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.