Making a house a home

I finally feel like I’m moved into my house. Well, I still have a ways to go, but I’m getting there. I hosted Culture Week and had quite a few guests staying at my house. One of whom was my Regional Leader (RL), a third year Volunteer who works with agency relations, site development, and volunteer support. She stayed with me earlier for a Volunteer Visit (aka my one-year mark). And she was just as frustrated as I was with my lack of tables.

My house in Chiriquí had a great big table, just moments before I moved into it. Then my renters exchanged it for one half of its size. This time around, I moved into my new house with no tables. My renters were about to take the bed out of the house too when I stopped them and explained that I had no furniture to move into the house. Later that first week, he brought over a table for me to use.

A table was a big improvement on none. However, I have a home office. Yes, that’s right, in the middle of a rural town in the tropics of Panama, I’ve set myself up with an office. Or at least it seems like it. I have loads of manuals that I refer to frequently, currently sitting on the ground in molding cardboard boxes turned on their sides for makeshift bookshelves. I bought a printer just two months after swearing in due to frustrations with customer service at internet cafes. Well, I think my printer might have some problems right now because cockroaches were living inside of it at my second host family’s house. I tried getting all the turds out of it, so we’ll see if it works better now. And then I have my baby laptop, external DVD drive, and mouse. Those I keep in watertight bags when they aren’t in use. And they get a drying out every once and a while with the school’s dehumidifier. Needless to say, I used the table for work.

That left nothing little surface area for the kitchen. Heck, rice and beans don’t require too much prep, right? Okay, so I don’t really eat rice and beans unless I’m out of money for the week and can’t get onions or meat or… oh wait, sometimes the store doesn’t even have those. (I load up on veggies in Penonomé.) I used a shoe-rack, turned food shelf, for my stove and toaster oven and kept my blender on the floor. For a cutting surface, I’d either balance it on the top of the oven or a five gallon bucket. (I’ve got lots of buckets for when the aqueduct runs dry, like today.)

Evidently, my RL didn’t think I could or should live like that. She was doing half the cooking so probably got frustrated herself. I have a couple kids who aren’t (very) afraid of my guard dogs and come to my house often. While I was out, she told them that they needed to tell their parents that I needed tables, one to put my stove on and another for food prep and to eat at.

The very next day, I got a handmade table delivered to my door and moved into my kitchen! It’s super pretty. Okay, so it’s campo style, but you wouldn’t believe the work that went into it. Have you ever sawed boards of tropical hardwood by hand? Oye, I did once in my old site, and luckily, I haven’t had to again. So the boards were cut, and hewn? I don’t know the word, but you know when they shave them down so they look all pretty? (Boards are made by chainsaw, the only machine used in this process.) And the legs of the table are all decorated with an in and out kind of design, cut by machete. I had to go to the city the very next day, but I sure appreciated his rush order.

Upon my return, I was greeted by a second, larger table. This one is made out of even heavier wood, as I have difficulty lifting it and moving it by myself. (My homeboy moved it into my kitchen for me, but I did some remodeling after he left.) I think I’m going to use the little table to eat and work outside on. It’s light enough that I can carry it back and forth. And the new table is lower than the last one, so I can type on it easier, and stand up while cooking on the old one. It all worked out perfectly!

In other homemaking news, I bought some bright fabric to make curtains for my house. I had some already, but they were all random: Winnie the Pooh on one window, Mickey Mouse on another, flowers on some, and green lace on others. Unfortunately, I didn’t measure my windows first. Some were 50” wide like I thought, though others are larger. I didn’t buy enough material, so I decided a two-tone design with a large stripe of color in the middle on the larger ones would look pretty neat. After hand stitching three curtains this way, I hung them… only to realize that my room now looks like the circus came to town. Oh well! It’s better than kids peeking in. (I still need to teach them that they can’t just come barging through my door, though my office/living room, and into my kitchen when they think I might be sleeping… Ah privacy, I can’t wait for that again!)

Once I finish all my curtains and clean up a bit, I’ll show you a tour of my house. Until then, I’ll be thinking about all of you!

Camino Real Gira

Since I haven´t been so great about updating my blog, I figured I better share some of my friends´ blogs with you to give you a better idea of what I´ve been up to. We did a gira or hike through Colon, the province north of Panama City through indigenous villages, crossing rivers, hiking over the Continental Divide, and finally reaching the Carribean Sea in one of the hardest backpacking trips I have every completed. Though we only covered thirty miles, much of the hike was in rivers and then in streams... which still spanned over ten meters wide and over three feet deep. Fighting the current and bracing against the pain caused by sand rubbing off layer after layer of skin around our ankles made for a challenge. Once we finally made it to our final site, an Afro-Antillian community on the beach, we couldn´t wait to take showers and clean up. Though we were to find that the town had been out of water for the past ten weeks. Hmmm, back to the river it was to soap up and rinse off! It was a great experience, packing with history of the Camino Real, teaching and learning about nutrition and alcohol in rural villages, and relying on eachother to make it through.

Here´s Elena´s blog with links to the history and maps of our hike and pictures on Facebook: http://panama.tumblr.com/

Ashely, who lives in Colon where we ended our hike, spoiled us all with her cooking. She's a great cook, and they have more food in their house than a tienda (town store) due to a Costco run while her parents were visiting. Her pantry is probably on par with a typical pantry in the states. Our eyes were wide and our mouths were drooling over it all. She also had a bunch of recipe books, including one called Four Ingredient Cookbook. It is a really pretty book with lots of great recipes that don't call for a ton of different ingredients. Wihle some of them are a little impractical here due to some random ingredients, there are plenty of good ones I want to try. By the tiem Courty visits or whoever comes next, I'll have Hollandale sauce for eggs benedict, soup stocks, and breads and veggie dishes all from scratch. That's the hope at least. But at least I won't be at a loss of what to do when I don't have any eggs to cook or have too much cilantro than I know what to do with.

I just got back from some early morning birding at Gamboa, near the Pipeline Road. They have a huge observatory tower, rising over 100ft from the forest floor and popping out through the canopy. It offered a great vantage point for lots of birds, including a couple species of toucans, bright blue cotingas and danaskis, spotted doves, sloths, and more. And instead of a $60 cab ride, we only paid $18 each for cab ($25), binocular rentals ($5), and entrance fee ($10 for Panamanians). I just love being a Panamanian with all the deals I get with entrance fees. hehe It was a beautiful place though, and I want to coordinate with them for my Flying WILD stuff. And I don't remember if I told you, but they (the marketing and publicity director of Flying WILD in the States) emailed me since he heard from others in the office what I was doing down here and wants to include it in their newsletter that goes out to all the educators using the program across the states. Pretty good networking for when I get back, huh? :) I wrote my boss to cover my tail and make sure Peace Corps is okay with me saying whatever. I can't imagine they'd have a problem with it though, as that's good publicity for them too. Now all I've gotta do is hold the festival in my site! hehe