The following is a letter that my program director asked me to write. It will be sent to the next round of volunteers in their invitation package to the Peace Corps as a sneak peak on the life of a current volunteer along with scores of other information. It briefly sums up my work and touches on my sentiments of my experience so far:
Hello and congratulations on being accepted to Peace Corps Panamá!
Should you choose to accept it this invitation, I can assure you that you will not regret your decision. You will learn so much about yourself and the cultures of Panamá while making life-long connections to the people you are here to serve. I encourage you to keep an open mind, let go of all expectations and enjoy the wild ride ahead of you!
I live in an indigenous community in a thatch-roof hut with no electricity, but with running water for most of the year. We sit high on a mountain with amazing views of the Pacific Ocean. The warm, generous spirit of the people and beautiful scenery here, more than makes up for the lack of amenities in the community. My work varies tremendously on a day-to-day basis and thus, never gets redundant and always leaves me feeling proud at the end of the day. I am constantly challenged and learning both technical and interpersonal skills in this environment. My primary work is with small community groups: bee-keepers that sell their honey to tourists, coffee producers that want to sell locally within the community and hot pepper producers that export to the U.S. through a subsidiary of Tabasco. I am one of the few SAS (Sustainable Agricultural Systems) volunteers working primarily in agribusiness, the cross-sector initiative between the SAS program and CED (Community Economic Development). The Agribusiness Initiative was created in recent years to train farmers across Panamá on fundamental business skills (i.e. accounting and marketing), improving farm planning techniques and strengthening their relationships with buyers and government agencies. We also focus on empowering farmers by de-mystifying legal contracts, bank loans and crop insurance policies on the basis that knowledge is power. Humble farmers know a LOT about the land, but with little formal education, most lack the business or legal knowledge to make informed decisions before entering into negotiations with buyers or taking out a bank loan. The agribusiness initiative seeks to bridge this gap. Most SAS volunteers will have the chance to work in agribusiness in some capacity in their communities — either with traditional cash crops for export (cacao, coffee and bananas), basic grains (rice, beans, corn) or other fruits and vegetables.
In addition to the Agribusiness Initiative, the SAS sector also has developed in recent years the Coffee Program that works with producers from high-altitude arabica coffee and low-altitude robusta coffee regions to connect them with domestic and international buyers, always seeking the best price for the farmer. This program also supports and encourages communities seeking organic and fair-trade certification. These opportunities, while not always easy to achieve, provide real economic solutions and present a much brighter future for the Panamanian coffee farmer and their families. Additionally, the SEEDERS group is volunteer-driven Peace Corps initiative to collect and save local and donated seeds for volunteers working in agroforestry and/or home and school garden projects.
Your upcoming 27 months in Panamá are sure to be the most memorable times of your life. Sure, you will feel lonely, frustrated and overwhelmed at times, but the rewards of your service FAR outweigh those challenges. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to be a self-starter as a SAS volunteer. Work will not come to you. You must go out and find it. Get involved and spend time with all of the leaders and organizations within your community. By demonstrating your commitment, you will integrate and become valued by your community members. At that point, you will be working shoulder-to-shoulder together. You will laugh with them. You will cry with them. When it’s all over you will leave a stronger person and they will hopefully be on the road to a more sustainable development. So, my future fellow SASer, get ready, all of this awaits you in Peace Corps Panamá!
I look forward to meeting you soon!
Abrazos,
Kat Fraser
SAS, Group 61 (2008-2010)
Comarca Ngöbe-Buglé
Panamá
Monday, July 13, 2009
Slithering creatures too close for comfort
So here’s a fun story that’s not necessarily “a day in the life” but it happened.. twice!
This is a story of killing a snake in my house. I found myself telling this story over and over to people back in the States when they asked about what was new and exciting in Panama. I honestly didn’t think it was a big deal at the time. People in my community don’t find this stuff very surprising, although it makes great conversation topic. They deal with it all the time. But to people back home, this is the kind of stuff that Peace Corps is made of..
It’s late April, around 10pm. I’m in my little hut getting ready to go to bed. I’m exhausted and have no idea why I’m up so late. I hear a rustle in my thatch roof. I assume it’s a lizard. Lizards are a common household guest that hangs out in the thatch, looking for bugs and spiders. The locals like lizards and rightfully call them “limpia casa” (house cleaner). I look up with my dim headlamp and squint when suddenly I realize that it was not the camouflage lizard I was expecting, but a much larger, slithering creature. It was indeed a snake: bright red and black with a white belly. Immediately I guessed it was a deadly coral snake that the locals tell me horror stories about, but recently was corrected by a self-proclaimed snake expert that it was most likely the non-deadly king snake. Whatever. This snake, deadly or not, was weaving himself in and out of the thatch, directly above my bed and I was not happy about it. I climbed up to my loft as fast as I could with my machete and took a swing, but I was scared to put a hole in the roof, so my wimpy hit was a failure. He got away. I was sat still for the next few minutes, listening for his whereabouts, but heard nothing. He was weaving around somewhere in the roof, probably looking for mice, and likely to reappear at any moment. Now what? I put fresh batteries in my headlamp and held tight to the machete, waiting for any sign of life in the roof. Nothing. An hour went by. By now, it was about midnight; I was exhausted but could not sleep with a (what I thought was a deadly) snake on the loose. Not knowing what to do and overcome by exhaustion, I strung up my hammock with intentions of sleeping there. Hammocks are the safest place you can be in the tropics and now I know why they were invented. I lay in the hammock for about 5 minutes, feeling defeated and violated by this predator, when suddenly I look over and see that the snake has reappeared in a different part of the thatch: right next to my hammock! I froze. But only for a second. I reached for my camera, but was trembling so bad that most of the pictures didn’t come out so well. Then I scolded myself for not focusing on the death of this snake sooner. He started to slither away again, so I grabbed the (much smaller) kitchen knife this time to get a more precise hit. Count of three. Got’em! He fell from the ceiling, wounded, but not dead. As he fled out into the yard, I chased behind, barefoot, with machete in hand swinging violently until I was sure he was a goner. What a (ridiculous) site!
So that’s my first snake-killing story. I hope it’s my last.
P.S. Snakes get a bad wrap for being poisonous, deadly creatures, but the truth is that only a few really are and in most cases, the antivenom can be found at a hospital few hours away. Snakes are an important part of the eco-system and its terrible to promote killing them just upon sighting them. This snake, however, crossed the line. The roof above my bed is just too close for comfort, so this one had to go. Since this incident, I finally put up my bug net around my bed which sufficiently serves to keep the creepy-crawly things out of the covers.
(Pictures below: Other snake encounters over the past year in the country, in my house or otherwise)
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Por fin: Back home in the tropics!
(Memorial day party at the lake near Charlotte)
(College of Charleston)
(Rodeo Beach, CA)
I just returned from a 3 week trip to the beautiful USA - land of cold wheat beers, hot showers (or running water for that matter) and crunchy organic peanut butter with no hydrogenated oils.
I’m exactly at the mid-point of my service. 1 year down and 1 year to go in Panama. Hard to believe how fast the time goes. It felt like a good time to reconnect with friends and family and try to figure out what my next step will be after Panama. I visited friends in San Francisco, went to the wedding of my dearest friends, Maria and Shawn in Wilmington, NC, reminisced in my old college town of Charleston, SC, and saw my family in Charlotte, NC for Memorial Day weekend. It was so wonderful be back and be exposed to all the changes since I’ve been gone. For better and/or worse, the States feel different. The mood has shifted. We’re at a low point, but Obamamania is strong and there is hope for the future.
Although it was great to visit the States, 3 weeks is a long time to be away from the kind of work we do as volunteers. So much is based on having strong relationships with community members and it is so easy to disconnect yourself from the challenges in Cerro Iglesias with all of the distracting comforts of the USA. I feel an overwhelming responsibility (that borders on guilt) to my community, however, and am eager to get back to site and start working again. I dearly miss my hammock and the peace of my little house with a view, but most of all, I miss the companionship of the people in my community. We have lots of on-going and upcoming projects, so I am excited to roll up my sleeves, put on my mud boots and get dirty again!
Here are a few upcoming projects:
Bees- The bees need to be moved from behind the elementary school. We have Africanized bees here, which are quite aggressive and potentially very dangerous. We are going to move them and split the colonies at the same time. Since none of us actually have any hands-on experience doing this, we are taking extra precaution and doing lots of research so that we don’t mess anything up or create a disaster. We are receiving a donation of 10 brood boxes from a private company here and are very grateful to Maliverns of Davíd for their generous contribution.
Latrines- A nearby community wants to build about 30-40 latrines for families that do not have them. While back in the States, I realized that many people have no idea what a latrine is. Basically, it’s like an outhouse, only more rustic. There are no septic systems here. There are a few types of latrines, but the most common and cheapest is a 10 ft hole dug in the ground with a cement floor and cement toilet seat on top with a little privacy wall built around it. This is going to be a huge project that might take several months to plan and complete. Don’t be surprised if I ask for your financial support out there. Latrines (and education on how and why to use them) are a vital component for improving overall community health and decreasing infant and child mortality rates. Why? I don’t want to get to deep into it, but without latrines, people do their business in the rivers and streams. That is typically where they get their drinking water as well. You get the point. Much more on this topic another day.
School gardens- Thanks to the generous donation from a US nonprofit, Seed Programs Inc. and a family friend, Mr. Eadie of Davidson, NC, volunteers all over Panama will have access to various different vegetable seeds that can be used for home and /or family garden projects. I plan to work with the primary school in Cerro Iglesias to teach the students about nutrition, organic soil building and how to cultivate vegetables such as squash, kale, and tomatoes.
(I saw all of my favorites back in the US:)
(Lovely Maria on her wedding day!)
(Iyi and Mego: Cerro Iglesias' most famous inhabitants)
(Arden: my first visitor in Panama, she toughed it out with me in those first few rough days)
(Mai: from CHS to NYC and now in the Bay Area, no one gives better life advice!)
(Laura and I talk a walk down memory lane in Charleston)
(Kasey and Lauren: High school friends become like sisters after all these years)
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Happy Earth Day!
What can you buy that will help save the earth this year? Every year it feels more and more commercialized, right? The better question is probably: what can you NOT buy that might reduce your impact on earth?
Up where I live in the Comarca we are having an educational Earth day celebration; albeit 5 days late and 2 days of activities. Classic Panamanian style. The local environmental government agency (ANAM) sponsored the event, which included very long, formal (yet consistently unprofessional) meetings where we talked about trash: the importance of its proper disposal, whether to burn or bury it, re-using plastic bottles and bags, etc. There was a drawing contest for kids and the prizes were baby trees to plant at home. That night they projected a Planet Earth-like movie to inspire the community to appreciate nature on the old 1-room school building under a beautiful star-filled sky . The main participants were the new tourism group in Cerro Iglesias. Yes, tourism. I think we are a few years off, but with the new road, adventurous tourists are bound to show up one of these days, seeking indigenous culture, crafts and natural beauty. A professor from the national tourism agency has been giving classes to locals, encouraging environmental conservation within the community for the sake of tourism. Enough Peace Corps volunteers have brought their friends and family through town over the past 8 years, so I think they could handle wide-eyed foreigners, if they had a bit more infrastructure (i.e.- places to sleep and eat). If people are motivated to keep the place clean and the forests protected on the chance that it might draw tourists, more power to’em! The cerro (hill) of Cerro Iglesias has a plethora of natural springs that provide water for 13 communities in the area, so it is of utmost importance that the hill stays forested. Without vegetation, the underground water sources dry up and the beautiful tropics eventually turn into useless deserts. (photo: The noticeably flat-topped Cerro Iglesias in dry season)
Speaking of water, the dry season is hitting us extra hard this year. The rains are late this year and water is dangerously scarce. That has made my comfortable campo living quite challenging. If we are lucky (and we, at the top of the hill and closest to the source ARE the lucky ones) we get a trickle of water for about 5-10 minutes a day. I fill up every bucket and bottle I can and hope that it is enough to get by until the water comes again. Laundry hasn’t been done in a very long time and I am the new master at the 20 oz shower (12oz, in extreme cases). I shouldn’t complain, however, people further down the aqueduct line haven’t had water since December. They go to a nearby river or stream, that isn’t always so nearby and is typically contaminated. No other choice. I feel bad whining about water-woes, because there are so many others in neighboring communities that have it much worse. It’s hard to appreciate water until it’s gone.
(photo above: Slash and burn agriculture at its finest. To the left you can see how it all used to look, that's where the coffee, which demands shade, is grown)
On a sad note, I feel the need to pay some homage here to my dear friend, Antonio, who passed away recently. Antonio was my next-door neighbor and the kindest, most generous man in Cerro Iglesias. Without fail, he would always give me something when I came to visit: bananas, oranges, coffee, bowls of rice and sardines. It was Antonio that stayed up until midnight listening to the radio in his hammock and then came over in the morning to tell me that Obama had won the election. He was a huge fan. He was a dear friend to all the Peace Corps volunteers before me, even the few that were here in the 1960s. Antonio was the first teacher in our school and continued to be very active in the community since his retirement in 1991. He was the promoter of a nutrition program with a local NGO called Nutri-Hogar, the treasurer of the aqueduct committee, collaborator with the national environment agency, an active member of the church and my official Ngäbere teacher. Habu Küri. Te voy a extrañar, sobrino.
(photo: One of many meals at Antonio's: me, Antonio, Adam, chi, Alicia)
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Honey harvest and tropical paradises
There is so much I still have to learn about bee-keeping. I´ve been working with 2 ladies- Victoria and Maribela- since I arrived in the community. We go check on the bees about once a week to tidy up their boxes, make sure no predators are stealing honey and check on their general health. I should be an expert by now, right? Wrong. I am still a peon, but happy to use a heavy smoker to calm down the bees while I sweat and choke on the burning corn cobs or scrap wood. (Photo: Victoria and Me, gearing up)
In the tropics, the harvest takes place in the dry season, when the bees are producing the most honey. We harvest 3 times during this season: ideally once in January, the main harvest in February and the final, smaller harvest in March. We have so far harvested 2x: the first yielded about 15 gallons and the second about 5 gallons of delicious honey. There should be a final harvest coming soon, but the rains came a bit early and so we might leave what’s left so that the population can continue to thrive. As I gather, honey production slows when the rains come because the bees don’t have as much time to gather nectar and pollen from nearby flowers (They don't fly well when their wings get wet?). (Photo: Victoria holds the 'marco' while Maribela uses a fork to break the honeycomb seal, preparing to extract the honey)
I’m not sure how they do it in other places of the world, but my ladies tell me that the harvest has to be done at night. The bees don’t see well so it’s easier to steal their honey in the dark. Even at night, though, they are extremely aggressive and can see enough to find the smallest hole to climb in and sting you like crazy. I wore several layers of thick clothes and even a jacket that I’ve used for snowboarding (in the spring) and I STILL got stung many times! After we stole the honey, we put it in a steal drum that has a handle to literally spin the honey out of the comb. It’s tough. When that was done at about 3am, we had to haul all that sweet bee juice up the mountain and down the street far-far away from where the bees live. If it’s too close, they will come find it and eat it all before morning. I have no idea if that’s a fact or just a local legend. (Photo: Maribela's boys hold down the honeycomb spinner while the older one spins)
So now we’ve got tons of honey to sell and are focusing on selling more of it in small quantities to tourists in David (Panama’s second largest city), rather than the intermediary that buys it all at once at a huge discount. Ounce per ounce, the group's profits are much higher this way. For all their hard-earned, year-round bee-keeping work, they deserve it.
I also recently spent a few days in Costa Rica learning about a green-building technique (anyone else sick of that buzzword yet?) called “cob”. Instead of using wood or concrete for house construction, the cob method takes clay, sand, cow poo and straw to make ¨bricks¨ that are used for the walls of the structure. No, it doesn’t smell like a barn… after it dries! It’s relatively simple, cheap and commonly used around the world. A few old friends from my Charleston days and I bussed it up to Costa Rica to an amazing place called Rancho Mastatal. The couple that owns the Rancho and over 500 acres of land that borders Cangreja National Park met in the Peace Corps several years ago and opened the Rancho as a learning center and sustainable living systems model. Over the years, interns and volunteers have come and contributed their skills and learned in the process. The results are beautiful and inspiring. See photos below and on Flickr.
(Photos: Various cob and bamboo hybrid building designs at Rancho Mastatal)
Back in Cerro Iglesias, the rains have begun! And the ¨honeymoon¨ (as Adam calls it) with my new house is officially over or near it. In the corner of the thatch roof, where it is hard to get a tight seal, water has found a way in. The first downpour came at 1am the other night and woke me up, frenzied, looking for a way to stop the massive leak that was splashing all over my books and clothes. I was up all night with a flashlight, looking for more leaks. The coming of the rain marks an important change in seasons. First, I won't be using the solar oven any more (sad), but more importantly for the village-folk, it means that the slash and burn traditional style of preparing the land will stop very soon. We will be planting corn and rice in the coming 2 months. The aquifers will slowly start to fill up, as water has been in short supply or no supply for several months. The mud boots will come out again soon and the umbrella will never leave my side until December.
This week a friend who just finished Peace Corps Ecuador is visiting and is going to help me build a trial cob oven so the baking can continue even in the rain! Mango season is not far off either, so get ready to see some pictures of delicious mango-baked products coming soon!
In the tropics, the harvest takes place in the dry season, when the bees are producing the most honey. We harvest 3 times during this season: ideally once in January, the main harvest in February and the final, smaller harvest in March. We have so far harvested 2x: the first yielded about 15 gallons and the second about 5 gallons of delicious honey. There should be a final harvest coming soon, but the rains came a bit early and so we might leave what’s left so that the population can continue to thrive. As I gather, honey production slows when the rains come because the bees don’t have as much time to gather nectar and pollen from nearby flowers (They don't fly well when their wings get wet?). (Photo: Victoria holds the 'marco' while Maribela uses a fork to break the honeycomb seal, preparing to extract the honey)
I’m not sure how they do it in other places of the world, but my ladies tell me that the harvest has to be done at night. The bees don’t see well so it’s easier to steal their honey in the dark. Even at night, though, they are extremely aggressive and can see enough to find the smallest hole to climb in and sting you like crazy. I wore several layers of thick clothes and even a jacket that I’ve used for snowboarding (in the spring) and I STILL got stung many times! After we stole the honey, we put it in a steal drum that has a handle to literally spin the honey out of the comb. It’s tough. When that was done at about 3am, we had to haul all that sweet bee juice up the mountain and down the street far-far away from where the bees live. If it’s too close, they will come find it and eat it all before morning. I have no idea if that’s a fact or just a local legend. (Photo: Maribela's boys hold down the honeycomb spinner while the older one spins)
So now we’ve got tons of honey to sell and are focusing on selling more of it in small quantities to tourists in David (Panama’s second largest city), rather than the intermediary that buys it all at once at a huge discount. Ounce per ounce, the group's profits are much higher this way. For all their hard-earned, year-round bee-keeping work, they deserve it.
I also recently spent a few days in Costa Rica learning about a green-building technique (anyone else sick of that buzzword yet?) called “cob”. Instead of using wood or concrete for house construction, the cob method takes clay, sand, cow poo and straw to make ¨bricks¨ that are used for the walls of the structure. No, it doesn’t smell like a barn… after it dries! It’s relatively simple, cheap and commonly used around the world. A few old friends from my Charleston days and I bussed it up to Costa Rica to an amazing place called Rancho Mastatal. The couple that owns the Rancho and over 500 acres of land that borders Cangreja National Park met in the Peace Corps several years ago and opened the Rancho as a learning center and sustainable living systems model. Over the years, interns and volunteers have come and contributed their skills and learned in the process. The results are beautiful and inspiring. See photos below and on Flickr.
(Photos: Various cob and bamboo hybrid building designs at Rancho Mastatal)
Back in Cerro Iglesias, the rains have begun! And the ¨honeymoon¨ (as Adam calls it) with my new house is officially over or near it. In the corner of the thatch roof, where it is hard to get a tight seal, water has found a way in. The first downpour came at 1am the other night and woke me up, frenzied, looking for a way to stop the massive leak that was splashing all over my books and clothes. I was up all night with a flashlight, looking for more leaks. The coming of the rain marks an important change in seasons. First, I won't be using the solar oven any more (sad), but more importantly for the village-folk, it means that the slash and burn traditional style of preparing the land will stop very soon. We will be planting corn and rice in the coming 2 months. The aquifers will slowly start to fill up, as water has been in short supply or no supply for several months. The mud boots will come out again soon and the umbrella will never leave my side until December.
This week a friend who just finished Peace Corps Ecuador is visiting and is going to help me build a trial cob oven so the baking can continue even in the rain! Mango season is not far off either, so get ready to see some pictures of delicious mango-baked products coming soon!
Place to call home, Part Deux
The house is done. We finished over a month ago, right on schedule. Building a house is simultaneously one of the most frustrating and rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. Doing it all off the grid adds a whole other dimension of challenges, but it was worth it all because this is probably the cutest house I’ll ever live in (with the most amazing view)! There is a video up on Vimeo if anyone wants to take the virtual tour ( http://www.vimeo.com/3636491 ). Warning- watch it on a laptop because you’ll need to turn the screen sideways to compensate for my horrid filming skills. As soon as I got settled into the new place, my parents and brother came to visit for a week! It was a blast to show them around the community and introduce them to all my favorite people here. I was nervous that they weren’t going to be able to rough it here, but they sure proved me wrong! They were great! We did a lot of hiking and endured insanely hot conditions with limited water supply. I am also very thankful that they brought my old mountain bike down so I can start exploring further into the depths of the Comarca. Having the bike opens a whole new world of freedom for me and I can’t wait to get out there! On my debut ride the other day, however, I got 3 flat tires. People that know me well, know how crazy I am about cycling, but not many know that I’ve never had a flat tire. Not even when I rode a good 400+ miles of the CA HWY 1 last year. I found a team of little kids along the trail to help me out, luckily. Together, we gave it 3 tries before a 6 yr old firmly told me that the tube was done and needed to be replaced. I took his advice and walked the bike home that day. Since then, I’ve been out on a few great rides along ridge roads with beautiful mountain views.
(Photos: my 'pit' crew gathering around the bike, family photo in Cerro Iglesias)
Other than hanging out in the hammock at my new place and planning for future bike rides and hikes to remote places, I’ve been busy with lots of activities in the community. The knitting class continues to go strong and is growing with every class. I will be starting another class in a different community soon, because the word got out and now those ladies want to pick up the sticks and make stuff! Thanks to my mother for hauling down more than 30 lbs of donated yarn so that these classes can continue! Many thanks also to the ladies who contributed yarn – it will be put to great use! I will, however, charge my group a very small amount (between 5 and 50 cents) for the yarn, because they need to know that in the ¨real¨ world, things don’t always come free. They will take more ownership, care and interest if they are purchasing it themselves (even though it is super-subsidized). With the money I will either have a party for them, elect a few ladies to bring to a knitting seminar that another volunteer wants to organize or purchase more supplies when we run out. The coffee group is still trying to get organized to obtain the legal documents to have access to a loan that will help jump-start their local coffee processing and sales force. Recently, the leading presidential candidate came to Cerro Iglesias and offered to donate badly needed resources that the group needs to continue down this path. Politicians are full of broken promises, but I have a pretty good feeling about this one. I have worked with one family (Jorge’s) to roast and package coffee that we sold at a Peace Corps leadership seminar a few months ago. He made $30 in 10 minutes! The other major activity recently has been harvesting honey with a few brave ladies in the artisan group. What an exhausting but exhilarating task! The next blog entry will detail that process. It’s intense.
(Photos: Roasted coffee we made to sell, Hello honey bee!, Liliana roasting coffee in a huge pot, Zulieka knits her first bag)
Thursday, February 5, 2009
A place to call home
In October, when I moved from a host family into the former volunteer’s homemade hut, I decided that the humble abode wouldn’t make it much longer and that a new house must be built. My vision was simple. Just a typical Ngäbe house made out of bamboo walls and thatch roof, much smaller than the current house and in a better location that includes a view of the Pacific. The house will be 12’x8’ with a lofted bed, which is larger than my last apartment, but fairly small as far as houses are concerned. Considering these modest requests, one might think that this small structure could be done in a weekend. Not so fast. That would be un-Panamanian. It seems impossible that since that time we have made such little progress, but hey, this is all part of the learning process, right?
Its very easy to blame the lack of organization and the absence of urgency in this culture, but its more complicated than it appears on the surface. For starters, successful construction only happens in the dry season, so October and November were out for gathering materials. The Ngäbes cut wood (and plant crops) according to the moon cycles. Wood can only be cut here in the second week of the waning moon. On top of that, the tide must be low in order to cut any materials that a house would require, primarily: bamboo, palm leaves (thatch) and straight, strong trees (branches for support beams; trunks for 2x4s). Considering these restrictions, this leaves about 7 days in a month, but only 4 hours in the day to cut the materials. If all of this sounds a bit loco, well, I agree. However, once upon a time, there was another volunteer who didn’t have paciencia (patience) and demanded his wood be cut on a certain date, which happened to fall on a full moon. 3 weeks later, his house was devoured by termites and fell to the ground. So, I’m practicing my patience and holding out in the old hut that is quickly being reclaimed by nature. I haven't decided if I’m living harmoniously with nature here or constantly fighting against her and her nasty creatures.
Finally, in December, when the rains stopped, we were able to cut the materials, in accordance with the moon and the tides, of course. The owner of the land where the new house is to be built and friend of mine, Florentino, was in charge of finding other community members that have the materials growing on their land. The part of Cerro Iglesias where I live is comparatively populated, almost urban in comparison to traditional Ngäbe living arrangements, so materials come from about an hour away. Once the materials are sourced, strong men are hired to cut and haul them on their backs or with a horse to the road. From the road we hired a pickup truck to drive it up to the top of the mountain where I live. These negotiations are sometimes even further complicated by differing ideas of how much material is needed to complete the job. For example, I paid a man $8 to cut the quantity of thatch needed to provide my roof, however, after he had cut what he claimed was enough, other community members told me it was not even half of the amount needed. I ended up paying another $5 for more thatch. So, I guess I paid $13 for my roof. I'm sure this sounds ridiculously cheap, but in the Comarca that is an absolute rip-off.
So far, we have 4 posts in the ground and piles of split bamboo just waiting to be become walls. Florentino tells me that he's had a hard time finding people to work for the competitive wage of $5/day, plus lunch. If that's an indicator of high local employment rate, I guess I cannot argue. But I tend to think it's more of a lack of motivation on his part or perhaps just the complete absence of urgency. So the battle for my idyllic hut in the jungle continues, but is nearing the end. New deadline is February 15.
(Photos of the work in progress)
Its very easy to blame the lack of organization and the absence of urgency in this culture, but its more complicated than it appears on the surface. For starters, successful construction only happens in the dry season, so October and November were out for gathering materials. The Ngäbes cut wood (and plant crops) according to the moon cycles. Wood can only be cut here in the second week of the waning moon. On top of that, the tide must be low in order to cut any materials that a house would require, primarily: bamboo, palm leaves (thatch) and straight, strong trees (branches for support beams; trunks for 2x4s). Considering these restrictions, this leaves about 7 days in a month, but only 4 hours in the day to cut the materials. If all of this sounds a bit loco, well, I agree. However, once upon a time, there was another volunteer who didn’t have paciencia (patience) and demanded his wood be cut on a certain date, which happened to fall on a full moon. 3 weeks later, his house was devoured by termites and fell to the ground. So, I’m practicing my patience and holding out in the old hut that is quickly being reclaimed by nature. I haven't decided if I’m living harmoniously with nature here or constantly fighting against her and her nasty creatures.
Finally, in December, when the rains stopped, we were able to cut the materials, in accordance with the moon and the tides, of course. The owner of the land where the new house is to be built and friend of mine, Florentino, was in charge of finding other community members that have the materials growing on their land. The part of Cerro Iglesias where I live is comparatively populated, almost urban in comparison to traditional Ngäbe living arrangements, so materials come from about an hour away. Once the materials are sourced, strong men are hired to cut and haul them on their backs or with a horse to the road. From the road we hired a pickup truck to drive it up to the top of the mountain where I live. These negotiations are sometimes even further complicated by differing ideas of how much material is needed to complete the job. For example, I paid a man $8 to cut the quantity of thatch needed to provide my roof, however, after he had cut what he claimed was enough, other community members told me it was not even half of the amount needed. I ended up paying another $5 for more thatch. So, I guess I paid $13 for my roof. I'm sure this sounds ridiculously cheap, but in the Comarca that is an absolute rip-off.
So far, we have 4 posts in the ground and piles of split bamboo just waiting to be become walls. Florentino tells me that he's had a hard time finding people to work for the competitive wage of $5/day, plus lunch. If that's an indicator of high local employment rate, I guess I cannot argue. But I tend to think it's more of a lack of motivation on his part or perhaps just the complete absence of urgency. So the battle for my idyllic hut in the jungle continues, but is nearing the end. New deadline is February 15.
(Photos of the work in progress)
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