2 more from Boquete

best coffee in Panama??

going fast, but it doesn't look like it...

pensiveness for christmas

This is not your happy christmas blog posting...sorry.  But it has a good ending.  Sometimes people say they can't tell how I'm really doing from the blog, but in this one I lay it out.  First, something I wrote back in good old P-valle, B-va, S-A.

Essay on Culture Shock – 8/21/08

 

10:30 pm, already been asleep 2 hours.  Why do I go to bed so early?  There’s something exhausting about being awake, and so comforting about being under a shield (physical and psychological) of covers.  Try to turn the light(bulb) on.  Energy surge, pop, no more lightbulb.  I would try to change the bulb, but I don’t know where there’s a ladder, or where the lightbulbs are kept.  This is not my house, I just live here.  Feel my way out the door, and into the bathroom, accidentally making noise when I trip over a chair that I swore was not there before.  I worry about waking the other residents of the house.  I tiptoe, in vain, feeling that every time I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I make too much noise and thus wake them up and inconvenience them.  They probably hate that I live here, with my noisy cat and weird habits.  But, I won’t sleep if I don’t go.  In the morning, cat wakes me up at 5:40 am.  Normally I could turn on the light and he’d calm down sufficiently, and I can sneak back to sleep for about 20 minutes until he jumps on my head again.  Today, I fumble around, grab a handful of his food, and throw it in his dish.  He’s not satisfied.  How I wish I had another room to put him in.  How I wish I felt like I really had a right to let him roam around the house.  How I wish I could trust that the kids wouldn’t terrorize him.  Wishing does nothing, it’s me, in the room, with a cat that won’t calm down no matter how much I want him to.  Coffee, fruit (apple tastes like laundry detergent or perfume…just like the last one.  Still, refuse to waste it).  Wish I had yogurt but the culture I brought from the city went bad and I couldn’t make any…so no luck there.  Listen to some NPR podcasts, feel a little better, cat is still nuts.  Can’t stand the screaming babies that have already arrived for the morning daycare.  Hate that I’ve been forced to live in this echoey kid-filled house.  I would never have chosen this.  Get out, I tell myself.  Get out for the morning and you’ll feel better.  Get dressed, plan to go visit the school director to do some planning, but first stop by our government ag extension’s house to buy some yogurt culture.  Damn, still not there.  Not in his office either.  Would look more but for some reason this morning two guys (who I know and are usually pretty nice) have decided that today it’s funny to say “hello” (yes in English) and sing that stupid stupid stupid 60’s song that happens to have my name in it. Pero Raquel, mi raquelita.  SHUT UP ALREADY.  GROW UP ALREADY.  See that the director is just getting to school, won’t bother her yet (she won’t pay attention at this point in her day).  For some reason, really feel like crying, decide to visit my friend.  House is open, but she’s not there.  Go home.  Want to go talk to the adults I live with, but end up tripping, feeling stupid, and knowing that if I open my mouth I will cry.  I don’t want their sympathy, I don’t want to tell them I’m sad, I’ll look weak and they’ll think, “aha, we were right, she is always sad! Why can’t the better volunteers come back?”  Pretend I was on my way to weeding the garden.  Why does my chicken wire fence get all wobbly every few weeks?  It’s never going to be tight and strong like the Bolivians’.  I have no credibility.  Sob all over my plants, but nobody sees and there are less weeds, so at least I accomplished something. Back to my one-room prison/sanctuary.  Cat has taken the liberty of digging all the sand out of his litter box…it’s a total mess.  What is wrong with him?  Am I feeding him wrong? Should I have had his stitches checked on or removed before I last left the city?  Maybe they didn’t take the testicles all the way off.  I’m a bad owner.  I want to hit him…I’m never violent back home.  I scream into my towel.  Put him in his travel cage, before he or I can do any damage.  Clean up the sand, luckily it was new and thus clean.  Feel guilty, let cat out. Kids still making noise.  Do US toddlers scream and cry that much?  I’m never having kids. Hope I was never so unreasonably demanding as these ones.  Cry more, realize I have to pee but can’t leave my room without the babysitter seeing my puffy eyes.  Put on iPod, loud (thank my lucky stars that package arrived last time I was in the city), read a few pages. Figure my eyes have cleared up enough to leave the room.  In the bathroom, catch myself in the mirror.  Well, my bangs look super awesome today!  One point: Rachel.  Feel better suddenly.  Decide I will cook Japanese rice and steamed veggies for lunch (I’m trying to be on a diet…still at a loss about why I have gained weight in site).  Rice has a larva in it.  But only one.  That’s another point for me.  Clean out the rice, put it in a better container.  Make some toast from my homemade oatmeal bread.  This bread is amazing, what an accomplishment!  And then, I feel ok.

 

This was NOT a typical 12 hours of my life here.  But this sort of morning happens, and is very real and scary while it’s going on.  Little things that wouldn’t be a big deal in the states compound on each other within one’s fragile psyche here, far away from easy fixes and speed-dials to friends.  I wanted my readers to have a sense of what culture shock feels like as you’re going through it, hence the present-tense style I wrote in.  It usually has less to do with actions taken against you by those of another culture, and more to do with a feeling of being trapped by your situation and by the fact that there is a point where the people around you won’t understand why you’re upset or why you can’t explain it.  For me, that’s what it is anyways.  Rest assured, it’s another thing I take in stride, and it luckily is a rare occurrence for me.  It’s a part of this experience, and I’m sure serves that great purpose of making me stronger.  Maybe I am changing a lot, since I bet months ago, a bad morning might have affected me for much longer.   

I included this because I go through culture shock in Panama too, and sufficient time has passed since the above events that my mom won't freak out too much if I post it.  I won't get into too much what's culture and shock in Panama at the moment.  I'll say that these two can make the bigger frustrations in my life harder to manage.

I'm frustrated that at this point in being a volunteer (I became official in April, so it's about 8 months), I still don't have a project started.  And even though it's for the obvious reason that I started anew in Panama just 2 months ago, it's like a volunteer service clock is ticking...I want to build, I want to have a thing to tell people I'm doing/did.  I want someone to tell me or at least imply that I'm having an effect in their daily life.  Pero, nada.  And as I mentioned in the last post, people aren't working right now in my area.  It is hot and dry, so in terms of all things growing and green, there isn't much market for work.  So sitting in my hammock, visiting with people, that's all nice if I would have another reason to be in my town.  As some of you know, one of my grandmothers died this month (I made it to Pennsylvania for 2 days for the funeral and to be with my family), so being in a town in Panama with no blatant reason to be there, just some vague idealistic you-know-what, instead of enjoying the comforts of home at the holidays, seems a little more ridiculous when I am still very much grieving that loss deep down inside, and know that my family is as well.

Ok, the good ending.  Sometimes you need an adrenaline hit to stop feeling jaded, sad, mad, etc.  Good thing I had planned to come to this mountain town of Boquete (in the mountains in the west of Panama) for a few days over Christmas, with the other two Bolivia transfers.  I wasn't sure what we were going to do here, besides speak English and play cards.  The other two were very into the idea of DOING things...good people to be with when you're generally bummed out.  Peter suggested we do ziplining in the cloud forest canopy...$60 which is more than I spend on most things, and I thought, "yeah, remember doing new and exciting and challenging things in Bolivia?  let's chase that feeling again."  So yours truly strapped on a harness, listened to some (I'll admit it, pretty good-looking) Panamanian zipline guides, felt a some serious adrenaline (as I am scared of heights) and left the demons at the top of the hill.  And while I admit that I would still rather be complaining about the cold and cooking Christmas breakfast for my family tomorrow morning, I feel better than I did when I woke up to what I thought would be just another day in Panama, and I suddenly remember that I still have a lot to see and do, and there is a lot I CAN do; it's about challenge, it's about sticking to it when you don't always want to, it's about being creative (which I think is the most-commonly-used adjective to describe me, and I'm not living up to it lately).

I also have big plans for the next few months in my site...building stoves, doing compost piles to prepare for planting season, etc.  So stay tuned, I'm back in it.

Besides working on being a housewife to myself, I generally do a lot of visiting.  My closest neighbor is extremely generous with her electrical current, letting me charge my computer and cellphone and put my extreme perishables in the fridge (most veggies, I’m finding out, can be stored for many days without refrigeration).  She has a six-month old daughter who is just so cute, and who has started to recognize me.  She likes to squeeze my finger, so I guess it’s good she’s not afraid of me.  When I leave here (confirmed I’ll be leaving April 2010, by the way) she’ll be almost two years old, what an interesting thought!  All the women here in town are about the same age, and so are the children.  I don’t know of any child over 12!  I like visiting houses, I’m getting good at the visit, sit and chat, known as “pasear” –to pass by.  Another friend likes to use me for my technical skills (this is how you plug in a DVD player, this is how to re-set it to color when the kids have messed with it and it’s in black and white)--not something I mind in the least.  I leave houses feeling happy, and usually not empty-handed.  It’s a common thing for me to be asked if I have enough bananas (never!), plantains or whatever else they might have enough to share.  What a beautiful thing, since it’s never forced.  Right now, people are mostly not engaged in agricultural activities, save a few very notable examples.  Since it’s turning into dry season, most people (whom I know, because I haven’t met many of the farming men, which definitely skews my point of view of activities) aren’t planting any more.  The corn and rice are growing, so they’ll be weeded a few times, and eventually harvested.  I hope I get invited to help out…being out in the fields with the blazing sun is not necessarily fun work in itself, but getting to share the experience and learn things through fairly easy conversation is something I value and find very fun.  My host family is of course still doing things, but even so, the work is less.  The goat (not Ding, but her mother) is pregnant as of November (she didn’t go into heat this month), which means that around April there will be a baby to give to another community (part of the Ministry of Agriculture’s agreement to give the family a goat) and…milk!  Which means cheese and yogurt!  Another family I’m growing close to has “habichuelas” – green beans, more or less, that they’ve been harvesting and selling.  I am supposed to go there and demand beans when I want them, but still I find it hard to ask for things.  This family works so hard, and !BONUS! has grapefruit trees (and lots of other fruits…it’s just that it's about to be grapefruit season).  I like them because they have sort of the same philosophy I do about farming.  Work hard, don’t get stuck doing things the same way all the time, enjoy the fruits of your labor.  I hope to take the mother of this family with me to a Peace Corps community leadership training in January…to involve more members of the community than just my host mom (this woman’s technically my host great-aunt and also my host dad's sister…like I said before, the whole community is a big family or two) in the experience of having a Peace Corps volunteer.  I think it will be good to shift the focus away from my host mom a bit, since there is a little bit of jealousy in the community, that she always gets the help from the Ministry of Agriculture, she got the Peace Corps volunteer, etc.; these good things happen to her because she is willing to seek help and thinks outside the box…which everyone in the community could do, if they wanted.  Still, to demonstrate the point that there can be more of a balance of good things that come the way of the town, I will be hoping to take some other people to Peace Corps trainings.

Well, I’m living in the infamous house (on my own!) now.  The first night I actually was scared to sleep there, but now it’s no big deal, it was just unfamiliar noises and a dog walking around outside at midnight.  It’s full of wildlife, or was…I arrived from Thanksgiving to two large nests of biting ants inside the house. Luckily, I had a package of ant/hymenoptera killer (wasps, ants, related) that we had used on some little black bees that lived in the house before.  Now the wildlife (minus the kitten) mostly stays outside.  The birds do like to make a lot of noise on my metal roof, but I think they haven’t been coming inside too much due to the human and feline living there.  I’m still not sure whether the bats have been getting in…yup, bats, the same animal my dad was once so scared of he poured a pot of boiling water over one to kill it.  I haven’t seen any new evidence of bat activity (poop stains that look like little oil stains on my floor), but still I wonder if they come in when I’m asleep.  So, the mosquito net is more like a bat net…since there are thankfully no mosquitos and the smaller insects can easily get through the netting.  It’s also serving as a nice kitty hammock/jungle gym…

 My lovely lovely shower/latrine.  It doesn’t smell, and taking a shower under the bright sun (nope, there’s no roof over the showerhead) in the late afternoon is real luxury, even if that water is cold.  The only issue I can really foresee with this one is that the door is only a shower curtain, and we’re starting windy season.  I can secure it on both sides, but still…you do the math.

My garden is coming along, since I obtained a whole lot of seeds from fellow agriculture volunteers at our recent in-service training.  I think the first thing I’ll eat out of the garden will be radishes, since they only really take a month to grow (and the seeds germinated within 24 hours!).  It’s a race between the radishes and the asian greens (the germinated literally overnight)…which I was super excited that somebody had seeds for!  The package was even in an asian language (I wouldn’t dare guess which, though if you asked a Panamanian it’s “chino”).  I also have an interesting variety of spinach (it’s like, a vine, but I’m sure still full of good vitamins), habañero peppers, green onions, and watermelon planted; there’s kale, eggplant, summer squash and okra in my seedbed, I’m really hoping they come up!!  I am starting a little herb garden as well, my host mom gave me aloe sprouts, and I’ve planted lemon basil, “toronjil” which is a citrusy leaf you can make tea out of, and native cilantro (flat oblong leaves, much hardier, but you need more plants because there are only a few leaves per plant).  As always, if you can find seeds and manage to send them in a way that they won’t be detected in the undoubtedly sorted-through package, I’d totally appreciate them (and promise to share with my ag buddies and community members…I’m definitely in debt for all the seeds and plants they’ve been sharing with me).

Kitchen/oven.  I have an oven…which is a luxury to people here, though they’d all like to have one.  To me it’s an essential to be able to eat real bread (the hot dog bun-like bread that comes to our store twice a week does not cut it for me) and baked foods, so I’m not going to say it’s a luxury for me.  Plus, I totally share the goodies that come out of there (like the banana bread I made yesterday that had bananas my neighbor gave me…).  Speaking of ovens…I think in the dry season I’m going to be building a fire oven and stove in the communal space (they call it a “casa communal” but without walls and a finished floor, for now it’s a space…a work in progress).  These are the stoves/ovens that Peace Corps and many NGO’s focus on, that use much less firewood thanks to some basic physical principles (like insulating and keeping the flame within the structure, and using a chimney).  So be on the look out for that activity.

Oh yeah, little Ray lives without electricity.  I have paid (and agonized over the price) a good amount to wire up my one-room house with three electrical outlets and four lightbulb sockets…but the hardest part is getting an account with the private electric company who will eventually come out and hook me onto the grid.  I tried and failed to do this myself; I needed to have a deed to the property and a rental agreement, but supposedly the owner of my house is coming next week on other business, and she will take care of this.  Still, we don’t know how long the wait will be for the company to come and hook me up.  The good thing about this is that I know what it’s like to be without the electricity, and I don’t feel so bad about having made this choice to dig into some of my US money for the privilege that most volunteers here don’t get…light and power.

Happy Thanksgiving...here's for your entertainment while the turkey cooks

ImnotdoinganythingmomIswearIswear!

My valiant bodyguard kills a roll of thread while maintaining lots of balance and cuteness.

Sup?

What are they running from...?

Mona wants to catch a Thanksgiving goose.

mail situation...

Ok...this is what happens to packages on their way to me.  I'm pretty sure my mom didn't masking tape the sides together herself, which means somebody tampered with it (well, the woman at the desk said something that could have been that they did it in the post office, but other volunteers say that they only open your packages in front of you there and I was just so excited for my first piece of mail in 6 weeks that I wasn't really listening).  IF you plan on sending mail, I highly recommend religious decorations and a list of items inside, which can be in english, but with a title of "Lista de Cosas en Este Paquete" so tamperers know they're being watched and so I know what you intended to send and I can appreciate it fully. I'm so sad that this happens, though whoever opened the package didn't notice the silver necklace that my friend Emily had sent to my house and which made it here unstolen.

I'm only going into this much detail about the subject because I know that sending packages and letters is a way many of you wonderful people can feel connected to what I'm doing here and I don't want that effort to be in vain...not because I think I deserve to be so spoiled.

Religious Sayings in Spanish, perfect for packages:  "Dios Te Bendice," (God Bless You) "Que Viva el Amor de Jesus," (no direct translation--That Would Live the Love of Jesus) "Señor de los Milagros, Guianos" (Lord of Miracles, Guide Us --the Lord of Miracles is major here)

A tip I've also heard from volunteers...since seeds are technically not ok to send, relatives have taped them inside double-folded magazine advertisements and it just looks to a careless customs officer or package hijacker like it's a magazine.  I think CD's and DVD's would also be well packaged this way.

Please do not spend lots of money on the contents of a package, I'm not in desperate need of expensive things, and I'd hate for anybody to spend money on things that will get stolen.  Second hand books aren't too big of an investment, will be appreciated by volunteers for years to come (we have book exchanges) and if they do get stolen, don't hurt thy sacred pockets too much.

P.S. I never had nor saw a tampered package in Bolivia.  Harumph!

Grito de Independencia

Boys in sombrero panameño and girls in pollera, doing baile típico.

It’s November, which means it’s country pride month.  The kids have maybe 10 or 15 days of school this month, since there are so many days off to celebrate various facets of Panamanian pride.  I went to my nearby city’s Grito de Independencia – the “cry of independence” which celebrates when the Panamanians literally cried independence from Columbia.  I think.  It was, in finest Panamanian style, a parade.  There were bands from schools from all over our province.  Here, being in band is really cool. Especially if you’re a drummer.  My host brothers really want to be in band so they can pound the drums and wear sunglasses in the parades!  I think parades are going to punctuate my experience on a regular basis.  Recently I was in Santiago (my regional capital) and suddenly there was a parade.  I asked my waitress what they were parading for, and she said, “es para las virgencitas.”  It’s for the little Virgins.  Sure enough, seemed like every Virgin Mary statue from the Catholic churches around Santiago and Veraguas was being paraded that day, along with her devotees.  One day someone will have to explain to me why there are Virgins of xy and z.  The great thing about parades is just about everyone can join in.  If you have a kid in band, you are allowed to walk near or behind them.  For the virgencitas, anyone who was devoted to that virgin put on a super duper clean outfit and heels and opened up an umbrella (that day, for the sun) and walked behind their statuette, proud to show everyone that they were showing their devotion to Mary.  Believe me, I think that’s real dedication to walk slowly in heels and nice clothes when it’s hot or raining or both for a few hours.

Heels, short skirts, independence.

Hatchets?

Little girl in pollera--the traditional latino cultural dress (the indigenous groups have different traditional dress)

Little drummer boy.

Ding the goat says stay tuned for more updates...they´re really coming! She also says she´s glad she´s not a turkey in the United States right now. She´d rather eat grass and bananas than be a Thanksgiving centerpiece. Haaaapy Thanksgiiiiving.

Things have been just about the same here in the last week and a half.  I’m getting a better sense of the way of life here (read: very slow and lots of family time), and I finally worked out my living situation.  I know in the last blog it seemed I was set up already, but that house fell through.  Luckily, there was another empty dwelling, which is much smaller but big enough for me.  I almost didn’t get that house either because they are expanding it this summer for future use…but the owner took pity on me and said I could live there as long as the construction wouldn’t bother me.  It might a little, but of course I said yes as long as they tell me when the workers are going to show up.  My impression is that they’re not building directly onto my house, but more like in my front lawn.  What a relief to not have to invest in building a house—it would have been really hard to do and after seeing houses that were already standing, I didn’t want to deal with the headache.

 

I’ve gone swimming in our river a few times.  It’s really pretty and extremely refreshing in this heat.  There’s just about nothing you can do to feel cool when it’s so hot—it’s a heat you don’t believe until you experience it.  I bought a fan, which helps at night, but when you’re out working in the day (it gets hot at about 8am), you just have to wear a hat and convince yourself you’re “sweating out the toxins.”  That’s why most people around here don’t work much in the summer.  Though my host family does, because they have irrigation (another reason most people don’t farm in the summer, which is December to April here, is that there isn’t always water).  People seem impressed that I work alongside my host family, and as word gets around people are being more enthusiastic about showing me their crops and saying we should work together some time.

 

The other day I feel like I actually imparted knowledge, when I suggested that we make barriers around our raised beds into which we were about to plant cucumbers.  In just a week after working that soil into beds, the heavy rains had really almost flattened them again, and I’m sure a lot of good topsoil went to never never land.  To avoid this process, I suggested we intervene.  So the two older boys and I hauled banana stems from various parts of the property and we arranged them around the beds.  Hopefully we can see that the soil stays within the barriers now.  I wonder if it will have a measurable effect on production.  It was a pretty easy process, sort of blows my mind that this isn’t already done considering the vast amounts of barrier material and the well-acknowledged erosion problem (they express it as "soil washing" here).  Next step: try this technology with more people!

Mona attempts to deflect child's hands with cuteness

My host brothers: aged 11, 7 and 12

rainbow (I see one about every other day); also pictured: banana palms and some other tropical trees

first semana

Since I have arrived in site, I’ve been quite busy! My host family for this first month is amazing, they’ve really taken advantage of training that the Ministry of Agriculture has offered them. For the past 2 years, they have been receiving materials to build various useful technologies like drip irrigation and a seed drying shed. The best thing is that they really use these technologies to their advantage, and constantly seek out ways to improve what they’re doing. They’re innovators/early adapters, in sociologists’ words. It’s great that I live with a family that actively does agriculture, since I’m quickly learning about the ins and outs of Panamanian agriculture. Some highlights:

-practicing machete-ing grass and weeds to make a clean planting surface; you’d be impressed how a properly wielded machete can act as a lawn mower-slash-weed whacker
-explaining the properties of tropical clay soils, and how we can bury organic matter to make soil that is easier to work and more productive; they already do this, but now they know WHY the soil is so darn hard regardless of whether you get the guy with the cultivator to break it up
-extolling the virtues of worm/kitchen waste composting bins; next step: finding the California Red Wrigglers (there are a TON of government and non-government agencies here, someone must have them), building bins in such a way that the very greedy, very destructive ants won’t eat all the eggs
-agonizing over the extreme, real problems with insects; although it is fascinating to watch leaf-cutter ants de-foliate entire trees and plants, it really is a problem when you need to eat what comes off those plants

Like I said, my host family is great. I have three “brothers” who crack me up, it’s fun to feel like an older sister to them. They are all different and I like them for different reasons. I already feel welcomed as a part of the family, hopefully I will be able to be a positive influence on them while I’m here. The oldest one was so amazed at how much I read, and decided to see what the fuss was about and started reading more too (though he started reading one of my Isabel Allende books that mom sent me…maybe a little adult for him)! Send kids/preteens books in Spanish! Scholastic I know translates many of its titles into Spanish. I bet my brother isn’t the only one who will discover that a book that isn’t boring and for school is actually FUN to read, and it would be awesome to have a collection of books that kids could sit and read in my house—an antidote to the television watching which is destroying these kids’ spirit to do anything constructive or outside (since parents didn’t have television in their childhood, they haven’t realized that they need to make rules about watching television). We’ve also been bonding over Phillies games, so I guess I have to be grateful for the TV in that respect. I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY WON! I can believe it, but it’s never happened in my lifetime. It was a thing for Panameños too because the catcher, Carlos Ruiz, is from here. I love how biased the papers are towards him being the star player…though he is a very good catcher I suppose.

My host mom is so energetic, very concerned that I’m comfortable and happy, and doing things that I want to do. She explains to everyone we go to meet that I don’t eat meat, or pork, or sausage, or chicken (not even the chickens that run around on the lawn! That even counts as meat to Raquel!), and that I’m so funny that I don’t take my coffee with sugar or milk, and that I already speak Spanish. It’s amazing how fast people go through sugar here though. My mom seems to buy about a pound a day. So maybe I can avoid gaining too much weight if I at least don’t pump myself full of sugar—I’m already eating lots of deep fried foods, which sure are delicious. On that note, it is less than a month already that I have left until I can live on my own and cook entirely for myself. There is a house built here that I can use, but I have to pay to re-wire the faulty electricity and have free reign to decorate and paint and landscape--anything would be an improvement. It’s a great blank slate of a house! My host mom says that we will make up some transplants as soon as we have a free afternoon, so that I’ll have some things to plant right away. I’ll also probably amend the sink and build a gray water filter off it so I can use that water in a garden, especially during the dry season (December-April). I also want to build a solar hot shower, even though I can stand a cold shower with the heat, there’s something about hot water that makes you feel really clean. I have lots more ideas too.

Oh, I already have a kitten. Lucky me that my host cat had kittens about a month ago, and my host mom was looking to give one away. I wanted to name her after a famous thief (Cristobal Colon?) because she is very greedy and steals food out of her mom’s grasp and then whines for milk. However, I couldn’t stay apolitical with a name that clever, so I settled on Mona, which is the female form of the word for monkey. Because monkeys are funny and steal stuff and climb all over the place. It´s not an instant love like with Dracula, but that´s because the mommy is still around...I can´t really compete with that.

This is the time when Mona decided to wear my Cornell hat as a cape and run around with it like super-kitty. Well, that´s not actually happened. She fits under it so I hid her under it, and then she poked her head through the loop, and started trying to escape, which she couldn´t, so she just kept trying harder. It´s like tying a bell on the tail...hilarious, but if you have a soul you take one or two pictures and relieve the animal of its misery.

Sorry not more pictures of site...but it´s only been a week!!

Inflation..I'm sick of it

So reading an article sent to me by my father and a good friend, regarding the evacuation/aftermath of the PC Bolivia volunteers, I had rabies (well, that's a translation of a way of saying you were super crazy mad) to put some things into the light.  May I add the following (of course from my own point of view, but we were all going through this together in one place, and I heard a lot of talking volunteers, discussing their options, hopes and fears)...

The Peace Corps team from Washington, D.C. was extremely helpful in the decision-making process, never forcing us to take a transfer, because it is not wise to make life decisions during stressful events, or to make them in a short period of time.  Many of my compañeros weren't ready to make that decision to jump into a new culture, program, and country without our familiar surroundings and friends.  And it wasn't a rejection of Peace Corps, for anybody that I talked to.  It was a need for time and closure, whether in Bolivia or in the U.S.  Sometimes I wonder whether it's something I should have taken more time to think about, and had I done so, I would have had to close my service and re-enroll for 27 months, thus being counted among the "PC rejectors."  We had a wonderful counselor to help us with the tough stuff, and we had placement officers who helped us with knowing exactly how sure we would be about getting placed to a new, satisfactory post if we so chose, once we had sorted our thoughts out in the U.S. (or on a super-sweet South American vacation using some of the money we'd earned as volunteers...it's not much, so why not spend it somewhere less expensive and really interesting).

More than half the volunteers had LESS than a year left in service (some were a MONTH away from their full commitment of 2 years), and it wouldn't make sense for those people to add a new 1 or 2 year commitment just to keep being in Peace Corps.  To me, that makes sense that they wouldn't hurry to another country, but rather go back to Bolivia to tie up their loose ends and maybe make arrangements for almost-done projects to be completed.  Again, not a rejection of peace corps or a statement against the organization, rather a logical decision.

There is a good number of people who are planning on doing another WHOLE 27 MONTHS.  those people had to close their service, which inflates the number of "not continuing" members.

Some COS-ed people are interested in Peace Corps Response, which places returned volunteers in short-term high-involvement projects to accomplish a specific goal, often in response to a major crisis (this used to be called Crisis Corps).  to be eligible for PCR, you need to close your service, then re-apply from home.

Some people with recent injuries could not transfer, because their medical clearance would take longer than the few weeks that would remain before moving to the new country.  That's unfortunate, but those people could still do Peace Corps in the future, and I know some really fought for the chance to transfer.  Were they rejecting the organization?  This might be the only small group of "angry" volunteers, but they were angry that they couldn't continue right away, because they still wanted to be volunteers.

All the people who ended their service have "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer" status.  It's like they're veterans.  Are those who end their military tours of duty rejecting the U.S. military?  They are honored as veterans, and hold that status for life.  Though the military and Peace Corps are clearly different, I do see a comparison.  An RPCV continues as such, as a part of the organization, and can choose to be an active RPCV, visiting schools, participating in events, etc.  It's an honor for many people to say they are RPCV.  I don't think most of these people would be considered as mad at the organization.

So as you can see, when the news talks about the HUGE number who apparently ended their relationship with Peace Corps or who were angry at the organization, they aren't giving a full picture.  Why paint it in this negative light?  I'm glad the Washington Post today did add more to the story about back-to-Bolivia volunteers.  I'm so proud of the people who chose to go back to tie things up, or stay in their sites and work for a while longer.  It says a lot about those people, and (in my opinion) how important their Peace Corps experience was to them.  For us transfers, that was an unfortunate draw-back.  Many of us would have loved to have gone back to Bolivia for a week and THEN go to another country, but it was not an option because the government is still obligated to protect us as volunteers, and Bolivia isn't safe enough for them to let any current volunteer visit.  

I would encourage the Press to give a more rounded version of the story.  They probably can't find a current volunteer willing to give an interview (we're not supposed to, for our safety and privacy), unfortunately, but the least they could do is research more of the post-Close of Service options and reasons behind taking this path.  Then the numbers might not look so dramatic.  But then again, what is the Press if not Drama?  Not News...certainly not! 

Para su placer de vista

some images from my first weeks here in Panama...which have taken me from former army barrack-hotel living to tropical suburban panama city to malls on re-purposed and re-painted school buses to a volunteer's site on the edge of the cordillera and back again

3 birds: if you look close at the center of this one you can see the third bird's tail; they call it sangre de toro (bull's blood) because it's bright red and black, like nothing you've seen before

nice dusk picture that doesn't at all capture the amazing view of the jutting hills

diablo rojo: public transport, not usually red, but always devilish

random city view:  either Panama City or a Latin neighborhood in NYC on a way too sunny day...you decide

mini-super:  oxymoron?  I'd just call it a mini