tight, short shorts. The place has a pirate motiff. And stalagtites that decorate the stage. It was funny. I looked at Lisa and reflected that never would the Andi from the global north every choose to eat at such a tacky place. But we were both giddy with the prospect of dinner at the casino. Ca-ching!

An update

2009-10-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

Rebecca whipped eggs for about a half hour trying to acheive the "soft peaks" with the wireless elbow grease of our grandmothers. We made a gluten-free chocolate polenta cake with cacao from Kate's community.

Elmo "the frog"

Rainy afternoon in the hammock with Chami. What a snuggler.

It has been so long since I've updated this 'ol blog. But it's funny, the longer I'm here the less the experiences I have impress upon me the need to record them. They become less out of the ordinary. I don't carry my camera with me as often and my journal, instead of filling with the happenings of the day, is a place of introspection and answerless questions.

Time is such a funny thing. There are days I stew in my community and wish it were all over. Days that I say to myself that if I didn't have a latrine project that I've promised to a nearby community I would call it quits. Then the next day, I think how sad and strange it will be when this is all over. An example:

Two days ago I woke up. It was raining, as it always does in October. It had rained all night and the fog that wrapped itself around the hill promised it would rain all day. I had two English classes at the school that morning so I ate breakfast, fed the cat and walked down to the school, planning my lesson as I went. The teachers had planned exams for that day and had neglected to tell me, so I walked away from the school without giving class. (Not a big deal, but a total of one hour walking in the rain). I went to visit a family on the other side of the communtiy. 2 months ago the 14year-old son was harvesting pifa (a squash nut that grows on a spiny palm) when 3 of the spines fell into his eye. He went to Panama city for surgery and the doctor made him an appointment for several months later. The kid approched John (the previous volunteer in my community who was visiting at the time) and asked for the money. "The doctor told me if there was a gringo living in my community I should ask him for the money." Unlikely. We helped him to write a letter to the Comarca senetor, asking for his support. To make a long story short they didn't get the money, although the money was waiting for them. They blame me. Really it is just a story of poor communication that plagues cross-cultural conversation. Then I spent the rest of the day at a funeral. I've been to funnerals before, but this is the only one I have sat through from the begining to the end. I won't go into the detailes. It was very sad. And funnerals, as my friend Kayla and I talked about, have an interesting way of illuminating how far you really are from being a true member of your community. I looked around and realized how many names I didn't know, how I couldn't remember where people lived within my community. I didn't even know the face or name of the boy we were burying, even though I consider his family to be one of my favorites, and I pasear with them quite a bit. His mother has 12 children, so it is not suprising that I can't picture his face. I felt like an intruder, but I knew once I went that I couldn't leave until it was over. When it was all over and they were serving food they served me first in a bowl with a spoon (everyone else ate with their fingers from a banana leaf). Even that display of respect has a power to seperate and make one feel seperated. I honestly don't know if they were glad I was there or felt that I was an intrusion. It is most likely the former, based on my experience, but sometimes it is hard to tell.

The next day I ran around from home to home organizing work days and I had possitive interactions with everyone I met. And thing fell into place as if because, as they say here, God Wants. And my gloomy mood lifted even though it continues to rain, and rain and rain. I have a nutrition charla with 50 women in my community coming up, lots of soil conservation barriers. Things are good!

Games in Kate's community. Me in Kate's dress. Slimming no?

Hace Rato

2009-09-28T07:51:00.000-07:00

Culture Week in my community photos:

We made Bocashi (fast compost) with the Beans group

Meritza taught us how to make the chacra strings from long, stiff leaves.

The plant is called pita in Spanish and kuga in Ngabere. Once harvested the leaf is held against a smooth log and a piece of wood with a sharp edge scrapes off the green layer, exposing the white threds that are then twisted into twine.

It's been a while. The hills smell like warm whole grain rice and the rains move in with the fog a little earlier every day. Must be fall. Fall here isn't that much different from any other season, but my mind and body still know that leaves should be falling and I crave candy corn and cider. It is time to plant beans again. I doubt I will be out in the fields as much this year as I was last year helping them to plant (my host family plans to plant 1000lbs of beans.) I am going to be traveling more within the Comarca, visiting other volunteers. Another volunteer (named Andie, dont be confused) and I are sharing the Regional Leader possition as of November, so that may change the amount of time I have to spend in my communtiy. I think that I am ready for a change, I'm ready for more movement.

I just visted Kate in Bocas. It was great to finally see where my good friend works, and to meet all the people that I've heard so much about. Her patience and resilience as always, made a big impression on me and I left her community feeling so lucky for all this, and all my amazing friends I have here. Peace Corps is never what you expect, but all those things I heard before I came about the amazing friends I would make were true.

In Kate's site we did a PML (a seminar on individual and group organization and self-esteem) and had a birthday party. Both were great successes! Kate lent me her pocka-dot dress and she rocked an amazing pink dress suit, both styles are frequently sported in her community. She looked so professional, and slightly like a flight attendent. "white lights lead to red light..."

Her community really enjoyed pining the tail on the pig and breaking a huge Elmo pinata "what is it?!" everyone wanted to know. "Look," one guy said, "It's a parrot!"

It was a wonderful experience. I would like to write more but I find it harder and harder to sum up life here. I have more commitments everytime I find myself with internet and electricity. I also notice that Panamanian and Ngabe culture make fewer impressions on me. The stories I used to write in my journal about things I had seen no longer register as story worthy. My journal is more of a venting tool that I use to work out things in my mind than a place to write about day to day life. I am trying to rush back to today after too many days away. Ironically, I have very little planned up there. Probably a testiment to the little time I have spent there during the past months. But my kitty is probably waiting for me, and putting off going back up won't make it any easier.

2009-09-11T06:26:00.000-07:00

More pics

2009-09-07T14:45:00.000-07:00

The fam leaves tomorrow. We had a good time. The highlight was definately the canal. Just kidding, although Dan did think it was facinating. Brett liked the snack bar and I liked the part of the museum that made blowing-up noises over, and over and over again. But once we ticked that off the list we spent most of our time in the campo. We hung with Kayla and made sugar juice, went up to my site and paseared through a good deal of the community, helping me get ready to host culture week. We spent a while at the beaches listening to machata and tipico music from the busito playlist, drinking fruit smooties and watching interesting mesh outfits walk by on their owners. Boquete was great, we saw, smelled and consumed lots of coffee. And we are back in the city, getting ready to go back to our lives, Mom and Dan back to work, Brett back to RISDI and me back to the campo for culture week. These transitions are always strange.

Photos from the trip

2009-09-02T14:11:00.000-07:00

fotos

2009-08-21T16:32:00.000-07:00

I may eat just lentils and rice alone. But cooking is much better when done juntos.

Isaac and Melissa gave a great chicken project charla in my site.

Yes. All from my garden! Note the one green bean.

Lice is no lie

2009-08-20T13:04:00.000-07:00

Photos pending. In the constant battle with viruses either the computer or my memory stick decides to default. I have this great photo I want to upload, but for some reason when I plug the mem stick into the computer all that appears is someones Spanish homework. I have no idea.

Mom, Dan and Brett come in for a visit in a couple of days. I am very excited. I need a break, and this will be the longest that I have had, nearly 3 weeks, due to meetings on either side of my family´s visit.

Things have slowed down significantly since I last wrote. Good thing the lice kept me busy. I am not, unfortunatly, joking. It was war and I won, but now my scalp itches from the shampoo and my hair is falling out. The hair that didn´f fall out I have been pulling out in a return to early service anxiety and a general ¨What am I doing here?¨question playing over and over in the cabeza.

But I am so excited to have the folks here and people are really excited to meet them. All the women really want to meet Mom. And I´ve had a couple great evening up with my favorite neighbors Bei and Eda Umo in their community. Birthday celebrations.

And I am thinking about applying for a position that will fill up some of my ¨empty time¨. Then I can enjoy being in my community for the social aspect, just hanging out, working when there is work but not worrying so much when there isn´t.

STOP! Don´t put that crab´s pincer on your nipple!

2009-07-17T07:18:00.000-07:00

A traditional weaving of a Panamanian hat made with natural fibers.

Manly men! Learning about fish farming

In my defense, my blog is not as outdated as the Newsweeks I read in my hamack. Yesterday I was reading one, finding the news relevent and interesting when I flipped to the front cover and discovered that it was dated December 8, 2008.

The last month has held a lot: My one -year mark. (if Peace Corps were a hill, better said, a mountain, I would be hiking down. We all know hiking downhill hurts your knees.) I went on a great vacation with some buddies (I was the 7th wheel, in fact, for three couples. Fortunately there were no flats.) We snorkeled, cooked and ate great food including fire-side banana foster and Panamanian cacao fondu with mangos. We laughed, raced crabs, caught up and wound down. It went too fast.

Soon I was back in site and Vaca Sagrada!! my garden was growing, winter squash, lettuce, radishes, green beans and cucumbers. I hardley dare to believe it. This is boring to you right? or maybe you can count the times I´ve expressed boyant hopes for my gardens and therefore can reasonably deduce the outcome... Interestingly enough though, one year later and I find myself doing the same things that I did a year ago. Ex: School garden (thanks to a great seed drive that a school we are coorosponding with state side did), organic pesticides, compost, heavy pasearing. I rarely fill my days to capacity. By the time it rains I am usually snug in my house with my nose in a book and my cat on my lap. But I stress about that free time less than I did last time round. I feel more accomplished with the little things that get done every day. Shooting the mierda witht the kids at school for an hour or two while we plant in their garden beats 7 hours stressing over what else I should be doing. Also marginly successfull: the school garden. Thank you Cathy!
The other night I awoke to my host family´s 7 dogs attacking something that sounded vaguely like a gasoline powered electrical plant, RIGHT outside my house. (Later my host dad would define the sound as roncar, the same word used for snore). Ok, so this thing snored loud. In a matter of seconds my host family had ran up to the rucous. I waited a while before I got out of bed to go investigate, not exactly sure I was up for whatever cultural experience awaited outside. It sounded like one of the dogs was getting eaten alive. My flashlight beem did little to illuminate the snorer. It looked like a grey, bulbous balloon wiggling back forth emiting a skunklike stench snoring like a semi truck motor. ¨Come see it,¨my host sister says.

An armidillo. The kind you dont eat, they explain to me. I retired to bed to listen out the last of the show. Dog teeth on shell. SNORE! whack! whack! and then finally, shink (that´s what machetes say.)

The next morning it was quartered and boiled and given to the ravenous dogs for breakfast. One ugly, stinky little beast.
Speaking of animals... I´ve become well aquainted with Ngabe animal lore. I´ve given up, more or less on my self-esteem classes witht the sixth graders, surcumbed to the blank stares, silent answers and the dawning realisation that it was all for my benifit anyway. I´ve settled for just having fun with the kids. I asked each student to go home and talk to their grandparents about stories, and to bring their favorites into class. They will rewrite and illustrate each story which will then be sent state side to our friends who sent us the seeds. This story exchange idea is my most recent brain child. Seemingly a great idea... What could possibly unsurp this? Not leaf cutter ants, and not shitty soil.

Until the kids brought in the stories and read them with these, oh so telling smirks. They are not being devious, but for all that they are reading they could be trying. I must be clear, their stories are some of the funniest I have ever heard, much funnier than any fox trying for some grapes, anyway. But they would not receive a warm reception in US classrooms. Every one is violent and sometimes brutal. The Grimm brothers would approve; to avoid predjudice we must reflect on the grusome beginnigs of our own cherished fairytales.

There are too many to share so here´s my favorite. Remember, this is academic.

Why the Vulture is Bald
Once upon a time a horse, tired from a day´s work layed down for a nap. Up above, a vulture circled in the sky, looking for lunch. Upon spotting the horse the vulture made the incorrect assumption that it was dead and began his decent. The vulture landed on the horse and promptly (information inserted for city folk: vultures eat the softest parts of the body first, being the eyes and the, well, the behind) inserted his head and neck into horse´s behind with the intent to dine. The horse who of course was not at all dead, woke up, was frightened and began to run, all the while squeezing his cheeks with frear. The vulture flapped and flapped his wings, but with each flap the horse ran faster. Finally the poor creature could run no more and fell to the ground exausted. Out popped the vulture´s head completely bald and smoking. And the vulture with his newly gleened knowledge says: ¨Lo juro, por Dios, que el ojo primero en vez del trasero.¨
Translation: ¨In the future when I go to dine, I´ll taste the butt only after the eye.¨

I´ll make copies of a complete book of Ngabe fables available soon!

The authors

The completed bean storage facility

Ojo de Gallo, a fungus that affects coffee

Murphey´s Law

2009-06-08T16:37:00.000-07:00

Bhoj slack-lining outside his mudd house... pre-fallKalli walking across a rickety bridge on the way to the charla that wasn´t...

Chiriqui provence grasslands

Mis amigas reading Beauty and the Beast.

Chacra y Nagwa Some chi watching us at the new volunteers´culture week

My photo-happy neighbors and their great background, strange hanging bottle and all.

Passing through town today... not supposed to be here but the plans two volunteers and I had to do an HIV/AIDS charla in a far away Comarca town fell through. The director of the school forgot to mention that the students would be taking their exams and would not be free until 4pm, a tall order for those who have to walk 2hrs to arrive home every night. We then turned to the nunery where we were to stay that night but they told us that every bed was full. So we hopped in a car and drove down the mountain. It was a beautiful day, a day that reminded me of camping in southern Utah (yes, that dry and that deforested). And we had a great lunch and 12 hrs after my alarm went off this morning I find myself again ready to go back up to site.

The HIV/AIDS charla that I had planned in my community with two different volunteers (see photos) also fell through due to hard rains and harrowing thunderheads. But in this case we were able to give the charla to the sixth graders. That went really well.

My buddies Kayla and Kate

I head to the city in the middle of the month for my yearly meds. This year has gone fast. Some days I only hope that the next goes just as fast (which I am sure it will), and other days I wish it would slow down. I have wrinkly hands. Seriously the skin is thick and dry and the skin on the tip of each finger is peeling off, giving the sensation that no matter what I touch there is something balling up in it (ex: my hair) when it is actually just loose skin. Gross. I will get it checked out in the city.

I´m really tired and am having a hard time finding ways to recharge. I probably need a couple of days of sleeping and reading in site and I´ll be back on track.

To motivate myself to pasear from house to house more I decided I would start asking community members their fabels and stories. I´d like to write them in Spanish and Ngabere and have the sixth graders illustrate them. So for the first time in a long while I went and made a full day of house to house visits. Jose told me he had a plethra of stories ( he didn´t use the word plethra). One went like this:

A woman is carrying her new born child up the road to the Health Center in the middle of the night. She´s tired and can no longer hold off sleep so she lays down on the side of the road and doozes off. Along comes a giant. He´s hungry and she, a new mother, could provide him with a snack. He tip toes up, and starts to drink her breast milk (wait, wait, this is a ngabe story). The women, thinking her child is hungry pulls the giants head towards her to acomodate her.... oh lord! That´s not her baby! In fear (and I imagine with much distaste) she pushes the giant away who runs to hide in the woods and see if she will dare sleep again. She does and the previous scene repeats itself except that this time she doesn´t fall asleep again. (end story)

I asked Jose how long ago this happened. He answers, ¨Hace varios días. (Translation: several days ago.) ¨Like on Saturday?¨I ask. ¨Could be,¨he says. ¨Or like 40 years ago?¨ ¨Yes,¨he says. ¨Around then.¨ Perhaps I won´t have the kids illustrate this story.

My cat won´t eat plain white rice. It´s embarassing. When he stays with my family they have to give it fish or chicken. He´s much fatter than other kitties due to Whiskas. It´s all very troublesome. But he is so nice to cudddle with. Note to my special friend who saw me flipp out on a camping trip many years ago because there was a tick on my tiger shirt: I picked 200 tiny ticks off of my cat a couple days ago.

Missing you all and hope that everyone is surviving the economic problems back home.

2009-05-16T10:05:00.000-07:00

Rainy season is back! No more carrying water!

Minchi chi Ngabe for little cat

My two visitors

Coffee in bloom

One of my favorite Chi-Chis

Jose´s daughter, Dominga

Building a worm box with Jose. (3 days later it had been knocked over by a horse and lay in shambles on the ground.)

Steph´s Coffee Roasters Seminar

My sweet little kitty, Chami. I am so glad I have him.

I even made up my mind to get caught up on my blog and upload my pictures last time I came into town. As Panamanians like to say however, ¨Dios no quiere¨ essentially translated: God doesn´t feel like it. That day it seemed to me, that he didn´t feel like it, although I feel a tad ego centric imagining that God has any opinion regarding whether or not I upload photos. But here, sometimes, it definately feels as though the forces work against me. Perphaps someone is throwing me the ¨mal de ojo¨ (evil eye) as so many people in my community tell me. If this is the case, he or she is one smart bruja. Who ever it is knows that nothing drives me mad like not being able to get things done on the few opportunities I have to do them. Never mind hexing me with a urinary track infection or even tuberculosis (recently these have been blamed on witchcraft). Hit me with the good old hurry-up-and-wait-but- get-nothing-done-even-though-you-have-tried-so-hard days.

Anyway, last week I came out to pick up two new PC trainees who were coming to visit my site and the computer wiped my camera memory chip clean. I was so pissed I decided not to write anything. But last week was great despite all the run of the mill mix ups and cancelations that plagued the trainees´visit. We walked for hours to a latrine meeting that didn´t happen. I had planned to make compost with a farmer and when we arrived he definately wanted to change the date. The conversation went like this
Me: Hi Romero, how are you?
Romero: Well, Bedti, you see, I am of good health, but... You know that compost we were going to make?
Me: (You have got to be kidding me!) Yes??
Romero: Well you see, I haven´t yet collected the materials.

I had passed by this house three times to make sure we would have something to compost that day. So I asked him what he needed and how far away it was. In two hours he had collected the materials and we had successfully made the smallest pile of bocashi yet to be seen in the comarca. The girls were good sports about the pase of our days. One even said kind of excited like, ¨They told us in training that they´d say ¨si dios quiere¨! ¨ (If god wants- the biggest Panamanian cop-out ever invented) I was glad I could oblige.

The next day we went to build the worm box with Jose and take a tour around his coffee farm. We spent alot of time just hanging out with my host family, people we met on the road and pasearing with other families in the community. It was a great experience to have visitors who reminded me of myself a year ago. I was able to look at all that I have survived and acheived during the past year and see how much I have changed. For the first time I really saw my language aquisition and the relationships I have formed with members of my community from an objective point of view. I felt really proud of all I had done.

Of course, the sunny feeling has somewhat worn off now that things are back to normal, I have a cold again and too much free time. Yesterday I did nothing but sleep. I have been so tired. Jose´s worm box had the life span of three days, someone else´s had dried up and the worms had died even though they live 5feet from the river and the plans I had today to build soil conservation barriers were cancled after I hiked up to the community for one hour. The compost we made when my family was here is not composting because there is still no water and when I pulled the tarp off it yesterday because it looked like rain the chickens had strune it about in 5 minutes.

Thank goodness for Scarlette O´Hara. I am reading Gone with the Wind again and I find myslef employing her Ï´ll think about it tomorrow¨mentalitly.

I´ve been thinking about, if I were, and I´m not going to because it would be silly, write a memiours what the title would be. ( I can´t even spell the word, do forgive me)

Betdi, Why are You so Sweaty?

Two Years in a Hamack

All the Things That Didn´t Work

8 Ways to pass an 8 Hour Meeting

Rich Girl, Poor Town

And the fleas bit her all over her body...

There are more, but some are too crass to appear on the web.

I´m headed out to a Gender and Development meeting tomorrow, and with two awesome girlfriends I will be giving and HIV and AIDS seminar to all the adults in my communtiy. Good ol´ condom on a banana demonstration etc.

I´ve been working in the schools quite a bit and it makes me happy. I feel far more competent and happy in the class room than in the feild (oops). We´ve been talking about self esteem, respect and all that fuzzy feeling stuff, but slowly I am seeing the kids come out of their shells. Yesterday I taught them a wash your hands song and passed out soap, explaining the importance of staying healthy what with the pig flu and all. Then I made the 6th graders go too all the classes and teach the song to the younger kids. Some of them liked it and others quite obviously did not. They stood, strong and silent in the back of the room being difficult. (Yes they were dudes.) But the quite girls sang loudly and didn´t shy from making the hand gestures that went with the song. I am going shopping at a dollar store to buy little prizes and the kids can purchase things from my ¨store¨with their participation points that I hand out daily. It´s fun. As for now, I am going to go find something with ice in it. Ice and dairy.... yum.

Patacones and Pets

2009-04-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

Patacones and Brett

Beautiful Las Lajas

WOW! Cool!

Shit!

Almost more than a month has passed since my dad and bro left Panama. Their trip flew by and before I knew it I was back up in site and it was if it hadn´t happened. I think we all had a really good time. I was suprised how quickly I slipped back into Normal again. My flawless directional ability got us lost in the city several times and as if it had a magnetic pull the dangerous ghetto Chorillo pulled us in to its narrow dingy streets. Dad was so calm. So was I (shut up Brett.) I pretended to be excited about the canal. To be fair, the boats are really big, and it´s a lot of water. But... I just can´t get myself to really care! Ever night we battled it out for scrabble champion. They were no match form my trilangual talents (quad if you count the words I make up.) I won. (shut up brett.) We ate great food and as my flaquito brother often pointed out, ¨Are you kidding? We just ate!¨ Exactly. I still dream about it. I made a point to drink Papaya milk shakes at every opportunity.

We visited lush mountain sides and flat beaches and the steep slopes of my community. Host father and real father exchanged heart warming words and we laughed and joked a lot. My community was so appreciative of their visit, even though it was breif. We made some compost like a big happy international family. The compost pile was a mixture of success (everyone came) and dissapointment (no one brought as much material as they had commited). And there is no water. so the compost is still sitting there, not composting. Small, unasuming, not enough. But that´s taking me somewhere esle....

Brett and Dad were christened Ngabe names Brett: Chachi Dad: Chidá. They still talk about them in my site. Sometimes we´re just chilling and they say their names out of the blue. ¨Chidá¨ they say and nod their heads, thinking. ¨Chidá... and your brother´s name, how was it again? Ah yes, Chachi. Chidá y Chachi. Huh.¨

Dad, Hermano mio, thank you for your patience when i had a map in my hands... next time i wont scoff at the GPS idea. Thanks for hiking through heat and haze to see where I live and for being so suppotive!

I wasn´t up in site for a week when stomach problems sent me back down and it´s been a rough month of not a whole lot to do. I´ve been helping carry sand and rock for the community bean storage structure (a little bit) . Each trip takes over an hour (30min steep uphill to the road, then back with the load of 50-60lbs. ) The group members have been carrying materials for a month now and they rest in my host families kitchen. When I am not helping they yell good naturedly up to my house, ¨Betdi, you sleeping?¨ ¨Making lunch already?¨ It makes me a bit nervous about my activity habits. I try and find a balance between being a part of the community and helping and not driving myself into the ground doing heavy lifting everyday. I´ve also been doing some soil conservation on slopes so sloped that it probably wont work. But I´m learning. I´m learning to be more honest and to say. No! Lets not do it here where the land has already slid and the slope is 1! (as in 45 degree angle). Mejor en otro parte, por favor!

Nine months after arriving to my community I became a mother. Of a sweet little kitten who becomes a little less sweet as he becomes more comfortable in my home. I hope I still have an inflatable matteress when I get home. I really like having someone welcome me home. Somebody to talk to (sort of). He makes me chill out a little bit, I like to make tea and pet him in the morning instead of stressing about what I am doing that day.

Last week we had out All Volunteer Conference. It was possitive. But I was negitive. I couldn´t seem to engage and felt threatened by all of the sharing of successes. It was silly on my part but I was really glad when it was over. Kudos to the group 62 with their abundance of musical and dance talent!

Tomorrow I head to a nearby community to talk about safe sex, aids and hiv. I think I am going to be deversifying form agriculture a bit. I need something to keep me a little more busy, something with more tangible results. I´ve been so frusturated! So I am in the process of asking for a latrine project in a community that is so far away from the road that they can´t get any support from anyone. And I am going to try and get more involved with gender roles, women and kids. And maybe agricultre will be like my platacones, important, just as filling as anything else on the plate, but not the main focus...

I tried to upload more photos but the comp is too slow. until next time!

9 months y siguiendo....

2009-03-19T13:45:00.000-07:00

Méligo, Bai, y Betdi. Please avoid obvious references to skittles and pots of gold.

Mom, this one is for you.

A long beautiful day of hiking.

You cané see the wind in this picture, but it´s there!

My neighbors, Ben and Lisa

Host family´s beans, but not all of them.

José impressed his latino counterparts with his knowledge of coffee prunning. It was a great exchange between Ngabes and Latinos (and gringos, for that matter.)

Lines of beans have been pulled up and left to dry in the feild before being degrained.

The roommate. One of them.

The Process: Porear (v) hit bean pods with sticks.

The Problem: Juice served from an old chemical bottle.

These girls were sitting in their house when I handed them a photo I had printed for them. The light hit the photo just right so that the picture turned translucent.

In town; on Vacation...

Today I showered with running water, ate cheese and drank cold water. Really cold water! Oh, it was so good. I enjoy that these are the things that I enjoy. I imagine I will always have more appreciation for things like refrigeration, a hot shower on a cold day and lunch with friends now that I have gone without for so long. But these things probably loose their luster and become normal again at some point. But now they are so exciting!

Tomorrow Brett and Dad come to visit. My first visitors from home. I am really excited to see them.

It has been a busy month. The summer keeps getting hotter, and dryer, but I´m getting used to it. Every other day I fill my big chacra up with my dirty clothes, 10L water jug and shampoo and go to the stream (mejor dicho ¨trickle¨). I still prefer the summer to the winter on account of the beautiful afternoons and rainless evenings.

I´ve visited some other volunteers in their sites, done some hiking, talked alot about soil conservation and coffee tree prunning. This month I spent more time with friends than I have before. Even though it was work related and alot of fun, the time out of site leaves me feeling disconnected from my community. So after Dad and Brett´s trip I am going to do what I can to stick it out for a couple of weeks and get my head back in site.

Ben, Lisa, Steph and I went to the capital of the Comarca to attend the election of the new comarca president. It was a beautiful hike with rainbows at every turn. The wind nearly knocks you off your feet it blows so hard, and it was colder than I ever expected Panama to be. We spent the night in a church and were awoken by a less than pleased padre who told us we had no right to stay there. we left, but I have never been chastized by a man of God before. As one could imagine, I felt rather guilty.

Favorite moment this month? Sitting in Ben and Lisa´s home on plastic chairs drinking wine and laughing about life here and life at home. Following a long and successful day taking about Lombriculture (worms that make strong compost) we debreifed by candle light and the good stuff (from box of course!) I have made some amazing friends!

I feel as though I need to make a statement. I have tried to be really honest in this blog. I have shared the very best and the most uncomfortable of what I have experienced here. It´s been lonely at times and I´ve struggled, but I am really glad that I am here. I have no doubt that this is where I need to be right now. I have also probably never had so much fun. I have a larger and more diverse group of friends than I have ever had before. The relationships I have formed with some of my fellow volunteers are really strong, and my friendships within my community are maturing into real, honest friendships. I do alot of laughing in and out of site. So thank you all for your support, your concern and your love! I miss you all, but I´m really happy here and I wouldn´t trade this experience for anything!

Photo Album

2009-02-25T13:53:00.000-08:00

After a camp for teenagers (regarding auto-esteem and safe sex) we took some kids to the beach. For many this was the first and maybe will be the only time they see the ocean up close, even though, for example, the kids from my site can see the sea from our ridge.

They loved it.

My host brother, age 14, headed for the waves.

Hello all,

It´s been a busy month and as always I find myself swamped with things to do at the internet cafe. I just got back from celebrating Carnival. We had alot of fun, we did some dancing in crazy outfits at crazy hours, slept under the stars on the beach and ate alot of ¨street meat¨. Now its back to work, harvesting beans, beating bean pods with sticks to release the seeds, and then carrying them to the road. (My host father plans of harvesting 800-1000 lbs of beans this year). It´s quite a shock to go from the thump-thump-thump of the base in a discoteca back to the comarca.

Last night the vacation ended with a bang when our minivan (driven by a fellow PCV´s friend) was pulled over by some cops at a checkpoint. We watched the scence with somewhat giddy anticipation as the cop took two of the guys across the street to a scetchy dark building to talk to them. Kate left the car to help with the negotiations. Maybe they needed a woman´s touch? Aparently so. The cop, satisfied with several bottles of liquor and cranberry juice and a Maxium magazine, happily posed with his billy stick, pretending to hit the two gringos. Then he helped us flag down a bus to take us girls home. It may have been the funniest thing I´ve seen in Panama. I´ll try and get the photos!

The summer keeps getting hotter and dryer and its harder and harder to stay clean. After a week of no water I finally went down to the stream to fill up some bottles to take back to the house. The stream that my family had pointed me too is about 20min down the hill and has dried to a trickle that that seeps out of the rocks, catches in a peice of halved bamboo and dribbles into a murky pool about one foot by two feet.

This is really depressing, so dont read it if you dont want to. I wrote about a little girl that came begging to my house frequently After several times I began to turn down her requests for sugar, salt, rice, and the really hard one, milk for her baby brother. I hadn´t seen her in weeks and had wondered why until three days ago I heard that her family had left when her little baby brother died. My mind made an instant conection which may or may not really be relevant. I know milk on that one occasion wouldn´t have saved the baby´s life. And the one occasion would have multiplied as the word spread that I was giving out food. But how would I have felt if this had happened similarly in the states? or in my first months here? I know I would have felt more affected. I would have been upset, felt guilty and regretted the lost opportunity to safe a child´s life. But I watch my reaction with a feeling of distance between me and that baby, I feel removed even though with each passing day I spend in my community I am in truth less removed. So many babies are born here, and so many die. It´s not shocking like it was before. And my jaded lack of guilt,my assured reaction that in the name of ¨sustainable development¨ I could not have done anything doesn´t really shock me either. It suprises me, maybe. I wonder if I am in essence loosing my humanity. I had a conversation with a young man visiting Panama about a similiar topic. I tired to explain why I do not lend or give money to anyone (in most occasions). He argued that to make a difference in one person´s life, for example, supplementing the diet of a child in their formative years was more important than being fair to everyone else. I tried to explain the debilitating effects of paternalism. But even as I felt the heat rising up my neck as I tried to defend the actions that I have debated so often inside my head, I knew it would not be last time that I had this discussion, with someone else or with myself.

My neighbor Benida, with her brand new baby. This may be confusing so I will clarify: This is not the baby I wrote about.

Winds that charged throuh our area at 115km per hour tore roofs off even the sturdiest buildings. The light on the floor is let in by a missing sheet of zinc.

One of numerous photo sessions. My neighbors standing by the church. The red writing says ¨God gives you time. Don´t wait until tomorrow.¨

Summer ... and the Livings Easy

2009-01-23T10:01:00.000-08:00

I feel like I´ve climbed to the top of a hill ( in reality that´s all that I´ve been doing during the past 7 months: climbing up hills, literally and figuratively.) Speaking figuratively then, looking down into all hte rolling hills and high peaks around me -the real ones which are being slashed and burned to a crisp- I know the challanges aren´t finished and that the lows will still pull me down, but it feels different. I feel different. I ´m calmer, less affected by the funeral of a baby , the endless demands for money, the sloth-paced speed of life and the absence of easy success.

The other day two kids chased me up the hill from the church. ¨Take my picture! Take my picture!¨I ignored it at first and they must have yelled it at me 20 times before I turned around and said, Ï´m not going to take your picture. Go away.¨They stopped screeching form y camera and they sniggered down the hill, seemingly unaffected by my cold responce.

Perhaps my realitive peace of mind can be attributed to the lull of work to be done here. The beans have been planted and only the men leave with their ¨bombas¨to fumigate the plants with fertilizer once a week. It´s easier to feel ok about not having work to do when no one else is working either.

I gave a pretty good lecture on agrochemicals the other day. I used more illustrations than anything else. They must have liked the drawings because they were involved and interested in the topic. Dropping words like ¨Sterility¨ and ¨impotence¨helps get attention, too.

Walking through my community I notice that most still fumigate without the masks and gloves I solicited for them. But some do use them. And that makes me feel good.

Overall, I get more satisfaction from the daily one on one interaction than anything else. I think most of the kids in my community have heard the story ¨Juan and the Magic Bean Stock¨at least once. And I love grabbing them as I read ¨I smell the blood of an English man!¨and hearing them squeal.

The other day I hiked down to a town at the bottom of the mountain with Micheal, my 14-year-old host brother. He acted as guide after Paula warned me about vacas bravas (angry violent cows) that graze on the trail. The whole time he told be near horror stories about close calls with the vacas bravas (¨But then I grabbed its ear....!¨) and snakes (¨Si, those are dangerous, they can squeeze a grown man to death, and you know, they´ll chase you!¨) On the way up a woman named Maura stepped out of the bushes onto the trail. ¨Boo. Did I scare you?¨she asked me. ¨Whew. I said pretending to catch my breath. I thought you were a witch!¨I replied. Maura uses every possible opportunity to engage me in converstation about witches, twins and kids born with tails. ¨¨You know, ¨She said, ¨I saw you both pass this morning and I thought, At last! Betdi found a man and she´s going to the river with him!¨ We laughed at her mistake and I pretended to be slightly scandalized. I tell her in Ngabere, NO MAN! I think it has a nice ring to it.. Brare Ñagare!

2009-01-05T05:41:00.000-08:00

Summer is great here....

Take 54.... or so it seems

My favorite time of day is dusk

Guandú, our first bean harvest.

Carmel Popcorn! Gilberto Jnr, Nini, and Jesenia mis hermanos.

The view from my porch

A muñeca (doll) representing the old year. They often hold a bottle of liquor. On New Years they burn the muñecas. This one has a note above it from a grandfather reminding his grand children not to forget their culture.

I hope everyone had a great holliday. Christmas in Kuna Yala was fantastic. You can tell from the photos. We slept in hamacks, visited a private island every day, payed locals for coconuts, which we ate sitting in the shaded white sand, and gorged on king crab and lobster. You wouldnt believe me if i told you how cheap it was. However, not for the tourist looking for luxery. ( I cannot spell today, please bare with me). I pulled on my pants one night after returning to the beach and was promptly bit by a 5inch centipede that was hidden inside. We were all screaming as I, with my pants around my ankles tryed to distance myself from the bug jumping around like a crazy ginga. An old sage looking Kuna man said ¨The same thing happened to me. It hurt real bad. The next morning I woke up vomiting blood.¨ But I didnt and the rest of the trip was a blast.

I stayed in my community for New Years, it was rather lonely, but I went to church with my host family and I could tell they were glad I went with them. Pastors from a more developed town brought in a PA system to the church (remember, we have no electricity). So imagaine my suprise upon returning to my community and hearing the screeching of a mic too close to the machine. Then, rather than saying -testing 1-2-3- they kept saying - Gloria a dios, gloria a dios (glory to god) over and over again. It made me giggle. my host mom Paula sent Nini up to my house with a bowl of their new years dinner. I freigned excitement (I´ve been sick with, as it turns out ameobas) and went down to their house to eat with them. She had made my plate especially without noodles, the gesture just momly enough to make me tear up. Later that night the kids and I made carmel popcorn, which was a hit. and of course, I was only to excited to share my favorite ambrosa with the fam. I started, again, from scratch on my garden, I built a raised bed and filled it with horse poop and compost materials. So, it was good I stayed in site.

The other day Nini had come asking to hear a fairy tale. We sat down and began reading. Ever so nonchalantely she threw her arm around my neck and leaned into me as she looked at the pictures. As I read I marveled at how far this little seven-year-old and my relationship has come. Nini was slow to warm to me. She rarely smiled and wouldnt look at me in the eye. She´s amazingly mature for her age and often was the one that would cook when I was still living with her family. I remember coming home some days so hungry and trying in vain to knock oranges out of a tree to eat something! I remember her watching me and feeling so out of place and so shamed, somehow. By a 7-year-old! So that sisterly show of affection ment alot.

I´ve been ill. I wont go into the details, except that in one midnight trip to the latrine with purpose, a giant spider the size of my hand crawled around the rim of the seat. I did a little dance as I tryed to decide what to do. Everytime I focused my light on him he crouched and stuck his butt in the air. But sometimes the urges are just stronger than aracnidphobea. So we negotiated.

I´m in my regional capital taking 3 different medicines for ameboas, I have had them for I dont know how long. Should have gone to the clinic much sooner. As irony would have it even though I rarely stopped pooping during the last week, when the doctor asked to collect a sample, well you can imagine. That is all I will say. I dont feel very good, and the meds make you feel sick for a while, but things should clear up soon.

Happy New Year!

Kat and her Lobster..

Feliz Navidad Prospero Año y Felicidad!

2008-12-20T13:05:00.000-08:00

California red worm box and family

Corn and a beautiful summer day

Another after-the-photo photo

Geronimo, my neighbor. great singer

I wanna wish you all a Merry Christmas! I´m not feeling much like writing today... not much sleep the last couple of days. I´m about to head out for my first vacation in Panama, Kat, Issac and Melissa and I are going to Kuna Yala. First I´m headed to Panama City. It should be interesting. I havent been to the city for six months. we might go to the mall ( i wonder if they have a Panamanian Santa there) and watch a movie. I´m excited for a change. This computer is murderously slow.

I´ve been in site for six months (1/4th of my service.) It´s hard to believe that so much time has passed. It´s easy to feel like I haven´t accomplished anything. Many of my fellow volunteers have fish/rice tanks under their belt or some other project in the works. I give little informational charlas, visit farms, plant beans and more beans, soon to be harvesting beans and more beans.

I also read fairy tales to small kids and whoever else will listen. So instead of just pasearing on those numerous days I wake up with nothing to do, I pasear with Los Mejores Cuentos de Hadas, under my arm and read Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and the Lamp, and other stories. Jack and the Bean Stock is an all time favorite... Guess why.

-What kind of beans were those?
- Uh. Magic beans.
-Si, but what KIND?
-It´s just a story. They don´t exisist, you know, here.
- Ah. A story, ahora si. like the bible?
-Umm. Yes,like the bible (it has the same unrealistic qualities)

But the last couple of days kids come over to my house every hour of the day to hear the stories, except most of them dont really want to listen, they just want to look in my house and ask things like, ¨Bedi, whose matches are those?¨ or make statements like, ¨Bedi, your mattress is so THICK.¨and ¨BEdi, what a WARM blanket you have.¨ Ay Dios.

The other week I got home from David to pick up various packages from mom and Aunt Ruthy. My backpack was packed with gluten free goods, in fact, when I got back and started unpacking it was as if my backpack puked Whole Foods all over my floor. I had my back window open (the only one I open when I want privacy, like while bathing, or unpacking alot of really delicious food). I dont know how long she had been watching me, but at somepoint during my efforts to fit cookies, pasta, dry cereal, candy, chocolate in secret places safe from eyes and rats, I looked up to see the nine-year-old neigbor named Danillela peering through my window. ¨Do you have any sugar? my mom wants to know.¨ This family comes over frequently to ask for sugar. I keep saying no, but this time made me feel particularly guilty. I imagine that some people reading this think I am stingy. I am stingy. Sometimes when this young girl comes and asks for dry milk for her malnourished little brother I tell her no. Then I close the door and eat the dry milk with a spoon. Guilt makes you do strange things. It is not that I do not give things to people in my community. I often take small offerings with me when I pasear to offset the coffee or food that culturally they feel obligated to give me. I pay kids to water my garden when I leave town for a while and buy the handycrafts of people in my community. But to give into a request like a loan or food handouts would set a precident impossible to follow and thus be unfair to the others who would undoubtably follow. I want to impart the lesson that work= money. But I will not give handouts. I´ve made the mistake a couple times already. leads to undesireable results.

Speaking of handouts, the other day, I stopped by a little store in my community to buy some tomatos (is there an e in there?). The owner asked me where they make spam. we looked at the label. Denmark. Then he asked me if I would please wait, because he wanted to ask me something else. He went back into his house/store and I heard him rummaging for a while. he came back and said, ¨Bedi, I am so glad you are here, because I dont know what these are for.¨ On the counter he plopped a greasy 5lb bag of gummy bears. I laughed. He looked at me. ¨They´re candy. Ositos de goma!¨ I said.

He then asked me if he could make chicha (juice) with them. This is funny because panamanians make juice out of everything. Apparently missionaries come every year and give out food. 4,000 ngabes arrive. (4,000x5lbs is a lot of gummy bears.) Dario had been keeping them because he didnt know what they were for. We cut open the bag and he asked me to try them. my tounge worked around the bear, looking for the flavor of lime that I knew should be there... but... kerosine... bag... ah! lime,there it is. ¨yeah, they´re ok,¨ I told him. He poured them into a new bag and stirred the five pounds of little bears around with a spoon ¨Hay bastante comida,¨ (That´s quite a bit of food) he said. he´ll probably make them into juice.

still here

2008-12-09T14:59:00.000-08:00

happy panamanian mothers´day to all of you who are mothers. maybe i will have more pictures later... my camera is being replaced (thank you mom). Thank you to all who have sent letters, packages, and emails. I realize it´s mostly a one way street because i hardly write or call... but I think of you all alot.

Whats been happening... the rains have stopped, for good. I can probably expect the water to go out soon, I´ll be carrying water up the mountain to my house. It might be fun though, communal bathing and clothes washing. I have been keeping busy, if not out there working then in there (meaning my head) working even harder. It has been incredibly intense, often leaving me with the desire to call this whole thing off. If life is so hard, why not spend every moment with the people that you love? But it´s giving me ample opportunity to work out some personal issues... exsorcising AND exercising personal demons.

I think I am going to start putting my efforts towards creating a presentation and documents about the use and disposal of agrochemicals. People here use herbicide bottles as coffee containers, and dont use equipment like masks and gloves. I went to fertilize beans several nights ago. I didn´t have gloves but I figured that one time for a couple of hours wouldnt be too bad. The chemicals acutally burned holes through several spots of my skin on my hands. DONT WORRY. I´m getting gloves today. But imagine, I was out there once for 4hrs. They have been doing it for days. You should see their blistered hands. Tomorrow I am meeting with the man who supplies my grains group with a mico loan in the form of herbicides and pesticides. I am going to try and see if I can convince him to throw in some masks and gloves for free. He should not be selling one without the other. I´ve been doing some research on the chemicals used in my site. Most say to avoid the fumigated area for 24 hrs. Yestereday I walked along a trail a good distance from a farm where a man was spraying fertilizer. The wind was blowing and it brought that summery smell across the valley to where I was walking. He wore no mask, no gloves, and shortsleves... I watched as his 6-year old daughter navigated her way barefoot through the sprayed plants to take him coffee.

I had a visit from an old childhood aquaintance the other day. It was unexpected. I had gone to visit José, my favorite coffee producer. He lives at the bottom of a pretty intense hill in a house that is really just a zinc roof. I was holding his young grandkid on my lap when the kid pulled something out of his pocket and placed it on my knee. Our eyes met, mine and the toy´s that is. It took a moment before I realized... ¨Mr. California Raisin? Is that you?¨ I asked in english. I picked him up and looked at the bottom of his once white shoe. Copyright 1987. Sure was. ¨wow,¨ I looked at the family. ¨Una pasita de California!¨ ¨No,¨ they hurried to correct me, ¨It´s a little frog.¨ I didn´t argue. The raisin and I looked at eachother knowingly. Here, raisins don´t have legs, arms and gaunty circa 1980 sunglasses. We both knew how far he´d come - from the greasy cardbord confines of a McDonalds Happy Meal to a moldy pocket in the Comarca Ngabe- Bugle. That´s all that mattered.

You must forgive me! These are the things of which I am inspired to write about these days. keeps things interesting. Not quite as intersting, perhaps as the rat that chewed its way through my mosquite net (not my fortress! No!) to shit on my pillow and sit on my head. That has made things intersting. My view on rat poison changed in an instant. Prepárate para morir!

Much love, smell some pine trees and eat a candy cane for me!

Happy Thanksgiving

2008-11-28T12:36:00.000-08:00

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.

Visit to Volunteer Site

2008-04-19T15:39:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone!
What an amazing day! We got up early and piled into 3 Peace Corps Land Cruisers to drive 2 hours to a PCV who is working with a group of farmers who implement alot of sustainable Ag. projects. The drive was pretty much everything I have ever expected, from close calls with large buses with people hanging on the outside to bumpy curvy dirt paths. It is amazing to imagine that at one point all of the pasture lands, that resemble the foothills in SLC, were once covered in forest. The "Slash and Burn" technique has really devistated the landscape. It is a practice that many conservationists are trying to stop.

We spent most of the time walking around the farm looking at honey bees, worm composting, veggie gardens and chicken coop. We stopped frequently to taste fresh goat milk (right from the teat... ok, from a glass, but it was FRESH) and some strange fruit. I have never experienced textures like that before. Some were cottony and turned smooth in our mouths, and others came from inside a small hard shell and we like a fruit snack with a seed in the center. I tried it all, and suprisingly, my stomach feels fine!

One of the volunteer's projects is a rice patty. We took off our shoes, rolled up our pants and talked through the mudd and water, pushing last crop's stalks deep with our toes so that they don't grow and compete with the new seeds. We also helped her plant a couple rows , which she could have done faster without us... not the point.

Her host family made all 26 of us lunch. Cooked on a mud stove in an enormous pot, were four chickens, broth, potaoes and something purple. The stew was served with rice and Orange/pineapple juice. It was amazing.

When we got home we went to the pool to cool off. An interesting interaction with the lifeguard insued. He came over and told us that the girls who were wearing shorts and the boys who were wearing shorts with belt loops needed to remove themselves from the pool. A married couple were preparing to get in the pool, the woman wearing a suit and some femnine shorts and her husband wearing some quickdry REI zip off pants. He istructed the girl to remove her shorts and give them to her husband or they would not be allowed to enter the pool. The entire group lost it. It was hard not to with the mental image of Brandon wearing his wife's short turqoise running shorts.

We leave for our training site tomorrow morning. It should be interesting to see how we pass most of the day with our new host families. This may be the last time I can use the comp for a while!

Oh yeah. They took us all to my machetes today. Mine is 22 inches. I will leave you with the idea of me, wielding a 22 inch knife.

End Week One

2008-04-25T15:09:00.000-07:00

Hola a todos!
So much has happened during the last week. Things are going well. I have been going to bed every night pretty early because I am so tired during the day ( I blame it on the humidity and heat. It has been sunny, no rain yet although they are supposed to start any day now. The temp averages about 85-90 every day with humidity of 95%. I never thought I would surive it but we are getting used to it.

In the mornings we have 4 hours of tech training. This week has been a large overview and we have had experienced volunterees come in every day and tell us about what they have been doing and the challanges they have faced. We´ve covered rice tanks, fish tanks, composting, home and school gardens, cacao and coffee and lots of other cool stuff. I am pretty sore from swinging the old machete around. no blisters yet.

In the afternoons we attend a language class (all classes take place in homes within the community. We usually sit outside on the terraza or in a ranchero (a open structure similiar to a car port but the roof is made of palm leafs.) Next week I will begin helping in the school which I am excited about because I dont have any kids at my host families home.

I really like my host family. My ¨mom¨calls me her daughter which is actually kind of funny since she isn´t that much older than me. She is a nurse at the local clinic and has a great sense of humor. I think she is dissapointed I dont want to gossip more about the guys in my group. I keep telling her we haven´t had much time for gossip or ¨bochinche¨to develope.

We are all getting pretty sick of the food already. They fry everything. Fried hotdogs are a breakfast staple. I haven´t had too much trouble with the gluten although I made some stupid decisions yesterday...

It is really beautiful here, it´s very green and there are fruits everywhere mangos, oranges, platanos, and lots of different stuff none of us are familiar with.

I think of you all very frequently and hope everything is going awesome. Libby, Alea, hang in there with the waiting process! So far I have to report that it is worth it!