Electricity

Sometimes a Volunteer can’t help but be out of site. In order to do our job and maintain our wellbeing, we have to pop out of site every once and a while to visit agencies, load up on groceries, and reconnect with the outside world. For me, these trips can be accomplished in a day trip to the provincial capital. Other trips out of site for medical, programming, and training are lengthier, requiring at least one night out of site. And when these trips are combined, you better hope nothing catastrophic happens back at home.

This past week, something did: my town lost electricity. You might be questioning my campo-ness if after two years of living in rural Panama, I still can't live without light. That’s fine by me—I love electricity! While my electric treasures ate up my Settling-In Allowance and then some, they are worth every penny to me. Instead of buying my food bit by bit, I can literally load up on fruit, veggies, and meat in Penonomé’s Public Market. Depending on how long I’ll be out of site, I can let green tomatoes ripen in the crisper and fill my freezer with pineapple and papaya which will be ready for a great smoothie upon my return.

Typically my town loses electricity at least once a week, though only for a few hours at a time. Usually it’s out in the morning when I want to boil water for a cup of tea or around dinner time when I have a pot full of beans to cook. I’m flexible; I’ll wait, skip the meal, or go pasear.

Evidently, the electricity went out soon after I started my hike out of site. It was back on by the time I arrived home days later. However, the surge blew out my power strip, which protects all my kitchen appliances including my electric stove, toaster oven, blender, and refrigerator. The good news is my appliances survived. The bad news is my fridge was without electricity for a whole week.

How did I know that my electricity hadn’t just se fue-ed that day? The varying states of decomposition of produce told part of the tale. I surmised that the pile of dark green mush in the freezer was once a head of broccoli. The pumpkin had turned into pudding. The black bollo shapes were the once-green guineo chinos I received from Señor Toribio shortly before leaving. The sprouts growing in a cartucho on a carpet of fluffy, white mold were a gift of frijoles nuevos from Señora Berta. I was looking forward to those treats.

The three fruit flies that escaped when I first opened the door of the fridge told the rest of the tale. That may not seem like many, but these probably emerged from one of the thousands of maggots squirming over every available surface inside. I carried each load of spent food out of my kitchen, through my office, across my porch, around my house, and to my compost pile. With each trip, I’d make a pit stop at my sink to rinse off the larvae crawling along my fingers and across my wrists. I carried the shelves and drawers out of my kitchen, through my office, across my porch, and down the hill to the sink to wash and sterilize.

I then tackled washing the fridge itself with a sponge and a load of soap. Each swipe of the sponge lifted countless larvae from microscopic goo to gluttonous round ones to dark, crunchy chrysalis. While they were dreaming of their metamorphosis to reproduce and continue the species, I was doing everything in my power to stop it. I raced the sponge out of my kitchen, through my office, across my porch, down the hill and to the sink. Repeat.

At various moments throughout this three and a half hour cleaning spree, I’d feel ticklish—not unlike a soft touch or a slight breeze, bending the fine hairs on my body and exciting my tactile sense. I’d look and no doubt find a juicy, white worm wiggling to and fro on my shoulder or a small, almost anorexic youngster on the back of my hand. These too experienced a truncated life cycle.

Once I finally finished, I headed into the center of town to buy some food for dinner. While the selection at the kiosco is limited, I pieced together a decent meal. In my kitchen I chopped up an onion, carrot, and culantro, dumped them into a pot, poured in a bit of lentils, filled it up with water and a packet of Costilla Criolla, and put it on the stove. I turned the small, black knob to about medium heat. The little orange light didn’t go on. Great, the power was out again.

Mom, here's a guide to my Spanglish:

campo (a place way far a away, or someone who lives in the boonies)

pasear (action of going around to people's houses to chat and visit... almost always resulting in getting a full plate of rice and beans or some kind of food or drink)

se fue (left, went away)

bollo (baked corn meal in a tube shaped by the corn husks... I'm not a fan of them as they don't have much taste.)

cartucho (plastic bag)

guineo chinos (Chinese bananas, think big bananas that are more cubic than round)

frijoles nuevos (new beans)

kiosco (little store consisting on about three rows of 5ft long shelves, selling essentials like rice, beans, and soap)

Costilla Criolla (Panama's version of beef bullion cubes)

Carnival!

Carnival was... words just can't describe it! lol

I started off on Thursday at the beach after a big meeting at my site. And then on Friday we drove down to the Azuero Peninsula to celebrate in Las Tablas. One of my friends rented out the house of someone from his site (who then decided that she was going to stay too... leaving us with one bedroom and 15 people!). I'm glad I left early Monday morning, cause my liver sure wouldn't have been able to handle two more days. As it was, I think I was the only one in my group of friends not drinking at the discotecas. It's a marathon, and if I was going to make it as long as I did, I knew I would only be able to handle some drinks from noon to 4pm, nada mas. Well okay, one of the days I played flip cup after we got back to the house, but then called it quits. Oh... lol and I had a rum and ginger ale the very first night, but that was only because the Vice President of Panama had his secret service bring it over to me and my two friends. That was a crazy day! We shook hands with him at the parade, and he asked if he could take a picture of us. Then he sent it to the US Embassador of Panama, with a text message saying, "Your Peace Corps Volunteers are celebrating Carnival in Las Tablas. I'm taking good care of them." Then of course we got a picture with him and that's when he invited us to join him in his VIP area of the club he owns. (He owns half of Las Tablas too, plus the main alcohol company of Panama (Abuelo and Seco rums, and Balboa and Atlas beers), plus Pub Herrana (Herrera?) which is a club in every major city of Panama for all celebrations, fitting at least a couple thousand people in each one. When he introduced himself to us, he told us that he was the VP and all that he owned... as if we didn't know who he was already. hehe) But needless to say, we were taken good care of!

Then in the culecos (the water craziness during the day), we got on top of one of the water tanker trucks and danced and squirted people with the fire hoses. And then we got into one of the VIP areas that are elevated as well above the wall of people in the streets. (I dont' like being squished with a bunch of people, so it suited me well!) And that had an open bar. You can see then why I called it quits at 4pm when that part of the day ends!!!

All in all, it was a great last Carnival in Panama! I'll send pictures as I get them from people, as I wasn't going to chance bringing my own camera. Ahhhh, now back up to site and back to work!!!

I went to the last day of the teacher seminar today. Boy, the agenda wasn't followed at all... Instead of analyzing the environmental education guides (or touching them at all), evaluating the workshop, anything helpful... we listened to a powerpoint on the types of puppets and spent the rest of the day making our own puppets and creating a puppet show in groups. Wow. And they werent' even the puppet shows out of the guides (since the written objective of the workshop was to orient the teachers in the use of the guides). Soooo, that was pretty much a wasted day. I'm out of site again, which means I have internet. Life could be worse. :) And I'm earning major brownie points from ANAM, MEDUCA, and my Peace Corps bosses. Gotta rack those up while I can! I'll definitely have a thing or two to say to the National Director of Environmental Education when I meet with him on Monday. Like... hey, if you want educators to teach EE in the classroom and want them to use the guides you just spent a ton of money printing... maybe in the workshop you should do more than just pass out the guides after five days and 40 hours of sitting through irrelevent lectures and doing random dinamicas (minus the itsy-bit of time you gave the Peace Corps Volunteer, aka me, to explain everything about the guides). Of course, I'll have to be more politically correct when I offer that suggestion.

Teaching

My teacher training went well. I presented a lot of info they had never heard before (always good in keeping attention), and the index that I made addressed all their concerns from the previous person's lecture on how they are supposed to carry EE through all their subjects. Unfortunately, there was some major confusion on the part of the planners, so I had to drop my activities on how to use the indexes. But the teachers were all flipping through them through other people's presentations, so hah! I won and had the more interesting and useful info. :) I go next week to present it in the city with my boss to the national directors. And I'm picking teachers' brains this week in the seminar for more info for our CEC guide.

Lol, you'd appreciate this... Yesterday the teachers were divided into groups and assigned an EE activity to present to the whole group. I was sent to help one group who had what would seem to be a pretty easy activity on vertebrates. They had to draw five verts on different pieces of paper, write what group of vertebrates it belongs to on the back, and string it all together to make a mobile. So they draw a snake and label it a reptile. Good job. Then they draw a dog and label it a mammal. Nice. Then they draw a loro (parrot), pollito (chick), and a pescado (which means cooked fish that you would eat instead of "pes," the animal, but I wasn't even going to go there). They labeled all three "egglayers." Hmmm, okay, so that is a characteristic of them, but that's not their group. It took me 20 minutes of trying to be pc with them and explaining the heirarchy of animals (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, etc), rereading the example in the book "mamífero, ave, etc". They kept arguing back. And finally saying, "What I'm trying to say is, you're wrong." Then one person in my group got it and took an extra 10 minutes arguing with the others to change it to "birds" and "fish." Oye! But then again, it reminded me of EE seminars in the states that some teachers who had NO science background attended.

And I really am leaning more toward middle school science. While I like that high schoolers have more freedom with classes (like opportunities to get into teaching AP Bio and AP Environmental Science), clubs (like a science one ro Wilderness Club, etc), and push them toward internships (like Mrs. Santiago did with me to get me the cancer research one at Stanford)... I could get stuck teaching Chem or Physics or something, which isn't what I'd like. The middle school curriculum is what I'm more interested, and any of them (6, 7, or 8) would be okay. The lower pay of middle school would also come with less work and pressure I think too. So I'll change that sentence in the personal statement. :) Thanks again!

So the PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer, the doctor here) is going to call Washington and fill them in on all that's been happening and see if they will approve allergy testing or whatever other kinds of tests. She said that they have never before approved it, so we'll see on that one. But I've got to stay in the city until at least tomorrow until she lets me know what's up.

She talked to the GI doc again and updated him on my tummy woes. So I have a new med to take at night, and he gave the okay on taking the pills for my face (antifungal). What I didn't know, is that when he went in, he found that my liver was also inflamed some, which is why the dermotologist was concerned with giving me the antifungals with the other meds. OYE!!! I hate this, but really hope that this new one works. "It helps relieve stomach spasms, abdominal cramps, and anxiety related to gastric disorders." At least this will calm my tummy down. I'm banking on it. If not, I'll be visiting you soon! I just really want to get the teacher training done and perhaps finally a bird festival in before I go.

Oye, I'm not happy. So turns out that the anit-itch cream I got from the PC med office had a corticosteroid in it, which caused the initial flare-up. Then the allergist prescribed a cream that also had the same stuff in it, which resulted in a super huge blow up/fungal infection. And now i have a huge patch of tinea incognito (like ringworm but caused by corticosteroids) on my face, covering half my lips, down my neck, up my cheek, and to my ear. ...And it took them a whole month after telling me I should see a dermatologist (Dec 30) to actually make me an appointment as it grew. And the whole thing was caused because of a mistake in the first place. Not happy!

As for my tummy, it still hurts, I still have diarrhea (though not liquid style anymore), and I still don't believe that all these symptoms (tummy, face, and blood levels)are unrelated. I'm gonna talk to the PC doctor and make her do more tests instead of just giving me drugs to treat the symptoms of whatever might be underlying this all.

I'm considering bowing out March 15th and heading home. It would be right after a close of service conference for all the volunteers I came in with. I heard it might be possible to petition for a full COS (aka it would be recorded that I completed my service and I'd get full benefits there-in instead of an ET which is early termination).

Tummy woes

All went well at the hospital, but it was kinda weird... Like everyone was asking who was with me, friend, husband, etc. Nope, I came alone. By about the fifth nurse asking me, I was getting a little nervous, should someone have come? But yeah, total hospitalness... check in with admissions downstairs, put all my valuables (cell phone included) in the safe (so then I had no concept of time and just twiddled my thumbs), and then had to sit in a wheelchair waiting to be taken upstairs. On the fifth floor, I signed some more papers, then was taken into a dressing room to strip (but given cool little capri pants to wear under my gown... that had a flap for my butt LOL!), and then all my clothes and my magazine went into a locker. Then I waited some more in the wheelchair, got an iv, and my doctor (Lambraño from before) came. It was so nice to finally see a familiar face, even to know that that same face would be looking up my butt soon enough. Then I was wheeled into another room, and hopped on a bed, where the hospital people read a security kind of statement... which I had them repeat cause I heard something about a "baño" and didn't realize that they were just talking about my Dr. Lambraño. hehe So yeah, he repeated it in English and I was like, Ohhhhh. And then they put the seditive in the IV. I think I was knocked out for all of it, and I definitely took a nap in another room.

When I checked out, I got the results (or at least some of them). There´s some pictures, and a paper with his notes. Basically my colon is red and inflamed, with some spots (ulcers? I'm not good on my medical Spanish). He took biopsies of each of those (seven of 'em). And hopefully that will tell me what I've got. So currently my diagnosis is "nonspecific colitus" with a note that it's probably due to some type of infection. We'll see! Oye, this sure has been a long lotta months of this!

>>Turns out the spots were all sites of infections, but none were active infections. So still no answers but I another round of meds to try to kick start the peristalsis again.