A ‘Chilly’ Christmas

Christmas in the tropics hardly felt like Christmas. My wish for snow resulted in a ‘chilly’ and rainy Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. My community complained it was really cold (we may have dropped into the low to mid seventies) and said that such weather could have only come from my country. I tried bringing the Christmas spirit into my ‘hut.’ (By the way, my house is finished and I have moved in!) I loaded my ipod with Christmas music and made paper red and green construction paper chains and paper snowflakes. My hut now looks like a second grade classroom. My neighbors tell me that they like my ‘flowers’ (the paper snow flakes). Because I’ve had several failed attempts at describing snow, I now just accept that compliment and say, ‘Thanks, I think the flowers are pretty, too.’

Christmas in my community was almost like any other day. While celebrations there normally are much simpler than in the U.S. (Christianization was a relatively recent happening among the Naso and expendable income normally is little to null), most families have fallen on hard times due to crop losses in the recent storm and high commodity prices. I saw no gifts exchanged and only some families celebrated with special meals (ones which include meat) with the immediate family. I celebrated the holiday by stringing up popcorn and introducing my neighbors to the magical corn.

Since my post-flood return to my community in early December, I have been going house-to-house doing damage assessments for various Panamanian government agencies. It’s tiring work (my community is very spread out over muddy hills and valleys), but I am really enjoying getting to know my community so thoroughly. The really out of the way houses have some of the nicest people who have nothing to give a visitor, but offer something anyway. After two and a half weeks of surveying, I am still only visited about half of the homes in my community. Damages range from homes forever buried in landslides, entire fields carried away by the once-raging river or by mud cascading down the mountain side, to cacao harvests lost to mold during the two weeks of rain.

While I surveyed the damage and took pictures, Soberanda, the kindergarten teacher in my community, showed out the remnants of her home: scattered thatch from her roof and splintered beams protruding from the mud. She and her neighboring extended family fled their homes for the mountain when they felt the ground move up higher on the mountainside; later that night a series of landslides buried their homes. In reviewing the losses, Soberanda smiled when she showed me the one personal possession she had recovered: a worn muddy t-shirt slung over the fragment of a tree trunk.

Thanks for the Christmas cards, thoughts, emails, and phone calls. They brightened my rainy, ‘chilly’ holiday. I wish you all a very happy new year. I will ring in 2009 in Panama City with my sister Tammy who will be spending a couple weeks getting to know Panama. Ciao!

One of the newest editions to the hood: Pinto

I love baby goats

this is Tibi. she is hanging out on my porch

my cat, Cuko

my favorite snowflake on the right

my porch turn second grade classroom

inside my hut

scrubbing my floors the traditional way: with coconut shells

Christmas Eve: popcorn stringing and hot chocolate drinking

pig butchering by the river

making bread to sell

Soberanda points to her husband´s t-shirt amidst her displaced roof

Hello, mud

The Flood - a picture narrative

the rain

swollen river - day 4 of rain

same spot - day 6 of flooding

The path for vehicles (and pedestrians in their absence) leading to my site. Water was knee deep when I got out Sunday. It rose to chest level that evening.

unloading a Columbian plane lent to Panama to help fly in aid, at Changuinola airport

highway into the province

open to general traffic (?!)

a landslide in my community. take a close look at the house.

where I used to cross the river

a landslide near my host family´s house

but still almost business as normal for the host fam ... posing with piglets

Pilgrims and Refugees

Happy belated Thanksgiving! Thank you for all of your comments, emails, and phone calls that brightened my holiday. Even in the midst of a natural disaster, I had the opportunity to celebrate in good company. Wednesday night when returning from serving up food at a temporary shelter, I arrived at the Bocas regional leader’s house to find it full of Peace Corps volunteers from all over the province. We had been consolidated to Changuinola for an air evacuation from the province set for the following day. Despite the somber mood in Changuinola, we had a premature Thanksgiving celebration complete with mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and … bean soup.

Since Thursday I have been in David with the other evacuated volunteers, where we have been visiting agencies, helping sort and pack clothes, and preparing and organizing ourselves for returning to our damaged homes. I have been in contact with several of my community members. On Wednesday, the flood waters subsided and the landslides lay still, the devastation was made visible, and the sadness of my community members rang clear in their voices. Their backs were against the wall. Several aqueducts laid in ruins with five broken spring boxes and thousands of feet of PVC tubing splintered and missing. Three houses were destroyed, and they had a near complete crop loss. Filled with guilt of my impending community abandonment (i.e., evacuation) I spent a frantic Thursday morning at the government agency coordinating disaster relief trying to arrange aid delivery to my community, which flood waters had cut off from the outside world. I boarded my plane out of the province with remorse; that evening I received a call from my community counterpart. His voice was firmer, lighter. A helicopter had arrived in the afternoon to deliver food aid.

I am sad to think of the work we put into planting fields that no longer exist and am scared when I think about the food shortages we will see in the coming months. I know my community is hard working and will pull through. The rebuilding has even already started without me. Friday I will arrive to contribute my hands to the effort.