Cuerpo de Paz Panamá

The Next Chapter

2010-07-04T14:13:00.006-04:00

I became a "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer" on June 10th, 2010, although in my case it could be better termed "Returning". I am now part of a team of cyclists pedaling back to the U.S. and volunteering along the way. Our team is Cycles of Change and you can find more information on our team blog.

Thank you for all of your support during my service.

Gross National Toughness

2010-06-06T22:23:00.003-04:00

I learned what it meant to contribute to Panama's gross national toughness last week. When I was a new volunteer, still fresh faced from training, I spoke with a veteran volunteer, and he shared his ideas about an innovative economic index that Panama could use to measure its riches in terms of its people's 'grit': gross national toughness. It would account for the sweat, blood, and tears shed daily in our communities.

Last week was my final week in site. Being so, my neighbors invited me to share a special meal with them Monday evening. I padded barefoot over the hill to their home at dusk and was not far into the journey when I felt a jarring pain in the toes of my right foot. I looked down to see my baby toe jutting out at almost a 3 o'clock position. I strained my foot muscles to try to encourage it back into position. My toe was not encouraged. After much ho-hum and a call to the Peace Corps doctor, I hobbled back to my hut, took a respectable dose of ibuprofen, and proceeded to set my toe, which required much squishing and wailing.

I nearly had my toe in place when a team of eight strong men arrived at my house to carry me out to the taxi stop in a hammock in the blackness of night. I put a halt to their good intentions, asked one of them help me to finish setting my little purple swollen toe in place, taped it with band aids, prepared them popcorn, and called it night: my pinkie contribution to Panama's gross national toughness.

Tjä Toë

2010-05-26T13:40:00.009-04:00

A couple Thursday mornings ago, Ernesto and his grand kids led me up the hillside to his farm to collect almonds. We had been waiting for the harvest for months ever since the branches filled with pink blossoms late last year. We climbed the hillside passing his plots of pineapples, green beans, basil, peppers, and peanuts. Eventually we climbed above the fog and drizzle that enclosed our houses below.

I sat down on a fallen tree trunk and found my eyes stinging with tears. Precious little time remained for me to savor with neighbors I had grown to love. Ernesto has proven to be the teacher of all things: introductions to dozens of new fruits and edible or medicinal plants and advise on how to evict bats that visited nightly and the very large snake that took up residence in my roof. His grand kids have pulled me through the rough patches. They bring me tea or herbs when I cannot rise out of bed. They have taught me how to prepare all of the new foods their grandfather brings me. They also fire my oven. They are much more adept at the task.

My Peace Corps service will come to a close in a couple weeks. From there a new adventure will begin. On June 20th, my friends Kat and Kate and I will embark on bicycles for the United States. Along the way we will be joined by five others on a tour we have called Cycles of Change. More information on the participants, route, schedule, and mission is available at http://cyclesofchange.wordpress.com/. We will be updating regularly throughout the tour.

tree frog

a ubiquitous cacao pod photo

candied orange peels

orange peeling

my prep station

examining a walking stick insect

a wild cacao relative

tree roots that could inspire a Halloween mask

The Buzz about Ag Biz

2010-04-05T16:02:00.005-04:00

Saturday, March 27th marked the final day of the Bocas Agribusiness Seminar. As the sun peeked over the horizon we left our homes, hiked out of the community, forded, or in some cases traipsed, across the San San River, and waited for out taxi. The cable suspension bridge had washed out four weeks prior and even made national evening news, which caused the governor to promise he’d build a new bridge within a month; however, construction has not yet begun. Luckily, though, it has been dry.

At the appointed hour Don Solano, our skillful and sporadically puntual taxi driver, arrived to whisk us off to Changuinola for the last day of the seminar. Along the way we were stopped at a banana crossing, which could be equated to a train crossing, especially here as train tracks in the area were ripped up years ago and rumored to be purchased by the Chinese. The bananas were on their way from the field to the washing and packing plant, to be boxed up and piled into a semi truck painted with yellow bananas and a bright blue and yellow oval seal, eventually put into a shipping container to cross an ocean, ripen from green to yellow, and be sliced on breakfast cereal.

With little further adieu we arrived to the seminar, and the farmers were a buzz with new friendships. Thirty-three farmers, all indigenous, from eight different communities participated in the seminar. We were missing a couple on the last day. Olmedo from my community could not make it. His brother suffered a serious machete wound the previous day in Sieykin. As I had hiked to the taxi stop that morning, Olmedo was hiking the three hours over the mountains to Sieykin to tend to his brother who had cut open his knee which had required nine stitches to be closed back up. He is still recovering. Olmedo says to have taken away his machete.

During the final seminar day the participants were asked formulate and share with the group a goal that they had for their farm. Their goals included doubling their production of plantains in the next ten months, upgrading the infrastructure and pasture lands for their goats in the next six months, and planting three more hectares of cacao with their families utilizing the agroforestry systems that Peace Corps Volunteers had taught them. Some drew maps or work calendars to further illustrate this goal. We ate cake that a woman in my community had made. She had been my first student. It was a jubilant day.

Sunrise from Druy

A bridge to the river bottom. The other half tumbled

how to keep your pants legs (or skirt bottom) dry

Don Solano's majestic beast

stop! banana crossing

role playing marketing your product: platains

a stately ag biz participant

team building, a group sit

fishing, in the fish tank

counting the catch

my haul

Mauricio & Cuko

Thanks

2010-01-07T20:32:00.004-05:00

Thanks to all of you that have helped support the agribusiness seminar. Your generosity has been amazing. And thanks to all of you who continue to follow my blog despite my recent shameless overt pandering for money.

The holidays found me back in the states, where you all dazzled me with your fancy phones, caught me up on last year’s booms (i.e., Sully’s water landing, açai berry) and busts (i.e., cash for clunkers, Tiger Woods), and showered me in hugs. Sorry for showering you all in tears. It is just what I do. Tomorrow I will head back to my community in something like Santa Claus like fashion, with my pack filled with puzzles for the kids, yarn for my knitting ladies, and specialty chocolate bars processed from purely Panamanian cacao (the very chocolate grown by my farmers!) for my farmers. It’ll be their first time tasting the finished product. I hope they are thrilled as I am.

Austin, Texas recycle bins even feature cocoa pods

Austin mural

Congratulations, Corin & Kieran!

my folks

thier livelihood

the homestead

my host family

celebrating mother's day (dec 8) with chocolate-banana swirl cake

my host brother is cute (turn your head to view)

Please Support my Community’s Agriculture

2009-11-30T10:40:00.004-05:00

Greetings. Today I write to you all with a request.

I would like your support for an agro-business seminar for farmers from my and fellow Peace Corps Volunteers’ communities. Farmers in our communities are mostly subsistence farmers, and when crop yields surpass household needs, the farmers try to sell their surpluses and are lucky to receive market value. Despite the challenges stemming from terrain, transport, and lack of fair markets, some of my farmers routinely makes sales outside of the community. Erik and his mother Gelda specialize in growing sweet peppers. Yaneth crafts artisan work form her farm's products. My host family harvests oranges and floats them closer to market on rafts constructed from bamboo. Although these farmers are experiencing successes, they are still struggling to purchase school supplies and uniforms and send their sick family members to the medical clinic. They are living in poverty.

The goal of our proposed seminar is train farmers in basic agro-business skills so that they can earn more income from their small family farms, allowing them to climb out of poverty. To achieve this the seminar will address: setting achievable goals, how to interact with government agencies and other organizations, understanding contracts, crop insurance and loans, keeping track of personal finance and savings, land use planning, making a work calendar, and learning the basics of marketing.

Please help us cover the costs of materials and logistics for the seminar. Donate now to the Agro-Business Seminar. Happy Holidays and thank you!

Chocolate and Mud Making

2009-11-12T20:24:00.010-05:00

My last entry featured several very handsome cacao pods. This photo-heavy entry is about what comes next. Some details are left out, but the basic steps are all included.

First the pod is cut open to reveal the white slime covered seeds inside. The goopy seeds are removed from the pod and piled up to ferment for 6-7 days to improve the flavor of the chocolate. From there the seeds are spread out in the sun to dry for another week.

Then comes toasting. The beans are toasted over a low fire (or gas flame in my home) for about 20 minutes. The house will fill with a chocolatey aroma and the beans will sound like popping corn when they are toasted.

Here is a pile of toasted beans ready for shelling. The beans have a thin shell covering the true cocoa goodness that lies within. I squish the bean between my thumb and fingers to crumble the shell off. It's pretty time consuming by hand, so industrially they use rollers and fans to blow the shells away. Recently I saw a news article about a coal power plant that will also burn cacao bean shells from a near by chocolate processing plant in New Hampshire.

Shelled cocoa beans

Grinding the cocoa beans requires a bit of elbow grease when no motor is involved. I use a corn grinder. My host mom uses a large smooth rounded stone that she rocs back and forth over the beans until they are a paste.

My corn grinder, which has yet to grind corn.

Once the paste is fine and runny, it is ready for shaping. I prefer disk form, so I pat them out with my hands and let them harden. And that's the skinny on chcolate making.

Forming chocolate patties is oldly similar to forming salmon patties

The following pictures are from my first experience in mud oven building. With the help of fellow area volunteers and my neighbor kids, we built a 4ft outside diameter, 2 foot inside diameter oven under my house. It was a pretty messing ordeal, which means it was a lot of fun. And finally, a good use for all the mud in my community!

Mixing sand and clay for the inside lining of the oven, where it will act as a heat sink

Preparing the insulation layer, saturated clay slip with sawdust

The dome is a sand form to hold the space and shape of the hollow where I will bake

My semi-finished oven

Cocoa Pods as Big as Your Head

2009-11-01T14:24:00.007-05:00

I know it has been a long time since my last post. To hold you all over until I have time to write something worth reading, here are some pretty pictures.

A new cacao variety bred in Costa Rica (photo taken by me at the facility!)
I hope to be grafting with it in Druy before I depart

Grafted plants at Costa Rica's CATIE
(Center for Tropical Agriculture Research and Study)

Kate posing with one of the largest cacao pods I have ever seen.
The CATIE gardens are a mystical place

Me, after a very unpleasant trip to my latrine, which was home to a very unruly family of wasps
My farmers teased me with name calling of "la chinita" (the chinese girl)

Ernesto, helping rid my latrine of wasps. His technique involved burning gasoline soaked synthetic rags. My latrine has still preserved the smell. I miss the smell of composting poo. I think the wasps do too. They buzz no more.

Making a fool of myself for laughs. I can't explain.

Rebecca, Kate, and I give a rediculously messy demonstration on brownie preparation

A fresh "patch" graft on a cacao seedling

The truly rainy season has returned

A baby peanut plant!

what was left of the peanut plant after the adorable baby goat got through my fence

A watermelon (this pic is for you, Mom)

knitting class has been a huge hit. I never would have thought it would be in the tropics

Glorified babysitting

Andi and Kate model some hot duds at Kate's leadership seminar

Jose showing off lateral grafting on cacao tree by the school

Playing games to see who can avoid Janell's questions... looks like Ernesto
was the big winner

Miss Mishap

2009-09-04T15:33:00.009-04:00

When I really like what I am eating, I tend to dance. Not standing up, but sitting down. I dance in my seat. And if there is music, all the better. So Wednesday morning I was taking my morning oatmeal (chocolate flavored) and scooting about to the radio when I was struck still by a realization. Although I had not considered myself a subscriber of jazz, the Costa Rican jazz station had found a willing set of ears. However, after three days of listening, I recognized the music as different familiar genre. This class of music, this “jazz,” was the tranquilizing background music of doctor`s office waiting rooms, mall corridors, and elevators… really any place that would cause me anxiety. As such I had avoided it with passion back home. But as that world is now far removed, and the association with jazz and uncomfortable spaces dissolved over time and distance, jazz can be enjoyed.

On side note, I have suffered my first machete wound. This week I played the antagonist pitted against a barbed wire fence (my skirt bore the brunt, but my hands and forearm bare scratches), a shovel (my shin and knee are graced with a purple blue crests… I am hillside digging challenged), and my very own machete. I was filing my beloved machete, which I believe is a much more dangerous act than actually wielding it, and I got all caught up in rhythm of filing. So much so that I nearly missed the edge of my right thumb slice itself right off. However, the subsequent outpour of red gummed everything up so much that further filing was suspended. Nevertheless, the wound is little to speak of. Previous accidents with kitchen utensils have created much more excitement.

But yet further animation was caused by an ant yesterday as I scurried out of my community in six a.m. semi darkness for a day of machete shopping in Changuinola. I closed a gate on the goat pasture encircling my house, and as I placed my hand on the gate, a very gracious ant placed its stinger around the tender tip of my ring finger. A throbbing exploded from my finger and the air in my chest could neither leave nor be refreshed. This contender of an insect was a bullet ant. It`s name comes from the effect of its sting, which purportedly feels like being hit by a bullet. Although I lack the bullet wound for comparison, I would not dispute its naming based on my recent experience.

I spent the rest of my hike staggering not unlike a drunkard and resisting the constant urge of dragging my finger through the mud puddles to cool the burning pain. Eventually the pain traveled up though my hand and to my forearm. I kept trying to just shake it out. As I sat in taxi leaving my site I discovered the most peculiar bit of my new injury. My swollen, hot pink finger was wet. Initially I attributed it to rain water dripping into the taxi. But once I eliminated that possibility, I inspected to sting to check for seeping. No such luck. My finger was sweating, rather profusely, but only the finger tip above the first joint.

I am glad to report my left finger has returned to its previous condition with only a pink pinpoint mark to denote yesterday`s encounter with yet another one of Panama`s ant species. However, my right thumb still complains bitterly with each tapping of the space bar.

calculating and discussing financial losses in cacao due to unmanaged disease... which can easily exceed $1000/hectare... equivalent to the annual income of some of my farmers

identifying critters (pests and beneficials) in the cacao field

my job security... a disease called black pod

monilia, enemy number one, in its last stage on the far left. it is a fungus that all out attacks cacao fields

a pretty fungus on a decaying log

Borderless Engineers

2009-08-26T15:54:00.000-04:00

A couple weeks ago, the Pueblo Naso (literally the Naso Village, the indigenous community in which I work) received an international visit. Half a dozen team members from the Austin, Texas chapter of Engineers Without Borders came for the group`s second visit to the town of Sieykin to continue work on an aqueduct project. Not knowing whether I would be of much use, but wanting to learn more about their project and to see more of the Naso community, I requested permission to pay the group a visit.

I woke up nervous and hours too early the morning of the hike across the mountains from my community to Sieykin. With my ever-wonderful neighbor Jorge guiding and rain threatening, we departed at six a.m. and spent the next three hours sloshing, climbing, sliding, and chatting our way along gentle rivers and eventually up a mountain nick named pela diente,` tooth peeler`. Elda, a farmer with whom I work, explained that mid-climb up the steep tooth peeler, nose breathing gives way to all out panting which in affect reveals one`s pearly whites. Apparently Jorge and I kept too easy of a pace amidst our chatter and picnicking on boiled eggs so that my teeth didn`t honor the mountain`s legacy.

Once in Sieykin, I found my use pasear-ing: visiting folks in their houses, making small talk, and secretly hoping that they would offer some delicious food or drink. Of course the visiting`s purpose was to discuss the team`s project and to collect census and baseline health data, but my participation was mostly limited to small talk. I butchered the Naso language for their amusement, and expanded my knowledge of the tribe`s very intertwined family trees.

Meanwhile, the brave souls of the group went with community guides in search of an adequate water source. As the days of searching through the unforgiving muddy mountainous jungle terrain, this illusive water source soon became known as the “ojo de oro”, the spring of gold. The team collected and analyzed water sources and surveyed possible aqueduct routes and returned battle scarred, mud covered, and inexcusably happy at the end of the day. A great group with a well-executed project. I am looking forward to their next visit, implementation, in May or June 2010.

EWB Austin members making sense of their data

In search of the ojo de oro

Jorge atop pela diente

Feliciano Feliz

2009-08-06T20:48:00.004-04:00

I recently have found myself in an unlikely game of courtship. My would-be suitor is Feliciano Feliz. His happy name owes to the fact that he has five girlfriends. Despite his polygymous behavior, Feliciano is pretty progressive. He is not racist. He has brown girlfriends, white girlfriends, and even spotted ones. And he is pretty open minded about what defines female attractiveness. He even has a bearded girlfriend. I have also discoved that Mr. Feliz is not much of a specie-ist either. He and his five girlfriends are goats. In recent visits, I have found myself the recipient of what I can only deduce as overt attempts to seduce me into joining his concubine.

Because the soil in my patio lacks fertility, I often visit Feliciano and his women folk to collect the droppings that fall from their evelated throne to use as fertilizer in my garden beds. I trudge up the hill to their palace in my boots with shovel and buckets in hand. Upon my arrival Señor Feliz comes down to greet me. He stalks, circles, and sniffs my wares. The stalking continues. When he is satisfied that his presence is known to me, he goes about spreading his royal mustiness. Feliciano rears to show his magnificent height. Then he settles his front hooves back on the earth and closes in. I pause from my manure shoveling and politely confront him with my shovel. He backs off a bit, and I take the opportunity to inhale. Assuming that I am just playing hard to get, Feliciano takes an alluring drink of his own urine. I finish filling my buckets and return down the hill with Feliciano trailing. I close the gate on Feliciano and continue down to my house. He calls after me with his best come hither grunts, apparently unwilling to admit defeat. He knows I will back.

Last weekend I stole time away from my farmers and their gardens, to go with some friends from Changuinola to go visit one of their friends in Costa Rica. I enjoyed the luxuries of cool mountain air, warm water, and private transportation. I traded in my one-utinsil-serves-all soup spoon philosophy for place settings which included two pieces of dessert silverware and enough food that required their useage. It was exciting.

coffee farm sidewalk

Costa Rican travel buddies and host Andrey

considering taking up residence under the very large leaves

at an ellusive valcano crater on a very foggy morning

a Costa Rican breakast with Mario and Denisse

my first bell pepper harvest... a sorry case for soil improvement

the garden of my ag promoter Jose with his family amidst the cucumbers

Cuko starring in a battle with a lizard

Comings and Goings

2009-07-20T20:29:00.004-04:00

Whenever I am hiking about in my community and I am spotted by someone, I can expect the same series of questions: where are you going, where are you coming from, and when will you return. Beyond me first phrase, “Rain is coming,” those were the first sentences I learned in Naso. Likewise, per my students’ requests, they formed the material covered in my first English class. As a result, I now get to talk about my comings and goings in three distinct languages.

Initially I was bothered by such an invasion of privacy. Was it necessary that I be accountable to every member of the community at all times? But eventually I caught on, and I have joined in keeping loving tabs on my neighbors’ whereabouts.

Once the traditional line-up of questions is exhausted, the conversation turns to my ‘family’ (my cat). Cuko’s name is evidently much easier than my own. When I present a mug of sickly sweet watered-down coffee (the locally preferred cup-of-joe), visitors will thank me, ‘Gisel, Janay, Janny, etc.,’ and, when the pet in question is not in sight, ask for Cuko by name.

So a few days ago, in accordance with my recent push to expand my pitiful Naso language skills, I tried responding with the best Naso I could muster: “Bor micho plï ära” (My cat hunger much).” Deep belly laughter exploded from my neighbor. I suspect something in the syntax went terribly wrong.

My neighbor may suspect that Gisel’s cat’s days may be numbered.

Almonds how I knew them before Panama (left), almonds how I know them now (right).

The ones on the right are (much) tastier.

Morning glory of the beach?

Man in canoe on the San San River

Pictures!

2009-07-02T10:19:00.003-04:00

Rebecca with the first harvest

wild cacao relative (i think)

study session with my 'sisters'

San San Pond Sak, turtle nesting grounds

San San Pond Sak

Preparing balsa bark as a compost bin

trellis making

cacao pruning debate

baby cacao trees

Transplanted

2009-06-23T19:31:00.001-04:00

I dropped off a couple specimens at a lab today. I passed the goods through the little window and the exchange with the receptionist went something like this:
— ¿Tu nombre?
— Janell-- her eyebrows raise-- J-a-n-e-double l, Henry.
— ¿Fecha de nacimiento?
— El 30 de mayo del 1995.
Eyebrows shoot even higher. I think. I laugh a little. I tell her I look mature for my age. I feel like an idiot. She laughs. I correct myself.

I am loosing my mind amidst all the urban stimuli of Panama City. My ankle sprain has proven persistent enough to warrant physical therapy. So here I am, finally learning to navigate the congested heart of this country (with much trial and error). I am meeting a different class of Panamanian, the well-groomed and well-spoken urban dweller. I am poorly dressed (in well-worn and stained clothes) and crude-mannered among Latinos (forgetting greetings and farewells, pulling off shoes to unveil blackened soles at physical therapy), but I am trying to redeem my redneck ways, promising to send cocoa seeds to the orthopedist and physical therapist.

Back in Bocas, cacao farmer field days continue. We have graduated from tree nurseries (one of my farmers, Dionildo, has planted over a thousand trees!), and are tackling pruning. It is a mostly new practice for my farmers and one that, if realized at all, is traditionally done with a machete, the all-purpose campo tool. Thus pruning shears and pole pruners had their debut in the community. It was love at first use for my farmers, who promptly asked me where they could buy them and how much they cost. My response disappointed some. Since $15 requires a savings plan for most in my community, we are working with a lending system.

My tomatoes, green beans, and zinnias (thanks, Janet) have become the envy of my neighbors, and the okra and watermelons are something of a curiosity in the community. Last Saturday I tried cashing in on this interest by hosting an open house/work day. I subjected the farmers that turned out (all six of them) to a day of discussing and constructing raised beds and trellises and making compost. Their creativity ran loose; one group used balsa tree bark as a container for their compost and another utilized my fence as part of their trellis design. They tasted okra for the first time, learned how to tell when a watermelon is ripe, and received a party favor: seeds. I, in turn, was introduced to two local plants to use in my epic battle with flea beetles.

Pictures to come when I locate an SD card reader.

Almost famous

2009-06-05T14:56:00.002-04:00

Check out a posting by the lovely Bocas cocoa team on the World Cocoa Foundation website: PC Panama Farmer Field Schools

This little piggy

2009-05-30T13:26:00.000-04:00

Greetings. Things are going great. Becky came to visit. It was fun. Been busy. Real post coming eventually.

from farmer field day. preparing cocoa seeds for planting

a little porker

playing games with my farmers, but with a purpose

finally sold it all, brought more than $250 back to the community. which translates into lots of school supplies.

fellow Bocas cocoa gurus

moth attack

Becky hanging with the neighbors and their chickens and goats

garden goodies - green beans

squash

watermelon (a fruit as foriegn as myself in Druy)

more moths, an invasion brought on by a Canadian entomologist

Cuko loses a battle

Ay, caraña

2009-04-11T20:57:00.007-04:00

A quick recap of the past couple weeks (post army ant invasion):

Following a bit of pleading, the very recently organized artisan group in my community has been working full force crafting traditional baskets (pronounced sheen in Naso). Last week we gathered to learn, teach, and craft. We started by collecting ‘the royal vine,’ peeling off its bark, and splitting it into smaller sections to use for weaving. Some strips were dyed by cooking them with a yellowish root tuber that had an uncanny resemblance to ginger. Then the weaving experts took charge. Results were amazing. Even I managed to craft something of basket like nature, and it could probably even hold all of two eggs. Owing to my English speaking skills, I have been put in change of selling the first batch of baskets (about 40 of them) and other works from the community (necklaces, carved gourds, bracelets, wood carvings, coffee, cocoa, and caraña, a traditional medicine for sores collected from tree root resin). My first selling attempt will be at a Peace Corps Volunteer conference this week. If that doesn’t go well, I guess I will turn to haggling tourists. Everyone (including me) is nervous-excited about it.

Inspired by my foodie friend Mike, motivated by the number of rotting guavas I see daily, and held captive by a sprained ankle, I tried my hand at some fruit-filled empanadas (turnovers) on Wednesday. They were neighbor approved, but I may need to a couple more attempts before I feel that I have a satisfactory product. Pictures below.

Yes, I did sprain my ankle. There was no mud (it finally stopped raining!!!) and I was running late, so I thought I would run down the ‘hill’ (read very steep mountain side) from a recent artisan group meeting. I fell. Badly. But my ankle is getting better. And no one saw the fall.

In agricultural related happenings, my garden/demonstration plot is looking great despite the ravaging flea beetles that seem to be attracted to my organic pesticides. I’ll hope to figure that out soon. However, fresh tomatoes are days away, and green beans, radishes, peas, okra, cabbage, pumpkins, and peppers should be soon to follow. Also it is guandú (pigeon pea, picture below) harvesting time, which means lots stationary pea shelling (for the walking impaired) and tasty guandú food experiments. Friday featured guandú with rice. Today was veggie soup with guandú. Mmm mmm.

Tjä toë! (I’m leaving, goodbye!)

starting the basket base

expert Ismael at work teaching

Olmedo weaving his first basket

... with some help

a team effort

basket beauty shot

seed neckaces

for sale

bracelets

tucans carved into a gourd, a gourd that grows on a tree

guava empanadas

the start of my garden, after a bit of machete swinging and shovel digging

pumpkins (& Cuko)

an aerial view... tomatoes, green beans, and radishes

guandu, pigeon pea

The Ants Go Marching

2009-03-21T18:34:00.005-04:00

It is lunchtime, and my water glass has run dry. I stroll into my ‘kitchen’ for a refill. There, I am met by hundreds of ants. These are not the itsy-bitsy sugar-seeking critters that are known to ruin picnics. No, these are monster omnivorous ants that make a machete-wielding scorpion executioner (yours truly) shriek in panic. The floor, walls, and roof are crawling with a blanket of six-legged trespassers. I notice my ñame, a delicious tuberous vegetable, under siege and attempt a rescue, tip-toeing my way through the trenches. As my hand closes around the prized ñame, a burning sensation explodes from my fingers to wrist. The little monsters bite! I fling my prized veggie out the window and drown my blazing hand in my glass of water.

Cuko the fearless fuzz ball cowards under my bed. I send out a frantic text message to fellow Peace Corps Volunteers: ‘Hundreds of crazy fierce biting ants have invaded my house. Appear to be holding a convention in my roof. Running dangerously low on bug spray. SOS.’ Kate replies: ‘Make a decoy trail with sugar. Throw water on them.’ However, they’ll have nothing to do with sugar, and they are undeterred by water. I decide reconnaissance is the next best plan of action.

Some ants are returning from their lofty convention with a scorpion in tow. Just as quickly as they stormed my house, their descent begins. Once on the ground they continue up the hill carrying off any unfortunate critter that was not fast enough to escape their grip. Within a couple hours, the last of the army has passed through, and my house is vacated minus the lost straggler that would bite my unsuspecting foot. In the evening, the ants go marching down the hill, over the wood pile, and through my bathroom, calling it a day. Hurrah!

Rufino´s pet capuchin, Fotín

The ants´ascent

Swarming about

sorry, you´ll have to turn your head to watch

Leadership

2009-03-12T15:34:00.014-04:00

Today the sun came out. Today I pulled off my socks. I removed my fleece jacket and my fleece pants. I did a little happy dance. I danced my way out to my latrine. I brought in my dry clothes after four days of it not drying. Then I took advantage of the first transport in four days and made a bee line for the clinic to sort out the serious mischief that has been brewing in my intestines. A couple more solid weeks of rain have hit Bocas during this supposed dry season. I have surrendered my quest to understand the Bocas definition of dry, but I have not and will not surrender to those mischievous little amoebas that are apparently quite fond of dwelling in my intestines.

Despite the will of my one-celled friends and the rainy cold front stationed over my province, it has been a very productive few weeks. Last week my counterpart Jorge and I gave a two day leadership and project management seminar that covered topics from goal setting, scheduling, budgeting, and group structuring, facilitating, and advertising to formal letter writing, public speaking, and interacting with agencies. In an effort to make the material as interesting as possible, I recruited a group of community members to be actors in skits performed at the start of each session and inserted quick games into the schedule as necessary.

The results surpassed my greatest hopes. Twenty-two participants arrived on the first day, and attendance actually increased for the second day. Better still, I left the seminar with tangible results: two thank you letters for the Ministry of Agriculture’s Department of Rural Development director, a letter of request addressed to me by a young women’s group that formed during the seminar, and a dozen potential logos for my farmers group, which will soon be a formal association! The young women had requested that I facilitate their group’s formation and help them start a project. Yesterday in our first meeting, we decided to pursue native artisan work: baskets, carvings, and jewelry. We all ready have a teacher, and our first work days set for this weekend.

I am quite at a loss for how it happened. Despite my amoeba-sponsored races to latrines, sporadic mud slip-and-slide antics, and language mishaps where things like ‘create children’ rather than ‘raise children’ leave my mouth, I have become a role model. I have a collection of teenage girls that show up at my house to hang out, and now they even seek my guidance. Unfortunately I have started a silly fashion trend of pink handkerchiefs. I seem to sweat a lot, especially here, and in my vain attempt to retain a bit of femininity I thought that a pink hanky would be a good solution. And now they are apparently all the rage among young women in my community. Neck scarves, bandannas, pony tail holders... all in the form of bright pink hankies.

The bridge I cross to enter my site

Kind of scary, but atleast it is being repaired

From the leadership seminar

Leadership seminar

Jorge, starring as the devil in a skit. I, of course, played an angel.

The "dry" season

2009-02-08T20:32:00.009-05:00

Jorge, my neighbor/Naso teacher, told my dripping wet sister upon her arrival to my community that according to the Naso legend visitors to the pueblo Naso are welcomed and sent off by the rain. True to form, her visit coincided with three days of rain. The rain clouds’ generosity towards my sister was matched only with that of my community. Despite the recent hardships, Tammy was showered in delicious food offerings: palm heart, baby bananas, cacao, softball size mandarin oranges, and freshly peeled rice, and she left bedazzled in jewelry adorned with a peccary’s tooth, seeds, and a turtle carved from a palm seed. She was trooper; her ankles became worn raw from the rubber boots and she became exhausted to the point sickness from battling with super-suction-ous mud in the rain. And I was uber excited to share my peace corps community and life with my sister, which is why I probably failed to notice that I made her sick in my efforts to show her everything. Sigh.

After bidding goodbye to Tammy, I raced back to Bocas to be trained as a facilitator of cacao farmers’ groups. The two week seminar was coordinated by the World Cacao Foundation, the local cacao cooperative COCABO, and the ministry of agriculture MIDA. In addition to being coached and led through example in facilitation skills, we were trained in cacao pruning, grafting, integrated pest management, tree nurseries, and post-harvest processing. The training is part of the Proyecto Cacao Centroamérica, an initiative to boost cacao production in Central America. I am lucky to have been involved in the project and currently am forming a cacao farmers’ group which I will co-facilitate in my community. If I can ever get back...

Despite this month marking the beginning of the “dry” season, rain keeps falling on Bocas. Landslides last Wednesday along the highway from David to Changuinola forced the closing of the highway for the forth time since late November. Consequently, I was stranded with my community counterpart in David late last week as we attempted to return to our homes after a PC conference near Panama City. We passed when the road temporarily reopened on Friday morning, but it remains in very bad shape (see picture below). Although I am back into the province, high rivers and flooding have kept me from returning to my community. Yesterday the volunteer closest to my site was evacuated from his community via news helicopter, and I remain in Changuinola waiting for the rain to stop.

The ministry of agriculture recently sent aid to my community in response to the damage assessment surveys I submitted for the community in December. Each family in the community received ten pounds of rice seeds, a hybrid that can be harvested in only 3 months. I was hoping for bean seeds as well, but it was still a greater response than expected.

On a personal note, my health is back to good! No parasites and no mosquito born diseases! Just the normal residual fungi that have colonized my apparently delicate leg skin. The wife of my community promoter has urged me to kill the squatters with battery acid. Normally I will give rural remedies a try, but not this time.

Tammy crossing a bridge

Tammy getting some help walking

Me, attacking a broken open cacao pod. the seeds are covered is a delicious white slime. trust me, it is really exciting

Tammy with Naso king Valentín and his wife Ausencia

English class

My host family and some silly gringa

A dredging ship going through the canal at Miraflores Locks

El Chorillo, Panama City

Cute ice cream shop in Casco Viejo... looked too expensive to go in though

Cacao seminar: cleaning seeds with sawdust for germination

Grafted cacao seedlings

Cacao seminar: my groups mini cacao solar dryer

Super sketchy section of road/apparent waterfall that we crossed

The swollen Changuinola River

A ‘Chilly’ Christmas

2008-12-29T10:28:00.011-05:00

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

2008-12-09T20:52:00.009-05:00

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

2008-12-02T18:43:00.003-05:00

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.

Rain, Rain Go Away

2008-11-25T11:26:00.000-05:00

From yesterday...

It has been a week since I have seen the the slightest hint of sunshine. An entire week with the constant drumming of rain drops, the deafening roar of churning rivers, and the lingering question of when will the rain ever stop? Saturday I was to leave my community for a Peace Corps conference in one of Panama’s central provinces, but by Saturday morning the flooding was severe. The same peaceful river I normally cross a half dozen times a day was wildly carving out a new path, undercutting banks, carrying away trees, rolling the boulders I used to wash my clothes upon, and sending the people living near its banks fleeing to their relatives’ houses. I put my travel plans on hold, came to truly appreciate living on a hill, and resigned myself to being mother nature’s prisoner.

Saturday came and went, but the downpour stayed on until the wee hours of Sunday morning. I woke to the din of rain diminishing suddenly unable to sleep in the absence of the white noise that had filled my ears for the last week. After a sleepless hour of mere drizzle, I sought my ipod to lull me back to sleep. By 8am the rain had returned, cell phone service was out, but the river had gone down to waist and chest level and some of my neighbors were crossing. It was my chance! Although taxi service into my site had stopped when flood waters became too dangerous for the vehicles’ electrical systems, I was still eager to get to my conference. I would make the hike. I grabbed my plastic covered pack filled with my double-bagged travel necessities and slipped on my very loved rubber boots. One treacherous river crossing, one washed out bridge, one swim across what was once a path, a half mile walk through knee deep water, and four rainy, muddy, dreary hours later I arrived to the road, flagged down a pickup, and settled in the back, happy to have put that part of the journey behind me. I was only an hour away from boarding a bus to David in Changuinola. I was home free!

Almost. Upon arriving to the bus terminal I heard that there had been come landslides that took out sections of the only road in and out of the province. The bus boy said they couldn’t get me to David, but they would take me as far as there was road. Other buses would be waiting on the other side. He said he didn’t know how long it took to pass through the washed out portions of the highway. Maybe twenty minutes he guessed. Would I be getting on the bus? The last one would leave in a half an hour. I told him I needed to think about it. And eat. If he didn’t know how long it takes to cross, did than mean that no one was crossing?

After changing out of my dripping clothes and eating warm food, my adventurous spirit returned. I boarded the bus and started asking other passengers what they had heard. Two hours of hiking. Six sections of highway affected. Someone mentioned a five hour hike and sixteen landslides. It was still raining. We would be arriving to the troubled stretch about an hour before dusk. Red flags went up. I got off the bus.

I would call up Peace Corps Panama to check in and see what was really going on. My cell phone still didn’t have service, so I tried a pay phone. No luck. I tried another. Again, no luck. After four more, I found out there was only local phone service. At the internet cafe I tasted defeat. The province was completely cut off. No road. No means of communication out, only radio. No Peace Corps training conference. No Thanksgiving day celebration with other volunteers. Just rain.

A day later the rain continues through its seventh day. The little news that makes it here says that a stretch of 15 kilometers (9 miles) of highway was affected by about 60 landslides. It will be days before they can open the highway for emergency supplies and personnel and months before it can be reopened to traffic. Meanwhile in Changuinola, the largest city in the province (pop ~50,000), people have been collecting rain water since water stopped arriving to the tap on Thursday. The gas stations are out of fuel. Parts of the city are out of power. Communication lines are still out, but reports of missing and dead and more landslides and flooding are trickling in. My community has been evacuated. I have stocked up on food, and collected gallons upon gallons of water. I am feeling caged and going little nuts, but I hear that there is a relief effort going on, maybe they could use me.

El Rey de la Selva

2008-11-18T13:03:00.003-05:00

Alas, a blank day in my calendar! I slept in until 6:30 and would have the chance to do some laundry and get a start on germinating seeds for my garden. I had just finished up planting some squash in an egg carton and was debating whether my unsettled tummy could be the product of a disagreeable breakfast or amoebas when four breathless children came running up the path to my host family’s home.

–Janelly, ¡Apúrate! Préstanos tu camera.
Before I would commit myself and my camera to the wild goose chase that was sure to ensue, I tried to extract some details.
– Mataron un tigre… Lindo, mi primo, y mi tío. Están en la casa. ¡APÚRTATE!
Ay ay ay, the air in my lungs got caught mid inhale. They killed a tiger. For weeks of I had heard of a ‘tiger’ stalking about the outskirts of the community with an appetite for pigs (having claimed five); however, I hadn’t seen this coming. I gathered my camera and told my nerves not to betray me.

The cousins and uncle trio left that morning to hunt a tapir (a large, rare mammal, a relative of horses and rhinos) and had just retuned with a tigre pintado (‘a painted tiger,’ a jaguar). They were obviously still high on adrenaline and full of excitement, but still humble. In a state of culture shock and saddened, I hid behind my camera, taking the pictures they requested, restricting my comments to ‘There is better light over there. Remove your hat; your face is coming out too dark,’ and writing down picture orders while my eyes lingered on the gaping machete wounds on the jaguar’s neck. Hunting dogs had helped the hunters locate the jaguar, they had shot at her twice with their shot guns, and when she tried to hide under a fallen tree, she was claimed by a machete blow through her spinal cord. When the time came to dress the cat, I took my leave. My tummy’s unrest was coming to a peak.

They jaguar pelt is now hung and drying in town next to the school, and the hunter trio plans to sell it. They think they can make about two hundred dollars. The meat was smoked and deep fried and consumed by the hunters and some of their family members (some opted not to eat it). I have been told that traditionally Nasos did not eat cat meat as cultural belief is that it could lead to mental insanity. They said that the night following the kill, the cries of a cat were heard coming from the mountain. Saturday will mark a week since the kill, and it will be celebrated with chicha fuerte (a fermented juice, yucca juice in this case) and a traditional song and dance to scare away the tiger’s spirit.

The Aftermath

2008-11-09T18:18:00.002-05:00

The misery of dengue has loosened its grip; its associated depression, debilitating pain, and feverish nightmares have passed, and it was promptly followed by more amoebas, which I am still working to rid myself of. My persistent health problems are a bit uncanny and have severely cut into my productivity as a volunteer. When I am not working on getting healthy, I am teaching English (we are conjugating verbs and making sentences already!), participating in school activities and meetings with my farmers, and working on my house (or ‘hut’ as some of you prefer).

House construction was put on hold while I was recovering from dengue, but we are back on track. The only work left on the house is to finish a window, install plumbing, and make the furniture (a bed frame, shelves, tables, and chairs). We have cut wood for the bathroom (my washing hut) and the latrine. The next official work later this week. In the meantime I am hauling in a stove, pots, dishes, a sleeping pad, plumbing needs, etc. and starting seeds for my garden to prepare for my move. Yea!

The world’s giddy excitement for the U.S.’s president elect spilled its way into my community. The day after elections several people asked me if I had heard the news and whether I had woken up dancing. While I had been bummed about my no-show absentee ballot and may have not busted a move in the early am, I coundn’t conceal my excitement and did whistle for the duration of the hike into my site.

my nearly finished abode, with its huge porch and neighbor

finishing the roof

a folkloric dance at the school

from the bridge entering my site

Dun ta da da... Dengue

2008-10-21T15:58:00.003-04:00

My remarkable luck with tropical disease infection and living with royalty continues.

While in still treatment for round four of amoebas, yesterday I received a positive test result for dengue. Symptoms started a couple days ago: a headache to rival all others, fall-down dizziness, fever and chills, all over body pain, a complete loss of appetite, diarrhea, and a general lethargy. Initially I thought I was just a wimp or maybe amoebas aone bazzurk. But eventually I cashed in all my toughness and went to the doctor, where he said that he thought I had a problem with my ears. Really, my ears. He sent me to the lab for a blood count. Suspecting something else, I asked the lab to also run a test for dengue. While waiting for the test results, I was given a couple IVs, one with meds to raise my low blood pressure and the other with painkillers. Three hours later I picked up my result. Prueba de Dengue: Reaccion Positiva (IGGe IGM). Despite the positive dengue result, other aspects of my health are improving. I noticed from the blood count I am no longer anemic, so yeah for that. The doctor says I will have another 3-4 days of symptoms before the mosquito-transmitted virus finishes running its course. But at least now I have drugs: a daily shot in the butt with an anti-viral (painful enough on its own right to cause me to change my sleeping position of preference), painkillers, and drops to keep my blood pressure up.

In regards to royalty, I was in Panama City last weekend for a medical visit (oddly enough unrelated to amoebas or dengue) and on my return I spent a day hanging out with my host family from training in Santa Clara. Unknowingly to me, my trip would coincide with my host mom being crowned queen of the senior citizens society. It was a full day of activity with cooking, decorating, and cleaning. I filled in where possible and snapped pictures between deboning chicken and blowing up balloons.

Life back in my community is going great. I am super excited (amidst my dengue-induced lethargy) to get back and see how progress is going on my house (they’ve been working on it in my absence… amazing) and get back to work with the most amazing folks Panama has to offer. Ugh, I know I have been reprimanded lately for a lack details in my entries, but I feel a crazy headache returning.

Watch out for the day feeding Panamanian mosquitos! Hasta luego!

A visual update

2008-10-16T18:15:00.005-04:00

the beginning of roof construction

sewing the roof

my unfinished roof from inside my house

rushing to get a roof up before the rain... rain won

topping off the roof

walking to the waterfall

at the waterfall

Jazmin and Heromi

the visitors bidding farewell

Roofing, Waterfalls, and Tourists, Oh My!

2008-10-12T14:24:00.000-04:00

So my tiny village had its first taste of eco-tourism yesterday. It went really, but really well. Everyone, the visitors and community members alike were all so happy. I divided my time between construction work on my house and sharing the role of tour guide and translator (I must beef up these English classes ASAP). It was a day that made me really proud of the farmers that I work with. The festivities included lots of great food, a trip a waterfall, a fair bit of walking (and falling), purchasing of artisan work, some folklore and dancing, guitar strumming and free styling, horse back riding, and, of course, pictures.

Work continues on my future home. It is looking amazing, and thanks to some patient teachers Friday I learned to ‘knit’ thatch with bailing twine for my roof. Already the floor is down (that was finished yesterday), and the roof is three-fourths finished. Lunar farming is popular here and because the moon changes on Tuesday, we decided to squeeze one more work day in tomorrow to cut and sew the thatch to finish off the roof. By the end of the month I should be moved in to my first house! Ahh, excitement!

Pictures to come. Internet here is super slow.

Orange Jam

2008-10-04T16:44:00.002-04:00

My first few days back form the U.S. were hard emotionally (I had left my sad and suffering family behind), professionally (on my second day back I was to deliver a presentation to my boss, my community, and the Naso king), and physically (I had to readjust to the mud, humidity, and heat). So in this time I mentally compiled some of the reasons why I really enjoy my Panamanian life. Here are a few:

1. I wash my clothes in a crazy beautiful river. And when my clothes is super dirty, I beat them against a rock just ‘to get the filthiness out.’

2. I live in the last traditional monarchy in the Americas. That’s cool. The following is recent exchange with king Valentín Santana, who lives in my community:

I walked quickly down the muddy path from the chiva stop because it looked like rain. When I stopped to talk to an acquaintance in the path, king Valentín caught up. He smiled, ‘Caminas rápido’ (‘You walk fast’). I laughed, ‘Ja, pero me caigo rápido también’ (‘Ha, but I also fall fast’). And we continued on in silence. Five minutes later the king slipped, and recovering he giggled, ‘También me caigo rápido’ (‘ I fall fast, too’).

3. I am a local celebrity. Upon my return, people I had never even seen before were asking me about my family and my grandma in particular.

4. As my sister recently pointed out, I will soon be a home owner. My house is coming along well. Yesterday we cut, bundled, and carried the leaves for my roof to the construction site. I think/I hope we will finish this month.

5. I no longer make small children cry. The kids in my host family now run out of the house to meet me. The scariness of a ‘tall’ white person is finally wearing off.

6. I get to introduce some of the kindest folks I’ve ever known to new pleasant things (e.g., grape jam), and they not only share my excitement, they ask me if we can make jam from their oranges.

7. I have mastered the extreme sport of chasing oranges downhill full speed on muddy terrain. AND I have been promoted to orange picker, which means I get to wield the really long bamboo pole with the wooden hook tied to the end.

8. Cacao. Enough said.

9. I am humbled here. Last night my host mom brought home soda and sliced bread for her kids. Their excitement was unparalleled.

The list goes on, but my will to continue typing does not.

the PC Bocas del Toro regional meeting in Chiriquí

bundles of leaves that will be my roof. we will be sewing them Friday

some of the seeds that my Naso teacher uses to make jewelry

Poetic Update

2008-10-04T09:37:00.008-04:00

From Wednesday: The following poem I wrote on the bus on the way to today’s regional meeting. One of our assignments for the meeting was to express “how is it going’ through song, interpretive dance, charades, or poetry. For the sake of time, in lieu of a normal blog entry, I am leaving my update in poetry. To my non Spanish-speaking audience, I apologize for the Spanglish.

Diarrhea, gas, and vomit I no longer spew,
It appears that my adventure with amoebas is through.
No more chicha was PC doc Lourdes’s command,
But when working in the loma I just don’t give a damn.
I take the communal chicha cup with its floating ants
While hoping that later I won’t poo my pants.
A day sin chupar naranja is incomplete.
Boiled green banana is algo I now enjoy to eat.
As for my house, it is looking good.
I spent Saturday jalando wood.
We planned to continue the following day,
But at dawn I was almost too sore to levantarme.
In a few weeks I will have a new home.
I’ll go from being 1 of 11, to be living alone.
Last week Aimeé came for my 4 month visit.
Llegaron muchos for my community diagnostic.
At my side sat the Naso king with his fancy bastón.
He played with some seeds while Aimeé babbled on.
With months of thinking my permanencia in site had not a prayer,
It just may be that the Naso king no me vaya a correr.

My community diagnostic meeting

Anita, helping carry boards for my house. She makes it look easy, but it was pretty tough.

Shoo-ing the goat by throwing orange peels at him

the start of a window frame

the nearly-finished frame that will be my house

Ernesto, the ornery man who is donating land, wood, thatch, and lots of time and labor for my house. I consider him my grandpa here.

Jorge, my Naso teacher and future neighbor, helping with construction

my host mom peeling rice

Life on Another Planet

2008-09-22T09:40:00.003-04:00

Last Wednesday I received a phone call that sucked the air right out of me. I was in David when my dad informed me that my grandma, my mom’s mom, had suffered a stroke and was not expected to live. The news knocked me to the ground and sadness and homesickness flooded my eyes and pounded in my head. I paced furiously throughout the city for the next few hours. When I finally had a chance to hear my mom’s voice, I knew that I had to get home. Soon.

During the next couple days, I traveled to retrieve my passport from my site, acquired Peace Corps permission to leave the country, and booked a flight. Friday morning I crossed the Costa Rican border for San José for a flight back to Ohio. The long and lonely pilgrimage terminated in the heartland, on my parents’ farm, in the arms of my mother. The next day I went to the hospital with my mom to say my first set of goodbyes to my dying grandmother.

Throughout my week back home I tried to ease the shock and pain in familiar activities, but the dizzying grief and the last half-year in Panama had diminished their familiarity. My skin dried up and flaked with the lack of humidity in the air; the closed up house felt like a sealed box, so I tried opening all the windows; waking up thinking and speaking in Spanish just wouldn’t due. And then there was grocery shopping. Although I had been looking forward to the possibility of indulgence, I was rendered completely useless in U.S. grocery stores. I walked down aisle after aisle (freezing my tushy off) only to arrive with an empty basket to the registers. Overwhelmed with the so many options, not being confined to a Peace Corps budget, and having access to refrigeration at home was just too much. I couldn’t decide what, if anything, to purchase. And then there were the pains of guilt. My parents’ fridge and cupboards were all ready full of food; did we really need more?

So when all else failed I sought comfort in the kitchen. I cleaned and baked: zucchini bread, pear-stuffed pork chops, apple dumplings, chocolate chip cookies, and pear crisp. And then I made grape jam from the grapes that were beginning to fall from the vine outside. And just when I was starting to feel at home again, it was time to say goodbyes. My time at home had expired. I would miss both Grandma’s passing away and the homecoming of my Philadelphia-dwelling sister. Saturday with a very heavy heart (and a heavy bag, full of grape jam) I boarded the first of two planes that would carry me back to Costa Rica, and yesterday I re-crossed the border to return to Panama.

Pictures of the heartland and my journey back…

sunset over the tattered (from Hurricane Ike) corn

the farm

cattails

Mom. she just read Omnivore´s Delima, so I had her pose with the infamous monoculture

bull thistle

the pregnant moos

clouds over Columbus, Ohio

somewhere south of Cuba

Laguna de Arenal, Costa Rica

Bowel-Splitting Bloating

2008-09-02T20:57:00.002-04:00

Disclaimer: as the title would suggest, this blog entry is a bit graphic and perhaps way more than you’d ever want to know about me, so if you have a weak stomach or would ever like to think of me professionally or romantically again, please stop reading now…

The uncomfortable bloated balloon feeling was back and worse than ever. The morning’s diarrhea led to a day of painstakingly monitored food consumption, but to no avail. Bowel-splitting bloating was once again ravaging my colon. The acid tasting burps were frequent and I could feel more trouble brewing. The pain was incredible. Five more appendicitis would be preferable to this. I tried laying down, but I felt something rising in my esophagus. I raced to the toilet just in time to vomit… air. Terrible stomach gas really. Like dry heaving, but more painful and decidedly worse tasting. I laid down again, pushing my abs inward to force out more air. Would my intestines really rupture from this pressure? What is the number for 911 in Panama? Oh no, more dry heaves. I race back to the toilet and this time vomit spews out, but with such force it splashes back in my face, in my hair. Eventually my stomach has nothing left to offer up. My whole body aches, I smell of vomit, and I wish for sleep. I take off my splattered tshirt, wad it up, lay down on cool concrete, and continue trying to force the gas out of my abdomen. Sleep comes eventually, and in a couple hours the sun rises.

More burps. And then things start moving in my colon. I race around hunting for a bag. The laboratory will be open today, and I can get tested for parasites. I find a bag, and figure out how to maneuver myself before it’s too late. Mission accomplished. I double bag for good measure, and walk down to the lab.

— Good morning. How can I assist you?
— Good morning. Uh, I’ve been having digestive problems recently.
— Would you like to give a sample of… uh…err… um…(recovering)… for parasites?
— Yes.
— Did you, uh, bring a sample?
I reach into my bag. My current situation has made me surprisingly frank and, well, shameless.
— Yes. It is a couple hours old. Is that okay?
— Yes.
I feel the eyes of the other man in the reception on me. I hand over my bag.
— It should be ready in an hour.
— Thank you.

Two hours later I return. It is Panama, so naturally all wait times need be doubled. I arrive and am told to wait. After 15 minutes, I am handed my lab test results: “Entamoeba histolytica (Q).” I have amoebas. Again. I take my bit of good fortune down the pharmacy, where I am given twice as many drugs as last time (per PC doctor’s orders), and spend the rest of the day how I would imagine an amoeba passing its time in my colon (minus the parasitic food consumption part): being blob-like and releasing enormous quantities of gas.

I know I an generally a pretty happy person and a particularly jolly drunk, but I am evidently a nasty mean sick person. Over a day into treatment I am still have eaten next to nothing and my intestines are still getting mad when I try to do so, so I call up the Peace Corps doctor to ask if that is okay and to see if force feeding myself oatmeal would be a good next step.

“Janell, I know that you’ve had amoebas twice, but I need you to eat something. Go to the cafeteria there in Changuinola and eat their soup with some rice.”

The thought turns my stomach to stone.

I really want to say, “You’re the doctor, you should know what six plus weeks of parasites does to your insides. Do you know how much pain I am in? Dammit do you have any idea how much I don’t want to eat?” But I reply, “Okay.”

After a fifteen minute pep talk with myself, I am putting on my shoes. She’s the doctor, so I’ll give her a chance, but if my nose says “no” I’m going with him on this one. The soup passed my nose, but not my eyes. I could see the chicken grease floating on top. I go to the store to buy some apple juice.

That was a couple hours ago, and things are looking up. I had some yogurt (which was totally against the doc’s orders of “No dairy, that includes yogurt”), but it sounded good, and I haven’t felt or heard any angry rumbling as of yet. And I have a whole arsenal of herbal meds express mailed from Ohio. I think things are settling down, and soon I’ll graduate solid foods again, so I’ll be headed back to site tomorrow, and explain that Janell can no longer accept drinks containing untreated water. It’s a shame, but it’ll be better than round 3 with amoebas.

Timber

2008-08-31T18:22:00.008-04:00

Despite waking up daily with garlic breath, the past couple weeks have treated me very well. Munching raw garlic has become more of a treat than a chore. I would describe it as instant digestive gratification, if such a thing existed. Digestive troubles are much less frequent these days and can mostly be linked to sampling an intriguing new fruit or consumption of food with a high sugar or oil content.

I am finally realizing how much produce rots on my community’s soils. We have passed through the season of rotting mangoes and avocados into rotting guava and orange season. Due to high transport costs, high labor inputs, and low prices offered by intermediaries, too often it isn’t worth bringing certain produce to market. As a consequence, I now bring a sack with me when I leave the house to collect what others leave behind. This gives great laughter to my host family. Also, much to their delight, palm heart (the tender top of a palm tree) has recently worked its way up to my second favorite dish (just behind pifá, a fruit which is also fed to the pigs). Apparently for the majority of the community eating palm heart is act of desperate hunger. My host family described the flavor as bland as they devoured tasteless boiled green bananas, white rice, and yucca. When I asked how much a palm heart sells for, I was laughed at (a pretty common occurrence) and told they are free, a waste product. They are left behind when palm trees are cut down and harvested for their fruit. Apparently I have varying views on what constitutes local delicacies.

Work for my house has begun, and it looks like I have one more project to work on in my next two years: reforestation. Seven trees were cut down on the first work day. And while watching each great tree fall filled me with excitement and awe, I was left with remorse for the subsequent gap in the canopy. But my inquiry into possible interest in a reforestation project was answered affirmatively, ebbing my remorse. An estimated two more days of cutting remain, and several weeks’ worth of work will follow: pulling the wood to my house’s proposed site, burying the posts, constructing the frame, laying the floor, raising the walls, weaving the roof’s thatch, and finally raising the roof. A dozen or so incredibly generous community members have vowed donate their wood and labor to the task through the coming months in exchange for breakfast and lunch on work days. And the generosity doesn’t end there. Tuesday when I went to the school for the teacher’s weekly English class, the director’s husband gave me a bundle of twine string for weaving my house’s roof. A nine dollar donation, a large sum on a Peace Corps budget.

Friday, for the first time in a month, I hiked up to one of the hill tops in the skirts of my community to the house of one of my farmers, Ismael. From the mountain there is a magnificent view above the fog all the way out to the Caribbean Sea, which is decidedly worth the burning I am feeling in my legs. Once in the house, I had ate my way through two-thirds of breakfast when I heard a ruckus behind me in the trees. A group of about 15-20 white-faced monkeys were passing through, but not without first cleaning a balsa tree of all of its fruit. I jumped up, climbed down from the house, and headed down a path toward the balsa tree to get a better look as they passed by not unmenacingly overhead. Meanwhile my host dad barley turned his head to look. He had seen them plenty of times before.

Eeks, monkeys in the backyard! One more sign that I live in the jungle. Now if only it wasn’t so darn rainy. ;)

the view from Ismael´s farm

mangotín according to a local, delicious!

casinos, they are everywhere, and the people watching is superb

scorpion eating scorpion

from the bus window coming back from David, the Caribbean

tree roots by the river San San

poisen dart frog (they are everywhere, esp in the mornings)

fresh new editions to my host family

Carved gourds, a traditional Naso craft

Costa Rica (from Panama)! The sketchy bridge that crosses the border

convenience store in Changuinola

All Kinds of Critters

2008-08-15T21:39:00.007-04:00

My host mom watches as I empty the ten grains of rice off my spoon into my mouth, chew by default, and force myself to swallow. I can already feel the turbulence brewing within. Just one more bite, Janell, it’ll make her happy, and then you can let the spoon rest. But my head says, “Stupid, stupid girl” and my tummy is shrieking, “Oh, no you don’t! There will be revenge.” And sure enough within a few hours, my belly swells up like a balloon, full of air, very foul air. Trying to pull my tummy in hurts. Bending over induces vomit-laced burps from the pit of my stomach. Why on earth did I try eating? And what kinds of reactions are taking place within my abdomen? After weeks of inflation, deflation, and other err, other discomforts, I finally admit to myself that maybe my body needed a leg up with some modern medicine. I go to the clinic in Changuinola, and am given a prescription to treat the amoebas that had been ravaging my intestines for weeks.

A couple days later, after many pills and nursing my stomach with an oranges and oatmeal diet, I am back in town and have celebrated the amoebas’ defeat with a pint of ice cream. Flavor of choice: cookies and cream. Oh, and I really did mean to share with a fellow volunteer, but after a couple of spoonfuls those silly thoughts melted from my mind. So cold (yea! for electricity!), and so creamy (yea! for daily products!). Oh, what bliss! And the cherry on top: no bloating!

Despite the recent health issues, I have managed to get myself to be at least mildly productive in my community. Which means that I have been reading a lot and fielding questions about the price of a can of tuna in the U.S., which I use some help in answering. However, through the bloating and cramping, I’ve continued my weekly English classes against my community’s protests for my health. I tried convincing them that I was going to get bed sores if I spent one more day in bed, and the issue was settled. We worked on numbers this week, having board races with the promise of candy for the winners. Mind you, the majority of my students are over 30.

For weeks my two oldest host sibling have watched me with curiosity as I practice my swim strokes that I learned in my last quarter in the university (I was going to be a college grad, but I still couldn’t swim!). After many shy refusals, I have finally convinced them to also give it a try. Things are going well. Of course I am no Michael Phelps, but not only have none of my students been lost to the river currents, my class has more than doubled in size to include my cousins as well. And the best part is that class usually ends with crayfish hunting among the rocks. I must admit I was a bit apprehensive the first time that these little guys appeared on my plate with their itty bitty fried eyes staring up at me. After observing proper consumption etiquette, I popped a whole one into my mouth and chewed, timidly but steadily. Not bad. Perhaps not a delicacy, but not bad.

In addition to the deep fried variety that graces my plate weekly, I’ve had many other critter sightings lately. The most novel that presented itself was a 3-toed sloth. The farmer that I was with at the time graciously cut down the tree that the small bear-like animal was happily feeding upon to show me the very slow-moving, rather defenseless creature. There are also sloths of the 2-toed variety, which this same farmer sighted, but failed to kill with his sling shot, so it got away. Apparently having fewer toes allows them to move faster. Scarcely a week ago, my host dad heard a strange noise not far from the house. He left with his flashlight and shotgun, and within minutes came back with two dead cat-like animals (name I forget, but picture is below). He and my host brother subsequently charred the animals over bamboo and hacked them up to feed to the family’s dogs. I have also seen my first toucan that was not on a cereal box. It had also fell victim to my host dad’s shotgun and was then fried for lunch. My last new animal exciting was just as exciting, but in a rather frightening way. It was a coral snake, but luckily I had my handy host mom to impale it with rocks.

the rooster slaughtered for my brother´s birthday

A picture worthy feast complete with crispy crayfish eyes (10 o´clock)

eventual dog food

chocolate cake perfection... my host mom is now selling cake in the community

the recently deceased Toucan Sam

the kittens brought into the world in my room between 2-5 am,
which means I am going to be a cat mom... but first I have to build my house... and then adopt :)

How do satellites stay up?

2008-08-02T16:34:00.005-04:00

After two weeks of daily rain, four days of diarrhea, a week of pink eye, and a couple hours of restless sleep, I set off to return to my community with twenty plus pounds of rice, beans, flour, and sugar strapped to my back. The rain had destroyed the path and sickness had destroyed my spirit. And the muck had just consumed my right boot. As I yanked at my boot, I yielded to the frustration and exhaustion. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I clenched my teeth, trying, in vain, to keep them from falling. In half an hour I was expected at Adelina’s farm to teach cacao pruning, but the rest of path there was far worse than the current stretch, and the rain clouds were already rolling in. I finally freed my boot, rinsed it out in an adjacent puddle, and resumed plodding along, regaining control of my tears. I soon recognized three figures coming in the distance: Adelina’s son, daughter-in-law, and grandson. Adelina was sick, very sick they said. She had gone to the clinic for blood tests for malaria (which later came back positive) and dengue. The said that we would not be working today, and I should not worry about Adelina, there was nothing I could do except head home, there was storm brewing overheard.

Other volunteers say that the first few weeks and months in site are trying, and each day is a testimony to that, but at least my days don’t pass without a hearty bit of laughter. As resident gringa in the community, I am the authority of all things technological or foreign-sounding. For example, last night my host dad inquired how do satellites stay up and what is a kilowatt. After a few ‘aye, aye, aye’s and ‘do you want the full answer or a generic one?’, I found myself explaining the principles of relative gravity and electricity to a bewildered Naso man over a kerosene lamp. Aye, aye, aye, enginerd Janell.

Oh, exciting news, construction of my house is scheduled to begin August 25th. It will take several group work days (juntas) to cut all the wood and build the house, but the agricultural producers that I work with are committed to finishing the house by the end of September. I have a site picked out, and the wood, palenquilla (thatch), and labor for cutting and construction will be donated (read: my community is amazing). I’ll supply the fuel for the chain saws, the nails, and the food. I am really excited. Maybe I’ll even bake cake.

kid’s day at the school, an ulgy duckling skit

my two year old host brother singing (his dad holding the mic)

The first cake made from scratch (ever) in my community

Ana frosting the chocolate cake

Raisin and cinnamon cake (the carrots did not arrive) in the "oven"

The coconut shaded primary school

The palm tree of pifá, the fruit that makes up a healthy portion of my diet

the land of nature´s abundance

a pre-dawn departure to catch the chiva out of site... not joking about the mud that swallows people and cars alike

Soggy

2008-07-26T21:36:00.002-04:00

I think my feet are acquiring the smell of wet boots or it could be that my boots smell like wet feet. Anyways there’re some funky odors embedded in my socks. It has been raining just about everyday during the last 3 weeks, but the rain doesn’t stop the work. I have been helping dig fish tanks and gardens, teaching English classes, and leading cake baking classes.

Cake class was well attended by males and females alike. The women took turns as head chef, and the men took notes for their wives. We make four different cakes: vanilla, chocolate, lemon, and ginger/cinnamon. All of them cooked in a cake pan inside a large pot over a fire. And all of them turned out well, and now I have requests coming from all over the community for follow-up classes. Which means lots of cake sampling. Now I have to think of more goodies to offer classes on that use other local produce. Maybe soon I’ll be teaching marinara sauce and pumpkin pie classes.

English classes are a bit of a challenge, but lots fun. My students, who number my host parents, neighbors, and town’s government official, are very excited. Some even bought new notebooks for the occasion.

I haven’t bit the mud (fallen) in over a week, and I am starting to earn some street credit among community members. Although climbing up mountainsides is no longer the challenge it once was (Columbus, Ohio didn’t supply much training there), I still find myself tired before the day is over ad more susceptible to illnesses. All of the newness around me is a bit much, and it is hard not to internalize the sadness or be overwhelmed by the abundance of teaching opportunities or injustices, the 17 year old with 3 children from a man 10 years her senior. Sometimes I go nuts inside. But it’s one day at a time, one soggy step followed by another soggy step.

Nature´s Bounty

2008-07-13T16:26:00.008-04:00

My early morning Naso studies on the Fourth of July were interrupted by new voices in the house. My host dad and brother had just returned from an overnight hunting trip. I came out of my room to see my host dad open up his son’s book bag and reveal the bounty: one wild chicken (Spanish: perdiz, Naso: srun) and a rodent-like animal, ñeque. While he proudly posed for a picture (see below) he told me about the conejo pintado (another rodent animal, possibly endangered, that sells for $2/lb in the city) that got away. They also returned with some wild tomatoes and rabo mono, tender fern tips. After cleaning the animals we sat down for an amazing holiday feast.

I have been afflicted by a new round of skin ailments. Sixty-four little red mounds from the bite of a little black bug cover my body. My feet have been sampled so much that they have swelled up and I now only take my socks off to shower. I also think I have athlete’s foot. But I think I have had it for a long time and just didn’t realize what it was. Initially, I thought my toes were weird because I had been walking with sand between my toes, but the itchy peeling continued long after the sand was gone. At least I now have a use for all the anti fungal cream I received for my rash in training. And then there is the blister/rash from stinging nettles, a tropical version that I earned cutting brush in my host family’s banana grove.

My feet are more sure on muddy hilly terrain. I am still far from navigating with the skill of the Naso and my boot are still destroying my feet, but my steps are lighter and my body less awkward. Falls still happen, but my third paw has been temporarily retired. Two teachers that live in my community have taken me under their wings. They have taken me to nearby Guabito for ice cream and grocery shopping and invited me to lunch in their house. They prepared a meal of smoked, fried chicken drumsticks, potato salad, white rice, fried ripe plantains, and lemonade. My culinary expectations are not what they used to be, and it was a treat to see so much variety in one plate of food.

The tight rope I had been walking was yanked upon in a community meeting this past week. A very outspoken community member made an ultimatum that I and the Peace Corps state which king we support. While my regional leader offered a diplomatic response, the subject will be settled in the coming weeks with the PC Panama director, the two kings, representatives from the 11 Naso communities, the agriculture group I am working with, and various others. While I am hopeful and confident that the conflict will be resolved happily, I still am still a bit fearful that I may be asked to leave my new home.

The evening after the meeting, my host dad tried to cheer me up. The conversation went something like:

Host dad: “Everyone has to confront obstacles in their lives. A long time ago there was a man named Jesus Christ, and he had to overcome many trials. Some people even wanted to kill him. And then they did.”

Me: “I am not sure I like this example. What are you implying?”

Host dad: “Just that there are some bad people, but a lot of good ones, too.”

Anyways, things are going well. The food and work are abundant. So is the recreation. I am developing my own extreme sport from harvesting oranges. Because my host family has all of their citrus trees planted on the side of a very steep hill, I am becoming practiced in trying to grab the fruit as it rolls full speed down the hill.

piggies eating pifá, a plam tree fruit that also graces my plate

my host brother, the dwarf

My host dad and brother with the night´s catch

wild tomatoes with rabo mono

cooking the ñeque and perdiz

my host mom grinding corn

neighborhood kids

the biggest pot I´ve ever seen in a home

digging a fish tank

one of my swimming holes

It's Official.

2008-06-29T14:04:00.001-04:00

Peace Corps Panama swore-in its 61st group of volunteers on Thursday at the house (read: mansion) of the U.S. ambassador to Panama. All the trainees got all gussied-up, and we marveled at eachother’s metamorphosis. Because the Peace Corps was celebrating 45 years in Panama, the ceremony was attended by the global director of the Peace Corps and a couple distinguished Panamanians from the ministries of health and agriculture. While the ceremony was wonderful, the highlight for me was a speech delivered by a fellow SAS volunteer Andi. She recounted the hotdog consumption, sicknesses without diagnosis, and mysterious skin afflictions that kept our training interesting and spoke about our next new beginning. The night followed with dinner at an Italian restaurant and dancing in Panama City and concluded at a karaoke bar with a Bruce Springsteen song.

Following swear-in, Peace Corps gave us two days off to relax, celebrate, and prepare ourselves for our arrival to site. Most of the group headed to the beach near San Carlos on the Pacific Ocean. We prepared fabulous food, played pool side charades, saw plankton luminescence, read, reconnected with home, and tried out surfing (or watched, as in my case; the waves scared me). Group 61’s bonds grew even stronger through the weekend, and today we all said tearful goodbyes, wishing each other well in our sites in the coming months and years. Training is finally over. This is where the Peace Corps begins, and I am feeling very small, but I am ready to go.

Pictures from Training

2008-06-28T12:14:00.002-04:00

Sifting sand for the estufa lorena ('mud stove')

Shaping the 'mud stove'

The entrance to the despedida (going away party) in Sta. Clara

Gifts to Sta. Clara host families at the despedida

My neighbors laughing at me

One dust-covered kid with one destroyed piñata

A Tale of Two Kings

2008-06-19T11:41:00.000-04:00

As a Peace Corps Volunteer I am to keep myself removed from anything political as the Peace Corps presence in Panama is strictly contingent on an invitation by the Panamanian government. Clearly, I don’t want to break the peace. Yet, during my stay in Seiyic during culture week and during my site visit last week, conversations about kings, comarcas, and hydrologic dams were swirling around me. And more often than not I was asked what I thought about the heated issues. Repeatedly, I managed to formulate a vague diplomatic response.

During my short time with the Naso, I have learned a lot about the above issues, and a few google searches have helped me to fill in the holes. The possible construction of a hydroelectric dam on the River Bonyic has divided the Naso people. Its supporters offer that the project would provide positive development impacts to one of the country’s poorest regions and supply more efficient and reliable energy. Its opponents point to possible ecological degradation, threats to local economy, and cultural loss. Among the project’s supporters is Tito Santana, one of the two men claiming to be king of the Naso people. Due to his support of the Bonyic project, Tito was removed from the throne by civil up rise four years ago. A large majority of the Naso elected and currently regards Valetín Santana, Tito’s uncle, as the current Naso king. However, it is Tito who the Panamanian government acknowledges as king of the Naso.

I have heard my organic agricultural producers share their fear that their culture is extinguishing. I have also heard the government-funded radio messages in Changuinola about reducing energy consumption for a more secure tomorrow. As I look forward through the next couple years, I can picture myself up on a tight rope, arms extended, trying to maintain perfect balance, weighing the threats to the cultural heritage of my community against the threats to my own existence there as a Peace Corps Panama Volunteer.

The First Glimpse

2008-06-17T18:05:00.004-04:00

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

Miga. Tja kjö Janell.

2008-06-07T16:21:00.007-04:00

Naso language training started this week, and I am beginning to think that I am in way over my head. Learning a third language (Naso) in a second language (Spanish) is scrambling my brain. Pronunciation is a maddening struggle. The vowel a alone has 4 different sounds (written as a, ã, ä, and a with both the tilde and dots). The pattern extends to the other vowels as well for a total of 20 vowel sounds. It makes my pea-sized brain hurt. Luckily, as the only student in the class I have the opportunity to spend 15 minutes practicing the ë sound if I so choose.

My language teacher is from the community that I will soon claim as my new home in Panama, and through him I am learning more about the Naso people and my future home. He shared that this week a group of Naso people were in Panama City to meet with government officials to try to seek a resolution for the hydroelectric dam project and in the issue of establishing a Naso comarca (reservation).

On Tuesday I will travel to my site for the first time. I will spend nearly a week in the community, deliver a speech (in Naso, eeks!), meet my community, and learn of its needs and possible work opportunities. I am really excited, but nervous about being a huge disappointment or just looking like a fool. My language teacher has told me of the preparations the community is making for me. If his excitement is a fair gauge for the rest of the community, expectations and engagement levels will be high. He has already expressed interest in working with me in horticulture production, goat husbandry, handicraft production/marketing, ecotourism, and baked goods classes/production. The last interest was named after I introduced him to brownies made from cacao from his own province. While I have much to learn, this many opportunities is a Peace Corps Volunteer’s dream. I am really excited.

After the site visit I will return to my training community for just over a week of training, swear-in as an official volunteer in Panama City, and be turned loose for my new home in Bocas del Toro Province. As I look forward to moving to my new home and learning the full story behind this mysterious indigenous group, I am sad to bid farewell to my training community and my host family here. Getting tackled by my host nephew as I walk through the door, hearing my aunts call out ‘ya viene la muñequita’ (‘here comes the [Barbie] doll’) as I walk home from class, and knowing just where to scrounge the best fallen mangoes are all activities I will leave behind in St. Clara in a couple of weeks. I have grown fond of my fungus-infected mattress, my odorific latrine, weekly bingo at my house, and seeing ants floating on top of my cereal.

My sis, nephew and cousin putting candles in my bday cake

My birthday package from home :)

Sisterly love

Cultural and Technical Weeks

2008-06-02T17:50:00.010-04:00

Culture and tech weeks are now a thing of the recent past and I am currently trying hard to decompress all of the novel experiences of the last two weeks. While the last two weeks have been crazy exhausting, they have been huge morale boosters and have left me worrying less about the next two years of navigating through relatively unchartered waters alone.

Culture week was a crash course education on indigenous groups in the Bocas del Toro Province. I lived with an Ngäbe family for the first few days. The Ngäbes represent Panama’s largest (and ever-increasing) indigenous group. Lots of kids and plantains and unabashed stares were mainstays in my few days there. That and alternating bouts of constipation (from the plantains) and diarrhea (from the water). But I survived, through lots of laughter.

After my time with the Ngäbes I was boated up the Rio Teribe to visit the village of Sieyic, the home of the Naso king. The stay was an amazing one. The only downfall would probably be not being about to meet the Naso king, but maybe that could be a later visit. The father of the family I stayed with shared Naso folklore (e.g., a grandmother rock protects the Naso), explained old customs (e.g., preparing girls for womanhood), and presented new issues that confront the Naso (e.g., construction of a nearby hydroelectric dam). Most of the Naso adamantly oppose the construction of the dam, and the tensions over the project have apparently even spurred violence. The same day I went upstream to visit the community another boat with Nasos was stopped, stoned, and force to turn back downstream. The Naso indigenous group also lacks a comarca (Panamanian equivalent of a reservation) of its own, and has been fighting for years to gain one in an attempt to preserve its cultural identity. It was incredible to hear about these struggles and to consider their implications on my next two years of working with the Naso. It is daunting but fiercely exciting. The Naso are a proud and such a beautiful people. And they’re organized. I can’t wait to work them.

After culture week fellow future Bocas agriculture volunteer Kate and I headed to the islands during our day off. Crystal clear water, white sand, and hardly another soul around on Isla Carenero made for a perfect morning on the beach. I definitely will be going back, especially since it’ll only be a few hours from my site. Hopefully one of you will provide me some company.

Technical week was also in Bocas del Toro, and the bulk of it was spent on an amazing cacao farm. It must have served as the inspiration of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory with its brightly colored cacao pods and gnarly trees. We learned about the crop and plagues that affect its production and practiced pruning and grafting techniques. We also processed the cacao beans into unsweetened chocolate. And from this amazing organic cacao the volunteers I was with made these amazing brownies that served as my birthday cake, which we enjoyed with boxed red wine. It was all a bit impromptu, but it was really touching and a very good way to begin my 23rd year of being.

Making food for culture language class over a fugon

From the water taxi to Isla Colon

The life jackets onboard that no one wears

A perfect example of agroforestry (cacao in the forground)

Chocolate in its natural habitat (Willy Wonka-esque, no?)

A tree nursery

More cacao pods

Drying the cacao beans

Toasted, crushed, and de-shelled cacao beans

Kate, grinding the beans

The fnished product, 100% cacao... a little bitter but so yummy!

More from week 4

2008-05-17T21:56:00.002-04:00

A few days have passed since site announcements (see previous entry) and I while I should be packing for the next two weeks in Bocas, I am plugged into my computer and listening to the music that I already miss (there is too much reggeaton here). Beyond the fungus-turn-rash, training is going very well, and things like latrine smells don’t bother me so much anymore. And yesterday when I poured milk into my ‘corn flas’ (every cereal in Panama is ‘corn flakes’), no less than 20 ants floated to the top. I hesitated for a minute debating my next move, and then picked up my spoon and dug in.

My fellow trainees marvel over the Panamanian diets in our training community, where in most houses there exist only two food groups: fried and starch. Sometimes these overlap (i.e., fried plantains). Some host moms take their frying creativity to new levels, by frying bread, hotdogs, corn patties (lovingly called hockey pucks by the trainees), etc. If Panamanians ate vegetables, they would fry those, too. But according to Panamanians, they do eat their veggies: yucca, otoe, ñame, and other root tubers. As for more examples of starch affinity, my fellow trainee Julliette offers a meal she was served a few days ago to illustrate: spaghetti with a side of mashed potatoes. Luckily for me, I rarely encounter these food woes. My food always tastes good and is generally nutritious. Even if there are ants floating on top.

Technical training classes are the highlights of my days here. We spend much of our time doing hands on activities, and my machete swing is finally getting dangerously good and new blisters are forming on top of the old ones. In previous weeks of training we have made lots of compost, organic fertilizers, and organic pesticides. Organic production techniques are stressed in training because the farmers volunteers work with often do not have the financial resources to buy chemical fertilizers/pesticides, which hopefully will make promoting organic alternatives that much easier. And this week, thanks to training with a level A frame, I can now define contour lines (without a laser level) and can tackle the basics of hillside soil conservation.

I am growing more excited about site placement, and I am looking forward to my first visit to a Naso community this coming week, culture week. For which I should be packing.

Hasta luego!

Site Announcements

2008-05-17T21:34:00.001-04:00

From Wednesday...
What a day! And what a range of emotions. Firstly, the (terribly strong, yet terribly ineffective) anti-histamines that I am taking for the perpetually spreading rash have made me a walking zombie. But owing to a fabulous lunchtime siesta I revived enough to enjoy the afternoon’s suspense-riddled site announcements (albeit feeling all kinds of itchy).

The Peace Corps certainly did their best to build up the occasion by bringing all of the PC/Panama regional leaders, showing an ever-inspirational PC video, and then bringing out a map of the country dotted with little stars marking the locations of our future sites. They worked across the country’s provinces, starting in the east and moving westward, announcing the name of each community, describing it and potential project work there, and then revealing the name of the volunteer selected for the site. It was great to see the reactions of my fellow trainees as they exalted at receiving coveted beach sites or shrugged at the description of a two hour hike into site. My community was the last placement to be announced, making it the Western-most site and the farthest from Panamá City. It is located in the northwestern reaches of the Bocas del Toro Province close to the Costa Rican border.

According to the information packet that I received tonight, my eventual home in Panama will be a “charming” community of about 600 people. Its people belong to a small and periled indigenous group, the Naso (a.k.a. Teribe). I will be the first volunteer in this site and the only PC/Panama volunteer working with the Naso indigenous group. I currently have many questions and few resources available, but my trusty Lonely Planet Panama (2007) guide book offers a little information on the Naso, which I will share:

It is estimated that there are only a few thousand Naso remaining in Panama, the majority of which live in the Bocas del Toro province and survive as subsistence farmers. Although they have remained virtually autonomous for generations, the Naso have recently started losing their cultural self-sufficiency due to missionary activity, Latino encroachment, and youth migration. Today, most Naso are bilingual (Naso and Spanish), wear Western-style clothing, and practice some form of Christianity. However, strong elements of ancestral Naso culture remain, especially considering that they are one of the few remaining indigenous groups in the Americas to retain their traditional monarchy.

While the work that I will be doing will depend largely on the information I will gain through completing a community assessment during my first three months in site, the Peace Corps has already identified many potential projects. These include working with existing fish and rice tanks, goat husbandry, grain farming (e.g., corn and bean), fruiticulture (e.g., orange, mango, lemon), cacao production, and sustainable agriculture techniques for traditional crops (e.g., rice, maize, otoe, yucca, plantains). Secondary work could include helping market local artisan work such as woodcraft and natural fiber baskets.

I will be fairly removed from modern conveniences (20 minutes in taxi plus 45 minutes hiking from closest bus line/border crossing) and other volunteers (2 hours), but I will still enjoy mountain fresh water from an aqueduct and have cell phone reception. I will build my own stilted home with donations of wood, thatch, and labor from my community (at least that is the plan). I will not have electricity.

It is hard to digest what all of this will mean for me. I finally know the name, location, and some of the needs and wants of my community. I know the names of the people with whom I may be living and working. Yet I know nothing about their culture, language, or daily struggles. I also know that this community has asked for a Peace Corps Volunteer, and so I will go, happily and hoping not to let them down.

But I will not be going just yet. Six weeks of training still remain before swear-in. And the next two weeks will find me once again in Bocas del Toro for culture week (Ngobere and Naso cultures) followed by tech week (cacao training). Hopefully a weekend island hiatus will fall in between, funds and time permitting.

The Rash and Casco Viejo Pictures

2008-05-12T19:44:00.005-04:00

Grinding corn for empanadas at my house

The rash

Along the shoreline in Casco Viejo

More of Casco Viejo

Part of the SAS (sustainable ag sys) crew in Casco Viejo

Demystification Weekend

2008-05-09T18:32:00.009-04:00

I left last Thursday evening for what my country director fondly calls demystification weekend. My fellow aspirantes (trainees) and I were each given a current volunteer site to visit for the weekend. We were given our volunteer’s name and some information on where to meet or find him or her. For some, the trip ended up being an outlandish adventure waiting for a man with a horse that didn’t show up, hiking two plus hours through Panama’s pouring rain and clay mud “roads”, or bouncing four hours down the pot-holed stretches of the Pan-American highway in an retired American school bus. Some aspirantes’ travels led them to unwittingly discover that some provinces have two towns of the same name. Some folks found out first hand that Panamanians love to help so much that the will even offer you directions when they have never heard of your destination.

Although my travels took me to the far-flung Bocas del Toro Province, my getting there was a very mild journey. Nine and a half hours in a comfy air conditioned overnight bus (next to a man who insisted upon calling me ‘Barbie’) and an additional half an hour in a mini-bus brought me to the foot of the hill upon which my volunteer lived. I scrambled up the hill as the sun began to peek over the islands of Bocas del Toro behind me. It wasn’t until I reached the top that the sunlight was bright enough to illuminate the panoramic postcard picture I was standing in the midst of: the fog-hazed mountains of the binational Parque La Amistad before me and an expanse of the island-dotted Caribbean behind me. How does a trainee keep her site expectations at none when she sees a site like that? Aye, Peace Corps, what are you doing to me?

After waking up my unsuspecting volunteer, we passed the morning learning about eachother and what had brought us to where we were, and I learned through a series of anecdotes what I could expect as a volunteer in an indigenous Ngöbe community in the cacao-rich Bocas. My volunteer showed me her tactics for how to eat well and stay healthy (despite the occasional bout of dengue) in the absence of electricity and running water. We made stove-top brownies from the block of cacao bought from a family in the community, and I marveled at the staying power of processed American cheese while munching on a grilled cheese sandwich.

I had the chance to take a few hour long hike to a transmission tower constructed by the U.S. in WWII with another volunteer that lived just down the highway. The hike was refreshing in a sweaty kind of way and little poisonous dart frogs were just about everywhere. The climb up the tower was reminiscent of climbing up the Harvest Store silo back home and I got a little fearful of the heights, but the view made it well worth it. I wish I could share it with you, but I guess my camera battery decided that it would be better for you to see it first hand.

After the hike I returned to my volunteer’s site for my inaugural quebrada (stream) bath. One of the neighbors was down at the stream washing her clothes and her husband was resting on a rock nearby when I made my way down to the steam. Not knowing the protocol, I hung out with them, striking up conversation about the community, the volunteer I was visiting, and cows, mainly. After about 15 minutes, the neighbor finished the washing and told me to go ahead and bathe. She and her husband gathered the clothes into 5 gallon buckets and started heading up the hill. I started dumping water over my head and was about to bid them ‘hasta luego’ when they took a seat on another rock overlooking the stream. Hmm. So I finished my stream bath with a small audience, said goodbye, and climbed up the hill to ask my volunteer about what just happened. Apparently, bathing with an audience is something that I may be getting used to in my future.

I leave you with some pictures.

Where my journey began: Dayton, OH

My host nephew with his cake (I forgot to buy candles, but I decorated the cake with raisins)

Sunrise in Bocas del Toro

180° from the above photo

Fungus Face

2008-04-26T16:47:00.006-04:00

“Injection?” asks Kalli, pointing to her shoulder.
“No,” replies the doctor, extending her index finger towards her posterior “Inyección.”

Kalli and I laugh, me noticably harder. It won’t be me dropping my pants for the next 4 days for a penicillin injection. Poor Kalli. Oh, but now it is my turn to learn why I’ve had to see my new surroundings out of just my right eye for the last few days. I describe my syptoms and the doctor takes a look. I walk out with an arsenal of eye drops only to return a few days later with a mystery rash on my face, neck, and hands.

Again a flashight inspection. We discuss itching. I am diagnosed with something that starts with an m and ends with many syllabols. I make a confused face and turn my head slightly. The doctor says it is “un hongo.” I am given a $10 tube of anti-fungal cream and cotton candy-colored pills. My fellow trainees now refer to me in jest as fungus face or just hongo for short. The cream is amazing because it dries the rash up in about 2 days, but each day a new crop of the fungus rash keeps popping up. I’m not sure if that’s okay, but I have lots of cream left still, so I am thinking it will soon get it under control.

My host family is a trip, and there are always good smells coming from the kitchen. Unlike many of my fellow trainees, fruits, vegetables, and non-fried foods grace my plate daily. I accompanied my host mom to pick papaya and mango from the trees in my grandma’s yard a few days ago, and the mangos are now ripe. And wonderful.

A couple nights ago the kitchen was a different story. I went to get some water from the refrigerator because I was dehydrated because I sweat about 1 liter of water daily (only a slight exageration), and when I did a 4 inch long grasshopper jumped off of the fridge onto my skirt. I shamefully shrieked like a little girl. My nephew came running to check it out and was followed by my host mom. Upon inspection of the grasshopper my host mom grabbed the insect and toasted it in her fingers over the stove burner until it browned. Then she tossed it onto the porch “for the chickens.”

Showers are a treat here. My host mom and Spanish teacher were mortified when I told them that I only showered every other day in Ohio. They recommended that I shower 3-4 times per DAY here. My face must have conveyed my thoughts before any words left my mouth, and they assured me that theirs was the hygiene that I should adopt. Despite their teachings I have only upped my shower frequency to once daily (twice only in extreme cases). I am still mastering the skills needed for a bucket shower and getting over my weariness of bathing in a latrine. I think I smell like poo when I finish my bucket shower, but atleast I am refreshed and lightly less smelly.

Tech classes are amazing. I got shifted to the Sustainable Agricultural Systems (SAS) trainging group from the conservation group. Apparently their was a bit of a mix up, but I am happy with the results. The switch means more manual labor in rural agrarian-based communities. And some amazing trainers teaching lots of hands-on organic production techniques. The training is intense, but good. One of the trainers is an organic chicken farmer here, but he seems to have his hand in everything agriculture. Language classes are decent, but I feel like I get more out of hanging out with my host family and neighbors. We are the 5th (I think) training group to be hosted in this small community (pop. 1500-2000) an hour from Panama City. I have asked a few people here what they think about having 30+ gringos living here. Their responses vary from feeling honored because Peace Corps selected them to share their cutlure, food, etc. to humored because gringos say funny things are have strange habits to frustrated (mostly children) because some kids give up their rooms for the gringos living with them. I feel very welcomed, and I am obviously very entertained.

Monday is my host nephew’s birthday, and I am off to the super to buy ingredients for a cake (my host family has a working oven… amazing!).

Hasta pronto!

Packing

2008-04-09T10:55:00.007-04:00

So I am finally getting down to the nitty gritty of packing and hopefully making my final shopping list (vacuum seal bags, hair ties, and a nalgene with a small mouth (I am spill prone)). I stuffed my pack full last night. It held most of my stuff and only weighed 35 pounds, so the bag of Reese's cups that I was on the fence about will be making the trip. mmm, yea!

Yesterday was my parent's 30th wedding anniversary, and as always they had no plans, so I opted to take a break from packing and stalking facebook to make them dinner: grilled Winner's marinated pork chops, baked potatoes, and asparagus. Prep was going well until I was interrupted by a UPS guy with a box for me. Funny, I thought, I didn't order anything from a Pro... what does that say?... Proflowers. So on that thought, I ripped open the package and found out that two dozen roses really weren't sent to me by mistake (wow!). But in my utter haste of trimming the stems I also trimmed off a chunk of my left index finger, which started dripping blood. I wrapped that up and went out to light the grill.

Of course the grill is a bit ghetto and really an accident waiting to happen. And so it did happen (the accident). The grill went boom, the dog went bark, Janell's hair went poof, and Janell's hand went sizzle. At least the grill lit though. So I re-cut my hair (so much for the $40 splurge cut I got on Saturday) and put my white blistered flesh (2nd degree burn according to Becky (which means according to webMD)) in cool water until the burning sensation subsided enough to wrap the taters in foil and defrost the chops. Dinner went well enough. I soaked my right hand in large, water-filled yogurt container and ate with the four good fingers on my left hand. Mom and Dad said it was good. Dad especially liked the asparagus. Sigh.

Goodbyes

2008-04-05T04:38:00.004-04:00

I only have 9 more days until departure, and things are beginning to feel 'final'. The goodbyes started last weekend at a friend's wedding. Today was my last day of work (more goodbyes). Tonight was my last night in Columbus, and despite the low-key plan (thrifting and dinner with a friend), I found myself victim to my first surprise party, a despedida. Even complete with cake. In fact, it was chocolate one with 'We'll miss you Janell' written in frosting. Luckily, there was no singing, but I still got teary-eyed. It is hard to leave such great friends.

I apologize for such a depressing first entry. I'll do better in the future. Goodbyes are just hard.