Punchin in the time card



My last blog post I mentioned my house was “finished” but I only meant that the roof was done and I was able to move in. I was far from being comfortable. I had some stove issues for about a week and I was taking my food over to my host mother’s house to cook. I also didn’t have running water or a bathroom but thanks to some of my favorite community members, I am now connected to the aqueduct and have a shower.



The "sink" with soon to be tubes. The trench is for drainage of water away from the house and into a nearby creek 



 

working on the trench

The only thing I am missing now is a place to poop! There is some talk of making me a latrine, but for the moment I am using a bucket and mixing in ash and sawdust to make compost. I refuse to use the river like many of my community members do. With my house finally finished, I thought life would become much easier. I did not realize that I would once again be going through a major adjustment period. Examples

Food: not only is it hard cooking for one person, but it’s even harder when you don’t have a refrigerator (no dairy in my life) and need to eat all your produce before the vicious Panamanian ants take over

Social life: my house is right smack center of the community so every person crossing the community or when the kids are going to school, usually stop for a visit. I have averaged 20 visitors a day (I include the kids who run in to say hola then leave). While this has been a very lovely and welcoming experience, there are times when I am trying to work, read, cook, talk on the phone, or just not speak Spanish for 5 minutes. Also, whenever I have visitors I feel the need to entertain: card games, showing them world maps, playing music, ect. While this is definitely part of my job as a volunteer, I am slowly realizing that is impossible for me to do this every time I have a visitor (especially 20 per day!). Also in Ngabe culture there are often long silences. For me and many of my fellow Americans, we have accustomed ourselves to think this is awkward and that we must fill in the silences. Now I embrace the long silences (it’s a good time for me to space out) and do not feel the need to stop what I am doing to entertain or teach.

To show my appreciation I had a house inauguration party. I opened the house for all the see; people enjoyed my photos, the 3 huge maps on the walls (US, Panama, World), coffee and cookies. I also brought out the UNO cards (thank you Laura!) which lasted for 4 hours. I also used this opportunity to inform people of my huge community analysis meeting.

The community analysis meeting is a very important part of Peace Corps Service. It usually takes place 3 months after “observation and integration” time in the community and is when the community decides what exactly they would like your help in. My boss and a local representative of ANAM were there to support me. We met with the teachers first and my boss helped explain my role in environmental education and how the teachers and I should collaborate together to bring more enviro edu in the curriculum. We then had a meeting with community members (about 40 showed up, good turnout) to discuss my work for the next 2 years. First. my boss reiterated why the first 3 months are so important for integration and reassured them that I wasn’t lazy (3 months is a long time to hang out without starting projects. Several other volunteers and I have shared that some community members questioned when we were going to start “working”). I then thanked them and shared what exactly I had learn in the first three months. I then explained that with these learning experiences I have made strong bonds with my community and now I feel very comfortable as if they were my family. This is the part where I started to cry and saw several woman crying as well. Once we got through the emotional babble I showed them a list of all the possible projects that I had heard the people say they wanted. It included:

 

Reforestation

Trash management

Ecological Stoves

School/Community Gardens

Solution to the water problem

Latrines

Teaching English

Cacao farm management

Artisan group

Botanical house

 

We went over every topic and reiterated that my work is in conservation matters, therefore I cannot help out in areas such as latrines (plus the new Panamanian president promised "cero latrinas" or zero latrines)

The community voted for the top two projects they would like to work on, and we discussed areas in which I could also be of help but I cannot focus all of my energy in. 

Reforestation won with 24 votes

Eco stoves with 16 votes (I will go into more depth of what an eco stove is in another post)

I will be helping organize a water committee and will have a series of seminars on how to have an effective committee. With the committee, we can solicit the support of the national health department. I have also recently been in contact with Engineers Without Borders, an NGO devoted in working with water projects, so I hope to receive the support from them.

I will be inviting cacao volunteers to give workshops on how to better management against fungus.

 

I will be holding English hours 3 times a week.

 

ANAM representative helping me explain why reforestation is important

 

Voting for projects

The results

 

 It seems that I will be very busy the next two years but I am happy to now have an idea of where my focus should be.

Lastly, I went to a Language Reinforcement training. Peace Corps offers to opportunity to receive some extra language classes a few months after being in site. I had the option of going to Spanish or Ngabe, but I decided Spanish since I know I will be using it after my service and I had many grammar questions. I traveled to Panama City for this week long training and it was great. I got to see a handful of other volunteers I had not seen since swear in. My host family was also amazing and I had the luxury of using an indoor shower, poopin in a flush toilet, eating ice cream and other dairy, and cooking latino food that I had missed so much. The family also took me to there far where we ate waaay to much food and enjoyed the scenery of the countryside

 

cooking pifa over the fire

 

 

The farm