This past weekend we each visited a current volunteer for 3 days in order to get a better idea of what life might be like for the next 2 years. I stayed with a agribuiness coffee volunteer in an indigenous region called the Comarca Ngöbe-Buglé in the west of Panama.
Trip highlights:
-Amazing exposure to indigenous culture and language- I think I may also live in this area!
-Organic coffee production- 5 farmers have recently been certified organic in this community
-Wildlife- Battles with scorpions, tarantulas and the hunt, catch and slow death of a Boa Constrictor
-I taught my first English class (more on the merits of this activity below)
Read on for details!
The trip there was classically Latin American. A good friend of mine (it’s amazing how close you get to someone in 3 weeks of PC training) and I traveled on a bus that was suppose to leave at 8:30pm, but left at 8pm instead. Apparently buses can do that here. We were supposed to arrive at our destination around 11pm, but the bus had some major complications and we ended up at our stop around 3am. From this point our only directions were to walk "up the hill for about 30 minutes" until we saw a bank and from there we could use the payphone to call the regional coordinator who lived in the area. Here in Panama the streets do not have names, directions are vague at best, and time is an abstract concept that should not be taken literally. “Ahora,” for example, typically means “now” in normal Spanish, but in Panama it means “later”, which could be anytime in the next few hours or even days. HA!
To arrive to the volunteer´s site (Nate), he and I hopped on a chiva for about 2 hours up and down a half paved, half dirt, mountainous road. A chiva, for those of you wondering, is simply a pickup truck with 2 long benches in the back and a cage around it so that baggage (or people) can go on top. Picture 38 people in the bed of a Toyota Tacoma (I counted, and yes, this was a record). From our drop-off point we had a 2-hour hike ahead of us to reach his site. We are now in the land of the indigenous group of the Ngöbe-Buglé. Most speak Spanish as a second language after their own Ngöbere language. The hike was strenuous; we climbed over 3 mountains, but well worth the views! His community has about 150 people living there, small for PC standards.
After spending the afternoon pasaering (Spanglish for going house to house to chit-chat) with every family in town, we had dinner with the matriarchic figure in the community, Rosa (La Famosa). Families are large, about 10- 15 people (mostly young children) all sleep together in a one room, dirt floor house with a zinc roof. There is no electricity for hours around. Our dinner was a simple soup made from a local root vegetable that was cooked over a open-air wood fire that is burned inside of the house. Now I now why this is the toughest job I will ever love.
That night, just before we went to sleep, I killed my first scorpion (with a shoe, no less)! It was about to enter Nate’s house through one of the many holes between the wood planks. I was glad to be sleeping in my hammock with the built in bug net! BYO if you plan to visit me in the next 2 years!
The next day we went to the monte (mountain) to work with one of the coffee farmers. They have already finished harvesting the beans for the season but there is always work to be done. Their coffee is grown on hillsides under the canopy of the forest at 1200m. We made barriers that will protect the topsoil from being washed down the mountain when the rainy season begins. They also showed me where they de-pulp the coffee, which is then used as compost that can be used to add nourishment back to the soil. Beautiful recycling system! The farmers are organically certified now, but only receive about $ 1-2 per pound for their product! Think about how much you pay for coffee per pound in the US? The difference goes to the intermediaries and to transportation costs. We, as agribusiness Peace Corps volunteers, are working with farmers to improve their post harvest process, eliminate the middlemen and hopefully earn a more reasonable price for such a laborous bean. I’m not sure if my particular assignment will be identical, but I think I am heading for a similar project.
That afternoon a small child informed us that they had spotted a boa constrictor and needed our help. We weren’t really sure what that meant, so I grabbed my machete and my camera and we followed the kid. Sure enough, 100m away from Nate´s house, there was a boa hissing at us from a not very safe distance. A man, I’ll call him the Matador, was attempting to catch him with a long stick that had a slipknot tied to one end. After a long battle, the Boa was captured and we followed our Matador back to the main part of town where another man was waiting to kill him by putting tobacco in his nose and down his through. Apparently, it is bad luck to just hack it up with a machete, so death by tobacco is used instead. I was planning to prepare a delicious soup with the fabulous piece of meat, however, everyone laughed at me when I suggested this. Must have something to do with bad luck. After several hours, when the boa was good and dead, a boy was instructed to haul it off to the next mountain where they have a special place to dispose of all dangerous snakes. What a waste of protein! We could have feed the whole town! There are a lot of pictures on Flickr in case anyone doesn´t believe it!
Saturday evening Nate informed me that I would be teaching an English class at 8:30 the next morning. What? Uh, I´ve never done that!
Me- Are we doing this together? Nate -No, just you
Me- What topic should I teach? Nate -Whatever you want
Me- Who is our audience? Nate- Whoever shows up
Fabulous. I would have killed for cell phone reception (you must hike straight up a mountain for an hour to even get a signal) to call a school teacher friend that could help me through my first lesson plan. I’ll pause here for a quick note on teaching English: I am the first to admit that I think it is ridiculous to be teaching English to kids in rural Panama for any practical purpose. Now, however, I am starting to realize that it is less about fluency and more about volunteers integrating with the community. First of all, its fun! Kids are learning in a structured format! This is progress! Second, I am learning their languages (Ngobere and Spanish), so it would be selfish of me to not satisfy their curiosity about English. Two out of the three goals of Peace Corps relate to exchanging cultures, so this is one way of making that happen while gaining trust in the community. Enough about that. What is the world was I going to teach? I decided to go with the colors of the rainbow. ROYGBIV. 10 kids showed up to class! I have nothing to compare it to, but I thought it was a success! I gave them the vocab words to start out, then split them into groups to make their own rainbows out of construction paper. Each group wrote and presented the colors of the rainbow in English, Spanish and their native language, Ngobere. Success!
I was very pleased with my site visit and after speaking to my director it appears that I will be in a site that is also in this indigenous area, working with coffee! I find out for sure on Wednesday! Stay tuned! I’ll post as soon as I can. Ciao, for now!
