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.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
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.
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.
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
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