The First Glimpse

For months now I have been conjuring up mental images of my Peace Corps community and imagining how I would be received there. Would they come out to meet me, would they just stare at me, or would they not even acknowledge me? What would the houses be like? Their clothes? Their food? Last week I had my first introduction to my community, what the Peace Corps formally calls the ‘Site Visit.’ The site visit was led by a selected community member, the community guide.

While the picturesque mental images I formed were not far from the reality of my village, my actual arrival was a bit bumpier than what I had imagined. After a full day of travel and precious little sleep, my community guide and I arrived to the final departure point. Only a 45 minute hike kept me from my first glimpse of my community, a hike through a deforested water-logged cow pasture in the blazing midday Panamanian sun with 70+ pounds of books and clothes strapped to my back and, in my hands, Peace Corps issued water filter (~5 pounds) and medical kit (7 pounds, thanks to the extra cans of bug spray I requested). As we started off on the final leg of the trip my community guide threw an empathetic eye my way. He was heavily burdened by chicken feed requested by friend and groceries requested by his wife. There was little hope I would be receive any help from him, so I mentally prepared myself for the trek. Along the way I searched for positive thoughts. For example, when I polished off the water in my Nalgene, knowing its volume, I calculated that I had lightened the load by nearly 2 pounds, which I had probably already sweat out, for a net loss in cargo off 2 pounds. Fabulous. What great progress. When things started to look especially bleak, on the horizon a welcome crew appeared, we were saved, and I am still alive to tell the tale. Yea!

After a brief meeting and lots of chicha (juice), I was turned loose to meet one of my three host families I will be living with in the coming months. As it would just so happen, this family lives within 50 yards of a waterfall that plunges about 50 feet into several little pools which in turn cascade into dozens of more pools, so I felt very inclined to drown my own odors in one (or several) of these wonderful little pools. Without pausing to change out of my rancid mud-caked clothes, I headed to the waterfall with two of my host sisters and my host grandma. Despite my own scumminess, the waterfall’s crazy awesome beauty inspired my host sisters and I to pretend to be actress from the movies, balancing ourselves on the rocks just right so that the water would cascade down upon our heads. I felt graceful and briefly very Hollywood until I attempted to glide from the main pool to an adjacent one and scraped up my tummy on a very camouflaged rock.

After stripping down to my skivvies, washing the clothes I had been wearing, and replacing it, we walked back to my home for the week, a quaint semi-open wood, thatch, and zinc hut stilted about 8 feet off the ground. After a supper of rice, lentils, avocado, and chicken cooked over a wood fire, a fugón (probably one of the best suppers I’ve had here in Panama), my extended host family and I gathered around an 8 inch TV powered by solar panels to watch a DVD of El Chavo del 8, a Mexican comedy show. I’m still working on processing that one. It was just really. . . unreal.

The next day was a meeting with the agriculture group I will be working with in the community. I introduced myself and asked what the group’s hopes and expectations were for the next couple years as they worked with their Peace Corps Volunteer. Their list was long, diversified, and pretty exciting. Many of the project ideas I have listed previously came up again, but they were joined by English classes and latrine improvement. After the meeting in the town center, I scrambled back to my host family’s house (45 min away) before the impending storm broke loose.

The house shaking thunder and solid downpour cleared about fifteen hours, and I headed out with a group of about dozen folks to get to know various agricultural producers throughout the community. This meant of treading up and down hills on paths of over-saturated clay for most of the daylight hours. Sadly I was the only one sliding ridiculously out of control down the hills. After my third and nearly fatal fall (a huge exaggeration, don’t worry), one of the little old men guiding me stopped to make me a walking stick. As he offered it to me, he said ‘su tercera pata’ (‘your third paw’). I felt a little ashamed taking the stick and acknowledging the fact that I am ridiculously clumsy, but I quickly got past it. For the rest of the week I went no where without my third paw, clinging to it for dear life on the slippery slopes. Even now, 3 days later my right arm is still burning in pain days from the death grip I held on that stick. But it was my savior.

After returning ‘home’ from day one of endless hiking, I noticed my host 7 year old host sister’s hand bleeding onto her shirt. When I asked to see her hand, she instantly hid it from me, but after some coaxing I got a look at it and learned she had cut it with a machete a few days earlier. Because it looked kind of gruesome, I retrieved my medical kit to prep and bandage up her hand. The rest of the family watched in keen interest as I opened up my enormous medical kit. To break the ice, I joked that the Peace Corps sent me with a traveling pharmacy so that they never have to send me to the hospital (which is a bit of a lie. The PC is quick to get volunteers to a doctor). Nevertheless, my host siblings asked me if I was a doctor, and later in the evening my host father approached me about another one of his daughters who has been losing hair from the crown of her head in the past few months. The next day I was asked by another concerned parent whose daughter has been getting headaches at school and while reading. The daughter elaborated that she couldn’t see far away things very well anymore. The fear in her eyes and her mom’s diminished when I explained that my whole family has the same problem, but we all have glasses to correct it. Despite my insistence that I am not a doctor, the medical questions keep coming. As I hiked out of my site along side my host grandma, she asked me if I had something for ‘el hongo que pica los pies’ (‘the fungus that makes your feet itch’). She went on laughing to describe the painful hot salt water treatments she uses. I laughed heartily with her and then bit nervously as I came to the realization that my insistence of ‘but I am not a doctor’ weren’t going to deter future questions or requests. Chalk up one more item on the list of community expectations... informal doctor/pharmacist.

From my room in Sta. Clara

Public bus transport, un diablo rojo (red devil)

The mountains of Chiriqui

Along the Pan-American Highway