Travelin'

I have not spent all of my time in my training community of Santa Clara. In my month in Panama I have been able to see many parts of the country.

During our first week of training, the training group and I visited a volunteer in a large community called Membrillo which is located in the province of Cocle. The volunteer’s main project was recycling within the school. She explained the collection process, sorting process, and distribution process. Every week families come with their recycling and the volunteer and dedicated parents will sort it. She has made an agreement with a person who will pick up the recycling once a week and take it to the provincial capital. The money that they earn from the recycling buy-back program is then redistributed back into the school for supplies. Since Panama does not have the facilities to recycle the material, the recyclables are actually shipped to a different country, which made me question about the sustainability of recycling here in Panama. However, the volunteer has been successful in educating students and parents in her community about trash management. Additionally community members with the help of the volunteer are being creative with their recyclables. They are starting to use bottles and milk cartons as pots for seedlings, they have made beautiful bags that have the tabs of aluminum cans sewn into them.

Artisan crafts can tabs

Trainees helping to sort recycling

We also visited a family that made beautiful handmade souvenirs from natural resources. There were wooden parrots, earrings, grass hats, and animal figures made of a rock material. When I first saw the table full of trinkets with beautifully colored figurines and perfectly woven hats, I was skeptical about the artifacts actually being hand made. These items must have been made in China. But to my surprise a few men came out holding a piece of soft rock and a piece of wood. Within minutes they had carved the wood into a beautiful parrot and the rock into a sea turtle. They explained the process while also including how much time the women take to paint the wooden figures. We also explained part of the sombrero making process but said making one can take months! As a present the family had made all of us trainees (25 of us) a frog to take home. Friends and family, expect some cool presents!

I also visited Chorrera as an assignment for my Spanish class (about an hour way from my training community). We were responsible for getting ourselves there using the transit system. We rode a Diablo Rojo, which are wild buses with murals, loud music, mardi gras beads, flashing lights, and feather boas that take people n route from Panama City to nearby cities. There are also chivas, which are pick up trucks with benches in the camper.The best way to find out how to get where is to just ask the locals. There are not set schedules and buses and chivas will not leave their starting destinations until they are full. Chorrera was dirty, crowded, and had no sidewalks. People were forced to walk in a one way street.

Diablo Rojo Bus 

Chiva

 

A part of training includes visiting a current volunteer one-on-one for 5 days. The volunteer I visited is in a community called Ojos de Agua, also in the province of Cocle. It is beautiful community way up in the hills. There were strong breezes and slight rainfall most of my time there which made the climate much cooler; in other words I woke up without sweating for the first time.

 

 I was welcomed with a fiesta;  fiesta for my welcoming but also for another volunteer close by who was finishing her service. Men played drums and women sang all night- a tradition called a tamboritto. We wore monutras- traditional clothing of white shirts and long beautiful skirts.  Hope to have pictures soon!

My volunteer gave me a tour of her community and I was able to meet many of the community members. They were all very welcoming and were patient when I tried to speak. We visited the school and observed classes. I will save my rant about the education system for another post. We hiked to a beautiful waterfall in the Rio Sensillo.

 Here we discussed more in depth about eco-tourism and the challenges the market faces. My volunteer explained that unless a place is right off a main highway with a resort or hostel nearby, it is difficult to motivate travel agencies to advertise the areas. Additionally, the community that may be near a place for awesome sights or that could sell handmade trinkets face challenges of:

Not speaking English

Difficulty of access to tourists

Not being able to travel out of the community to advertise and promote the area

poison dart frog!

Larger tourists guides from Panama City making the revenue instead of the host community members

The volunteer told me about other challenges she has faced while being in her community and I think it is important to share them. Her community is considered big for a CEC volunteer, 800 people. The community is primarily farmers whose farms are tucked back in the hills after a 2 hour walk from their houses. Recently the community has faced a plague within their coffee plantations. To attack this problem, ANAM, a national environmental agency, has provided herbicides and fungicides. The community also recently got electricity, which has been great timing for the politicians. Political parties have given out appliances and money in return for votes. Additionally, Panama is trying to expand the canal. ANAM is implementing that the canal organization must reforest areas to replenish the deforested areas currently under expansion. However for reasons I don’t understand, the canal organization gave the community school chickens. The idea was that the chickens would lay eggs and the chickens could be used for school lunches. Again what this has to do with reforestation I have no idea. What I hope readers are seeing is a trend of giving; the community is receiving things for free.ws an act of good intentions. However education nor sustainability are being implemented. For example after herbicides are applied to the coffee plantation, ANAM agents are going to leave without solving the farmers’ problems. Next season if the same thing happens then farmers will not have the herbicides nor the knowledge of crop rotation or other sustainable farming methods. The chickens at the school died because they were dropped off with no organized management system. No one participated to feed the chickens nor care for the eggs. The community is saturated with projects, and projects where they receive things. So when my volunteer has suggested projects involving teamwork, education, and time, the community has been uncooperative. 

After hearing my volunteer’s story, I have a better idea of the challenges I may face during my service. Moreover I had my own challenges as a trainee during the visit. I realized how much Spanish I don’t know. It was very hard understanding people of the country side, where it is typical and people cut their words in half. After visiting the school and talking about farms, I am lacking on technical vocabulary. I also met people from the city, who I expected would talk much clearer, but was disappointed when they spoke a mile a minute with mucho slang. Paco a paco, paso a paso. Little by litte, step by step. On a fun note I got to start to weave my own sombrero! It really is a long process!

Panamanian sombrero

 

 

 

Finally, I got to spend a day in Panama City. Trainees were required to break into groups and “scavenger hunt” for different areas of the city. Afterwards we wondered around Casco Viejo, a beautiful part of the city but a little touristy and expensive. My afternoon was spent relaxing and although I would like to explore the city more, my initial impression was in comparison to any other large city: poor and rich parts, dirty and clean, mucho traffico.

 

The joys of family

My host parents are the community grandparents. My host father, Larzaro, and my host mother, Maria.

They have 2 children that live right next door, both which are married and have children themselves. I enjoy being able to practice Spanish with all generations.

My host parents with their grandson

Maria is very reserved, quite, yet sweet and caring. She has great one-liners :“Oh Im so ugly when I wash the dogs. I love feeding my chickens every morning. Are there cats in the US?” Lazaro is 94 years old but is very active and sharp. For the first 5 days I had no idea what he was saying. His absence of teeth and living in the countryside all his life makes it almost impossible for me to understand. After being here a month I can maybe pick up about 50% of what he is saying. After I learned more vocabulary and got used to his accent, I asked him to show me his farm. His farm, like most farms in Panama, look nothing like farms in the states. Around the house there are random fruit trees, cocoa, vegetables, and root plants such as yucca. He sells his harvest to the community after feeding his family. The tell me that he enjoys the winter seasons here (April-November) because it is the rainy season and his farm thrives. Aside from being a farmer, Lazaro is also a man of politics. The presidential elections are in May and every politician that appears on tv he tells me every reason why I should not trust him/her.

The house is small yet efficient. Most houses I have seen are made of cement blocks because that is the cheapest material. My room is small yet cozy. I am also lucky enough to be living in a community that has running water (most of the time) and electricity. My house even has a toilet and not a latrine!

Front entrance to my house 

our "BBQ" area 

I spend my evenings with Lazaro and Maria’s grandchildren, usually playing cards, playing hackysack, or drawing. We have gone on small family outings to a nearby river and into the city.

There have been several birthdays within the family since my time here. A special birthday dish is arroz con pollo (rice and chicken) which doesn’t found fancy but it is quite the treat. The rice usually includes many vegetables which is my favorite part since vegetables are not popular here and not always easily accessible. The rice/chicken concoction is cooked but then simmered with banana leaves over it to hold in the flavors. Another birthday treat is diced potatoes mixed with beats. The beats don’t really add flavor but add a fun purple color to the potatoes.

Cooking arroz con pollo 

With all the birthdays I have had enough cake to give me diabetes for the next 4 lifetimes. Ironically I am not fond of the traditional cake. It is a white cake with a caramel filling in the middle. However it is  always dry and the caramel doesn’t taste like the caramel I know.  My family will always give me a plate regardless if I tell them I am full. The dogs always end up getting about half the slice.  It is very much a cultural trait that Panamanians will feed you and insist you eat until you are about to burst.

Some highlights of family time:

Maria really thinks it unsafe if I leave the house after 830

Maria hates cockroaches. Positive side of this is when I tell her a cockroach is in my room, she becomes invincible and storms in my room with a shoe and bug spray, ready for whatever comes her way.

My first day, I figured out how to turn the shower on but couldn’t turn it off. I had to leave the shower with it running, soaking wet in a towel, roaming around the yard trying to find Maria to help me.

A bat flew into my house once.  I ducked and this reaction made Lazaro and Maria laugh….for days. They still bring up the story.

When I play cards with the children, Lazaro always teases me and asks if we can go to Panama to play black jack.

They really like watching scary movies and movies about US college frat parties. I have very uncomfortably watched an American Pie movie with them.

Long days, short nights

 After seven hours of travel time, I arrive in beautiful DC. Since I was not able to leave Arizona and make it on time the day of the Staging Event, Peace Corps flew me out the night before. A few others arrived early as well and we took advantage of the free time to see the sites of DC. I got to see the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, the White House (surprisingly anti-climatic) and visited a few museums of the Smithsonian Museum series.

The Staging Event has several purposes: to have a meeting spot for all trainees who are spread throughout the country, receive student loan deferment papers, and fix any other paperwork trainees may have had problems with. It was also a good opportunity to meet the other trainees. We had two groups of volunteers: CEC (the sector I am in) and Teaching English. We discussed the history of the Peace Corps, why we applied, and what are our expectations. An inserting fact: JFK was inaugurated in January of 1961, proposed the Peace Corps in March and had the first volunteers out of the country by September of the same year!

The next morning at 3 am we loaded onto the bus to head to the airport. For those planning a visit from the states, sit on the left side of the plane! There are gorgeous views of the city flying in. We were greeted by PC staff and volunteers and taken to PC headquarters, about 20 minutes outside of the city. Headquarters are in Ciudad del Saber, which is actually an old US Marine Base (in other words, some of the fanciest buildings around). We spent 4 days in Ciudad del Saber: we met an abundant amount of staff members (including medical and security staff), women received a pregnancy test, took language placement exams, had interviews with the country and program director, and received lots of stuff. What kind of stuff do you ask? A word of advice to future volunteers: leave some room in your bags when you arrive. You will be given an obnoxiously large medical kit, a mosquito net, a Spanish-English dictionary, and a binder full of information.

View of the city

 We also took a trip to the National Terminal, where we learned a little about the transportation system (mostly buses however Panama is currently building a metro) and did a bit of I-forgot-to-pack-something shopping.

After 4 days in Ciudad del Saber we moved in with our host families. I will save a description of my family for another post! CEC trainees are living in Santa Clara and TE trainees are in Santa Rita, both approximately an hour from Panama City.

I have really enjoyed training for far, but it is exhausting. Long days and short nights. Every morning we have language class from 8-12. I was placed in intermediate-middle, which is the level I need to be at when I swear in at the end of training; only hoping to improve from there! Then we have technical classes from 1-5. For technical classes, the first 2 hours are usually bureaucratic have-to-cover-topics, but interesting nonetheless. We have covered topics such as cross cultural sensitivities, what types of things CEC volunteers work on, and the history of development within the world and how the Peace Corps approaches development.

Many people think Peace Corps volunteers arrive to a country, build houses, pick up some trash, teach some English, then leave. Peace Corps emphasizes on building sustainable relationships in your assigned community. For example, the first three months at your site you are encouraged to pasear,  a Spanish verb which means to hang out, visit, and get to know each other. Panamanian culture is full of pasear-ing, so it is not weird to stop by on a Tuesday afternoon and chat. This time should be spent getting to know the people and assessing their needs. The community has asked for a volunteer so they are excited to have you! You can then assess what the majority of people would like the volunteers' help on. This can range from trash management, reforestation, sustainable agriculture, learning English, ect. Then the volunteer can then help the community by educating on the particular topic, connecting the community to national agencies for help, teaching community members to write grants, showing them alternative methods to trash management, ect. After all the volunteer is only going to be there for two years so it is important to educate people in order to change behaviors, because that is what is going to make a long term impression.

So after discussing topics such as these, the latter 2 hours of technical classes are interactive. We have done garden work, learned how to use Panamanian tools such as the machete, and have built trash incinerators. I can go on another long rant about this, but will keep it short. Basically Panama has no national trash management system. Many people out of the city burn their trash from a hole in the ground. Burning of plastics and other materials releases toxins in the air, which has negative health effects. The air in Santa Clara is always a little hazy with so many people burning trash. Incinerators are basically just metal cans that you burn trash in. However, the can holds in the heat which burns the trash at a higher temperature. Therefore, the fire is so hot that the toxins released are also burned as well and not released in the air. Incinerators are also great for smoke control.

After 8 hours of class, I usually come home and hang with the family. After a day full of Spanish and technical information, my brain is mush and ready for bed usually around 9 pm.