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!