Taco Night

domingo 2.10.11

Taco night was a hit with our family! We served about 18 people and everyone loved it!

Nene, my uncle, eating our tacos.  He really loved it, he just didn´t like me taking the picture.

My sister, Martita and her tacos!

Site Announcement

Site Announcement

sabado 1.10.11 

After 6 weeks of training everyone finally found out where we will be placed for 2 years.  When the instructors brought the map onto the smart board in the office I saw there were a lot of beach sites.  Awesome!  But not for me… I am headed deep into the mountains of the Comarca Ngabe Bugle, honestly the last place I thought I would be going.  I will be in the site of Peña Prieta and to get there from Panama City, I take a bus and a chiva (a truck that people pile into the back of or sometimes a small van) about 5 hours to the entrance of my site.  Then I hike 1.5 hours.  My area of the Comarca is all mountains.  The Comarca is an indigenous area where they speak their own language Ngabere, in addition to Spanish, and the women wear traditional naguas.  Those are the dresses shown in my pictures from the last post.  The culture is a very important part of their culture and coming in as a white, outsider will be a tough task.

Some things I know about my site, I will have some cellphone reception, there is an aqueduct in my community and they use wells during the dry season but I don’t know the condition of them and there is some type of health building in town.  My site has roughly 150 houses with 700-900 people.  Some of the main sources of income are agriculture and raising chickens and cows.  The closest volunteer not in my training group is a 2 hour to 2.5 hour hike and the closest volunteer from my group is probably about the same distance.  There is a primary school with 265 students and 16 teachers.  The way the teacher system works here is that teachers with the most years pick where they want to teach and live first.  Therefore they pick latino sites or sites closer to bigger cities.  The teachers in the Comarca usually don’t want to be there as much and leave on the weekends and are often “sick” from school, which means that the children don’t have class because they do not have a system of substitutes.  There is also a secondary school of 345 students and 5 teachers. I will not have to build my own house it seems because there are about 3 houses that I can possibly rent after my 3 months of living with host families.  I am unsure of the latrine situation so I may not have one when I arrive and I will have to think of another alternative, such as a composting bucket. 

Many organizations already exist in my community although the structure and organization of the groups are not yet known.  There is a junta, or work group used for projects such as building houses, harvesting crops, or other major projects.  There is a club for fathers of the families, a water committee (each house pays $1.00 a month to be hooked up to the aqueduct), a health committee, a women’s group, a farmer’s group, another women’s group and baseball and soccer teams.  Now there are a lot of groups in the community already but do not get the idea that they run anything like in the United States because they don’t.  They are usually pretty dysfunctional and meetings can last for 5 hours or more accomplishing nothing. 

More information I received: My community is part of the mountains of the Cordillera Central and from many high spots of the community besides enoying the fresh mountain air, I can also see neighboring ridge communities and the Pacific Ocean in clear mornings (which is far from my site).  The people of my community cultivate the slopes for rice, beans, root vegetables, coffee, cacao, bananas and various fruit trees. 

Description of Potential Work:  “I know that you will be challenged by the remote location, severe weather at time and intense Ngabe culture.”  That’s encouraging haha.  So basically when I arrive to site in November it is the rainy season.  Therefore it rains just about everyday and all day.  My hike in will probably be very tough carrying my luggage, especially if it is in fact raining.  It gets chilly in the mountains when it rains and also at night.  Never did I think I would be cold in Panama.  So while some of my friends are on their beach sites, and one on an island, I will be cold in the mountains; although the mountains of the Comarca are a beautiful site.  My primary purpose as an environmental health volunteer is to develop water system improvements projects, initiate sanitation projects and assist in local health and hygiene improvement efforts while building community capacity to participate in sustainable project development and implementation.  Potential secondary activities include women’s, youth and artisan group development, sustainable agriculture techniques, introduction of practical nutrition ideas to families, and group sports.  I am the first volunteer in this site.

Whooo that is a lot to take in.  October 11^th I will be traveling and visiting my site for 5 days and then returning for the last week of training.  After that it is back to my site for 2 years.  The first week visiting site and the first 3 months in site are said to be the hardest times because it is the first time we are by ourselves.  For the first time we can only communicate in Spanish and we are the outsider of our community.  Integrating is the first and toughest task of a Peace Corps Volunteer.  That’s all I have for now about my site.  On a different note, 2 other trainees, Sergio and Sarah, and myself are cooking tacos for our families tonight.  We are cooking American tacos, my favorite food, for about 18 of us.  It is going to be an adventure!

Where everyone in my group is going throughout Panama.

The girls going to the Comarca, Erica, me, Sarah, and Susan with our Regional Leader Erin, and APCD Brandon.

Tech Week

miercoles 28.9.11

Never have I wanted a peanut butter sandwich so bad. Man I missed my latrine.  Walking freak show, come one come all.  Those are all really good possibilities for what I could have named my post this week.  Last week we all headed to tech week, which during tech week we found out it is the hardest week of training.  Thanks for the heads up…  We had 6 hours in a bus watching the worst movies ever.  Gifted hands, Fireproof, there was a reason they didn’t make it to the big screen.  When we arrived to the site it was pouring rain, which meant most of our families didn’t come to pick us up.  I had to trudge through some raging creeks to get to my house where I was greeted with awkward stares.  Yes I am aware I am a gringa (white female). Please stop staring at me.  I had the typical rice and beans for dinner and then I went off to my room, which was in my host sister’s house.  My bed was made of wood with a cow rawhide on top.  Luckily I got my own bed while my family members slept 3 in a bed.  I was told I was going to be sleeping in my sister’s house alone but fear not while I was trying to read my book and get ready for bed (yes it was 830pm because what else do you do when it is raining and you don’t have electricity) in popped 4 of my family members to come and stare at me while I read.  What a night of restless sleeping.  Rule number one: always bring a sleeping pad.  Note to self: buy a sleeping pad.  I usually woke up every hour or so with one part of my body numb.  So each night continued as so.  With all the time I had to read I was able to finish “The Secret Life of Bees”.  My breakfast was usually yucca or white rice and always white rice for dinner, which I came to like because it is a safe bet.  The lemon tea grass was great as well.  One day I told my family that I wasn’t a huge fan of yucca so I didn’t get breakfast and that night my dinner was cold.  But fear not lunch was always amazing because one lady cooked for us and we all ate together.  She cooked some of the best food I’ve had.  

Now to the reason we were actually there…technical stuff.  During the week we focused mainly on water systems.  We surveyed the town to see how much water each family used a day and see how the families dealt with health topics such as washing their hands.  Each family only pays 50 cents a month for water and this town was fortunate that they have an abundant source of water that flows all year long.  We also walked all of the lines of the aqueduct and surveyed the line so we could take the info and put it onto maps.  We presented our findings to the community on that Thursday.  Surprisingly we only started 30 minutes late and with about 10-12 people.  That is a great turn out!  Here we run on Panamanian time so that means that meetings usually don’t start until an hour or two past time at the earliest.  Also it is really hard to get people to the meetings so you usually have to bribe them with snacks.  We had a solid 20 people for most of the meeting and of course with 10 minutes left there were over 70 people.  During the week we also learned how to thermoform PVC so we could fix some problems of the aqueduct, we built a bridge over the creek for the aqueduct and built tap stands at the school.  I’d say I’m a pro at cutting rebar with a hacksaw.  That hacksaw is so useful.  Although tech week started off on a rocky foot I really learned a lot of skills and how to approach a community when I’m “that new white girl that no one knows why she’s here”, which even at the end of tech week people were still wondering about us.  I really enjoyed the physical building and I am hoping that working with an aqueduct will be a project of mine in the future.  So after a rough week what better way to end it then going to the beach!  Most of us headed to Las Lajas beach, although 2 of the guys in our group went to Panama City to watch football. Not sure watching football for 2 days of the next 2 years is a great choice.  But hey hopefully my Cowboys won…?  Back to the beach, Las Lajas is the widest beach I have seen when it is low tide.  We stayed in “Panamanian” cabanas on the beach.  I used “Panamanian” because I’m sure when you think of cabanas on the beach you picture some type of high-class resort.  Well don’t.  Our cabana shacks were awesome though and right on the beach.  Las Lajas is beautiful but hidden and not built up yet so we stayed for $5 a person for the night.  We headed down the beach to the American-owned hotel for food, fish for dinner and French toast for breakfast.  After living on white rice all weekend I had never tasted food so good.  After a great beach night it was back to Los Mortales.  We were so lucky that we got to watch the same awful movies again for our 6-hour bus ride.  Once back in Los Mortales I had a visitor in my latrine.  Hellllo cockroach.  And then I got another present from down below hellllo rumble in my stomach.  I missed you too.

I want to share a haiku that my friend wrote while he was on his volunteer site visit.  Enjoy!

rumble from within

giardia, is that you

if so, be gentle.  

One of our sexual health presentations. We learned what snowballing was.

The other slide... rainbow party?

A parade in La Chorrera.

In the Comarca Ngabe Bugle for tech week, looking at the aqueduct.

My room and my bed during tech week.

Morning view in the Comarca.

My family's house right below the house where I slept at night.

Sergio and Bri surveying with a water level, following the aqueduct.

The beginning of our tap stand project at the school.

Ngabe children in their traditional clothes.

Putting concrete in the mold to form the tap.

Concrete hands. The first of many.

Traditional dresses.

Lack of clothes is typical.

My group giving a presentation to the community on health.

The sun when the clouds passed in front of it on top of the mountains.

I cut open the aqueduct tube to start the bridge making process for the aqueduct over the creek.  Little did I know I would end the process soaking wet.  

The ties we used to connect the tube to the bridge.

Group 69 EH with our finished aqueduct bridge.

Evan working on the tap stand.

Finished bridge.

Our finished tap stand.

We thermoformed the bell ends on the tubes so we could reconnect the water source to our tap stand.

Our cabana on the beach at Las Lajas beach.

The widest beach I have ever seen during low tide.

Eating dinner at the American-owned resort.

My 6am wake-up run on the beach.

A traditional dress from the Congo, Colon that I wore during our cultural celebration day.

Our spanish language teachers.

My spanish class, Erica, our teacher Kenia, Bri and I in our dresses from across Panama. 

John cheated for the potato sack race. 

The broken chair after playing a game where we had to blow up a balloon and then put it on the chair and pop it with our butt.  Man down.

Pictures from the past week

The final state of my feet before getting better.  They are almost normal looking now.

Part of the aqueduct system in our town.

Baby cow. Clearly.

Working on the plancha for the pit latrine.

One of the water tanks we worked on and our mixing area.

Playing my guitar on my birthday.

Typical birthday feast of rice and chicken.  So good!

My family. Top my brother-in-law Joni, me, my sister Lenith. Bottom my sister Martita, my mom Marta and my sister Mabel 7 months pregnant with a little girl, Joelese.

Birthday cake my favorite part.

Sergio and Sean, 2 other trainees, with my sister.

Hey Aidan, what kind is this?

If you are wondering what my room is like.

Cow injections of vitamins.

Eating oranges on the farm.

My sister and I on top of a horse with no name.