Busy two weeks!

I feel like I haven't stopped running around in two weeks. PML, Project Management and Leadership, was a week packed with seminars for volunteers and their community counterparts. We received the bulk of the material back in Pre-service Training, so this was geared toward our counterparts. Basically, I babysat for the week. The president of our Padres de Familia, secretary of the conservation group, and position holder of other groups in town backed out at the last minute. As it is the middle of the tomato harvest and planting time, any of the guys in the conservation group who own a farm wouldn’t be able to come. Many of the mothers wouldn’t be able to pawn off their kids at a moment’s notice and would probably have to attend the rescheduled Padres de Familia meeting anyhow.

This left me with Jesus, who is a dedicated student in my Eco-English class and a member of the conservation group. He is a hard worker which I figured would make him the perfect person to take. Boy was I wrong. Now, he was certainly loved by all there. He told some great stories. But I think he got a little intimidated by the other counterparts. Instead of working on the real problems facing the group, he babbled off advice to other groups facing some of the same problems that our group hasn’t even begun to address. Instead of focusing on a single project and carrying it through all the sessions such as writing a letter to an agency or presenting in public, he jumped like a fish out of water hitting everything under the sun. Me: No, we don’t need plastic bags for reforestation, we just filled 5,000 with dirt and still haven’t collected any seeds. Jesus: So we should ask for MORE bags. Me: Ummm, no. (Did I miss something here?) Jesus: Let’s ask for a roof for the basketball court. (This suggestion was followed by a long story about basketball plays and games.) Me: What does that have to do with the conservation group and trail building project that is pending?

I eventually stopped trying to pull him back to conservation topics and the reason I brought him. I know he learned a lot during the week and was certainly proud of what he accomplished and people he met. In the end, that’s all I could hope for. Perhaps his talking about what he learned will spur others in the community to ask questions. And hopefully I’ll be around long enough to clear up anything that he may have missed during his tangents.

The first day of the seminar I celebrated my 24th birthday. I began my day at 7am to pick up Jesus in the chiva to Potrerillos and then David. He informed me when he got in the chiva that he didn’t eat breakfast yet. (He gets up at 4:30am every day, so why would he pick today to skip breakfast?) So I bought him breakfast in David and we got on a bus at nearly 11am. I bought him lunch in Santiago and then we finally arrived at CEDESAM at around 4:30pm. (It seemed more like it was his birthday than my own.) That’s nine and a half hours sitting hip to hip with a Panamanian who reminds me in many ways of my uncle. It was intense. Then we had sessions until 8:30pm!!! Finally I escaped with some great friends to the casino to celebrate my birthday. Kayla made me a delicious cacao cake and everyone in the entire casino sang to me (the Panamanian version of the song of course). It was a great birthday, well worth the long day’s wait.

I had my regional meeting on Friday and a group of us took off for Lost and Found Ecoresort to continue bonding. Volunteers from the Comarca kept us company. Now, for any of you interested in staying at this “resort”, be forewarned that it is most certainly a hostel. There is a steep climb up uneven stairs to reach the place (I’m talking at least 10-20 minutes of huffing up all of your stuff, which for me was a week’s worth of presentable clothes from the seminar.) The dorms, or the one that I saw, consisted of four platforms filled with end to end mattresses for perhaps 20 people. It is a great place for Peace Corps volunteers or those adventurous folks looking for a cool place to crash. It’s not so much a place for parents or those accustomed to a little more comfort. I was actually in the “house”, which they told me was their new addition. It is actually just an old house, in the middle of two others a hike away from the main hostel and common area. There was nothing special about the house, and I’d suggest trying to stay in the main hostel if you get the chance. We did see capuchin monkeys on the morning walk back to the hostel, so perhaps for no other reason, it was worth it to stay out there.

Upon my return to town, I had a meeting with the mom’s sending their daughters with me to Girl Scout camp which went well. And the following day I had a meeting with the conservation group, which went… okay. It turned out that we needed to get all the paperwork for the Biological Corredor grant in by the following day, so I arrived at 7am to start cracking on it. (Mind you, I had scheduled a meeting weeks before to get it done, which the group then canceled on me without telling me.) Anyhow, we got a lot accomplished and I left at around 3pm to print off maps and letters that we would need. I then handed the three maps and three letters to the member of the group who said he would be responsible for it all. All he had to do was get three more signatures from members of the group and get the letters signed by the president and secretary who are both his neighbors.

I left for camp with four of the seven Muchachas who were supposed to come to camp. One was close to the Costa Rican border with her dad, who wouldn’t bring her back to town to come. Two others were blocked by their parents from coming who offered me one lame excuse after another to delay their decision in letting the girls come. I wish they had just been honest and upfront with me so at least I could have offered the opportunity to other girls in town. Oh well.

Camp was definitely a Panamanian affair. We were given a schedule, but didn’t keep to it. Instead of lunch at noon, food was never ready until 2pm. Instead of bedtime at 9:30pm (which is late for me to begin with) activities went until 11pm, midnight, or beyond. The one constant was a wakeup call at 6am or 5:30am if you are sleeping in a tent with little ones who want to get in a shower before the morning exercises. In fact, I didn’t even sleep in the tent the whole week with them. Our tent was actually made up of two tents with a large fly draped over them. I had four girls in each of the two tents, and I was left in the middle. The middle was not only a thoroughfare for dirty shoes trampling through, but also had a lovely large skylight made ever so pleasing with the downpours at night. Two nights of getting soaked and I had it. I headed for a cabin which didn’t offer much more in terms of warmth since I only brought sheets, but made up for it in comfort with a real mattress and pillow.

The girls seemed to enjoy themselves despite the downtime. Peace Corps volunteers did our best to fill in some of the gaps with games and activities of our own. There was a great charla about HIV/AIDS with dinamicas and videos. If you get the chance, I strongly recommend googling “Forrito” which is a singing, cartoon condom. I was a little surprised that they showed the video to 10 year olds, but hey, it’s a cartoon, so it can’t be bad. Hehe Perhaps they even have an English version of the videos, I don’t know, but they were really funny.

Other charlas were not as good. A 40 minute charla on making heathly food choices stretched to two and a half hours. That wouldn’t be so bad if it was really productive, but no. I learned that drinking ice water makes you fat, bet you didn’t know that! …Yeah, so it was lacking in factual information. Girls were falling asleep and most just weren’t paying attention at all. They all seemed to have forgotten about that come time for the evaluations and only remember the problems with the food. (For example, they completely ran out of food for my entire patrol on the second day. So they were finally served something whipped up from the kitchen an hour after all the other girls had eaten and left. )

Camp was an overall positive experience though. My girls learned not just about HIV/AIDS but a little about responsibility too. (Over the course of the week one of my girls lost her sandals, found them, lost her dished, borrowed mine, found hers, returned mine missing a spoon, lost her glasses, and lost her hat, not to be found again. ) They also made friends all over Panama and had an experience they never would have had sitting in town watching TV or what-have-you on their summer vacation.

I got back to town and was greeted by a disastrous house. Okay, so not quite a disaster, my house was still standing. But really strong winds and a lack of closing windows made for quite a mess. My bed that had been made before my departure had the blankets and sheets stripped and covered in dirt and leaves. I left a stack of printer paper on my table which spread all across the floor with a healthy film of dirt on top. Dishes fell in the kitchen area, and light bulbs, perhaps through the vibrations of the tin roof, wiggled out of the sockets and shattered on the floor. It’s all clean now, and I just have to buy some more bulbs today.

I had another meeting with my conservation group. I was told at the beginning of the meeting (which started an hour late in true Panamanian style) that the list of participants was missing three names so we would have to redo it and that our letter of solicitude was still missing. I mentioned that I printed it off, and asked what happened to all those papers. It turns out they just sat there the entire time, without any signatures or mention that they were ready to go. Now we need to turn in a letter from the local authorities supporting the group by Friday, which means that the letter I had printed off still needs to get down to that office in Potrerillos so they can write up the letter we need. I’d like to say I couldn’t believe that no one did anything and then refused to believe me when I told them that I had printed off everything they needed and they only had to sign it. The group is pretty much falling apart, and I think it would almost be better if it did and they could get some new leadership in there and start anew. I told them that I couldn’t and wouldn’t do everything on my own, so we’ll see what happens.

In other news, I received a grant for $60 from the Volunteer Advisory Council which I’ll be using to put together a kit with materials needed to run a FlyingWILD birding festival. It will keep me busy getting it all ready, but it should be fun and rewarding. I think I’m going to stick with a theme like Survival, hitting on the threats to bird populations and adaptations of birds.

Carnival is at the end of the month which will be a fun time to catch up with friends in a wet and wild atmosphere of the Azuero Peninsula. I’ll keep you posted and hope all is going well up in the freezy north!