New address!

First I want to thank the wonderful friends who sent me letters and mail while I was in training! you have no idea how much it brightened my day to receive mail.

Now that I am in site I have a new address! You can find it in the 'contact info' page of this blog.

Some potential awesome goodies:

Cliff bars
Duck tape
Kids books in Spanish, small ones!
Deck of uno cards

Any other snacks and goodies would be great! Let alone just words of love! Also if you send something please tell me so I know to look for it when I am in the city

Look for the Bear Necessities

My first 3 weeks in site have been a roller coaster. Peace Corps mandates that you take the first 3 months to integrate, better your Spanish, and build relationships. The point is to get the community to trust you so when it comes time to work they will actually want to work with you. The first week was very mundane and repetitive. I went house to house, explaining what Peace Corps is, what types of projects my sector works in, and why I am not starting projects right away. I also had to explain many times that I am not here to teach English, nor do missionary work, nor give money.  It was a slow start, but as I have spent more time visiting I have had great conversations and am starting to feel like a human again and not a song on repeat. 

The ups, highlights, and laughs

The day of the election I learned how to peel plantains. Well, I didn’t learn but tried it. Imagine peeling an unripe banana with a knife. They all laughed as I destroyed plantains while the women next to me peeled them perfectly

Three of the teachers live in the community during the week and go home on the weekend. But since they live in the community I have spent quality time with them and think I will be able to work with them in environmental education.

After school I have taken kids out to “hacer ejercicio” –do exercise. We run, do push ups, jumping jacks, and sit ups. When they are tired of that we play soccer or volleyball.

I play cards with my neighbors almost every night. We have a joke going that if I lose I need to call Obama to bring a golden trophy for them. If they lose, they need to call their newly elected president to bring me a flush toilet and clean water.

My little host brothers always play the “Bear necessities” song from the jungle book, but in Spanish. I love seeing them dance to it

Made a hot chocolate drink from raw, unprocessed chocolate. Soon to come is learning how to make chocolate from the cocoa seeds themselves!

Had a group of children teach me how to wash my clothes in the river

Ate rabbit for the first time, I have never seen a rabbit here but I’m told they are the size of dogs and weigh 20 pounds

I have learned words and phrases of Ngobe, their local language.

Made coconut bread from scratch and cooked over a fire, not from the leisure of an oven. The two women, Bexaida and Lily, and I made the bread with are part of my host family. They both have 2 children and both of their husbands work in Panama City to provide for the family. Both are 21 and can cook just about anything.



Bexaida, my host sister



Lily with her daughter, grinding coconut

Got invited to work on the farm. Treacherous 2 hour hike up a mountain but gorgeous view of the Atlantic coast and got to work on my machete skills.

 

View from the farm

 

 

 I also work out in our garden with my host brother. “Cleaning the yard” means chopping tall grass with a machete. I was trying to chop off old leaves from a plantain tree and without realizing that the trunk is very soft, I accidently chopped down the whole tree!

Tree I accidently cut!

Below are pictures of my beautiful community!

 



Road to my community



kitchen for the school



School with a soccer field in front



Some of my favorite men



Cecilia and her granddaughter. She is an amazing medicine woman that doesn't speak much Spanish but I will contently listen to her Ngobe for hours 



Katerina reading the Three Little Pigs

 



My little brother helping me clean the yard

 

Some of my best friends, yes they are 8 years old

The downs, challenges and struggles

Screaming children, everywhere I go. Anytime.

Missing cheese, milk, yogurt, and cold beverages.

As I mentioned, the monotony of explaining Peace Corps. But now that more people are aware of the program, they are eager to start projects and are constantly asking me when I am going to hold meetings

Spanish. No doubt its improving, but still struggle with vocabulary, fast speakers, and telling stories using certain grammatical tenses.

I feel tired all the time due to my diet. Boiled bananas, rice, bananas, plantains, fried bread, bananas, bananas, if I’m lucky chicken and lentils, bananas.

While most speak Spanish, I feel isolated at times when they are all speaking in Ngobe. Or approach me while speaking Ngobe when they know I don’t understand but they think it’s funny.

Expectations are high. Problems and potential projects I have heard community members include:

Aqueducts and latrines. The aqueduct does not function properly and dries up often. There have been stretches of 5 days without water in the faucets. Not to mention not every house has a faucet and those families need to carry water from faucets to their house. I have only seen about 10 latrines in Santa Marta when I know there are about 50 houses. Talking about this problem has been challenging in many ways. First off, I have zero experience in this area. Second, it’s been disheartening telling them I have experience in this area and that my group does not work in these types of projects. Fortunately, I have a meeting next week to meet all the other volunteers in Bocas del Torro. I plan to ask other Environmental Health volunteers for support. I am afraid that if the issue of water is not address than it will be difficult to motivate the community about conservation and the environment when they struggle with a necessity of life. I also want to motivate the community to form a water committee. Right now there is nothing but 4 men who volunteer to fix the tubes when they are broken. A committee could keep track of the aqueduct, charge the community for water so when pipes break there is a sum of money for maintenance, and could contact national agencies if there is a bigger problem with the aqueduct.

Reforestation. Wood is used for everything: houses, fire stoves, to make boxes for drying cocoa seeds. Many realize that the aqueduct is drying because there are less trees to protect the water shed. This is a project I can do!

Trash management. While I have seen way trashier of places (like my training community or places in the states) there is still an interest in trash clean up. Where I lived in Santa Clara, people burn their trash outside. But in Santa Marta it’s too wet so people burn trash inside their house. Luckily there is not a lot due to the limited stores and products here, but I have still walked into houses with the fresh smell of burning plastic. Burning trash also uses wood and doesn’t help the reforestation issue.

Education. MEDUCA (ministry of education) and ANAM (Panamanian equivalent to the EPA) have an agreement that mandates environmental education be in the curriculum. ANAM and MEDUCA have written guides for teachers, but the teachers complain that the guides are too vague, too advanced, and that they have no time to incorporate it. But there are other problems related to this such as many teachers are only in a school for a year (refer back to my “Stay in School” post), class is only for half the day 8-12,  and much time is wasted on poor classroom management techniques. Many CEC volunteers help the teachers with the environmental guides and lesson plans.

Ecological stoves. This is a type of stove that still used firewood but it made from a clay like material and the flame is enclosed as opposed to having an open flame which uses more wood and creates more smoke. There is interest in having one at the school and one at the communal house that is used for events.

Efficient farming and economics. Many people in my community sell cocoa seeds to a cooperative called Cocoabo. I have not been able to research much about the cooperative but if any readers find anything interesting please let me know, since I only get internet an out once a month! People in my community receive about 40-70 cents for a pound of organic seeds. Conventional seeds are paid less. This is obviously not very much and explains why my community is very poor. While I cannot change the consumer-producer trickle down effect, capitalism, or exploitation, I can help in other ways. There are more efficient harvesting and drying methods that could increase the farmers yield. My boss said that every year there is a chocolate training that I can attend to learn these techniques.

Botanical house. Still a little fuzzy on this issue. ANAM built a house that is supposed to be for botanical medicine and health center. It was built about 5 years ago but is still not open. I went to a community meeting to try and investigate. However half of the meeting was in Ngobe or very fast Spanish so I did not get very many details. I plan on talking with a community member soon to get another explanation.

 

Artesian group. Have no money to buy materials and complain that they do not have the time or money to go into more touristy areas to sell their products.

 

There are many possible projects to consider and it seems like my time here will be very busy. But the community is going to need to prioritize what they want. When my boss comes in August we will have a community meeting, where the community will decide which project they would like to work on. But until then I will be observing, learning, adapting, and sweating J

 

 

 

Officially a volunteer!

 

The last few weeks of training were jammed packed. We hosted a community analysis, which is something we are all going to have to do ourselves in our communities. We presented to Santa Clara 4 common projects that CEC volunteers work on: reforestation, home/school gardens, trash management, and eco stoves. About 20 people showed up (average turn out) and they voted to work on trash management (thank goodness, this place always reeks of burning trash!). A current volunteer who extended for a third year has been helping out with our training and when we leave for our communities she will stay to support Santa Clara with this project.

Our host families also threw us a despedia, or goodbye party. We learned and presented Michael Jackson’s Thriller dance, which was AMAZING! There was food, dancing, pinantas, and a traditional stunt which includes a group of people climbing up this greasy pole. We were told that the trick is to get drunk and attempt to climb 500 times until the grease has rubbed off. Since none of us were drunk, we tried the latter strategy. The group started with 6 guys and after an hour, me and 2 other girls decided to jump in and ruin our clothes to give it a try. We eventually built a human pyramid and one of our bosses, of all people, climbed up the rest of the pole and received the bag on top.

 

Things have not been all fun and games though. There has been tension with families and trainees, stress on certain trainees who need to reach a certain level of Spanish on their Language Proficiency Interview before they can go to site, and tension on the community for water. The rainy season has begun and while I still do not know the exact reason, the community’s water gets shut off after it rains. Hypothesis is that the aqueduct gets clogged with leaves and debris. Regardless, our community went 4 days without water. All families have a back up tank with water, but normally the water will only be out for half a day. People are very poor about conserving water. After one day, my family ended up using almost all of our 200 gallon tank.  Yes we do need water for washing, drinking, bathing and cooking, however in this time of no running water, I saw people mopping the floor, make tea and coffee every other hour, washing dogs, and filling their inflatable pools.  I didn’t realize how much my schedule depended on water until I had to start buying water bottles at the store just to splash off after sweating all day, or saving a few extra hours in the day to do laundry in the river.

However the tension subsided when it was time to leave our training communities. We said our heartfelt goodbyes to our host families of Santa Clara. We spent 4 days at headquarters for some last minute paperwork and seminars. I will give a warning to prosperous volunteers (another challenge with water); pester and pester and pester for your water filter. Peace Corps Panama policy is that only volunteers who absolutely need water filters are going to receive them. Seems like a fair policy but ever since we found out where our sites are, there has been an ongoing struggle with water filters. The medical office only received 2 people who needed filters in their site, me included. However after we visited our sites several other volunteers were sick because of water issues. They had to approach the medical staff several times only for the staff to tell them that they need to get approval from our bosses that the sites were actually lacking in clean water. During this miscommunication fiasco, we were swamped with other things we had to do and the medical office never approached us with answers or filters. I am now writing this blog on a bus to my site with no filter. I called the medical office to see if I can have a filter sent to my site, only to be told that the secretary didn’t know what I was talking about and that I need to email the main medical officer. There are other ways to get around the issue such as chlorine and boiling, but I have felt inadequate support from the PC health office.

On a happier note, we went to the US Embassy for our swear-in ceremony. I am no longer a trainee and officially a volunteer! The house was beautiful and full of delicious hoeurd’ouvres  The ambassador was an awkward yet friendly man, and we met other representatives of national agencies here in Panama. The country director, language teaches, and other staff were all there to congratulate and celebrate with us. After that we hit the city for a night of celebration and dancing. My bosses stayed out later than I did! We had a few days before we had to be in site so we spent some time at Nueva Gorgona beach.

 

I didn’t think splitting from my training group would be this hard and it is going to be empty not seeing them everyday. I have really started to make stronger ties with my fellow volunteers in the last few weeks. My service and volunteer life is about to become real. While I have had challenges during training, I have lived in a fantasy of comfort, schedules, cold beverages and friends these past 9 weeks. My life is about to change dramatically when I walk into my jungle-hidden community with no electricity or gringos. But probably one of the most important things I have learned in training is that I am not alone. While I was applying for the PC, many asked what motivated me to be “dropped off in a third world community all alone”.  But I have felt an incredible amount of support from my fellow volunteers (new and experienced), my bosses, the security coordinator, my Spanish teachers, and other PC staff. Additionally, I look forward to building a bond with my community so I am not “alone” there and know I will be able to go to them for anything  I may need. I see my PC family developing and am so grateful to start embark on this opportunity.