Friday, December 26, 2008

A peek into the private thoughts of Lisa...

This is a special blog, and a special time, because it marks the first time in my whole life that I've actually written in a journal for more than a day or two, and after 5 months in Panama, have filled a journal.

The night I finished filling my first journal, I had a great time going back and reading snippets of my thoughts, and figured it might make for an interesting blog. So, here are a few peeks into my brain over since August 11th, 2008...

8-14 - We're here! We've done it, and made it through the process of applying, and Staging! It's still a bit unreal to be here and everything has been a blur so far. .... After that, we got to go swimming! Yay! Except that it was also a test - 10 minutes swimming and treading water non-stop and then we had to jump in the pool with our jeans on, pull them off, tie the legs in knots and create a working flotation device with them. I think my jeans won't be dry for months.

8-15 - I cannot speak Spanish.

8-16 - Happy Birthday to me! ... I got my first real unique Panamanian food experience today with chicheme. The best way to describe it is as corn milk. Milk with mashed corn (chunks and all) in it. Milk you chew. Delicious!

8-18 - I think a roach crawled across my neck last night. Something did. And I found a roach on it's back near the bed this morning.

8-20 - Today I was called a bon-bon in the supermarket but I had no idea what the guy was saying until I asked our Spanish teacher..... An off topic note - Ben just told me that he wishes he was covered in those lizards that live on the walls and near the ceiling that eat bugs. I had a hard time writing that because I was and am laughing so hard.

8-23 - Our first session today was about tropical diseases and it was pretty freaky. We also watched a video of PC Panama volunteers removing bot fly larvae from a fellow volunteer. So, if you get bit by a bot fly, they lay eggs in you, and then it grows under your skin. The way to remove it is to put duct tape ont he spot for 24 hours, then when you take it off, it pokes it's head up for air and you have to grab it and pull it out without killing it. Nasty.

8-27 - I saw my first wild monkey today. I was sitting in tech class and saw it before the kids ran up with slingshots.

9-8 - I was just attacked by a beetle. Ack.

9-17 - I am sitting in the Comarca, with pink eye in both eyes and I'm miserable. ..... And we hiked and hiked and hiked up the mountain - then down the side of a muddy cliff to our place. Our family is very, very poor. The house has a zinc roof, but not many walls. There are 10 people living in a space the size of our tech rancho in Santa Clara. We got there, dropped our bags and then started the most (or one of the most) uncomfortable nights of my life. The family just stared. ...My eye started itching this morning at the school and now I feel like there are needles in my eyes. ... The food sucks. Last night I got cold rice with a veggie similar to green beans, and luke warmsoup with a chicken head in it. I have no appetite.

9-21 - But to add insult to injury, or in this case, injury to injury, Ben and I went down to the quebrada to bathe after classes, and just as I stripped down, I slipped on the rocks and fell hard on my arms and back.

10-21 - We've come full circle now - back at Ciudad del Saber - where we started life here in Panama over 2 months ago. We swear in tomorrow, and looking back, 10 weeks really have gone by quickly. ... Two weeks ago now we left for our community partner conference, and it went well. ...Ben and Reinaldo went to the MIDA office to pick up supplies, and Edilsa went to buy chicks, so for a while I was alone in the piquera, but in my time, a boy drew a picture of me standing there and showed it to me. It said - Bei es muy bonita - Bienvenidas. It was cute, and touching. ... We basically live in a cloug forest, and it's neat to watch the clouds and mist roll in and envelope the mountains and the town. ... I think they might only speak Ngobere, which is totally intimidating. How can I work with people I can't communicate with? ... Peeing. Another issue. I always seem to have to go all of a sudden and I feel like my bladder is going to explode. I run to a latrine and nearly pee myself everytime while trying to rip my pants down and squat. Not to mention that the latrines are so full that if you have to go #2 you're likely to get a good dose of splash back.

10-29 - Noteworthy - toilet paper. Here toilet paper sucks. It's 1 ply, and at times resembles swiss cheese. But at the ambassador's house, they have the good stuff. 2 ply (at a minimum). It felt like I was wiping my ass with a towel. I didn't even dare try to flush it as no system here can even handle the 1 ply. ... The family was excited to see us, especially the kids, but they immediately started asking if a bunch of our stuff was for them. They also had their hands on and in everything. We quickly learned that just about everything needs to be out of reach. ... Meetings here last forever and accomplish very little.

10-30 - Today we went to one of Reinaldo's fincas, and we hiked up in the mountains for nearly 2 hours to get to the farm. When we arrived we got to work and they told me to clean up the trash, which was old plants that had been chopped down and died. My tool was a stick.

10-31 - I was thinking about our apartment for some reason, and how great it felt to crawl out of bed and stumble across the carpet and to the bathroom in the middle of the night. ... I'm not sure what the night has in store for us, but I bet it involves white rice.

11-3 - I have a peeing problem. Since being in Panama, the urge to pee seems to attack at once, and now it seems even worse. Up until now usually I could run to the latrine, or somewhere outside, depending on how dark it was, hold it, dance around, try to rip down my pants, and then go. But now I'm not even able to stop myself. Las night I held it, and didn't even know I was going until I felt warm wetness spreading. It's a bit frustrating to feel like a child that can{t control themselves. ... I think I just wiped DEET in my eyes.

11-7 - We went to Guaca to meet with the artisan group there. I kind of learned how to make a chacara. They started the bottom and handed it to me. And boy is it ugly. Really it was a day of being talked about, and not to, and of providing a lot of laughs with my super sucky chacara. My hands are tired and my butt is sore, but I spent a day with the people, and they want me to spend more time with them, so that is a good thing.

11-11 - At one point, one of the men proudly showed us a viper he came across, and killed, when we were all out working in the field. That makes 2 deadly snakes seen in the course of less than a week.

11-15 - Our patience is running thin. Annoyances: 1. Being asked for everything and anything. The neighbor asked for a loan. Everyone wants to use our phones. They want to use our flashlights, etc. 2. No privacy. They are in our side of the house all the time and it's obvious. They come in when we're here and when we're not. Our stuff is moved around. 3. They take and eat our stuff. We came back from David once and were missing half our hangers. Today we're missing a bag of M&Ms and a bag of chips. 4. They're noisy. They wake up at 4:30 a.m. and play music, talk, read aloud, scream, throw things, etc. All noisy. I know there are huge cultural differences, and I remind myself of it, but it's frustrating. We have a lot. A lot more than them. A lot they've never seen, so I want to share, but I can only do so much, and I won't be used either. I here to work. Not give hand outs.

11-17 - The dog would not stop barking last night. And it doesn't just bark, it growls when it barks. I feel like I haven't had a good, restful nights sleep in ages. And the food situation just gets worse and worse. I've woken up in the middle of the night starving. I think malnourishment + no sleep = crabbiness. I don't want to do anything today.

11-21 - I feel like shit. I've now had the shits for 5 days, and I have bouts of nausea and feel weak and irritable. ... Last night around 2 am we had a good scare. A noise woke us up and we couldn't figure out what it was, but them we saw a dog shoving itself through our door. It jumped up on our table, got muddy footprints on all our magazines and books, ate some cookies and them left.

12-1 - 13 days of diarrhea, possible parasites, a bacterial infection in my intestines and 4 days in the hospital and here I am. .. The other news of the trip is that Ben's grandmother, Dorothy, died on Friday nigth. It's been quite a week Stressful, painful and sad.

12-3 - Yesterday I celebrated a small, but important milestone - my first solid poop in 16 days - complete with latrine splashback! ... I hate canned fish. ... I can't wait to have our own place.

12-13 - They've developed a major case of the "we needs." We need food. We're hungry. We need rice, salt, sugar and coffee. Now we need eggs, oil, and bread. Now we need matches, and chicken seasoning and more vegetables. Ben went and bought a lot of food, but they always want more. Their parents better return soon.

12 -19 - Last page! We've been in site for nearly 2 months now. The time is passing by fairly quicly. Things have been rough at times, and great and uplifting at times. I'm glad we're here. I never could have experienced something like this without taking this risk. Peace Corps F@%# yeah!

There it is. A tiny bit of journal number one. Stay tuned!

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

¨Twas the Week Before Christmas

And all through the Comarca,
Not a creature stirred,
Except bugs, rats, cats, dogs, drunks, birds, Peace Corps Volunteers, lizards, spiders, kids, etc

No, there is no Christmas in the Comarca. Sure, the people of Panama know about Christmas and even celebrate it, but they do not experience the whirling maelstorm of consumerism that seems exclusively American. While the world bemoans a coming recession and Americans still buy 21.6 presents per person (down from 23 last year) on average, the folks in the Comarca quietly go about their lives without much of a thought towards the day that Jesus was registered with the government (he was born in April). There are no presents, no trees with decorations, no songs or mistletoe. There will probably be a Christmas service for those who were converted by the recent missionaries, but very few are thinking about doing anything special, let alone even hearing about ads and sales from Thanksgiving to end of the year as they are not getting them over the radio and they don´t have TVs (or electricity).

But here, in this little shack, in the corner of the village, in the heart fo the jungle, there is one young blonde cutie who wants to hear some carols, decorate with garland, and put up a tree. She sings softly those songs that she carries inside, gathering a small herd of children to her like the Pied Piper of Hamburg. She does a little piroqette with the twinkle of a tear in her eye as she wishes whole-heartedly to be in a place that celebrates this favorite of American holidays, this wonderful time when we all put aside our differences and think about what is good for everyone. We take time to ponder the meaning of world peace and the brotherhood (sisterhood) of man (woman). We plan trips to see family, or at least a phone call to touch base, and we search the stores and malls for those perfect gifts for our loved ones, presents they will actually use. We attend churches with sermons full of hope, and read many a Hallmark card with lovely sentiments.

While we feel like we are doing a good deed by being here, and we are happy to have friends like the other PCVs we will be meeting up with at the beach on Christmas Eve, we do indeed miss that special time of year when even an old grouch like me has trouble uttering a bah-humbug. When the stores and schools and court buildings are all showing their Christmas spirit and playing those classics, and even strangers are a little nicer to each other than they have to be. Its a time when there are plays and TV shows about being a better person, Santas in malls offering hopes to kids and outside of stores offering hopes to the poor, and we can all hope that the item we really want (that was at the top of our gift list) is under the tree decorated with memories of past Christmases.

We are going about our lives as we had expected ourselves to, searching for leaders of the community and encouraging them to continue to fight for a better life. We are just starting so it is a time of hope and optimism for us, even without the holiday spirit. And yet, somehow, I´m sure that this little blonde of mine will have us some plane tickets back to the States next year, because she is not going to want to miss more than one Christmas in a row!

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

The Mute Screams

First of all, Lisa is better. After one regime of pills for parasites, she went the other hospital in the capital and they took a stool sample, then they kept her on an IV for three days. They said that the original diagnosis was wrong and that she had a bacterial infection instead. At least she is now better and poops like normal again.


We have had some interesting theories put forth from the people around our communities. I´ve come to believe that they are largely a combination of poor education and guess work:


The other night around 3:39 a.m., a man was yelling at the top of his lungs in the middle of the road, obviously straining for every last decibel. AAAA-OOOO-EEEEE! After a half hour of this serenade, during which several dogs offered their own counterpoint to which he responded in kind, he went suddenly silent. While no one around here complains when their sleep is interrupted (except for Lisa and I) they had all heard the man and had some ideas about what was going on.


One suggested that he was inebriated, as Lisa and I assumed, and called him a borracho, which is a derrogatory term for a drunk, then got himself falling down hammered a few days later. Another said he was a witch and could bring an evil wind to make people sick. And yet another, Lisa´s favorite, said that he was a mute...who was screaming. I think that theory involves a curse or something but they didn´t offer any kind of coherent explanation.


And we have picked up on some other strange statements. After I said that we weren´t getting a good signal today due to the thick, dark clouds, I ¨learned¨ that cell phone reception gets better when its sunny because the sun recharges the signal with electricity. Rice is the most nutritious food in the world, which is why everyone eats it, every day, for every meal. When the earth shakes with anger, the weather changes...and after our recent 6.2 quake near David, the weather did in fact change (from wet to wetter) and we had a 40-year flood!


We´ve also been discussing a bit of astronomy. It seems that the people from a nearby town believe that people can walk to the sky. People I´ve talked with think that the stars are holes through some kind of fabric or dark film. The moon is strong enough to break through the ground up there, but the stars cannot, and if we wanted to we could walk there. We can see that the world is not flat because there are all kinds of mountains and water, but round like a ball, you´re crazy, Gringo!

I´ve tried explaining that the objects in space are spherical, including the earth and that the distances between them are incredible. I talk about how the moon rotates around us and us around the sun and that they are in no way close to each other. I was pretty sure I lost some credibility when I tried to explain that the light of the moon and the light of the sun are actually the same, but that the moon is reflecting that same light off a white surface. It sometimes feels like I´m the wharthog from The Lion King: After Simba says that the stars are our ancestors watching over us and Timon says the sparkly dots were ¨fireflies that got stuck in the big bluish-black thing,¨ Pumbaa responds, ¨Oh. Gee, I always thought that they were balls of gas, burning billions of miles away.¨ Timon-¨Pumbaa, with you everything is gas!¨

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Thanksgiving and Flooding Updates

Happy Thanksgiving! First the good news... The standfast phase for our area of the Comarca was lifted shortly after it was placed, and Ben came down the mountain and joined me in David on Wednesday, along with other members of our group located in the Comarca. We are planning to go out and have a nice meal at a restaurant in town tonight to celebrate.

The not quite as great news is that I just finished up my rounds of medication to fight my parasites, and people say I should be feeling better soon. But the medications are strong, and it feels like there is a battle being waged in my abdomen between the parasites and the pills. I´m hoping my body and the pills are winning. So, I´m still not feeling great.

The worse news is that the rain continues to fall. The Bocas del Toro region and the Comarca portion on the Carribean side are devastated. Many people have lost everything. Several Peace Corps volunteers in those areas were stranded in their sites and had to be evacuated out by helicopter and the rest were consolidated. Today a small plane brought most of them into David, and they may be here for several weeks or up to a month while roads are repaired. Today we spent our morning unloading trucks of supplies - mostly clothing and medical supplies - to be sent to areas in need. The flooding hasn´t gotten much news coverage in the world (from what we´ve seen), but the situation is pretty dire in areas. Please continue to keep the people of Panama in your thoughts this Thanksgiving.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Parasites, Earthquakes and Flooding.. Oh my!

There are a lot of crazy things happening in Panama right now, so let´s get started.

First of all, we´re now approaching nearly one month in our community and we´re having a great time. We are BUSY! We have been meeting with countless community groups and businesses, as well as groups from communities up to several hours away from ours, to get to know them and how we might be able to best serve them. We´re also getting into a routine in the community and everyday feel a little bit more like it´s home to us. And, let´s face it, we´re still in the ¨rockstar¨phase in town. Kids and adults alike have taken to shouting our names as we pass by, and we´re asked to visit and stop in often.

Now, the other stuff...

1. Parasites. I (Lisa) have parasites. Lets just say that 9 days ago now, I started having diarrhea, which got progressively worse everyday. I also felt nauseated a lot, and would waver between having no appetite at all, or feeling like I was starving to death. My energy level was minimal. Last Saturday night was rough. I couldn´t stop going. If you get my drift. So, Sunday morning, we called the Peace Corps doctor, and I was on my way to David to go to the hospital. Yesterday morning I went to the hospital, and was immediately hooked up to an I.V. and they did a blood test and told me that I´ve got parasites! Now, I´m on medication to kill everything off and try to get me back to normal, but it´s got me feeling icky too. But, the explosive diarrhea is a thing of the past. I should count my lucky stars that this is the first bad thing health wise I´ve had to deal with (should we count the pink eye experience or falling down and hurting my back in the river) when other volunteers in our group have had issues from day one.

2. Hunger. I´ve never before felt hunger like I´ve felt it here in the past few weeks. I´m guessing that the parasites are mostly to blame. Anyone that´s done Weight Watchers can probably agree that the first week you´re on plan is hard, and you feel like you´re starving. That´s nothing. And really, I can´t begin to imagine what real hunger and malnourishment is like. But having my hunger wake me up in the middle of the night, and keep me up for hours because it´s consuming my thoughts, is a new level of hunger for me. To be fair, I should mention that the food just isn´t doing it for me. I eat tons of white rice. Tons of nutrient lacking, flavorless white rice. The vegetables that were in abundance when we first arrived have disappeared. We´re not even getting the boiled green bananas anymore, which I actually miss. And at times, we´re now getting canned fish, which is making my stomach flip right now just thinking about it. Before it sounds all doom and gloom though, I will say that it makes the prospects of cooking for ourselves soon seem so much better.

3. Earthquake! Last Wednesday morning we experienced the strongest earthquake we´ve been through, at a 6.2. We ¨woke¨up shortly after 1am to the strong shaking. I actually crawled out of bed at 1am to relieve myself, and came back in the shack and noticed that the dog from next door had snuck in our house. It was cowering against the wall and freaked me out. I shooed it out and went back to bed. At first when the quake hit, I thought ¨what a freakishly strong wind!¨ (People have shared that we get very strong winds in the summer here - which is nearly upon us) Then I realized it was shaking. This quake was different from my last big one (in Fairbanks, Alaska at a 5.8) because we were about as close to the earth as possible this time, and the last one hit while I was sleeping on the top floor of an 8 story building. Our host dad woke up and thought about getting us up, but told me the next morning that he knew we were sleeping. I reassured him the next morning, that if he thinks the zinc shack is going to fall on us, he´s more than welcome to scream and yell and get us out of bed!

4. Floods. We´re in the rainy season right now. There´s also a tropical depression hanging out on the coast that´s threatening to become a cyclone. That´s not a good mix. We´ve had no issues in our site because we´re living at about 4,000 feet, but all of the water has to go somewhere, and unfortunately it has caused really devastating flooding in the provinces of Bocas del Toro, Chiriqui and ours, the Comarca Ngobe-Bugle. So much so that the Peace Corps Panama powers that be have declared that everyone in these areas has to stay where they are right now, until further instructions arrive. This means I am in David (see number 1), and Ben is still in our community. We originally planned to have a nice private Thanksgiving in Boquete, but Boquete is devastated by the floods. Then we thought David, or the beach, but as it stands, no one is going anywhere, and we may not even have the holiday together. Which brings me to my last point...

5. Giving thanks. There is a lot for us to be thankful for this year. I could try to list them all out and would surely forget some, but I´ll sum it up by saying that we´re thankful for this opportunity and experienceand we´re eternally thankful for family and friends. And machetes (which are great for killing roaches).

Please keep the people of Panama in your thoughts in this difficult time. Also, if you´re feeling like you´d like to help the Peace Corps, or our projects in Panama, please take some time to check out the Peace Corps webpage and click on Donate Now!. You can choose specific countries, projects or volunteers to help fund.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Getting Started

We´ve been in our new community for a couple of weeks now and are really enjoying it. There are a lot of business opportunities surfacing with each new meeting and the people seem really motivated to try to capitalize on them. Of course, some people appear to be most concerned with the money that might come with our support, but we just explain what Peace Corps is over again. We get the random ¨give me money¨shout out, most recently (in site, since I was called out to on the street here in David when we arrived) while I was gathering firewood from a little kid claiming he was an orphan. Not knowing whether he was or not, and being the bleeding heart that I am, *snicker snicker* I talked to him and his two friends about Alaska and how poorly hand-outs have gone for the indigenous there over the past three decades. I´m not sure if it sunk in though; when I finished, he tried to negotiate it down from $1 to 50¢ and then 25¢.

Its assumed that we gringos all have money to give, and the culture here is strongly weighted towards hand-outs after a generation or two of the communist experiment. Although its a bit discouraging at times, you do have to stop and say to yourself, well, we do have money, don´t we? Nevertheless, it won´t help them out to continue to get a hand-out instead of a hand-up, or as I told the ¨orphan¨, by not giving you money, I´ll help you learn to take care of yourself and not rely on anyone else to live.

We live in a part of a house with the family that we visited during our site visit week. They have young kids that seem to have really taken to us, almost too much at times. We are not sure how much longer we are going to be staying with them, but we have made some basic improvements for our comfort so we could probably stay for quite a while. There are some other options to explore, and some minor annoyances provoking us to try something new, but we are having fun with them and they are very nice. Besides, we´ve had so much on our plate that we haven´t had much time to just walk around and talk to people...what they call ¨pasear¨here in Panama.

We´ve been holding meetings with groups and individuals almost every day. When we are not learning more about the businesses in town or learning their weaving techniques, we go out to the farms to till the soil, or chop and clear the weeds, or clean up the corn fields. Usually, we have to walk for hours in the mountains just to reach the farm, but they usually feed us lunch when we are out there all day. We have some wicked blisters on our suave office hands!

We have entered the rainiest time of the rainy season. Its awesome to see the clouds rapidly roll in, like they are a living thing. Occasionally the rain will last all night, and, a few times too often, we´ve been caught out in it while we are walking or farming. It can be a little chilly, but nothing that would threaten our health. We are really close to the equator here afterall. Although many people talk about how much it rains, its still not as much as Southeast Alaska. There is time to almost dry your clothes in the hot sun each morning!

We´ve gotten out of our site a couple of times now. Its been nice to have a period to settle in. We were supposed to have something akin to that through our training, but not much really prepares you for the poverty level of our site, or the pace of life. Our training site could have been a rural town in America (and I´m not the old person who says that!) It did work for our Spanish proficiency and for the basics Spanish culture (like the soap operas on the TV in the internet cafe right now) and, of course, for our understanding of our job and Peace Corps.

That not withstanding, its good to come to David. First, to see Obama win, as Lisa quickly posted last week, and now to have a meeting with the regional office of IPACOOP, one of the main agencies that we will be working with as business volunteers. A good many volunteers from the western part of Panama came into this city for the elections. We had kind of a party atmosphere, with the newer volunteers heading to the casino (where the operators had been persuaded to put up CNN on four of the dozen TVs) for food and beer while the seasoned volunteers had themselves a much cheaper pre-party in a larger room of the hotel, cheering each new breaking news as a state was called. I believe that everyone of us here (not surprisingly) was rooting for Obama and hoping for some good change. Most of us are at least partly concerned with our nations reputation overseas!

Unfortunately for an old news hound like myself, I couldn´t hear the TV in either the crowded room at the hotel or in the casino. And the casino only turned on the volume during the acceptance speech, which apparently was just a little too long because they brought out the dancers and switched on the music right before he finished. Instead of hanging out with the groups, I spent my evening walking between the two places (escorting our female counterparts if they were planning on going alone because it was also a holiday week here in Panama) and checking on in with our laundry lady who perpetually needed just 20 more minutes. In between, I lounged with my six-pack in our little hotel room switching between the two biased news channels of CNN and Fox News, trying to soak up as much information as possible. And really, I had a ball. Later, I walked Lisa back from the casino and we watched together when they called the race and had the speeches. Damn proud to be an American.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Hooray America!

Congratulations Obama!

Yay for absentee voting!

Yay for Colorado going blue!

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Swearing In

We swore in as Peace Corps Volunteers on Wednesday, as Lisa mentioned in the last post. Her post was before the ceremony so I´ll take a moment to describe it.

Busy morning of last minute sessions. A couple of hours of free time and a quick meal to the last minute trainees. Finally free of sessions. People are giddy, laughing at silly stuff. People are busy with nothing. A little time in front of CNN World Report.

The little yellow buses arrive, mere mini-vans in the U.S. A quick drive through the hot city. A heartbeat and we leave ratty shacks and old business for lavish front lawns and amazing high security fences. Fences make good neighbors. We wait at the gate of the compound.

We wait. We wait for awhile more, and then we are told that the security was told we would arrive 45 minutes later. They want to impress their new boss, our new ambassador. They want to run things right. We were supposed to arrive later.

After a time, the staffers convince them to let us leave the air conditioned vans. We get to stand in the sun. We have various pictures taken, by the buses, in front of the tennis court, there´s the pool. We have a big group one on the front steps. Now just the girls. Now just the Bocas group. Comarca group, where are you? Oh hey, did we do the boys photo yet?

The inside is fabulous. The air conditioning is perfect. So much space and elegance. If you didn´t feel a little excited before, if it didn´t feel real yet, being here on U.S. soil again in full Western beauty and landscaping will get you going. The water is fresher here, the air sweeter, the hor dóeuvres were scrumptious.

The ceremony starts. First an official from Panama welcomes us and speaks of the table of important people. He talks of working together. He says very nice things. He mentions the vice minister. She stands and talks to the table. There´s been a signing of documents, a renewing of trust between partners, they are related to the work of the Corps. We are all feeling pleased with our understanding of Spanish. The Country Director talks to us. He seems to think our group´s most uninvolved member, our hermit, or pariah, or self-outcast, is our leader, but his dignified words are a complement to us all. He has good jokes, too.

We get a story from our second in command. This is his last group of newbies. He´ll be with us for a few more months only, a victim of an excellent idea: Peace Corps staff should be Returned Volunteers who served the Corps within the last five years. His fifth year is up next Spring. He will be missed.

We take the oath. We will uphold the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. It is solemn and heartfelt. The paper was already signed yesterday. We only lost one trainee along the way, and gained three from another program that fell. In that, we came out ahead of where we started.

Our group wrangled one of our best trainees, now volunteer, to give the speech. She is masterful. She impresses us CED trainees. She impresses the EH trainees. She impresses the new volunteers from the other country that fell. She had worked hard on this, got the editted words other trainees and the perfect translation from our teachers. I´m sure she was no slouch herself on the original. She must have practiced out loud because her prounciation is spot on. The Panamanian staffers all smile and nod along with her. We understand the Spanish better for her enunciation. The most visibly impressed are the table of important people.

The EH speaker is also impressive. He´s known around these parts as a poet, and he is going to impress as well. Although is Spanish is a little rockier, he still has a poem that works only in Spanish and it beautifully describes our current feels as we get ready to head into the field. He has a second one that works only in English, but we are there to appreciate it as well, though not many Panamanians can be on board. We clap hard for both of our speakers. They have made us proud. We are volunteers!

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Today is the day!

TODAY WE ARE SWEARING IN AS OFFICIAL PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEERS!!!

We initially were supposed to swear in tomorrow, but things got shifted, and now we're swearing in today, this afternoon to be exact.

I had an interview yesterday with the Country Director and at the end I mentioned that we've been waiting for this day for a long time, and now that I've thought on that statement a little more, we really have.

We don't know the exact dates, but at some point many years ago we made the decision of whether to pursue the Peace Corps, or have a family. (And before that we talked about Peace Corps quite a bit). Obviously we chose Peace Corps. But that decision (in 2005?) set a lot of things in motion. Ben went back to school to get his degree and finished in December 2006. In January 2007 we sent off the first paper applications. May 2007 we had our first interviews with a Peace Corps recruiter. August 2007 we got our nomination to Latin America for the following year. In October we put our house on the market, and we closed on it in February. In March, Ben was medically deferred for 8 months, meaning we would miss our program. We appealed the decision and it was approved! In June we were facing the end of our lease on the apartment and had no news, but then we got our invitations to Panama!

August 10th we flew to Miami for staging, and August 13th, we set foot in Panama for the first time. Now, we've been here for over 2 months, we've learned a lot about Panama, Panamanians, their culture, a lot more Spanish, more technical skills, and of course a lot about ourselves. We both feel incredibly lucky and happy to be sitting here today (many years later), literally fulfilling one of the dreams that we've shared together for such a long time. YAY!!!

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

What´s your ETA, Bei?

Filed teeth, crossed eyes: first impressions. Sharing cultures: Are there indigenous people in the United States? They are afraid of frogs, planes, and being alone at any time, but not chivas without adequate brakes. Plantains are still bland, bland, bland. They can carry 100-lbs loads in grass-woven bags attached to their foreheads, up and down giant mountains on muddy trails for hours. We are going to be living with some interesting people.

My name in Ngabe is Eta (pronounced eh-duh) Lisa´s is Bei (pronounced bay-ee). We were named by our counterparts when we met them, and everyone we meet in town loves to laugh at us upon introduction; look at these funny gringos with Ngabe names!

We went to our site for the first time this week, and we love it. It´s in the Comarca Ngabe-Bugle, high in the mountains in good coffee country. It´s jungle, to be sure, but beautiful and full of mystery. While we were there, it rained nearly every day and the clouds surrounded us so that they were more like mist. We are told that we have a great view, but I only got to see a little of it on the first day.

On the chiva ride up, Lisa got to sit in the front so she saw more of the gorgeous green mountains with a view of the Pacific Ocean. I was late due to an impromptu meeting with our counterpart so I had to hang onto the back of the truck for dear life. It was painful and the rain made me wet, but at least it was only an hour and nine minutes.

When we met our counterparts at the little conference we had, the woman had filed teeth and the man had crossed eyes. As it turns out, these are not strange qualities here. The filed teeth came to three little points on each tooth (so that only two triangles had to be filed out). The other filed teeth I´ve since seen are one or two points per tooth so our lady had something extra special. She´s also an accomplished artisan.

The man is quite intelligent and an excellent public speaker. Despite how he would be received in the States where corrective surgery for this ailment is very common, he has no problem talking in front of anyone and is quite convincing. His Spanish is excellent as well as his Ngobere; he´ll use both to win over anyone to his side. Moreover, he is very intelligent and looks for every opportunity to expand his knowledge. I´ve really enjoyed our conversations in the evening.

It is a large town, with many amnenities such as three restaurants, a large Centro de Salud, a cooperative, a small 5-room hotel, a bunch of little kiosk stores, and a high school. Many people from outlying villages have moved here or hike an hour or more to work here. The chiva goes up to our site and many people take it down to the Interamericana.

We will be having another Volunteer living in the same town as us. She has an agriculture focus and has been working here for two years. She´s extending for a third so we´ll be getting the full benefit of her experiences and she´ll be helping us meet many of the movers and shakers. She asked for a business volunteer to follow up on her agriculture work. Now that many horticulture groups are growing tasty organic food, they and other groups like the artisans, the cooperative, the restaurants, and the stores would like help with accounting, marketing, etc, that she just can´t provide. She was as excited as the townfolk to hear that they were getting two instead of just one, although they are apprehensive because the last one left after just one month many years ago.

Needless to say, we have a lot of opportunities to work. While some people just seem able to envision us finding funds for them, many others want more specific help that we are ready to provide, after an acclimitization period. We will be working closely with people on a hands on basis to learn their work and gain their trust. After we feel comfortable with our understanding of their situations, we can begin to make suggestions for improvements. I think our days will be very full, especially at first, and already there are people arguing about having us work mostly with them.

Our physical conditions are fairly rugged. I´ll just give a few little highlights to let help you feel what we are looking at:
Sleeping on wood planks, it´s cold at night.
Cockroach in my breakfast, just feed it to the cat, the rest is tasty.
Splashback from the latrine is never nice, score: Lisa 3, Ben 0.
Can´t seem to pick the right shoes, Lisa wore nice stuff when they lead us through forest trails and almost lost a sandal in the mud, jeans and tennis shoes for a trek in the rain, and rubber boots for our first agency meeting.
Baby still has a cough for a couple of days after starting meds from the Centro de Salud, after some natural herb meds and a day, parents say they work better.
Lisa´s eyes burn in the smoke, and host explains that it´s from the cold air, not the smoke, of course!

Lisa refers to our site as Heaven in the Comarca or sometimes Alaska in Panama. We absolutely love it and look forward to our two years up there starting next week.

Monday, October 6, 2008

A Few Afterthoughts

Mangrove Mud is the Kryptonite of Velcro.

Hot dogs are breakfast sausages when fried.

There's always room for another person on the bus.

Giardia is the new fad diet.

If it's endangered, its a delicacy, but not more expensive.

Whistling and catcalls are respectful complements that you will miss when you're back in the States.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Grassroots meets Government...

I guess you could already say that the Peace Corps is an organization that works on a grassroots level, through the government, but this week our training group had the pleasure of meeting the new U.S. Ambassador to Panama, and got to truly see how our work affects so many people on so many levels here!

On Tuesday, the Ambassador visited us and we had a pizza lunch and then shared a little bit about who we are and what we´re here to do. After lunch, we broke into groups by sector and had a more in-depth discussion about our role here as ¨Community Economic Development¨volunteers and what that means. We had some interesting discussion about challenges and measuring our success, as well as how the Ambassador´s office, and the U.S. government and Peace Corps can work together for change. It was an interesting meeting, and Ambassador Stevenson is a fascinating woman!

The rest of our week was pretty much routine. We were back in our training community and spent our days attending technical class and language classes. On Wednesday, Ben and I facilitated a portion of the technical session about accounting and bookkeeping concepts (although it´s been about 5 years since I studied or tutored in accounting concepts!). We´re also in separate language classes now, Ben has been in Spanish classes, and I´m in Ngabere classes. Techinically, at my ¨mid-term¨language test I scored higher than required for passing the Spanish, so that might play into it. I guess it´s also meant to give us a bit of a mix, although I would love to learn more Spanish as well. Right now we´re gearing up for our site visits - we leave the training community on Tuesday afternoon and meet up with our future site counterparts in a location in Cocle, and then on Thursday morning, we´ll travel with our counterparts to our communities, returning back to training on the next Tuesday.

During our visit, we´ll be tasked with figuring out our host family arrangements for the first three months in site, and with developing the beginnings of a work plan with the community. We are excited to get our feet wet and see where we´ll be living and working in just a few short weeks now! That being said, we really are enjoying our family situation in the training community and know that we will miss them a lot! It will be hard to say goodbye to them! They´ve done so many great things for us in our time here, and our time has flown by!

Shorter edition today, but more soon after our site visits! Thanks to everyone for their continued support! We miss home, and everyone, but we´re happy and doing well!

Monday, September 29, 2008

Tech Week Adventure - for Ben

Lisa and I split up during our tech week, as you can tell from her post, to learn different subjects. While I didn´t really feel that I had learned as much as I had been expecting to, I still had a great time and really liked the family that I stayed with. The senor of the home was in Panama City for the week receiving scheduled medical treatment so I was only with his 70+ year old wife and their granddaughter. I also got to meet the girl´s mother and father, although they didn´t live there.

Both the grandmother and granddaughter were very friendly and helpful. The girl is very intelligent and was trying to learn English at school. We spent time each day translating words for each other and talking about them. She was in 4th grade so we were probably on about the same level.

It took me all week to begin to understand the grandmother. Like many old ladies, she has an accent all her own and much of the time I needed a translation from the girl. Nevertheless, we both liked each other very much. What we were able to talk about usually resulted in much laughter. When I left, she cried a little and kept hugging me until I told them I would come back to visit.

We spent much of our time working with the kids at the school. It is a large school, and includes grades 10th, 11th, and 12th, which means they are specialized classes here in Panama, similar to associates or apprenticeship programs. This one focused on agriculture, and students came from so far away some had to be boarded. We had a tour and a business plan with some of these high school students, but most of our time was spent with the younger kids.

We observed some classes and taught a couple of computer classes. We did some Junior Achievement lessons and read some children´s books with them. I really enjoyed working with the kids; their interest and excitement is contagious, and they really were interested in learning. I just wished we had more time learning about cooperatives and/or mentoring potential leaders because I told that will be our focus in our site.

We had a few adventures along the way as well. We got to kill some chickens for sancocho, then pluck and clean them. I got to kill two of them so I got to try snapping one´s neck and cutting the throat of the other one. After all that I´d heard about killing chickens my whole life (and I´ve never lived around them before so every scratch-and-peck, squawk, cock-a-doodle-do, and various other stupidity had been as fascinating to me as I was to the people in the Comarca) I´m glad I finally got to do it myself. Unfortunately, it wasn´t really as much fun or glamorous as it sounded so it´ll probably be just a chore now. I´ll have to stick to hunting, fishing, crabbing, shrimping for more fun and excitement.

Speaking of crabbing, on our last day, half of our group got up at 4:30 am to slog our way through a mangrove forest to the ocean. We cut some mangrove roots to use as handles on either side of a net and dragged a river for crab. We got into a bunch of the really expensive ($2-$3 a piece) crabs and caught about 25 big ones and 8 or 9 little ones. They had some really pointy and sharp shells and claws. When they saw that they were going to be grabbed from the net, they spread their pinchers out wide and then clapped them together. It was really cool. Their pinchers were sharp enough to draw blood, as we found out first-hand, and were dexterous enough to reach almost anywhere. The big ones were about 9 inches wide.

In our nets were also filled with fish. Some were little and had spines on their backs and fins. The spines had venom that numbed one member of our group´s hand for awhile. We also had some little black and green ones, bigger than the venom fish, that had white bellies. These little guys were puffer fish. When you squeezed their heads a bit, or they were just scared, they´d puff up with air. You could rasp their bellies against one another and they´d stay all puffed up.

Well I´m running out of time here so I´ll sign off. Thanks everyone for your great posts and for some emails to boot. Keep them coming!

Tech Week - through Pink Eyes...

We´ve survived another week, and compared to culture week, it was worlds apart. My culture week was in Santa Clara in Chiriqui, about a stone´s throw from Costa Rica. The climate was Amazing! We were in the mountains, at altitude, surrounded by coffee farms, and it actually got cold at night, and even during the day at times! No sweating for a week - what a treat! The views were gorgeous and the town was quite well off, comparatively speaking of course.

I showed up recovering from my pink eye and moved in with another host family, and started eating a lot of food (which lead to a rather unpleasant gassy period on Tuesday night: Very little food one week + tons of heavy food the next = pain).

Tech week is all about the technical aspects of our work, and my group was focused on agricultural work and artisan groups. We spent our week preparing and presenting charlas (presentations) on accounting and marketing concepts for two different groups. We also taught Junior Achievement in the local school one morning. Much of the week was spent learning about working with youths, and preparing for our charlas, but it was great to get our hands dirty and start working. And better yet, information that we´ve gotten about our site suggests that the groups in our future community want to learn about accounting and marketing as well as other things, so we´ve got somewhere to start!

No crazy illnesses or injuries this week - aside from the again noteworthy painful gas experience, and I did fall down in a gravel road when walking down a hill, and happened to land right on the same spot I hit last week in the river in the Comarca! My bug bites stopped itching and are healing now, just in time to return to our training community and get some new bites!

My host family experience was great - I actually stayed with another trainee in a home with a mom (her husband and son are living in the U.S.). The house was big, we each had a bedroom, and we had walls! Yes, walls! Like I said earlier, it was like being in a completely different world. And the contrast really made me think about poverty levels. When I got to Panama a month and a half ago, I would have thought that people in this community were very poor compared to the U.S., and they are, but here, they seem so wealthy when you see other areas. I´m greatful to have had the opportunity to see quite a few places in Panama so far, and to really see that contrast. It´s been very eye opening.

Other highlights - on Friday we went to a large finca and did a coffee tour. We got to see how they process their coffee from start to finish, and then got to do a ¨cupping¨ afterward. They roasted the beans for us, then ground them. We then sniffed them in a particular way, and then we added water, sniffed the foam, then slurped and swooshed, etc. The coffee was STRONG, but good. We learned that coffee has a 100 point scale of quality and this was ranked in the 90´s. After the cupping, they brewed up some coffee and enjoyed some time relaxing on the farm and checking out their collection of local bugs and artifacts.

And after two weeks of hard work and travel, on Saturday we had a little free time and we got our first taste of Panamanian beaches! Most of our group met up at a small, undeveloped beach site and enjoyed the sun, waves and warm water before returning to the city area last night.

This week we are in training pretty much like normal, but we are getting ready for our site visits that take place in the middle of next week! We are really excited to get into our actual communities and start seeing what we´ll be doing for the next two years! Training is nearly over now, and has really flown by. Swearing in gets closer everyday!

Saturday, September 20, 2008

The Comarca Visit - from Ben´s Viewpoint

I got beaver-fever. We walked a lot, uphill, both ways. We ate plantains, bland, bland plantains, with white rice sometimes. Lisa got pink-eye. Lisa got eaten by bugs. Lisa fell down naked. All we ate was plantains.

That´s how I feel looking back now, after a shower and a fastfood meal from Pio-Pio (a fastfood chain specializing in chicken, ¨Pio-Pio¨ is the sound baby chicks make in the latino parts of Panama). I´m in a slightly air-conditioned internet cafe in Santiago, Veraguas. And looking back on our little adventure from culture week is easier than living it.

Lisa summed it all up pretty well, though I´d emphasize that it looked like her eyes were bleeding except the blood wasn´t running down her cheeks, after the swelling went down enough to see her eyes. She´s covered in bug bites, more and more every day in Panama in general. We had our mosquito net up but the wall of our shelf-bed was sloped so we couldn´t get the net to spread out in that direction. Mosquito nets block mosquitos unless they don´t have to go through the net.

I believe her description of the home failed to capture it properly. These are some very poor people, though they do love to smile and laugh. Mostly, they seem to laugh at the misery of others, including each other, but hey, I´ve always said the root of comedy is bad things happening to other people. And they are happy.

Back to the home. Picture a slopping, packed-clay floor. Put in some mostly-straight tree trunks about 3 inches in diameter. Attach a ¨zinc¨ (sheet metal to a non-camposino) for a roof, slopped to catch rain water. Put up a few more zinc for walls, but don´t bother to have it meet the roof, ground, or each other; we´re not making a complete wall here. When you run out of zinc, put up anything else: tarps, old clothes or blankets, some large leaves. Holes in the material are not patched up in any way.

Build some shelves to sleep and sit on. Another large one for a fire (there was an old fogon location outside but I think the wife appreciates not cooking in the rain). The shelves are more tree limbs, fairly straight, and a couple of cross beams held together with a nail or two and a lot of twine...a lot of twine, or shoe strings, or anything else around. I think I only actually saw one nail used in the structure, but I´m assuming there are others. Then lay some halved tree limbs across the cross beams. Now top it off with some of that carpet padding that you put down before the actual carpet, or more old clothes/blankets. (the outhouse or latrine is made the same way)

To complete the picture, put in two hammocks, a bunch of twine to dry clothes or hang stuff so its not in the mud, lots of smoke from the cook fire, and bits of trash. Not too much trash though. Although they were recently a nomadic people and used only organic materials thus creating a strong ¨throw it on the ground when you´re done with it¨ attitude, I think this younger generation realizes that stuff´s not going away, and neither are they.

You can mentally see where we were, if you add a couple of gringos for the week, their mosquito net, a couple of giant magic bags that seem to produce a new wonder toy each day, and everyone with a flashlight because it gets dark early. Unfortunately, they were also terribly shy, except for the dad of 38, so they didn´t even talk to us in our (and their) second language: Spanish. They talked to each other in Ngobere and just stared at us. I´d say that most of the questions we did get from people (other than the dad) were about how much things cost, and the dad asked that a lot too. But hey, these guys don´t get any catalogs.

I also had an interesting conversation with an uncle. The mom´s brothers seemed to come and go as they pleased and would claim a bed from one of the children whenever they were there. We ¨met¨ at least three but its hard to see them in the dark (¨met¨because they never did give their own name, I´d just ask the oldest son later). This conversation was about how much I thought he could make if he went to America. Bear in mind that he came right to me from outside, I´d never seen him before, didn´t even say hello, and it was almost dark. I tried to explain that it really depended on his skills, what part of the country he would go to, and later that I´d never had, worked with, or met a house keeper (which he apparently thought was a typical job for any immigrant, even a farm laborer who probably doesn´t know what our houses need or look like).

We also spent much of our time each day in language lessons. Our schedule said it would be Spanish and Ngabere, but it was always Ngobere (it can be spelled either way) which was explained in Spanish. My Spanish is still trying to find itself in my mouth. It was frustrating for us, wore us out really, and definitely frustrating for our two teachers, though they didn´t show it very much. Another aspirante´s host mom said, seriously, that she would be able to speak Ngobere by swear-in. Another heard from a Ngabe said that the volunteers we´d met spoke it well, but the volunteers themselves disputed that and laughed. They said that if you even try, all the community will say that you speak it well.

All in all, I really like these people. They laugh anytime something gets hurt, but so do I. They have some hard living conditions, but nobody chooses where they are from. They are some of the hardest working people I´ve ever seen, and apparently I´ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. They say both the men and the women, all small people, will carry 100 pounds using only a strap across their foreheads, and they walk up and down some damn steep hills. And the site that we saw was accessible by road. Most of the environmental health guys will have an hour or two hike into their sites, over mountains and streams. I gotta hand it to those guys. I´m looking forward to being dropped off in our town by a chiva.

Speaking of chiva, I´ll leave off this culture shock entry by talking about my umbrella. It was $4 and I bought it weeks ago. It was big and wide and green and I liked it. I took it all the way out to the Comarca, changing buses and riding a chiva. My fault, but I forgot it under the bench in the back of the chiva (damn they crowd those things). On the way back down the hill, because its a one-way trip up, I asked the crowd to reach under the bench because I forgot my umbrella there. The driver explained to me that it was now another person´s. She took it with her when she got off at the end. The volunteer hosting our culture week said she´d try to get it back, but when she said it was a two hour hike up the hill and then off into the woods, I told her not to bother. It wasn´t worth $4. Then I rationalized it by saying, she probably needed it more than me anyway. She made a face that said ¨not really¨, which was the same face I got from each volunteer who came to visit when I told them the same thing. Now I know why our host dad told us umpteen times our first night that our bags were his responsibility and that no one would mess with them in his house, we could feel assured. He was saying it because it wasn´t a part of his culture to have things belonging only to one person.

A taste of the Comarca - from Lisa´s perspective!

Right now I´m sitting in David, stinky and dirty from a week in the Comarca, and waiting for a hotel room for the night. We (Ben & I) were in the Comarca this past week for our culture week visiting another current volunteer along with 5 other aspirantes (trainees) from our group. We arrived Sunday afternoon and went off with host families. Ben and I were placed with a family that lived far up the mountain, but once you got up the mountain along the road, we also had to slide/hike down a muddy mountain cliff to their home. And talk about a bit of culture shock. Life is hard in the Comarca, and will be hard in the Comarca, but after a week there, and coming back to civilization, I really feel that it´s the place where we are needed most.

The family we lived with had 8 children, 2 adults, and last week, us. Their house had a zinc roof on some logs, and a few small sheets of zinc around the outside that formed bits of walls. Inside there were 5 platforms for beds and nothing else. The first night was uncomfortable and awkward. We arrived and unpacked a few things and set up our bed area with mosquito net, and then we were stared at all night until our host dad woke up and tried to communicate with us. We´d heard stories from current volunteers about experiences in the Comarca with a family of 12, being stared at, eating food you can´t see in the dark, and knowing that you´re being talked about and laughed at as you hear ¨gringo...¨, and our night definitely fit the mold. The people were very shy the whole time we were there, but were opening up to us somewhat as time passed. We ate our breakfasts and dinners with the host family, and food was typically boiled plantains, overcooked white rice and maybe a bit of beans. Lunches were with the group of aspirantes and were rice and beans. I won´t lie - I didn´t like the food. And I miss cooking. Living with a host family for 3 months after swearing in will be challenging, but I think we´re ready.

Now, to the fun stuff. On Wednesday I got pink eye, and full on, in both eyes, pink eye. They were both goopy and gross on Wednesday and into Thursday, which is even more disgusting in a place where you´re always covered in mud (I´m officially in love with my rubber boots- FYI). Yesterday my eyes apparently looked like they were going to leak blood at any second, and today they still look wicked (my first look in the mirror), but are ¨much better than before.¨

Also, on Thursday, Ben and I trekked down to the quebrada (creek) to bathe after class and I slipped on wet rocks and fell on both of my arms and my back - hard. I´ve got some nasty bruises and a pretty sore back now. AND... I have more bug bites than I´ve ever had in my whole life, easily. I look like I´m diseased on my arms. Andrea counted 15 bites on the back of my neck this morning (all new from yesterday), and my neck is probably the least bitten part of my body aside from my face.

So, I´m a mess, but have had a lot of good laughs at myself over the week! Everything else from the week was great - we did a lot of hiking up the mountain to different places. We visited a coop farm one day, and on Thursday we went to a presentation by a local artisan group. They make really awesome dresses and bags, and we got to watch them break down the fibers in leaves that they use to make string. I´m very excited to learn more about the local artisans and the type of work I may be doing in our community soon!

What else? I used a machete for the first time in my life to make leña (firewood) and actually was doing pretty well with it (i.e., no missing fingers, toes or legs!). Wednesday we went to the school in the community and presented charlas about the world map and the continents to each grade level and then shared a lunch with the teachers. And we didn´t miss the electricity. The area was gorgeous, much cooler than the city and it rained quite a bit.

I also shed some tears from frustration. Like when I was walking to class with full on pink eye, and Ben noticed that I had an army of Ngobe children following behind me. I turned around to smile at them, and they saw my eyes and said ¨BREN!¨ Which means ¨sick¨in Ngobere. I later joked that that would probably become my Ngobere name at this rate! We also had an uncomfortable night our second night with the host family because several drunk men showed up at the house and were arguing with our host dad about how much money they got from us for staying for the week. They spent a lot of time talking about that and staring at our stuff. We also got lots of questions about how much EVERYTHING costs. And no matter what you say, it´s a ton when your host dad makes $5 a day working hard at a farm.

I was telling a friend this morning though on the way to David that this feels right. We´re not here to be comfortable, and we knew it wouldn´t be. This was just a taste, but there´s so much we can learn from the people, and so much we can give as well. And I´m ready for it - red eyes, bruises, bites and all!!

Tonight I have a night in luxury - my first hot shower since the states, AC, and maybe some mexican food, before going off to tech week in Chiriqui near Costa Rica. Ben is heading toward Veraguas right now for his tech week, and said he´ll be checking in here to give his perspectives soon!

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Welcome to our Blog!

We´re just getting this set up, but intend on using this as our major mode of communication with home and friends for the next two years. We won´t have internet access a lot, and sending individual emails quickly gets overwhelming, so we hope you like our blog!

We´ve been in Panama now for over a month and overall, we´re really enjoying our time so far. This week we found out our site location for the next two years, and Ben & I will be going to an indigenous community in the Comarca Ngobe-Bugle. The community has about 1,000 people and they speak Ngobe first, but some people will speak Spanish as a second language. We will be close to other volunteers, and quite a few others from our training group. We will be working with a coffee cooperative, women´s artisan groups, micro-enterprises and youth groups in the community.

This next week we are going to the Comarca for Culture week, to experience life in a community similar to ours and start working with the people. The following week we´ll be in different locations for our Tech week, to learn specifics related to the jobs we´ll be doing in our communities. Ben will be going to the Veraguas province to learn more related to cooperatives, and Lisa will be going to the Chiriqui province to learn more related to artisan and youth groups.

Overall, life is good! We´re almost half-way through pre-service training in Santa Clara. It´s a beautiful, small town, and we live with an awesome host family. We´ve been very comfortable living with them, and have been picking up Spanish quickly from them, and our 4 hour Spanish classes every day! Their home is beautiful, we have a flush toilet and indoor shower, unlike many of the trainees. It´s very hot and humid here, and sometimes showering twice a day is a necessity. Our food so far is great, but our mom is a great cook who likes diversity in what she eats. A lot of the typical food is fried and a bit flavorless, so we´re happy to change things up!

In the Comarca, we can expect to eat a lot of rice, plantains and yucca - all flavorless, and with little nutritional value. The people are small and skinny (from what we hear), but hardworking and motivated. We expect them to be shy, but very friendly. We´ll be following up after another volunteer, who will actually continue to be in the site with us for one more year, so we hope to jump right into working side by side with the community. Our town is a bit of a hub for other communities, so we hope to be working with other volunteers in their sites as well.

We won´t have electricity, but we should have running water most days. We´ve been told that the homes typically have a thatched roof and a dirt floor. It rains a lot, but we´ll be in the mountains, so it will actually get cooler at night (than we´ve experienced so far). The higher mountain locations are the best for coffee growing, so we´re bound to become coffee drinkers (again for Lisa).

Keep checking in with us, we hope to post about every week or so, and leave comments! We´ll also be checking email from time to time for more personal stuff! So starts our adventure in Panama!