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.

For now, I am delighted to be back in Panama - land of Noah’s Arc rainstorms, a sweet and watery substance called coffee, and copious bowls of white rice.

(I saw all of my favorites back in the US:)

(Laura shows off her big blue eyes)

(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)

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: Same shot of Cerro Iglesias in rainy season)

  

 

(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)

 

 

 

 

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!

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)

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)

Happy New Year!

Just like in the States, the end of December and beginning of January is a notoriously unproductive time of year. It’s no different in Panama. Although, we have some strongly devote Christians in Cerro Iglesias, they don’t really celebrate Christmas the way we do in the States. Neither in the commercialized, nor in the religious sense. There is no snow, no caroling, no lights, no nativity scenes, no gifts, no ugly holiday sweater parties with friends. It’s all pretty much the same as usual around here. Other than family members now working in the cities and returning to visit their hometown, there was nothing Christmas-y about being in the Comarca. Panama City, on the other hand, was filled with gaudy Coca-Cola sponsored Christmas trees and oddly placed plastic decorations of a white Santa going down a snowy chimney, with large animals from the north pole parked on the roof. You’d think they would make it more culturally appropriate. Maybe a middle-aged, overweight and drunk Latino man in a red spandex Speedo, with his sombrero and machete, riding in on a horse and bringing bags of rice and sugar to scared little kids? To avoid the non-Christmas-y Christmas in site, I decided to spend the holiday with some friends in the San Blas Islands in the Caribbean. Kuna Yala, to be specific. It was a good choice.




The Kuna are another indigenous group here in Panama that have mostly separated themselves from the Panamanian government but have their support for building roads, schools, etc. They have tactfully learned to exploit their indigenousness and beautiful landscape to attract the adventure traveler, such as myself. I found it the right mix of both cultural and geographic beauty (and not too expensive). The locals even invited us to a “coming of age” party for a young girl in the village. The men made a small, dark tent out of sticks and leaves for the girl to be locked inside of for 5 days, while the town had a big party. The men drink, the women eat and that poor girl remains confined to darkness. How do these brutal traditions get started?

For the New Year, I traveled up to the fun, but touristy islands of Bocas del Toro. Also in the Caribbean, but less beautiful than Kuna Yala, these islands are a cultural melting pot of Afro-Antilleans, Latinos, ex-pats, tourists, and indigenous groups like the Ngabes and Kunas. It was really nice to finally see some diversity, but it’s an expensive place to hang out on a Peace Corps budget. Nonetheless, we had a great time. On New Years day we rented bikes and rode 20km to the other side of the island, stopping to see some bat-filled caves on the way.

Back in Cerro Iglesias, I’m slowly getting back into my routine of working with various groups, primarily the artisan/bee group (honey harvest is just weeks away), the Tabasco pepper farmers (who are looking for funding for a small irrigation pump to be able to harvest peppers in the dry season) and the coffee group (who is filing for the legal documents to obtain a loan and expand their business). I also recently started a knitting group, thanks to another volunteer’s donation of yarn/needles and the expertise of Laura, a dear friend who visited recently. We are 8 ladies strong and they are picking it up fast! Actually, I think they are already better than I am at it. Most of them already crochet colorful purses that everyone uses here (men and women alike) called chackras but they enjoy picking up a new skill. Perhaps we can start a new knitted-bag trend in the Comarca!



(photos of Kuna Yala sail boat, my new knitting group, and the honey bees)

Happy Holidays from the Caribbean!

Since last time I wrote, everything (at least in my region) has dried up! The region of Bocas del Toro is still recovering from the damages from last months floods, however. Where I live, we are officially in summer which means no rain for the next 3 months. My umbrella is now primarily used as a parasol. The days are scortching hot and the nights are relatively freezing. It's a welcoming change from the gloomy rain.

For Christmas, I'm heading out to the beautiful white, sandy beaches of Kuna Yala with a few friends. A pickup truck will drive us from Panama City to the boat launch. They tell us only reachable by 4x4 vehicle and about 4 hrs to get there. Kuna Yala is another indigenous group in Panama that are probably the most famous (there are 7 altogether in the country). Unlike the Ngabes that I live with, the Kuna Yala are extremely organized and set up for tourists. The cover of the Lonely Planet guide to Panama features an island from this region. Pictures coming soon!

Merry Christmas to all!