Summer camp is over. Real life begins!

In the short time since my last post a lot has happened down here.

I visited my site, Cerro Iglesias, for 4 days. It was awkward and awesome at the same time. Ladies and gentleman, I will be roughing it for the next 2 years! My host family for the first 3 months in site has given me my own 'house' so I am very fortunate to have my own space. My house is made of bamboo with a thatch roof (see photo). I hope to build my own house with the help of the community, but those details haven't been worked out yet. The town is very spread out and each family has a compound of huts that are separated by thick forest with steep muddy trails connecting neighbors.

After returning from the site visit we had a one more week of training in Santa Clara. In our final days, I spent a lot of time with my fellow trainees, as this is our last time all together. The friendships I have made over the past 10 weeks will be my support system over the next 2 years. We've played a lot of ultimate Frisbee, slack-lining and swimming in the river. There was even a capture the flag game one night that ended tragically when I nearly decapitated myself on a barbed wire fence. Whoops! I'm hoping it won't leave a nasty scar. We organized a huge goodbye party to thank our host families. It was tough to plan to cook and entertain 200 people but we pulled it off! As a going away gift, my host family gave me an adorable kitten. They were so excited to give it to me, so there was no way I could refuse the little guy. After a tearful goodbye with the host family, we were whisked off to Cuidad del Saber (PC headquarters). We stayed there for a few days and "swore in" as real volunteers on Thursday evening. The world director of Peace Corps, Ron Tschetter, was here to administer the ceremony and celebrate 45 years of Peace Corps in Panama at the ambassador's house in Panama City.

We, the newly initiated volunteers of group 61, are having one final celebration this weekend at the beach before we disperse throughout the country. I am very excited for my real Peace Corps experience to begin, but am devastated to say goodbye to my fellow gringos. We have become a family over the past 10 weeks. So, tomorrow morning, I will take all of my belongings for the next 2 years, along with my kitten, and try to make in the mountains of Panama. If I could make it in Manhattan, I can make it anywhere, right? Goodbye internet, electricity, running water. Hello adventure!

(Photo of host brothers and sisters plus kitten)

Life in Santa Clara / training community update

I feel the need to take a moment to apologize for not posting about my awesome host family until now. My previous posts have been about trips we have taken within Panama, but my host family has been taking care of me for almost 2 months now! I will post some pictures soon (before I move to my permanent site, promise). The family is much like my real mother’s family in that all of the children (all 7 of them), although most are grown and have their own families now, live within shouting distance from the house they grew up in. Although it can be overwhelming, it is wonderful to have a house full of family all the time. Until recently, I was still unsure of exactly how many people slept in our house (final count: 9). Santa Clara has been the host training community for 3 years now so my family is well-accustomed to the needs of us gringos (personal space and more fruits and vegetables than the average Panamanian, to name a few). My room here is 3x as big as any room I ever had living in NYC! My host father is the local political figure (Honorable Representative) here in town so my accommodations are relatively more luxurious than most of the other volunteers in our training site. For example, my family has a car, flush toilet and tile as opposed to concrete floors. Santa Clara does not have cell phone reception or landlines so my host parents also serve as the community ambulance drivers. On several occasions they have left in the middle of the night or day to rush someone to the hospital. They are truly incredible people and I am very grateful that they have made me feel like a part of the family since day 1! (On a side note, politicians are very much like celebrities here and their photos are posted all over town. See attached billboard photo of my host father. More photos coming soon.)

Ngäbere class:
I graduated from Spanish class a few weeks ago and am focusing my time on learning the indigenous Ngäbe language now (along with sustainable agriculture techniques, but more on that another day). Panama has 7 indigenous languages, but Ngäbe is the largest group with almost 200,000 people. There are only 3 of us in the class so we are lucky to receive a lot of 1x1 attention. Our teacher conducts the Ngäbe lessons in Spanish, so there is an added level of complexity in trying to grasp the language. The multiple meanings that nearly every word contains are a constant source of laughter. For example, the Ngäbere word “Kä” means: land, name, year, weather, place. The word “Ü” means: father-in-law, ax, yucca. The word “sulia” means cockroach and Spanish language (I’m sure there is a great story behind that one but I don’t know it yet). One phrase that we learned the other day while struggling to concentrate in our outdoor classroom was: “Ti bike se antlan kamike biombo bti”. Translation: I’m going to kill that rooster with a slingshot. Seriously, those roosters are more distracting than the NYC M14-A bus that used to shake my entire apartment building. Between the roosters, semi-wild dogs and the delicious mangos that come crashing down like bombs on the zinc roofs around us, it is a miracle we get anything done. Who knew the campo would have so many distractions!

Today we are traveling to a conference center a few hours away where we will each meet our community counter-parts. All I know about mine so far is that his name is Jorge. I imagine that he works with the coffee cooperative, but not necessarily. After the 2-day conference, Jorge and I will travel together to my future site, Cerro Iglesia in the Comarca Ngäbe-Bugle. I will spend the rest of the week in site getting to know my community and compiling their expectations for the upcoming 2 years. I have no idea what to expect, but I am very excited to find out. Stay tuned!

Coffee Training Week in Boquete

Directly after culture week (see last post) 6 volunteers including myself met in Boquete for a week of coffee training. Boquete happens to be a top tourist destination but for good reason. It has a cool climate and is located in a beautiful valley surrounded by lush forests and raging rivers (think eco-tourism). Boquete is also at the base Panama’s only volcano, Volcan Barú. From the top, on a clear day, you can see both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea! I will be back to make this trek!

The Peace Corps Panama coffee program is only 4 years young. It´s goals are to work with Panamanian coffee growers to increase their production using sustainable techniques and to improve the post harvest processing of the beans. We also work to empower community members by linking them with organizations, agencies and companies to find the right markets (local, domestic and/or international) and fetch the best prices for their coffee. My group will have 6 volunteers working with coffee farmers and 2 of us will be in indigenous coffee sites.

The week was filled with visits to many specialty coffee fincas in and around Boquete, which is known for producing the finest coffee in Panama. I won’t bore you all here with the details of the coffee industry (that will come later), but in a nutshell we covered how to: select seeds, prepare the soil, sow, grow, prune, identify pests and disease, harvest, de-pulp, ferment, dry, store, peel, roast, grind, cup to determine quality and price, find markets, sell, export and finally, drink coffee (preferably con leche).

We also met with coffee producers who are in the highest specialty market here in Panama. Even though the coffee production in Panama is just a drop in the bucket when compared to world production, it was interesting to speak with roasters and industry players to get an idea of the potential for Panamanian coffee abroad. For example, most farmers in Panama received between .85 cents and 3 dollars/ pound this year for their coffee. A special variety of coffee called Geisha that grows best in Panama received between $150-180/ pound. That means that each cup would have to be sold for around $25 each just to break even. Insane! Who buys this stuff? Apparently, the White House and high-end restaurants in big cities throughout the world were big buyers this year.

There were many exciting revelations this week but perhaps the best moment was finding out that the volunteer who is serving as our coffee coordinator is constructing a bicycle coffee grinder! This is the perfect combination of a practical tool and a farmers’ spinning class (ok, maybe just for me)! Grinding coffee by hand in large quantities is strenuous and the campo of Panama does not have electricity, so this could be an excellent tool for campesinos to utilize in their communities. Check back within a few months, I intend to make one of these and think it is necessary to fulfill my bicycle withdrawal! If anyone has any designs or ideas, please send them my way!