Work update

The training went super well. It was all interactive and new information, so everyone was really attentive and participating and happy for it. Our boss kept saying he was shocked that no one was falling asleep as is often the case with our training when they invite trainers (other volunteers) to help out and they are unprepared and just rehash all the same info in a ¨discussion¨. So we did good. :) I´ll be doing a teacher training with teachers from all of Coclé, maybe others in February (tHE ANAM director forCoclé heard about the training I did and wants me to bef up their training.)

And in early Dec (10 and 11) I´ll be in Panama on a training of the trainers for PML (project management and leadersçhip). Then in January and maybe later too i´ll be training pairs of volunteers with their community counterparts. It keeps me busy as the principal at my school hates me and makes me feel unwelcome there. If he only knew what he was missing. lol

Over the river and through the woods

Craziness... I crossed out of Kaylas community on Thursday night in the last chiva out. Well in the morning on Friday, a MOP (Ministry of Public Works) truck went across carrying gravel to fix the road... and the whole bridge came down! THe bridge just split in half like a V into the creek below and the truck rolled down with it. No one was hurt, but Kayla will be walking for at least a couple of months... and her stores in town probably won´t be restocked until then too. Crazy, huh? It´s been on the news every night since (the first day she was interviewed too) in the section of news that they go through all the problems in Panama that the government has yet to act upon. I think her community feels really forgotten about since they´ve been asking for a new bridge forever and will still have to wait a long time even now that they don´t have any bridge. Oh Panama!

Projects and creations

Geesh, getting people to write all those articles, digging for pictures, and everything it took to put the whole thing together was a lot of work. That's why they say Peace Corps is a 24/7 job! I spent a lot of days last week waking up at 5:30am, getting to the office at 7am, working there until close at 7pm, and then working in my hostel until 2am just to do it all over again. Next time I should have more help. But I'm happy how it turned out. (Did you notice though that I wrote June on the cover instead of September? No one else noticed who looked it over before print, so I'm not taking full blame. hehe)

My next project is putting together a training manual for my sector, mainly on environmental education. I'm also waiting on my Program and Training Specialist (assistant director of my sector) to finally hand back his corrections on my Bird Education Manual that I translated and adapted from an English guide I have. I know I have Spanish words in there, and verbs conjugated... but I'm not sure if people would really say some of the things I want to. That organization in the states (Council for Environmental Organization) will be writing about me in their newletter that goes out to all national parks, nature centers, and anywhere else environmental education is taught. So I'm keeping myself in the game for my return to the states and jobmarket.

We have our Regional Meeting tomorrow, when all Peace Corps Volunteers in my Province (Cocle) join together to present what we've been up to with the government agencies we work with. And then all the Volunteers and someone from headquarters are all coming out to my site for the other half of the meeting and to spend the night. It should be fun, as I've planned it at a cool organic farm. And the wifes of the guys who work on the farm have started extracting essential oils from plants like mint and vanilla to make into soaps, and using the same process have made some all-natural alcohols out of pineapple and mango harvested from the farm. :) Oh, and in a Volunteer Advisory Council meeting I was in last night, I won a grant to finish off my Leadership seminar series I've been doing with groups in town. I've definitely been keeping myself busy!!!

Oh and my new favorite drink is to climb up a coconut tree, chop one down with my machete, open it up with the same tool, and blend coconut with run and frozen papaya. Mmmmmm. Don't worry, I don't climb up the tree too much to make it a regular treat. It's a fun drink for when I have visitors!

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

Settling in again

¡Hola Hola y Buenos Días!

I’ve been much busier in my new site than I feel I ever was in Chiriquí. Well, I’ve been pasearing less and spending that time on my little laptop typing away. On a typical day, I wake up at 5am to the chickens (hens are noisy too, it’s not just the roosters!). I try to go back to sleep or at least stay hidden in my room until 6am. Then I get up, take over the bathroom for a good half hour with a shower, brushing teeth, doing my hair, and using the john depending on what delicacies have been sitting in my stomach all night long. I then emerge and eat whatever has been sitting on the kitchen table since I entered the bathroom. It’s typically a cup of coffee (now warm or cool) and a piece of bread spread with butter and usually a Kraft single or the Panamanian equivalent. I gobble it all down as graciously as I can and then return to my room to pack up what I need.

With my computer tucked away in a drybag and my cell phone charged, I head off to the school. I gingerly step down the leafy stairway and try to hop across all the rocks to the other side of Quebrada Puerto Frio. I’m usually not that successful, so I luckily have gotten in the habit of rolling up my pant legs before attempting it. The problem is that only this family uses this creek crossing due to the location of their house. None of the rocks are stable. In fact, after the last heavy rain, a couple of them in the middle got carried away. I have better luck crossing Quebrada El Congal as everyone who lives in the 20 houses of this sector has to cross it here. (When there’s been a lot of rain, all bets are off. I waited over an hour once for the water to drop about two feet. Even then it was up to my mid-thigh, so you can imagine I got wet.)

I then walk down the trail alongside the baseball field bordered by a few neighbors and a tienda. I meet the main road with a right turn and pass by the Catholic Church and another store before reaching the school. All in all, it’s only about a five minute walk. Pretty nice commute, huh? At school, I change my shoes or all my clothes depending on how high the creeks were and how wet I am.

I head into the computer lab where I’ve been spending most of my time. It’s the only air conditioned room in… well, the whole town. So in an equatorial country at 300m above sea level, AC is welcome. Plus, there’s a dehumidifier, so I feel assured that any humidity my computer or other electronics have gathered over the night will be dried out a bit. Other teachers come in throughout the day to take a break from the heat, so I’m hardly ever alone in there.

I have two classes a day of Informática, aka Computers. I make it up as I go along. What doesn’t work with one class, I try to adjust my explanation and try again with the next one. I started out with Preschool through sixth grade, but that wasn’t working. I dropped the little monsters that couldn’t keep their fingers off the power buttons and now have first through sixth grade. I think telling one of the four main parts of the computer was called a “mouse” scared some of them away, as they will barely touch it and just tap the sides with their finger to get it to move. I tell them it doesn’t bite, but I’m not sure they believe me. (Laura and any other lefties, you still use your right hand for the mouse, don’t you?)

So we’ve been working using the mouse with a couple programs I bought here in Panamá. One program calls out directions like “Put the red square to the right of the yellow circle.” It sounds easy, but when third graders have trouble with their rights and lefts, and some are still working out the differences between a square and a triangle, it gets pretty tricky. Other programs from that same company focus on science, math, and reading. I haven’t used the reading one much as fourteen computers talking at the same time with no headphones for any of the students would drive me crazy during the 40 minute period.

I’ve now started them on a typing program from Typing Tux. It’s a free program from the internet and still has some bugs. Just getting the kids to use two hands is my goal. Like the mouse, they hit what they need to and then put their hands back under the table. I feel like bringing in a roll of duct tape to ensure they keep their hands in position. Muhuhaha.

In my off time before and between classes, the principal has been keeping me busy with digitizing forms. I don’t mind recreating the tables in Excel that much. There is a lot of information that I’ve wanted to find out, like the correct spelling of teachers’ names, the number of boys and girls in each class, etc. However, when he asked me today to type the names, birthdays, parents’ names, and social security numbers of all 244 students, I told him he could use the same form I made for the preschool student census. He wasn’t too happy with my response and after half an hour had two names inputted. We’ll see if I cave in. I don’t know the kids’ names and want that info eventually. I’m just busy with some other stuff right now.

I’m typing up a lot on environmental education, especially from Project WILD and friends. Since my four main guides are in English, I’ve been translating to Spanish which takes longer than just typing word for word. My goal is to have a guide on how to complete our Peace Corps goals, from teaching lessons in the schools to implementing environmental action plans. All the info is already there in my guides, I’ve just got to compile it all, adapt it to Panamá, and of course get it into Spanish so community members can use it after I’m gone. That’s the plan at least!

I spend my Tuesday and Friday afternoons with the tourism group. I’ll usually catch the tourist on their way out of the school and then pasear with the group at their marcadito (little market of handicrafts) while the American AARP members waddle through town with their walkers to eat lunch with families. They come back to peruse the local wares, and then we have a meeting. I’ve got a friend down at the granja (organic farm) where I go about once a week. Depending on the week, I might have a meeting with the leadership of the town, the PTA of the elementary school or middle school, the woman’s baking group, or the aqueduct committee. As you can imagine, the woman’s group is one of my favorites. This weekend I hiked to the toma de agua which is gorgeous despite our intermittent water supply. So that’s what I’m up to!

I’ll be home over the Forth of July whether my bosses like it or not: technically I’m not allowed to go, but I already bought my ticket! All my other friends here are getting together the same week for an adventure on Coiba Island and to celebrate our one year anniversary of being sworn in as volunteers. One way or another I’d be out of site. Can’t wait to see ya’ll!