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