Riding Buses in Panama (21-12-09)

Here’s another “what it’s like here” blog postings…trying to do more of these as I soak up my experiences and store them as proteins in my brain.

Short-distance regional buses are extremely convenient most of the year. I can’t believe there aren’t any of these in more rural areas in the States. I have no idea what I will do when I don’t have a car in Vermont and there aren’t any buses to take me to town. Anyways, this is not most of the year, and bus travel is extremely frustrating. But the reasons it is frustrating will give a nice window into how it’s so great most of the year…as my AP Bio teacher explained, “we will learn about the normal by studying the abnormal.” A few primers: the buses are owned by the drivers, I think, but they are regulated and belong to a company (maybe it’s a cooperative thing). There is a team of “ayudantes” (meaning helpers). Each ayudante works a specific bus or two, in a team with the driver. The ayudante loads and unloads your packages, looks and listens for cues that someone wants to get off and takes your money so the driver doesn’t need to be distracted. The prices are standard and printed, and the ayudante is generally good at knowing what a specific mid-route to mid-route fare is. Children and seniors get discounts, and if you carry a child or two or three on your lap or within your seat’s legroom, they go free. I’ve seen grown children (I’d say at least up to age 10) transported this way. You can bring livestock. I’ve seen chickens in sacks, puppies and kittens with their heads sticking out of sacks, and my own kitten was once allowed on in a cardboard box that she kept popping out of.

So today I walked up to the bus stop, planning to catch the 8am. It actually leaves from the main town in my district at a few minutes before the hour, depending on how many people are on it. Fuller means leaving earlier. The few minutes I spend brushing seeds and dirt off myself, finishing dressing and primping (one must look presentable getting on a bus; it’s a respect for the other passengers thing to not be sweaty and smelly when you are in their proximity) are always a bit of a suspenseful game. If there are others waiting, we inevitably begin the discussion. Which buses are running today? The little ones=groan and complaint about how they fill them up so much, the big ones=general happiness because they are almost never too full and they circulate air much better. The little ones are Toyota coasters, the big ones are repurposed school buses. Will it be really full today? If it’s on or around the 15^th or the end of the month, when people get paid, it will be fuller. If the seniors are getting their bonus checks, it’s going to be REALLY full. Why is it still not coming? This is the most suspenseful question. A little later than 8am could be good, because it means it was waiting a little longer to grab more passengers and so there aren’t too many people riding today. Too early and it’s going to be really full and possibly standing-room only. Today was the third option: much after 8am, because the bus had already stopped many times to pick up passengers and it was consequently too stuffed to pick me up. Generally speaking, there is a seat or standing room for me, but since it’s Christmas season, everybody is going to Santiago to receive and send packages, buy presents and food, etc. Other full times of the year: Easter and Mother’s Day. My next option is to stay at the top of the road for an hour, wait for the next bus. I never do that. I’ve learned some patience, but not much. I could wait half an hour for the bus passing in the opposite direction, and arrive in the starting town in time to secure myself a seat. I have never done that, but today I considered it. What I do do is walk 20 minutes to the Pan-American highway (yup, I’m that close. I’ve sometimes fantasized about packing a bag, grabbing the cat, and flagging down a ride and heading north through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico into the States…). I could wait for a cab or a ride (known as “bote,” like a boat), but the cab drivers drive a steep bargain for what is only a 20-minute walk. From there it’s generally easy to catch a bus serving a longer route heading to Santiago. Today I think I was out there in the hot sun for 40 minutes trying to get one to stop, but 4 passed by too full for passengers (we were quickly amassing by the side of the road…bad news because a bus driver can’t just let some on and there’s no queue of who was there first). Finally one stopped and I stood for the whole 30 minute trip. I arrived just as the 9am bus from my route was arriving.

The bus terminals in Latin America bring me great joy, normally. In our terminal, which is quite small, there are vendors of seasonal produce (right now: tangerines and pidgeonpeas), pirated music and DVDs (generally young guys with fashion tshirts, distressed jeans and gelled hair who mumble: “musicapeliculacomica”), shaved-ice-and-sugar-syrup treats from a cart (called raspado but pronounced ras-pow), newspaper vendors, an agricultural supply store, shoeshines, a butcher, 2 across-Panama courier services, a farmacy, 2 restaurants, several sundry/basic foodstuffs stores, a guy who walks around selling peppermint sticks and Panamanian candies (older guy who yells “pe-per-meeen-eh, man-hares, dulce de laaayche”), a bakery where things actually taste as good as they look because there is a constant demand and thus renewal of the supply, ATMs, lottery ticket sellers, clean bathrooms, and a random touchscreen thing that is supposed to help tourists. My favorite discovery back in my early days was that one can obtain ice cream in at least 5 of these establishments. A cone runs about 35 cents, a cup 40. The ice cream is nothing gourmet, and you have to know which flavors to say no to. The stores only keep one or two at scooping temperature, so you sometimes have to shop around so as not to get the rum raisin (heavy on the imitation rum) or orange-pineapple (it’s neon and gross). I have plenty more to opine on the ice cream, but that’s for another posting. The terminal around major holidays is mayhem. People who generally don’t leave their homes are suddenly all there, crowded and messing up the pedestrian flow. Little kids are running into me and my laptop bag, old people just suddenly stop mid-stride because they. (Syntax joke there…get it?) There are purchases and parcels creating a smaller lane to walk through. More people than usual are crowded to check out the lottery tickets on sale. It’s not joyful this time of year…it’s hot and stressful and makes me grumpy.

Now, after a day of errands in Santiago (though one clearly does not have to leave the terminal area to do most normal Panamanian errands…I have a different set of needs like wireless internet, the post office and a real supermarket), I have to plan when I arrive back at the terminal. On big bus days, I worry less, and can arrive fairly close to the hour and still have a seat. Today was a little bus day, so I knew I should get there at about 20 past the hour to make sure I could get a seat. Some days I’ve actually gotten there as the previous bus was leaving, on purpose, and staked out a claim on the next bus with a few others. It’s cutthroat. There are certain accepted practices, so getting there an hour early does not mean you have to sit on the bus for an hour until it leaves. Once your packages are stowed (just recently the ayudantes have taken to writing the package destination and number of packages directly on the bags, so now all my eco-friendly bags have marker stains…thanks guys), you can put something on a seat to save it and go get snacks. Sometimes people will sit, get up for one snack, return and eat snack, then get up for another snack for the road, etc. I’m sure I’ve done that, what with all the cold drinks and ice cream and fried green bananas and coffee. I never leave valuables, and today all I had were my water bottle and my eggs (never stow eggs, tomatoes or bananas…or anything else smashable). That would be enough to save a seat though. So I left those on an empty seat (for the first half of an hour the buses are just seats with stuff on them, very few human beings sit in the bus because it’s so hot and because there is so much to do in the terminal). Nowhere had ice cream. It was 2:30pm and probably the heavy flow of hot and crabby people had used up today’s supply by mid-morning. I went to the supermarket across the street, and luckily there were some single-serve sundae cups (much more expensive at 85 cents, but much higher quality ice cream with caramel…mmm). When I returned with my treat, all the seats were full! Including mine! The guy in my place totally had a guilty look in his eye, so I said, what happened, I had my water bottle and eggs right there. He hemmed and hawed about not knowing who they belonged to and how he thought they were for the next seat over (which only made sense because he moved them to the next seat over). But the ayudante, who knows me (they all do, I should really get a frequent rider card with 10^th ride free or something) came and used his power on the guy. I think the nosy señora across the aisle thought I was a rude “gringa” who should wait my turn, the way she kept staring at me. She tried to boss a lot of riders around, but I still felt her glare fixed on me especially. I was there first and had saved my spot in the accepted way, so I didn’t feel that bad. It was nice to have the ayudante step in to help me. I’m glad I always take the extra second to greet him and say some generic thing like, “oh there’s a lot of people today, huh?” Without fail, people who don’t live that far away from Santiago but who don’t have their own bus route will wait until a driver starts his engine, and then sardine-pack themselves into the bus, only to stop it 2 minutes outside of town, 3 minutes outside of town, 4 minutes outside of town, etc. So there are people leaning all over the seated passengers, the seated passengers get cramped, and the driver will continue to let people on despite our protests because each passenger means more money for him. That happens often with the little buses which have the obvious disadvantage of being little (fewer passengers fit in the seats). But generally my bus travel is much easier than today. I walk the ten minutes to the road, get on, sit for half an hour (music is generally too loud but I’ve gotten used to it and know most of the songs by heart), get off, do my stuff, return to the terminal, save my place, get ice cream, go back. Today made me appreciate how well this system normally works. And I did get where I needed to go and back home again, so how much can I complain, especially since there was time for ice cream.

my second and probably last vacation as PCV

So I earn a ridiculous amount of vacation vs. a nomal job. Two days earned per month worked (mind you it is a 24/7 job). However, I'm lame and don't think I'll actually use up all the time I accrued...especially since I can't go on any more vacations during my last three months (mid-Jan-mid-April). Anyways, to help me with my little incapacity for taking "me time," my cousin Britta came for vacation!

One of the big advantages of Panama as a tourism destination is its small size and relatively well developed travel infrastructure. We were able to spend a full day inPanama City, where we explored the technical “old city” which is slowly being renovated, but for now is strikingly run-down with a few artsy cafes and restaurants interspersed. I had never seen this part of the city before. We decided to start walking back towards our hotel, which was across the city, essentially. The idea was to walk until we had seen enough of the pedestrian market near the Old City, then catch a taxi. I loved the market! It was another new experience for me in Panama, but reminded me quite a bit of the giant markets in Bolivia (but a much smaller and more navigable version). I located a big fabric store which sells all the fabrics that are used in the various traditional dress and costumes throughout this diverse country. I certainly plan to go back and pick up more before I go home. There aren’t many specific souvenirs or traditional crafts that one can bring back here, but the specific prints of fabrics do have meaning to someone who has lived here. I purchased a little bit of Veraguas-specific floral fabric and the same kind of fabric that the Kuna indigenous group uses for their headscarves. We kept walking through the city, not really intending to, but eventually landing at our hotel. All in all, it was about four miles of Panama City! And we were waking up at 4:30am the next morning to get on this plane:

We flew to the San Blas Archipelago (run by the Kuna indigenous group), which was very remote. In an unfortunate twist of events that we may never really understand, we were told that the island I had reserved us a cabin on was no longer open for tourism, that our options were seriously limited when it came to price (expensive or REALLY expensive), so we ended up somewhere where we were paying double what we had anticipated, and the food was not so good. We explained we didn’t mind eating fruit, yucca, fried plantains and fish, which is the local diet. However, we ended up with mounds of potatoes (which do NOT grow on or near these tropical islands) and sad seafood half the time, rice and decent fried fish the rest of the time. There is a weird idea in many tourist operations in this country that tourists come wanting to eat these specific “gourmet” things like lobster and mashed potatoes. Perhaps true sometimes, but it was strange that we couldn’t convince the proprietors to serve us something they obviously ate themselves. Literally, our guide showed us his house and his pile of harvested yucca. But, that was the price to be on amazingly deserted and beautiful beaches, to which we took a boat every day and on which we sat for many hours. There was even a little impromptu oceanside yoga session one day, led by yours truly...

I loved the boat rides, but definitely felt like I had little choice in what we were doing every day. We knew we were eating breakfast and then leaving at 9am for somewhere each morning, and returning in the late afternoon. A strange and not-Panamanian sense of time and schedule. Not every visitor has this experience, but that was ours. I would perhaps recommend going to these places during the tourist season, where more islands would be open and thus one would have more choice in where to stay. And definitely go with snacks, strong sunscreen (I’m still peeling!) and more cash than you think you need.

Once back on the mainland, we took a 7-hour bus ride to reach the western province of Chiriqui. Chiriqui is known for its high mountains and volcanic soil. It’s where the bulk of the export-quality coffee and oranges and vegetables are grown. We were actually at one point staying in a town where I could see the same vegetables that make it to the markets and supermarkets in my part of the country—I love that kind of thing. Sadly I didn’t really interact with the farmers. It was interesting to see the contrast in people’s standard of living. Even the indigenous farmers (identified by their style of dress) were living in cinder block houses, some had satellites on top! In my town, the latino farmers aren’t doing so badly, but they aren’t making much money off their rice crops, if any at all. The farmers in these mountains were definitely getting a cash inflow by selling vegetables. So once again I must lament that I haven’t been able to kickstart the vegetable production in my own town. My community is missing out on cash inflow as well as improved nutrition, and it is SO frustrating to see the obvious difference. The mountains suited me a bit more than the beach, probably because the cool air and altitude were a novelty.

We visited some wonderful hot springs, which marks the first time I sat in a tub of hot water since I was in the States last December! My cousin convinced me to ride a horse for the first time in my adult life. I was scared at first, but I got the hang of steering away from cars at least!

The experience was made more interesting by our horses’ personalities; they were a little confused about what their task was and were easily distracted by the yummy foliage at every turn. I suppose it was like my fascination with the fresh cool-weather vegetables, so I can’t blame them too much for eating everything. There was also a trip to a coffee processing plant, which was a nice mix of science, engineering and agriculture for me.

Between all the activities, there was a lot of bus riding and waiting for transportation to show up or taxi drivers decide whether they felt like taking us somewhere. It was pretty standard for me, but I could tell it was strange to Britta who is used to New York City’s fast pace and availability of goods and services. She was quite a good sport about things, and definitely got a feel for the Panamanian way of life. She was daring enough about eating Panamanian foods (which I actually had been craving after the islands!), and learned quickly how to order a papaya licuado sin azucar (basically blended papaya and ice, NO sugar). It was great to have her visit me and show her support in that way, and I enjoyed showing off how much I knew about Panama (for better or worse!). The two times I’ve had visitors, it’s made me appreciate Panama more for all its diversity and differences from the United States. Which is not to say that it doesn’t still frustrate me in many ways. I’m looking forward to going back to the States, but after this vacation I feel an even stronger need to be a sponge for all the Panama-ness I experience, positive or negative.

taking in my surroundings

Lately I’ve really been conscious of how little time I have left in Panama. Therefore, I’m trying to spend as much time visiting people when I’m in my community, to soak up as much of the daily experiences that define my life here. So my blog may become a collection of these vignettes, since I’ve sort of moved from a project and accomplishment-focused existence to something more like being a part of this community.

Slingshots

The men who work the land around here, planting rice, corn, beans and having cows all carry a few things with them when they go out into the fields. Generally they bring water, a machete, and a woven bag called a chakara. I never really thought about what was in the bag, but the other day I was hanging out with one farmer (he likes to converse with me…I still don’t understand a lot of what he talks about because he gets going really fast in Spanish using new words and referring to things that I have no context for) and his brother comes up the road. He mentions there’s something in the tree (a hawk or other raptor) that kills chickens. Out of the chakara comes a slingshot and his ammo. I was delighted to see him use, in all seriousness, a slingshot to try to conquer the bird. The little boys often carry around slingshots, but I had never seen an adult use one. The young kids are pretty deft with them, knocking bats out of the banana palms and such. I’m not sure why this little tidbit makes me so happy, but I think it has something to do with elegantly simple technology that is still in use and is still being passed on to the younger generation. Call me romantic, but amidst constant reminders that this country is letting its youth forget its culture (encouraging it almost, for example: the emphasis they put on learning English to be able to be a part of the world economy…seriously, that’s Panama’s 20-year plan as far as I can tell, teach English phrases to kindergarteners), I like knowing that the slingshot is still in use.

October Update

Hola!

In the past month (in which I have not updated my blog), I have been trying to fix my digital camera to take pictures to post here, which really is why I haven’t posted sooner. Anyways, I have been easing into my new Regional Leader role (maybe I haven’t announced here that I am taking on this leadership position, but here, officially, I’m announcing it). The former leader is still around so I have been learning the ropes from her, but starting mid-November and until I leave in April it’s going to be the Raquel show. The position is essentially three-fold: volunteer support, agency relations and new site identification and development. So I get to be somebody important to volunteers, to our local agencies (I have met our Provincial police chief!) and to the office/program directors. I’ve decided to take on this role while still living in my site (can’t get enough of that clean air and tranquility), which has meant a lot more time riding the bus to my provincial capital. I read a lot, but that’s wonderful. It’s nice to feel like I have a schedule some days, and the rest of my days I can hang out in my town and be okay with not having so many actual projects going on there. I have seen some new parts of my province, and will be exploring much more of it as I essentially cold-call/visit potential new volunteer communities. EEK! It’s a daunting prospect, but I know I’m capable of pulling it off.

I was also preparing heavily for the GRE’s, which I took on Saturday. As prepared as I was for the test, being in Panama was not to my advantage. I made sure I had a good night’s sleep, and arrived at the school an hour early, just in case I had the location wrong. This wouldn’t have been any big deal except that the proctor only arrived at 8:30, and it took another half hour for them to tell us to line up to register, then we waited over another hour for them to find a microphone system to be able to read us the rules and announce the time. So, we started 2 hours late because that’s how things work in this country. I can accept that generally, but in the case of a United States-administered test where a person’s future is (in part) on the line, I was expecting something better. Or was I? I did have a worry that something like that would happen…like they’d lose the test books or something. So instead of being done right at lunch time, the bulk of the test happened between 12 and 2pm, which are eating and siesta hours in my book. I’m concerned about my score, really, since I was not my fresh in mind, body or spirit when it came to the rapid-fire math questions, but what’s done is done and hopefully my other merits are much more important to any potential program. And no, I have no specific ideas, plans or timelines about grad school, I just thought this would be an advantageous situation in which to take the test because I could study and take it on paper…I guess my plot was foiled! The big kicker for me is that this sort of thing happens constantly, and there is no consequence for the school’s messing this up. It’s not like they get paid to do this, or are going to get fired or otherwise penalized. Hopefully my complaint and others’ to Educational Testing Services will prevent this from happening to other people (I also know that this is not an isolated incident, as a friend took her subject tests two weeks ago and similar things happened to her, including the proctor interrupting her during the test to ask how she was feeling, how she was doing with the test!).

So, those are the two major events that took up my time in the past month. November, as you may all remember from my first blog postings, is a fiesta month, because it’s Independence Day/Country Month. So I will take out my FILM camera and be snapping pictures because I know I will regret not having records of all this cultural activity. Maybe I will find a way to post the pictures.

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road??

A memory: when my brother and I were young, we would tell each other “why did the chicken cross the road?”-type jokes, but I quickly understood that I could not outsmart him using normal punchlines (i.e. to get to the other side). So I would make up ridiculous answers like “to get to the bench to go to the rainbow land with the pot of gold and then to Bart Simpson land.” I remember saying Bart Simpson land.

Why do I mention this? Not sure, maybe I miss my brother and our childhood. Maybe chickens are a major part of my landscape these days. But that line keeps popping up in my head as a parallel to the question: Why did Rachel join the Peace Corps? I might as well be that chicken who blindfolded herself, took a step onto the asphalt, and ran across propelled by the idea that there was something worthwhile on the other side. I was expecting: learning about tropical/Global South subsistence agriculture, sharing my knowledge to enrich people’s lives, sharing my culture and learning about another culture. As I come up on being in Panama for one year (Oct. 8^th is the official date, and if Peace Corps had kept their word as things had been when I transferred from Bolivia, I’d be going home that day), I have been forcing myself to think about what I have accomplished and what I have yet to accomplish. In a sense, I have done the aforementioned things. But not on the grand scale that I had envisioned. I had images of working with groups of people who would learn things from me (like doing worm composting or intensive inter-cropping) and put them into practice within their systems of home gardens or farms, all of us smiling and cooperating along the way. That definitely is not the case, and unfortunately not because it’s physically impossible, but because of some more invisible forces.

Last Friday, in my apparently vain attempt to hold the weekly nutrition/health class (nobody wanted to do it, for the nth week in a row), one person told me that I must be really bored here, with so little to do. In a way, I am, but I haven’t given up. Then she told me how I should have brought in an English language class or something, because agriculture and the “other things” I do are useless here. Or I should have gone somewhere else. Inwardly enraged, I tried to calmly explain for the millionth time to the millionth person here that I graduated from a good university (the BEST, GO BIG RED) with a degree in Plant Sciences, not Teaching English. I explained that it IS possible to do agriculture here, I’ve seen successful gardens in this very town. I didn’t even bother to explain to this person who just told me she couldn’t “do nutrition class” this week for ambiguous reasons that nutrition is in no way useless and maybe the most exigent item on my to-do list, based on what I feel is needed here. Children learning English is not on the list. Of course, the government here has convinced the population that English-speaking Panamanians make money…so all parents want is for their children to get into an English immersion school so they can make money. No matter if they are eating fried hot dogs and a bag of Cheetos for breakfast (that’s not an exaggeration).

What this woman was saying is nothing I haven’t heard or inferred from conversations before, but her accusatory manner, as if I had made the bad decision to come here and desire to do agriculture projects, is what hurt my feelings. This site was not my choice, though I suppose agriculture was and I stand by that choice. But the chicken crossed the road, and got what she got. That joke never says she didn’t like it so she went back, does it? Fortunately for me, I know I’m here for a defined amount of time. I can be miserable or not with what I got, but it will end one day. I’m trying to do things that will tip me to the not-miserable end of things, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. However, I have no intention of being bossed around or bullied into doing things I don’t believe in. I plan on fighting the good fight promoting nutrition and gardening for the next 6+ months, and then I will be done. I do think that there is value in finishing what I started, no matter how hard the days are. Thank goodness I’m stubborn like my late Pop-Pop! Then there will be no doubt in my mind that I fulfilled every promise I made to myself and to the Peace Corps. Furthermore, I think I’ll realize later on that a lot of good came from this experience, that I did learn a lot and possibly that I did have an impact on people here. (Side story: When we were in training in Bolivia, we heard a story of a community in rural India. A visitor there noticed that people there had exceptionally good teeth. When asked why, people said it was because in the 70’s, there was a Peace Corps volunteer in the area who always brushed his teeth, so they all started doing so. That volunteer may have never known what an impact he made). It’s just hard to always know what that good is while I’m here, hearing such negativity from people who should be thanking their lucky stars they have an expert (comparatively speaking) in agriculture who speaks Spanish and has only their best interests in mind living in their town for another six months. But even if I’m just a silly chicken on the other side of the road who will never be sure if this was the right choice, I’m glad to be pecking my way along, independent, scrappy and proud. And what separates me from the chicken is that I know one day I’ll go back across the road, changed in many ways.

My New Job!

So I applied for and was accepted to become a part-time regional leader for my province! I am currently going through two days of training, and starting in November I will be taking on responsibilities like visiting volunteers and keeping up a positive and informed relationship with Panamanian government agencies (like the ministry of agriculture). Hooray for defined leadership experience, new challenges and going outside my comfort zone.

More updates soon.

abc of llano del padre

Apologies for not posting. To reward you all for your patience, I have been working on a photo alphabet project. My digital camera has stopped working (wish I had one of those sweet shock-proof, waterproof, freezeproof ones right about now, though I don't think they're extreme-heat-proof), so I'm missing a few letters. The idea was to use words that were characteristic of life around my site, and to have the kids engage in the activity and thus be practicing their ABC's. It was fun, and actually hard to get the kids to stop. They would run up to anything, name it, say what it began with, and pose. So here goes, hope you learn some new words!

ABC slideshow on Picasa

vecinas

one of these is cuter than the other...

Vecino/a:  (bay-see-no/na).  Neighbor.  Though in my case also means friend, and occasional serious favor-doer.

A few months ago on a drizzly and dark night, I got bitten in the spine by a very large wasp.  They call it a "congaluna" here.  In any case, I thought nothing of it for about 10 minutes, except that WOW it hurts to get a wasp sting there (I'm much more careful about standing under lightbulbs at night now).  Then I started itching seemingly uncontrollably in my armpits, knees, and groin.  Then I looked at my back and noticed it was all red. Then I couldn't stop itching my major articulations, and I saw that I was breaking out in raised bumps in all of them.  Then the itching and breaking out started crawling up my neck, and soon I was worried my throat was going to close up.  I could feel the swelling in my ears, it seemed.  I was also, stupidly, without any credit on my prepaid cell phone, meaning I could not contact Peace Corps or any other emergency services.  My option was to find someone who could do that, but it wasn't necessarily going to happen.  I walked through the mud, trying to reach my host family's house (not a short distance).  I turned back, and although I didn't want to disturb my neighbor, I had little choice other than waiting to see whether I was going to stop breathing or get better.  So I knocked, and shouted it was me.  Well, my neighbor didn't have any phone credit, but she ran off to the next house over, to her mother, who luckily did.  And didn't think twice about calling Peace Corps for me, even though that meant they wouldn't have phone credit.  They spent almost all their credit calling Peace Corps, my host family, and later, the ambulance from the nearby town.  I was actually fine, I knew that even before I got to the hospital in nearby Santiago.  But having my neighbor there to help me kept me from panicking, that's for sure.

This neighbor and I hang out a good amount, just talking and watching her baby (15 month old girl) grow up.  I do consider her one of my best friends here.  She's always willing to do things like fill up my bucket with water from her much larger tank, when we are all suffering from drought and she has 4 bodies to bathe and cook for, versus my one.  I try to make it up to her by lending her a few dollars every now and then (I was uncomfortable about it at first, but she always pays me back as soon as she gets her child support money) or picking up some things for her when I go to the store (again, she always pays me back, there's no free money here).  

So last night, when I was making banana bread and my gas tank finally went out mid-bake (4 months on one tank, I think it's a record in my town!), I was grateful that her mom is the only other person in town with a working oven and, luckily, a full gas tank.  She didn't hesitate to let me into the kitchen so I could finish the baking.  Of course, she got a nice hunk of bread.  I hate feeling like that's not an equivalent favor (sweets for much more precious gas), but these people really understand giving and what it is to be a good neighbor.  Giving is not about getting...it's about filling someone else's need, when you can.  I know this is a fairly common theme with me and in this blog, but it always bears repeating, as I am reminded of it in powerful ways every day.  There is always something you can give.  In the USA, we tend not to be sought out for favors in the same way.  However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't seek out opportunities to give, right?

a hundred trees, yes please!!

So of late I’ve been working on two things, mostly.  First is the exercise and nutrition class that has not been working out so much.  I had 3 weeks in which I had seriously good attendance, and the women who came were totally into it.  The following week only one woman came.  Then the past two weeks NOBODY came.  Once because it was raining, then this last time I don’t know why.  It’s really hard for me to think that this maybe won’t work out.  I know I’m capable of giving this class, I’m full of good ideas, and think that if the women would really make the effort to go, they’d get a lot out of it and enjoy the time they take for themselves.  But…they just don’t go, and always give reasons that to me seem, well, stupid.  I haven’t resolved how I will deal with this, whether I keep trying to get people to show up, or to forget about it.  Probably the first option, though it’s so frustrating to feel like I’m forcing people to go to “my” class, when I started the class based on a need I observed and which was expressed by many people.  It’s their class, for them, but I think they see it as they’re doing me the favor of showing up.  Should not be like that. 

On the other hand, we planted around 100 trees in my community yesterday!  This is a major success for me.  Here’s how it went.  Early June, as you readers may remember, I made a list of things I wanted to get done.  Out of that, I decided the trees were very important and not too big of a task to take on.  I invited many people, and ended up with a small group of (generally speaking) hard workers, and we decided we could put in the effort to dig holes in the open area around the chapel, and I would get tree seedlings from the Environmental Authority’s extension in the nearby town.  It’s too late to raise the seedlings to be planted this year. I gave up the idea of making people commit to a tree nursery to be able to participate, but those who have been participating in the effort actually want to do tree nurseries so we don’t have to wait on trees from the Environmental Authority.  So that is actually something we can work on near creeks in the dry season!  The Environmental Authority had two types of trees, both can be raised for their valuable wood, but trees are trees and they still do all the important soil-protecting, air-purifying, shade-giving activities before they are cut down in 20 years.  For those interested in trees, they are known here as Caoba Nacional (Swietenia macrophylla) and Roble (Tabebuia pentaphylla), the latter being very similar to oak.  It’s good to use wood production trees because people see their value.  Plus, they always can collect the seeds and raise more.  That’s what I love about trees, they are disposed to reproduction, if you just leave them be or put in a small amount of effort, the returns are great.  Not like those dumb vegetables which suck up nutrients and still ask for more.  Grrr.  But I digress.

Our original goal was to plant 50 trees, but digging holes was surprisingly easy.  We did it in 30 minute sessions so people wouldn’t balk at the idea of going to a second work session, and were at our goal after just 3 sessions.  So then the agent who had the trees said it would be fine to bring even more trees (we ended up with around 100).  So we dug more holes, and set the date for planting.  It went very smoothly, since the holes were already dug.  One of the group members/diggers has been absent for the last week dealing with an illness in the family, so she had a real excuse to not be here planting.  However, the very morning that we had agreed to plant, I went to get one of the other planters’ houses and she said she couldn’t because she had to walk with her old mother to the house farther out of town.  That is one of those excuses that makes no sense to me, it just sounds like she didn’t feel like doing the work.  I’m allowed to believe that it’s a stupid excuse because her mother has been hanging around the house for several weeks and I reminded her yesterday afternoon about the planting, and then all of a sudden she has this extremely important task of delivering her mother to the other house.  Despite being down 2 of 5 adult workers, the environmental group came in the truck along with the trees from the nearby town, and we had the help of my host brothers/cousins.  We planted all the trees in under an hour!  So my overall feeling is good, but I am always left amazed by how I can get lied to and stupid-excused to by people who claim they really want something to happen.  Worse, I can’t help but anticipate that those who didn’t show up (I had invited more than 4 people to be a part of this effort, but they never actually came to anything) will have some sort of issue with the way it was done.  You can’t not show up and then complain.  Well, here you can.

Still, overall I’m very happy there are trees here that weren’t before, that my faithful helpers went home with 4 valuable seedlings each, and that trees may become a constant project for me here, now that we have gotten off to a good start.

Other news, my friend’s park project that I advertised in June got very quickly funded after that blog post.  I therefore believe many of you contributed, and assure you that it is now in its beginning stages.  I’ll keep you posted, but for now I want to thank you for contributing, all who did.  It means a lot to be supported by people back home.

Digging holes on the llano (plain, field)

arrival of the trees (this is my host mother)

Angie and Gordo (who is not fat, so the nickname is a joke)

Alfredo and Carlitos

Carlitos and Alfredo (this is my favorite pic of the day)

Cochina Cochina

Cochino/a (ko-chee-no/a): very dirty, ragged, unkempt sort of a lower-class/skankyness connotation; like, if a kid plays in the mud then tries to grab a tortilla off someone’s plate, you yell at them for being cochino/a. The goal, often hard to achieve in ridiculous heat/weather conditions, is to stay kempt and un-cochina…

However, I am a bit cochina, though I’m the only one who sees it: my underwear no longer fits because the hand washing stretches it out, and most are starting to get holes, but I’m not throwing them away because as far as I know I won’t easily be able to replace them (there’s no Victoria’s Secret here…and the other clothing stores, I’ve found out, won’t let you try underwear on and I tend to be a XXXL in all the other clothes they carry).

This is not a plea for packages of underwear, just thought you’d all enjoy a vocab lesson combined with a little update on my status. That is to say, I’ve been away a really long time, but it took me until I saw my holey undies to realize it. 10 months until I go SHOPPING for new ones and probably have a heart attack from the price.

I have to explain my birthday out of order because that's how the pictures uploaded.  All in all a great day, I had two volunteer friends hanging out with me in my site, and this is what we did.

Took my host brothers and their cousins swimming in the river.  It was still kind of low because the rains haven't been every day (biiig problem since all the crops are just coming up), but it was swimmable.  That's me in the center swimming with my 11-year old host brother.

Piñata candy collection, from the piñata I provided for the kids.
Left: my friend Glenda (since the first day of pre-departure staging for Bolivia in Washington, D.C., to Bolivia, and now in Panama); center, little Veronica almost hits Miguelin in the head while trying to get the piñata with her eyes closed (Miguelin had spotted a stray candy on the ground).
Me and the coconut-rum cake with guava filling and whipped cream icing and 24 candles.
Me and piñata. Yes, I've lost weight and am very happy about it.

In other news besides getting older, the women's health class I've started is going well, last week I tried to teach an aerobics/dance routine to a Janet Jackson song, that didn't really work but the women had fun.  More on that soon.

Thanks always for the support, and thanks for all the recent birthday wishes!

major update-ation

i know this is a lot people, but i don't know either way if you read it or not so i'm putting it up here in case you are interested.

The last part of vacation

Well, Theodore and I made it through Nicaragua without a hitch, until the last night getting to Managua, when our shuttle SUV sort of broke down and the driver did a typical move where he refused to get help in the very nearby Granada, and instead had another car sent all the way from the town where we started.  So we got stuck on a dark highway for an hour plus.  Oh and I got a sting ray sting in the ocean, which hurt a LOT, but I’m oddly proud of the story.

 

The next day, we got to Panama City, got our temperatures read by a camera (infrared, I guess) because of the H1N1 hysteria (that is what it is), and a few hours later met Mom and Dad, who’d gotten up at 3:30am to make their flight.  Of course, you couldn’t tell that Mom was tired, but Dad was dragging a little.  Not ideal for driving around Panama City, but at least we had a misinformed GPS lady ordering us to turn where one can’t turn, stay left when she means stay on the same road, etc.  We made it to the Panama Canal just before they were closing the doors, phew!  Dad finally realized where he was, and made a beeline for the observation area.  Nothing like feats of engineering and giant machines to wake him up.

The rest of the week went something like this.  Mom saying her version of “gracias” (pronounced grat-see-ay in her book) any time someone Spanish-speaking got within 3 feet of her.  Dad mumbling “bueno” or “gracias” with less frequency than Mom and otherwise grinning and looking at the scenery.  Theodore getting attacked by bugs (they ALWAYS go for the ones who are most bothered by it, it’s a rule).  Me freaking out because things aren’t as perfect as I’d imagined, despite the fact that the rest of the family is assuring me they’re having a good time.  Discovering that rice and beans is always better than pizza in rural Panama.  Somehow managing to navigate cities and rural areas of Panama without getting in a serious car crash, despite the GPS lady’s intentions to kill us by driving us into construction.  Being at my site for the height of ant mating season, when all the ants fly in massive quantities, attracted to light (the two nights we ate dinner in my site it wasworse than I’d ever experienced, normally the bugs aren’t that bad at night). 

 

Looking back on it, it was a very good time, regardless of how stressed I was with needing to be a part of most interactions and activities because of the language barrier.  I was so concerned with making things perfect that the above picture is ALL that I took on my digital for the days my family was here.  I'm kicking myself.  The big highlight was being with my family.  It sounds corny, but it’s true!  I couldn’t do this Peace Corps thing without the support of my family (I’ve heard stories of volunteers whose families think this job is irresponsible or worse; I couldn’t handle that), and the fact that they came out to see what it’s like was the ultimate show of support.  I was just so glad to be able to experience our family dynamic, give and get hugs, roll my eyes, and give an insider’s perspective of the “interior” of Panama.

Garden and weather update

It FINALLY started raining for real for real.  It did the day before I left for vacation, and I figured that was the start of it.  But upon my return, I learned it hadn’t done so

 again until the day before.  So almost 2 more weeks without rain!  I guess I took my vacation at the right time, because that might have been it for me and this darn weather.  But since I’ve been back, it’s rained each afternoon or night, and well.  

Sometimes there’s really scary lightning and thunder, so it’s good I can snuggle up to the princess cat who does not like to get her paws wet.  She seems to think I have some control over the weather, because when she wants to go out (at any hour of the night) and it happens to be raining, it’s a big ol’ whine fest.  When it’s not raining, it’s sunny and humid.  I don’t think it feels as bad as sunny and dry, even though it maybe feels hotter because your sweat doesn’t have anywhere to evaporate to.

Despite no rain while I was gone, my neighbor managed to keep my plants alive!  I told her I’d pay her (and did), so that was probably some incentive.  She may have one of the greener thumbs in town, but we never knew it before because she doesn’t keep a garden.  But maybe we can do a raised bed for some basics, because she likes vegetables, but is very occupied with the 1-year old.  So my zucchini is flowering (2 female flowers that haven’t quite opened), the broccoli, basil and (volunteer) peppers are holding on, I transplanted some tomatoes, and the lettuce is growing, though spindly and slow due to the heavy shade I have it under.  It’s that or it gets burned up by the sun.  So…still not eating veggies out of my garden, but I am more hopeful than before that they’re going to give me food.  I had also planted pigeon peas and Jamaica Flower (sorrel, Hibiscus sabdariffa, used to make a delicious tea or punch with sugar, ginger and/or cinnamon and/or cloves…but it takes until Christmas to mature) back in the beginning of April.  Both germinated, which is great because I now have Panamanian plants in my yard.  I know why they call them pigeon peas now…the pigeons like to dig up the seeds and eat them!  The papayas are growing, two guanábana (soursop) seeds have germinated, and I’ve been burying mango and avocado pits, but so far nothing has come up.  I’m going to run out of planting space soon…but I want to get some banana and plantain palms planted too!

Check out this contrast.  I took the top photo right before leaving on vacation, beginning of May.  After just a month, not all of which was rainy, the bottom photo shows how things have greened up significantly.

 And check out those giant zucchini leaves!

Projects planned update

Last week we had our trimesterly meeting, part of which is turning in a report about our activities, both completed and planned.  Even though I had many lines filled out on my completed list, I don’t feel satisfied with those activities.  I’m not satisfied because these aren’t so much agriculture or food-security-related activities, which is what I joined Peace Corps to do.  I know, I’m hard on myself and had a major obstacle (drought!), but I need to get real about why I came and what I want to have accomplished when I’m done (less than a year left, incredibly).  So, I’ve decided on a few main foci for the next few months.  Briefly listed they are:

-weekly nutrition/fitness/self-esteem/”women’s issues” class with whatever women are interested (it may just be a few, but that’s okay with me)

-reforestation.  Now that it’s raining, there’s no good excuse (many bad ones, however) to not start tree nurseries and plant trees.  I have found a source of trees, my district’s branch of the National Authority of the Environment.   Now how to coordinate the planting.  I also want those who receive a tree donation to commit to having a tree nursery on their property, though that’s a long-term vision because the trees we start now will have to be nursed through the dry season and planted after I’m gone.  But, if the nurseries are located near creeks, I think this is reasonable.  People do grasp the necessity to plant trees, so I think my job can be getting them from knowing what should be done to taking action.

-green manures and worm compost.  I would like to get at least a worm compost bin completed at my host family’s house.  Knowing my host mom, she’ll name the worms and treat them with the same love she treats all other living things.  I can think of a few other households that have a good chance at taking care of the worms, but doing worms does take some setup and time investment and I haven’t located a source for the specific compost worm species.

-more veggie gardens!

 

I turn 24 next week…I suppose events actually have progressed rapidly when I remember that my last birthday I had been in my Bolivia site for just a little over a month, and I spent my birthday morning on my hotel bed in Santa Cruz opening numerous packages from family (…seeing as the Bolivian mail system was trustworthy enough that I actually received them) and hanging out with baby Dracula.  This year, maybe I’ll go swimming in our river or bake cookies or a cake to share with mi gente (my people) or go see a movie in Santiago (are there any good ones out that will reach here?) with some other area volunteers, but I’m not counting on the mail, sadly, and seeing my family last month was really the present I wanted more than anything.   What I can say with quite a degree of certainty is…I’ll be home next birthday, to turn a cuada (the Panamanianization of the word for a quarter dollar) century!

Help a cause!

What's this a picture of???  How can YOU get involved in what's going on here?

Keep reading...

I´m finally making new friends in my region! I feel like each time I´ve made a friend nearby they´ve left suddenly. Am I cursed? Anyways, I was out helping my closest neighbor (was my second-closest until my first-closest left...) with painting a world map in the school. ...

(my friend and a community helper painting the map...pretty nice right?)

...and learned he´s also looking to renovate the town park, but only has 4 months left and is still waiting on funding. This is the type of project where the community puts up about half the funding and then Peace Corps puts a description of the project on their website and anyone can donate funds. I know economic times are tight for most of my readership, but consider donating to this project, I´ve seen the community and I think it´s a worthy donation (plus I don´t forsee myself requesting monetary donations for my community, so if you want an easy way to help out a Panama volunteer, don´t hesitate!). And if the community in Panama managed to come up with 47 percent...consider why the rest of the world can´t manage to get the other 53% donated. There are plenty of projects worldwide you can donate to in this way, but here´s the website for my friend´s project.
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=525-111

The community members are fairly well organized and they have a self-proclaimed group of ¨nature lovers¨who volunteer with the National Authority for the Environment, making the community a more eco-friendly place. So, I think they´re deserving of a park beautification project.

Thanks for your support!

Granada

Theodore arrived, we don´t have any pictures of us together yet, but it´s been nice having someone else around. Someone who tells me it´s ok to eat at ¨expensive¨(like, 8 dollars vs. 5) restaurants, and someone to talk to and play cards with. I´ve been doing a good enough job keeping him healthy, it seems. We were in Granada for Sunday and Monday. It is another city full of churches and colonial architechture, but it´s different than Leon in the sense that things were pricier (seemed to be a slightly older, wealthier type of tourist and ex-pat residents) and there were more beggars everywhere. Theodore picked up some important safety tips (ducking into stores when being followed) and ¨no, gracias¨(no thanks) very quickly. Granada is also cool because it is on the big Lake Nicaragua-aka-Cocibolca. 10th largest in the world, 2nd largest in Latin America (is Titicaca the first? I can´t remember). It has something called Las Isletas, a group of 365 generally very small islands, which have cool wildlife, some are inhabited by communities Nicaraguans, some are privately owned by wealthy foreigners. I took a nice 2.5 hour tour around some of them. Very fun.



A Nicaraguan who lives in the islands. Mostly these people are fishermen or women as a trade, but they are quite poor. An interesting contrast between their small houses and the mansions on neighboring islands. This man was kind enough to show us his catch (the bottom of the canoe was full of live-but-soon-to-be-dead fish). Now, these people are not an indigenous tribe, they speak Spanish, and supposedly have been on the islands for about 200 years (so like, way after the Spanish came). But my tour guide kept saying they were ¨natives.¨ It´s like calling me a native in the United States...Seemed a bit diminuitive or racist to me.

This is a picture of me watching out for pirate ships from the fort on the lookout island (which I hear is not so preposterous to do these days).
Monkey on monkey island. They´re not native, but someone put 4 monkeys there just ´cause. And they were awesome.
When our boat got stuck in the grassy plants. The plants re-aggregate fast, since boats travel through here at least 2 times a day, and yet we had to wait for a more powerful boat to push a path through. Nature wins!
Cool church. Looks a lot like the León cathedral, no?

Masaya, days 3 and 4

Masaya has been a less interesting than I´d expected. I guess since the guidebooks came out touting it as the place where hammocks are made and can be bought, it has become the place where tourists go to get ripped off for souvenirs. I´ve had a sort of identity crisis, because in Nicaragua I am a tourist, but I try to be a different kind, one who gets to know the people and care about them. So I thought it would be easy to go visit artisans´workshops to see the handicrafts being made, but I couldn´t really find them my first day. So I went to the very touristy old market, as it´s called, and bought a nice hammock (family size, for that husband and kids I have...it´s the only size that seems worth the money though) and a hanging hammock-weave chair. I´ll post pix of those then I have them hung up in site. Sidenote: I miss my site, knowing people, cooking for myself (this town has very little for a vegetarian to eat, but the fruit´s just fine), Mona, etc. But to ease my pain of being a tourist, I struck up a conversation with the guy who sold to me (I´ve been trying to do this as much as possible, in taxis, etc., as much to prove to them that I´m not the ordinary limited-vocabulary tourist, and also because I feel like becoming a human to people makes them less likely to try to rip me off or worse). He was a nice guy, I ended up paying 50 bucks for both items, which I is a price I´m not embarrassed about. My strategy is always go for the guys who could be my great uncle or something. That age range. And must be pudgy, preferably with glasses, wearing a polo shirt or something with sleeves.

For the second day, I decided to go where I always enjoy, because I´d felt pretty crummy about Masaya in general (except for a decent burrito for dinner). What do I always enjoy? Farmers´markets, and nature. So I´d read in the Lonely Planet that there´s a second market at the bus terminal (which I needed to locate anyways), and since nothing was open for breakfast yet, I headed over there. And breathed a sigh of relief, and then almost vomited over my 50 cent bag of watermelon chunks because I was near the butchers section which invariably smells more than it should, in any meat market in Latin America. But that market is significantly more real. They have the tourist stuff there, but just being among people going about business as usual made me feel better. I´ll be re-stocking my snack fruit supply tomorrow morning before going to pick Theodore up at the airport. Then I went to nature. An entirely DIFFERENT kind of nature than the usual rain forests and rivers, however.

That´s sulfury smelling smoke, not dust, behind me.

Behold, the Parque Nacional Volcán Masaya...or, Masaya Volcano National Park. It´s the country´s only active volcano, not that it´s shooting out lava, but it´s definitely smoking. It´s cool to see, and the visitors center has an exhausting exhibit about what volcanoes are. I took some pictures at the top, it´s now the second volcanic crater I´ve seen up close (first being Haleakala on Maui, which was better, actually). I met a Spanish guy when he was trying to take a self portrait, and offered to take his picture FOR him, and then he took mine for me. So you must thank Roberto for that picture. Then we walked all the way down the crater together. I wanted to go alone, but the park rangers stalk you and sort of matched us up and kept calling us ¨la pareja¨ (the couple) as they were radioing our whereabouts. But he was nice enough, and I was surprised we understood each others´Spanish. Though he corrected my vocab a few times, which is funny because it´s like a British person correcting my American vocabulary. Neither is wrong. Anyways, I suppose I was glad to use my vocal cords for something other than a monetary transaction.Some priest put up a Cross there because the thought was that the Devil lives down there. But since there´s a cross, it´s ok, it´s now a Catholic volcano and the Devil won´t want to come up (i.e. erupt). Though it did in 2001, a little bit.

Good precautions.

Leon day 2

Sweet Leon Murals:

The writing on the right translates to: Nicaragua will be free while she has sons that love her.

What I did on my second day in Leon:

I had 2 fruit juices.

I bought fruit in the market.

I ate tofu.

I walked and got lost and realized my Lonely Planet map is actually all wrong and it´s not just I have a sudden inability to orient myself.

I swam in the pool.

I tried (one bottle of) the Nicaraguan beer Toña. It was ok, nothing to make me want to drink more.

I also got to talk to 2 mothers who lost their sons in the conflicts and revolution a few decades ago. Here in Leon there is a memorial set up with pictures of many fallen heroes (several women actually!), but the coolest part is that at the memorial, there´s always mothers or other people who were there when it all happened. So I sat and asked to hear their stories. I don´t know the history very well and a lot flew over my head because they just sort of talked in a flow of consciousness, but what I did pick up was very interesting. Most striking to me was how these women sort of heard their sons had died, but wanted to go get their bodies but were often prevented. But still, they felt they needed to identify the bodies so they figured out ways to do it. THey also just talked about that time in general, when Leon was bombed and everyone was still in town and they just hid where they could. And one was telling me how she was escaping somewhere and had to trick a guard, but then he gave her food for the kids she had lied to say she had to go take care of. One kept saying how it´s true about the motto: ¨Patria libre o muerte¨ free country or death. These young people (one of the sons was 13) realized they would probably die but kept trying and joining the cause until they completed it. One made it clear that her 2 sons joined voluntarily, and she knew she couldn´t stop them. Admirable (the sons and the mother), if you ask me. Then we started talking about modern politics and how even today they feel that there is tension between the Sandinistas (the party that overthrew the dictatorship) and other political parties. I was grateful to get that opportunity, and also grateful that I´ve never lived through that sort of trauma. Amazing how many people in the world could tell such stories.

Headed to Masaya, the heartland of folklore and handicrafts.