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!)

Healthier soil = healthier crops = healthier people

(Ladies showing off their fruit and vegetable seeds for home gardens)

Recently I’ve done a series of seminars with various communities and groups in and around Cerro Iglesias that encourages the use of organic soil making to produce healthier crops and ultimately healthier people. My focus was working with mostly women and teenagers to promote home gardens. This seminar series was inspired by a very nice donation of fruit and vegetable seeds I received from a dear family friend, Mr. Eadie of Davidson, NC. The seeds came from a neat organization called Seed Programs Inc. Mr. Eadie provided me with several hundred seed packs including: tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, collards, watermelon and cabbage. Instead of handing out seeds haphazardly in the community, I felt that education was important and I could touch on important themes such as organic soils/fertilizers and nutrition/health in addition to providing seeds for home gardens.

Soil:

Without good soil, it’s not worth even having a home garden so soil quality is the first topic covered. One of the toughest things about living in tropics is that once the jungle has been cut down to build houses and plant food, the soil quickly looses its fertility due to intense sun, rain and erosion. Almost everything grows in this climate, but without healthy soil, people become dependent on chemical fertilizers mostly supplied by the government to have success with their crops. These fertilizers are polluting the water sources, are dangerous for the farmers handling them and in the long run are making the soil even less fertile by stripping it of other important minerals. Although I am opposed to the idea of chemical fertilizers, I can sympathize with the fact that necessity drives this behavior (people need to eat!). I also believe, however, that a balance must be found. If we can teach people to keep organic matter on the ground instead of clearing it all away and burning it, they will need fewer chemicals for their crops. Organic soil making (composting) will improve soil fertility, thus improving crop production, thus leading to a healthier family.

To start the seminar, I asked my participants, “where does the soil come from”? From everything that falls to the ground and decomposes. When we walk in the jungle and look down, we notice that the soil is rich and black. When we walk through the farm where we have corn or beans or rice planted, the soil is reddish-brown. This soil is tired and crops will only grow if they are fertilized. In contrast, what grows in the jungle? Everything! So, in order to mimic the rich soil that we find in the jungle, we have to mimic the jungle in our own yard or at least designate an area for composting. What falls to the ground in the forest that later decomposes and becomes dirt? Leaves, animal excrement, rotten fruit, trees, ash (in the case of forest fires). All of these things can be found on or very close to our homes. So instead of chucking them and letting the chickens peck away at them, why don’t why put them in a big pile and let them decompose to turn into a rich soil? The most important idea I wanted to convey here was that composting is easy, free and can help crops in your garden or farm grow healthier with less chemical fertilizers.

(Working with school kids and teacher to chop up organic matter for the school garden's compost pile- imagine 20+ kids swinging their machetes wildly)

Gardens:

People here in the Comarca picture a garden differently than we do, typically. They picture a garden as at least a 1/2-acre of terrain to plant a single crop. I believe in the States we would just call this a farm. So, the first step is to introduce the idea of a home garden: a small space near the home where various fruits and vegetables can be grown to increase the nutritional content in our diets (i.e. something of nutritional value to go with the white rice or boiled green bananas). Each participant learned how and when to plant each fruit and vegetable seed. We also went over different creative ideas to enclose your garden without having to buy expensive chicken wire.

(making a fast decomposing compost pile near my house with my neighbors and covering it up with banana leaves to keep out chickens and heavy rains)

Nutrition:

A healthy tomato plant will produce a ton of tomatoes, which provide us not only with a delicious fruit, but also with a great source of vitamin C and other nutrients. A lot of times, poverty and lack of education do not afford desperate mothers the chance to feed their children a balanced diet. Boiled green bananas and root tubers such as yucca are the main staples here and in some places this is all there is to eat. Children in these areas are lacking important vitamins that are necessary for mental and physical development. For the people that live closer to a road and are typically better off (and I use the term “better off” in a relative sense), there is more access to the beloved white rice and snacky foods such as cheese puffs and sugary sodas. They have extra money to buy empty calories but are not as motivated to buy vegetables and definitely not motivated to grow them. Like most of us in the U.S.A., they are victims of clever marketing and pretty packages. In a sense, my role in this seminar was to make the case for vegetables – a crafty marketing scheme to promote their delicious culinary uses and exquisite health benefits. Unlike the soda or the cheese puff, my motivation is not to maximize returns for my shareholders, but to maximize the development of healthier bodies and minds for my stakeholders. Take that, cheese puff.

I taught this seminar in 4 communities: with my knitting group, my closest Peace Corps neighbor’s site (about an hour away), at my house with my neighbors, at a PTA meeting in the school in the town down the hill and with the kids at that school. In all, about 70 people (mostly women), plus about 25 children in the school received this training and received 6 types of fruit and vegetable seeds. In hindsight, I realize that a better strategy would have been to charge people a nominal fee (say, a nickel) for each seed pack. Not because I’d pocket the money (in contrast, I could have helped purchase fencing material for them), but because people tend to care more for something if they have worked for it or invested something. Oh well, live and learn. I’ve gone to visit several of the participants and many are having success so far. Below are a few pictures of them. Thanks again to Seed Programs Inc and Mr. Eadie for your support!

(Above: Cabbage is off to a great start!)

(Above: Norma shows me her beautiful tomato seed bed)