Shine On, Church Hill

(My solar phone charger)

For better or worse, the culture of the Comarca is rapidly changing. Government initiatives to push infrastructure in the form of roads, housing projects, and food stamp programs in exchange for vaccinating children and sending them to school have been more influential to social and economic development here than Peace Corps could ever hope to be. Thanks to a stable government that generates sufficient income from the canal, Panama is able to provide some social investments, although many would argue that it’s not enough: about 90% of Ngöbe people living in the Comarca live below the poverty line.

Just two years ago one had to hike in from an hour away to get to Cerro Iglesias because the road was nothing more than a muddy trail that trucks could not reliably navigate. In that time, local stores had the barebones necessities and few people could work or study outside of the community. For the most part, they were confined to these beautiful mountains. Now, however, we have a road that is three-quarters of the way paved to the top (the government ran out of money to pave the whole thing). Community members can now hold steady jobs in the nearby Latino town, San Felix, and more kids are able to attend high school there as well. The road allows many more material goods to come to us, such as the beloved vegetable truck, the egg truck and even the fish truck! Having access to a road certainly changes one’s quality of life and it is evident that Cerro Iglesias has grown substantially over the past 2 years. Is their natural next step towards assimilation into the modern world to have access to electricity? It appears so.

A few months back, I wrote a formal letter to solicit support for my latrine project from the Honorable Representante (similar to a mayor). He responded that he could be of no service to me because all of the money within his jurisdiction for community projects was going to be used to bring the electric lines to town. These lines, of course, would only be installed along the main road, where people live in more permanent houses (most built for free by the government or by relatives working in the capital). Typically, these road-dwellers have more steady incomes and are therefore more likely to be able to pay utility fees. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the population that live scattered in the mountains are drastically poorer and do not even have basic necessities such as running water or sanitary facilities! So why would our mayor want to put the cart before the horse?

A friend who recently finished her Peace Corps service questioned my logic, “Don’t you want your community to have electricity? Isn’t that a good thing?” I thought about it. Was my reaction illogical? Don’t roads and electricity represent development? Aren’t I a community development worker? Shouldn’t I be excited about electricity coming and the new opportunities that they community will have to… develop?

Perhaps I had idealistic hopes that Cerro Iglesias would leapfrog traditional electricity grids and progress to more sustainable systems such as solar or bio-digester power. While some have solar panels (thanks to the Spanish and Taiwanese governments), more of the well-to-do (that’s a relative term) families somehow have purchased gas-powered generators, which are terrible noise polluters and I’d imagine are incredibly inefficient. Generators also have a disadvantage because they require that someone leave the community and spend half a day to fill up gas containers to then haul back into the community.

But my main problem here isn’t the source of the electricity, but rather, the use of the electricity. Electricity will not just bring lights to road-dwellers, but also the number one culture-killer: the television.

I conducted an informal survey recently to prove my suspicions about what sort of changes electricity would actually have in Cerro Iglesias. Not to my surprise, nearly everyone excitedly explained that they would buy, after light bulbs, a television. If you thought that daytime television and reality TV shows in the US were a waste, I promise the telenovela is 100x less intellectually engaging. Author Jerry Mander once wrote, “TV has even worse impacts on indigenous people, causing them to lose their traditional cultural practices, making them adopt a Western lifestyle of conspicuous consumption, and severing their connection with nature and the sacred.” Hence, I fear that electricity will change the landscape of my adopted home.

So call it development or evolution or assimilation, but its undeniably inevitable: the lights are coming. If they are lucky they will find a way, perhaps through promoting eco-ethnic-tourism, to preserve their unique culture. My beloved Church Hill will sure look different when I visit within the next 5 or 10 years. I just hope that they still speak their native Ngöbere, wear those bright zig-zag dresses and cherish the tranquilo life style that makes this place so special.


(breaker box in our new municipal building)


(Traditional Ngobe lady next to a shiny new car)

Support Haiti

This is old news by now, but I just wanted to share with everyone that if you haven't supported Haiti either financially or otherwise, consider this:

My little community, where the average daily wage is about $5, is raising funds through their local church to send to their hermanos in Haiti. They are poor, but they are not desperate. The Panamanian government, in fact, has also sent in 22 rescue workers and 15 tons of food and medical supplies.

As many of you know, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. It is a nation that is all too often torn apart by national disasters and political instability.

My dear friend, Alex Cottin, is in Haiti now, working on the relief effort. He works for Merlin, an international nonprofit working to bring medical care and services to countries devastated by conflict, disease and disaster. Although I promised I would not be soliciting more financial support, I urge everyone to chip in for this cause. Click HERE to learn more about Merlin and donate.

If the wonderful people of Cerro Iglesias can give a little, you can too!

(Below: Text message donation that I sent to Haiti: $0.50 at a time)

Home for the Holidays

(Roasting marshmellows for S'mores in the kitchen!)

I’ve been absent lately, both in body and mind, from the Comarca.

As if the torrential downpours and persistence of mud aren’t enough to turn one into an antisocial recluse during the Panamanian winter, over the past few months I have also become so self-absorbed with my post-Peace Corps academic/career goals that I lost touch with my surroundings. I became afflicted with an inner battle that wanted to be present and engaged in the community, but needed to focus on a future plan. Looking back, however, I suppose it was a means to an (hopeful) end. Nevertheless, it takes a lot of work and a consistent presence in the community to maintain a feeling of integration here and, despite winter, I haven’t been pulling my weight.

I can write about all of this now, because suddenly and quiet drastically, it’s over. One day, a few weeks ago, it just stopped raining. Just like that. The instant switch from winter rains to summer drought in Panama never ceases to amaze me. Likewise, with my future fate currently out of my hands, I have hastily emerged from my egocentric bubble and returned to the social butterfly that I truly am. Furthermore, the start of summer means I have a lot of exciting work on the horizon: latrine construction, honey harvest and the launch of a new coffee toasting business here in Cerro Iglesias!

I felt that spending the holidays at home, in the Comarca, would be a great way for me to re-integrate my mind back into the world of the people I have come to adore over the past year and a half. I did my best to create the essence of Christmas with candy canes, carols and paper cutout snow flakes, but the true spirit of the holidays is sharing time and space with the ones you care about most deeply. Although I would have loved to have been with my real family back in the States, my Cerro Iglesias family is the center of my world right now and I wanted nothing more than to be sharing lukewarm coffee and fresh guandú (pigeon peas) with them for the holidays!

So, with solar cooking and beekeeping on my agenda for tomorrow, I return, happily, to the moment!

Below are a few holiday pics from my Re-Integration-as-Full-Time-Peace-Corps-Volunteer-Again Week!

(Fresh guandú)

(Me and Luz on Christmas morning)

(The S'mores were a big hit)

(Mother's Day celebration in December)

(Mamá and me (she's dressed to the nines in her 'Finding Nemo' nagwa!))

Agribusiness, Peace Corps Panama Style

(Hilario, our coffee association president, and me, checking out the coffee trees)

When one hears the word agribusiness, mega-giants like Monsanto and Cargill might come to mind. As Peace Corps volunteers in Panama, however, the term agribusiness has a much less egregious tone. Our work pertains to communities that are typically off the map and living in poverty, and thus, our definition of agribusiness is small-scale, family or community based farming activities that are or have the potential to earn income. Examples of these activities range from selling surplus oranges or beans to a community coffee-growers association selling coffee beans in the national market to something more sophisticated, such as producing multiple hectors of hot peppers to be exported for Tabasco Sauce.

Whatever the activity may be, farmers we work with typically have had very little formal education. While they are incredibly knowledgeable about the land and the crops they produce, they sometimes lack the skills to be savvy businesspeople. Peace Corps’s Agribusiness Initiative seeks to bridge that gap. A few months ago I became the co-coordinator of this initiative here in Panama and in that time have been working to streamline our educational materials. Our training seminars walk farmers through farm planning techniques and fundamental business skills such as accounting, finance, marketing, quality control and distribution. We also focus on empowering farmers by de-mystifying legal contracts, bank loans and crop insurance policies and strengthening their relationships with buyers and government support agencies.

(Me leading a session on farm planning at an Agribusiness Seminar in the Darien, May 2009)

Currently, we are planning 3 agribusiness seminars for the first half of 2010 with a goal of training about 100 farmers on these important skills. The first of these seminars will be held in February in Bocas del Toro and we need YOUR help to make it a success! This region of the country, famous for its beautiful Caribbean islands, is home to many poor banana and cacao farmers. We are raising money through the official Peace Corps Partnership (grant) Program to provide transportation, lodging and food for our participants. Peace Corps volunteers have no access to funds, so we count on the Panamanian government and donations from around the world to fund our work. I know many of you donated or wanted to donate my latrine project, but if you are looking to still support my work in Panama, this is a very worthy (and tax-deductible) cause!

Please click HERE to be directed to our Agribusiness Seminar donation page on the Peace Corps Partnership website. On a side note, this grant is not in my name, but my fellow volunteer and friend that lives in Bocas del Toro, Janell Henry, from Ohio. Thanks a million! And I promise this will be my last pitch for financial support! Happy Holidays!

(Merry Ngobe Christmas. Stockings made with the familiar Ngobes zig-zags)

Huge thanks to all of you who supported the latrine project!

Wow! I am shocked and amazed at how quickly this grant was funded!

I want to express my deepest appreciation to all of you who gave your financial support to make this project a reality. I still do not know who you are so please contact me if you made a donation so that I may extend my personal thanks to you! The Peace Corps Partnership grant does not allow me to see who donated until long after the project is completely finished (or next May).

Your efforts will be great news for Miguel, the president of our latrine committee and the whole community of Quebrada Pabón. Although it is still raining way to much to start any kind of construction, I might be able to get a head start on the latrine seats now that the grant has been funded ahead of schedule! Nothing happens ahead of schedule here... wouldn't that be fun to see if I can actually pull it off!

For those of you that were thinking about donating or were planning to, there are LOTS of other great projects going on here in Panama that could use your support! I will be blogging about them soon in case anyone is interested.

More on the latrine project and other tales from the Comarca, soon!

Many thanks,

Kat

(Above: Miguel, the latrine committee president and myself, the white giant in a bright new nagwa)

(Happy Birthday Panama! Independence Day from Colombia, November 3rd! Parades are a huge deal around here)

Project Outhouse: The story, the solution and how you can take part!

Hello friends, family, colleagues and those who have been directed to this site via word of mouth or at the request of my # 1 fans (aka- my parents!)! I invite you to read on about the framework of Project Outhouse and encourage you to consider a contribution towards its success!

The situation

As some or most of you know by now, I have been working on a variety of community economic and social development projects since arriving in the Comarca Ngöbe-Buglé in western Panama just over a year ago. Most of my work has been about education and capacity building such as writing small business plans, home gardening classes, and beekeeping training sessions. My next project is about infrastructure, a welcomed change to the somewhat intangible soft skills that have been my focus up to this point. I have committed to helping a nearby community with dedicated leaders on fulfilling a basic need: latrines (AKA the outhouse, the loo, water closet, whatever you want to call it)! The community of Quebrada Pabón consists of about 20 families and has been consistently left out of nearly all development projects that have come to the area. While Cerro Iglesias, the larger hub community I live in, is soliciting the government to bring electricity, Quebrada Pabón, less than an hour hike away, does not have running water nor do they have access to latrines. What does that mean to their community health? Without access to running water, children are sent to fetch water from nearby rivers and streams. Without access to latrines, people do what they’ve been doing for centuries and do their business in the outdoor bidet. Read between the lines: the rivers and streams are being contaminated and then water buckets are filled for cooking. Now, this seems like an obvious no-no, but a generation or two ago, there just was not the same population density, so the community’s health was not nearly as effected. In a culture where each woman is expected to have between 5 and 10 children, exponential population growth has caused all sorts of complex issues that have had negative effects on agricultural practices, land disputes and public health. Lack of access to clean water is a well-known and common cause of illness especially in children. The following comes from the UNICEF website: "Almost fifty per cent of the developing world’s population – 2.5 billion people – lack improved sanitation facilities, and over 884 million people still use unsafe drinking water sources. Inadequate access to safe water and sanitation services, coupled with poor hygiene practices, kills and sickens thousands of children every day, and leads to impoverishment and diminished opportunities for thousands more."

Providing access to latrines in Quebrada Pabón is just one step to solving this massive global issue.

(Nearby waterfall with a great swimming hole)

The solution

The community leaders in Quebrada Pabón are aware and concerned with this public health issue. They have contacted local government representatives and gotten no support up to this point. Almost a year ago now, Miguel, a dedicated leader in the community (see photo below) contacted me to start soliciting support for this project. His approach to this project very much embodied a spirit of collaboration and I was impressed! The project that we are proposing is to build 20 latrines in the community of Quebrada Pabón by next May. Our goal is to reach those who have never had a latrine and to inspire a cultural shift towards using latrines. We will educate the community on the benefits of latrines and the hazards of not using them properly.

I will be present for the construction of each of the latrines this projects seeks to build. Yes, I plan to become an expert at mixing concrete the old fashion way. There are several experienced volunteers in the area who have offered to provide guidance and assistance. The design of the concrete latrine floor includes handles so that when the latrine fills, the floor and seat can be lifted and used in a new location, hence, its benefits will be reaped for decades.

(Above: Meet Miguel, our latrine committee president and the sweetest man you'll ever meet)

The project in the context of sustainable development

The underlying question that we ask ourselves everyday as Peace Corps volunteers is “how can we make this project or activity sustainable?” Our goal is to promote development in a way that does not fuel the “give-me” mentality that feeds a feeling of poverty, a force more degrading than actual poverty. For that reason, Peace Corps provides its volunteers with no project funds and most of our work is educational and motivational in nature. However, this project seeks to provide basic infrastructural need that will improve the general health of the community and thus I am seeking your financial support. Good health is essential for getting on the first rung of the ladder out of poverty and without it all other development projects are hopeless.

Community contribution

The Peace Corps Partnership program recognizes the importance of community contribution in the context of project sustainability and requires that the beneficiary community support 25% of the project costs. Quebrada Pabón has committed to cover 45% of the costs for this project including: all of the labor costs, materials such as sand and gravel, all local transportation of materials (i.e. hauling 100 lb bags of cement on their backs or by horse for nearly an hour to arrive to the construction site). Each participant will be required to attend a series of educational seminars given by myself and other volunteers covering topics such as how to maintain cleaner water sources and how to avoid illnesses spread through water contamination. In addition to the hard labor and time contributed by the community, I wanted to ensure a sense of financial ownership, so I am asking every family to pay $5 towards the purchase of materials. As an added incentive to complete the project in a timely manner (before I leave next June), I am offering a $2 rebate to each family that successfully completes their latrine and is using it properly within the first month.

How your contribution will impact the project

You, the generous donor, will supply the funds to purchase materials that must come from outside of the community to make this project happen. These materials include mainly: cement, rebar, a seat mold, sheets of zinc for the roof and a few tools such as a cement trowel and a shovel. Peace Corps has strict reporting policies in place, so you can be rest assured that 100% of your tax-deductible donation will be managed properly and used only to purchase latrine materials and pay for the transportation of those materials.

I trust that this description has provided you with a more (or more than enough) detailed explanation of the project than I was allowed to post on the Peace Corps Partnership Grant website. I hope that you will please consider even a small contribution for this project. There is no amount too small! Your contribution is greatly appreciated and will leave a lasting effect in the Comarca Ngöbe Bugle!

Please feel free to contact me for any additional questions or clarifications. If you do choose to make a donation, please let me know so I can shower you with praise! Peace Corps Partnership website does not make any donor information available to me so I will not know who has donated unless you let me know. Thanks again for your support. Click here to be linked to the official page.

All the best,

Kat

(Photo above by Edward Perry, me with the girls)

It's undeniably fall in the Comarca

(Household chores: clipping weeds to make a broom and dehusking rice)



(Welcome to winter/rainy season in the Comarca)

While most of the people reading this are probably enjoying the red, yellow and orange leaves of fall, the Comarca couldn’t be any greener. When I think of fall I imagine fresh apple cider, crisp mornings and pumpkin pies. Fall in the Comarca is officially known as winter and its most notable feature is the insane amount of rainfall.

(Aji dulce, sweet peppers provide some color and joy to my bowls of fresh rice, also reminds me of fall leaves.. ok, that's a stretch!)

For several days now, we’ve just been sitting in the clouds. The sun hasn’t bothered to make even a brief appearance. I wonder if down below at the beach it is also raining or if the rain clouds are just stuck on Church Hill. Without the sun, the solar panels at the cooperative are useless and cell phones go dead. Too much rain seems to be making the phone networks loose coverage anyway. Although we are not officially in a cloud forest, it sure feels like it. They pass right through my bamboo walls, leaving heavy wet dew on everything. Even the toilet paper is just a little too damp for comfort and now must be kept in a zip lock bag. My clothes and sheets have long since been covered with mold and its no use to wash them because they’d never dry. So, the battle with nature continues and I seem to be losing. It must be fall in the Comarca!

If I sound miserable, I assure you that I am not. All of the rain and mud has kept me indoors and has provided an excellent excuse for deep introspection. But as soon as my propane stove broke I was out of town on the next car. Life without hot beverages is just not worth living.

(Coffee drying on screens under a plastic roof that we received from the President of Panama- more on the coffee progress another day)

The only similarity between fall in the States and fall here is perhaps that its harvest season! Most notably: corn, rice, cacao and coffee. Also, many people are enjoying tomatoes, cucumbers and squash (thanks to Mr. Eadie for the seed donations – see previous entry).

(I helped out with the rice harvest with the family of my "mama")

The other obvious sign of fall in the Comarca and all over Panama is the sound of school bands for miles around. There are not one but two Independence Day celebrations coming up (… although I think they should consider a third one from the US!). From my house I can hear the drums and xylophones from several surrounding communities, depending on which way the wind is blowing. They practice rain or flood, every single day. The Independence Day school band parades are very serious business here. There are competitions and cash prizes and lots of pride to be won. (Check out the xylophone video that I posted on Flickr - it was too big for this site)

(Farmers market at the school! So much is in season right now!)

The Ngöbes have recently made national news here. Angry with international companies’ self-serving interests in mining, hydroelectric and tourism (there is no real tourism going on here, so I don’t understand that one), they have organized a 230-mile long, hot march to Panama City to protest. They even have a website dedicated to this cause! For a typically stoic, passive people, this is quite remarkable and I commend them for being passionate and standing up for their territory. However, I do believe that good old fashion protesting is in most cases, a waste of resources, especially if you do not have a strong political voice. This undoubtedly small group of protesters was not from my community. It seems, however, that revolutionary Ngöbe spirit is in the air. My community recently decided that after nearly 2 years of putting up with the director of the school, a Latina who they say did not respect their culture; they ousted her from the position. The entire community protested by not sending their kids to school for 8 days. The school is a hub for several communities within about a 3-hour radius of Cerro Iglesias and about 1000 children in all attend. Not one of them went to school until finally, the government had to do something about it. They officially fired her and named a new director of the school. I was so shocked and slightly inspired by this collaborative community effort. The kids are now back in school and the band practice is in full force, rain or flood.

(Some of the various products in season at the school farmers market (coconut, green beans, chayote, yucca, tomato, peppers, oranges, rice, corn, bananas)

Girl stands next to the healthy cucumber plants (seeds provided Mr. Eadie of Davidson, NC))

(Bebé (just turned 2!) helps his family rake the coffee every few hours so that it dries before it molds)

(Ripe cacao pod ready for making chocolate!)