Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Meet: Jorge Guerra (Head of my host family)


Jorge was the first person I met from my community. He traveled several hours by bus to pick me up at our counterpart conference and took me to Cerro Iglesias for my first visit way back in May. He met me as a favor for his father, who was originally supposed to be my community guide (before he found a job that moved him out of the community). I have now been living with his family for nearly 2 months and he has opened up substantially since those first awkward days. Most mornings he is up and about by 5am. While his wife, Liliana, is getting the 5 kids ready for school and attending to the infant, he is usually chopping wood for cooking or sharpening his machete to get ready for work. All day, every day, he is working. He dedicates himself to the production of corn, rice, beans, coffee and more recently, ají peppers. Jorge only went to school until 6th grade, as did most men his age in Cerro Iglesias, but he is a smart man. He spent a few years working outside of the Comarca, as a migrant worker on Latino farms in the fertile region of Chiriquí. He also spent a short time working in construction in Panama City, but says he prefers life in the campo because it is more tranquil: less noise, pollution and more room for the children to run around. Basically, he chose to work his family’s land because he did not want to work for the ‘man’; not an easy path by any means. Similar to most New Yorkers I know, Jorge works hard, but plays even harder. After a week of long days in the field, he will get together with his buddies and they will drink themselves silly on homemade chicha fuerte. These gatherings, usually Sundays, are planned in advance, because it takes several days to for corn to turn into alcohol. They will sit in front of the house under the mango tree, sometimes as early as 7am, and stay there until the liquor runs dry or they pass out. (The women, for the most part, do not drink). Can you blame him?

During the week, Jorge is constantly trying to keep up with the different crops he has planted and finding ways to put food on the table. The ají project, if successful, will be one of the only ways (aside from the coffee harvest) that he has to earn a living for his family. He is very dedicated to his family, in ways that somewhat defy the stereotypical ‘machismo’ description of Latin American men. In the evenings, he spends quality time with his 6 children. We usually sit with the kids and chat or help them with their homework. He quizzes them on multiplication while I help the older ones with English and reading comprehension. What Jorge wants more than anything is for his children learn English. (That goes for about every Panamanian I’ve met). It is hard for me to imagine that learning English is more important than basic math skills and Spanish literacy, but I do the best I can to mitigate the Panamanian fascination with learning English.

Despite the stresses of his life, Jorge has been gracious enough to take me in and live with his family during my first few months in Cerro Iglesias. I have already shared many unforgettable moments with Jorge and his family. Although there have been some tough and/or awkward situations, the overwhelming majority has been positive. Living with this family has been an incredible learning experience for me and a very important part of coming to understand the local culture. I just hope I can return the favor in more ways than teaching kids English...
(photo of Jorge with his 9 mo old son who they just call "Bebe". Photo by Arden Sherman)

Thursday, August 21, 2008

When the peanut butter runs out

July is a tough month in the Comarca. There is a saying that goes something like: "Señor Julio le roba la pila" (Mr. July robs the pot). July and August is the time just between the harvests and there is not much paid work for unskilled farmers, so families struggle to put food on the table. It’s not nearly as bad as a true famine that parts of the African continent must experience, but nonetheless, it makes for a stressful time for poor Panamanian families.

I was feeling a little guilty about not spending enough time with my host family, so I decided to go work out in the field with them one day. Our task: plant 1200 aji plants. Jorge has been trying to finish planting 15,000 aji plants on a hectare of land. There is an aji planting craze in my community right now because of the new contract with Tobasco (yes, like the sauce) that is buying peppers for export. After a full day of working in the intense sun followed by a torrential downpour, and only eating a few oranges from the nearby tree, I was starved. A few nights had gone by over the past weeks with no dinner. When this happened, I would go back to my hut and snack on a secret stash of (crunchy) peanut butter and crackers - my new staple. The peanut butter had recently run out, leaving me feeling anxious about how to control those desperate moments of hunger. I realize that this all sounds completely ridiculous especially when my host family just goes to bed hungry (although I have a sneaking suspicion that the kids were fed by the grandparents). I will contest that their bodies are more accustomed to not eating as often as most gringos. We are notorious snackers and I am the worst of them. If I had time, I’d look up some hard facts to support this claim. Anyway, as we were leaving the field in the afternoon, we stopped to harvest some yucca planted along the trail. Yucca is a tuber and requires ripping out the plant from the ground and collecting the roots, similar to a potato but with a thicker trunk. This delicious starch provides virtually no nutritional content, but serves its purpose as a filler. As we started pulling up the plants, looking for roots, they were still stuck deep in the ground and we had no tools for digging. So, I got down on all fours with my 12 yr old host brother and started digging for dinner. I was so exhausted, dehydrated and hungry, but was furiously clawing at the soil with all my might. Half laughing at myself, it suddenly occurred to me that this is what happens when the peanut butter runs out: subsistence living. Perhaps this was a fine lesson in integration. We are now more than half-way through August, and are enjoying the new harvests of corn and rice, so things are much less stressful. The other day they killed over 100 chickens in town to sell and my family got the heads to cook for dinner. I had to decline. Looking back, I should have at least tried the chicken-head soup, but I had a full jar of peanut butter and crackers waiting for me back in my hut. Maybe next time.