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!