Epilogue: The Things I Carry

I have now been back in the United State for over four months.  I admit that following my flight back on September 2, I did tear up when I told the customs agent at the airport that I was returning from two years in Panamá and he replied, “Welcome home.”  I have since slowly reintegrated into America, becoming reacquainted with everything from driving to laundry machines to so many choices at the grocery store.  I want to post one last time, to tie all of my Panama Ponderings back together, to nicely wrap up this blog, to provide myself (and you?) some sense of closure.

Except it’s just the beginning.

The reason Volunteers who have completed their service are called “Returned Peace Corps Volunteers” (RPCVs) rather than “former PCVs” or “ex-PCVs” is because, though we may return to the United States, we are never truly done with our work as Volunteers.  For the rest of my life, I will be able to continue the Peace Corps’ Third Goal: “To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.”  Or, more simply: “Bring the world home.”  So this is something I will proudly carry – and continue to share with anyone curious enough to ask and listen – going forward.  And I have already had plenty of opportunity to do so!

Before continuing to look forward, I want to look back for a moment.  In my first post, I outlined why I wanted to serve, and what I was hoping to accomplish.  And now, I have the opportunity to compare those expectations to my experiences.  I did indeed find living among the people of a community an effective way of understanding the full context of the challenges they face – just as I had hoped, following my Engineers Without Borders experience.  I did indeed live the problems alongside them – learning to manage limited resources, the unpredictability of life, and the sicknesses that accompany water and sanitation challenges (16 times, no less, if I’m counting right!).

I must admit that, despite my high hopes, I still cannot say I am fluent in Spanish – in fact, I have learned that the more I know, the more I know I don’t know – for though I am a proficient communicator in rural communities and much improved from two years ago, there is room for improvement to feel comfortable among well-educated, fast-talking, city-dwelling Spanish speakers.  Perhaps the best sign of growing into my Spanish abilities was when Ángel told me that I had changed a lot since the beginning, since I was more comfortable joking around.  I replied that he was finally getting to know me as ME – the real Alex – it just took a while to be ME in Spanish!

I understand so much more thoroughly the depth of my privilege.  Even doing my best to approximate living like the people around me, there were a few ways that I would never have that full experience.  Perhaps the most important component was that I had chosen to be there, and could choose to leave, which is something many people there could not choose, or else they were choosing between living without resources in the city and living on their land in the campo.  My education was another privilege with which I arrived; just being able to read and write proficiently gave me enormous advantages in doing business and dealing with people.  Peace Corps also furnished me with 1) a predictable, steady living allowance that meant I always knew exactly how much money I could work with each month, a key source of stability that few in my community enjoyed; and 2) free health care, another important source of stability – I never debated whether it was worth it to go to the hospital when I was sick.

I believe I have learned a lot of lessons, many of which are chronicled in these posts, and I will carry all of them with me.  I intend to take the serenity of “Panama happens” and apply it more broadly to “life happens,” drawing from that patience and flexibility that I have worked so hard to develop.  And I intend to empower others when I have the opportunity to do so.  I believe I will continue to embrace my “center-midfielder” role, seeing patterns, organizing things, and setting others up for success.  I will continue to pursue big-picture systems thinking, seeking to understand the full context of a problem before seeking a solution.  I realize the power of changing my perspective; indeed, I have been able to see and experience new things as both an American, and to an extent, as a member of Quebrada Pastor.

I will also continue to carry my relationships with my friends in Quebrada Pastor.  I have been able to call Ema, I have traded messages with Arcadia (Ángel’s oldest daughter), and I hear from Willy every month or so – including a shipment of chocolate!  In fact, to that end, I left this final message for Volunteers still in Panamá, a final Peace Corps limerick:

This is to be my last promotion:

Secondary project’s devotion,

Quebrada Pastor

Represent no more,

All the balls already in motion.

If you think chocolate’s good for your soul,

And like it organic and local,

A name you should know

(Since I’m gonna go):

William Binns will keep your stock full.

Cacao puro by the quarter pound,

Dark chocolate candy bars – best around!

Cacao nibs in jars,

Cocoa butter bars!

Can be shipped to you – how does that sound?!

68776629 call,

Text, or Whatsapp, he uses them all.

Message on Facebook,

While there take a look

At Heidy Organic Chocolates’ wall.

And so there, now that I’ve done my part,

Peace Corps network connect at the start,

I’m passing the buck:

Go buy cacao pucks!

And tell your friends it’s made from the heart.

I will probably never stop being his promotor, no matter where I go.  I really do believe that someday he’ll make international shipments accessible to everyone… So if you have tried a sample and really like it, I encourage you to let him know!  (His English is getting better all the time, too, so don’t let that stop you.)

And, finally.  A look forward.  To where will I carry all of these things?

Starting February 6, I will be working as an Environmental Engineer for the Indian Health Service on the Hopi Reservation in Northeast Arizona.  I will again be working on water and sanitation projects, in the service of the Hopi people; it’s almost like Peace Corps Level Two (this time with electricity and an engineer’s salary)!  Of the opportunities available to me, this was the most compelling.  It took months of searching, applying, interviewing, considering, discussing, and agonizing to reach this decision, and I am excited for the new adventure.  My new hope is that my two years of practice in immersion in a new culture will help me learn the full context of a people about whom I currently know next to nothing, which will help me serve their communities as their field engineer.  This position promises to be challenging and rewarding, and I am happy to conclude this blog opening the door to the next chapter of this journey.

Thank you to all of you who have read my posts, regularly or rarely, and to all of you who have told me you appreciated what I have written.  Thank you for your support, encouragement, and curiosity both now and all along the way.  Sharing my Panama Ponderings publicly turned out to be a pretty good experiment, after all.  Thank you for making it worthwhile!

This is the conclusion to a poem I wrote long before my departure for Panama, but no less relevant now:

And just there, standing,

Arms spread to the sky,

A glance over the shoulder:

A higher mountain, nearby.

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On to a higher mountain, then!

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Pictures:

It has been great to spend time with family since being back!

A few special occasions to wear Ema’s nagua – right before cutting (and donating) my hair, and for Rosh Hashana.

 
My first international shipment of chocolate from Willy!

  Thanks for the certificate, President Obama!

My next adventure: I think the high desert of Northeast Arizona is approximately as opposite as you can get from the Panamanian coastal rainforest in terms of climate and terrain.  So much to explore!

Pride and Tolerance

My despedida (farewell party) at Ema’s was beautiful.  As beautiful as the universal value this family has come to represent – not just to me, but to all of their visitors.

Ema presented me with a gift – a nagua, the traditional Ngäbe dress – made especially for me, custom fit and the colors of my favorite of Elsa’s naguas: yellow and red triangles on black.  Looks like fire in the night.  You decide the symbolism.  (Photo below.)

The gift was perfectly fitting, coming from them.  Ema’s family takes pride in their culture and its traditions, and they wanted to share it with me.  And they wanted me to feel included, part of their family, this symbolic act representing how they have treated me all along.

During the despedida, I finally had the opportunity to thank the whole family, all at once, for how special they are, not just in my eyes, but as other Volunteers have observed to me as well.  This is a family that is proud of their culture as Ngäbes.  They belong to the Mama Tada church (in fact, Ema’s husband José travels to other communities as a preacher of the church), which is a Ngäbe Christian-type church that believes that Jesus spoke directly to the Ngäbe people, that conducts all of its services in Ngäbere, that in other places is seen as isolationist and jingoistic and xenophobic.  Not here.  Not Ema’s family.

Ema’s family is proud of their Ngäbe culture, as Ngäbere-speaking, nagua-wearing, mochila-making Mama Tada adherents.  But they are also more than that.  Because they are also accepting of other cultures, too.  They want to share their culture with others and are open to learning from others about cultures different than theirs.  How else could we have had a Passover Seder in their house, in which both Hebrew and Ngäbere were spoken?  Rather than judge others for their differences, they are curious and ask questions.  Their openness is not about how much exposure they’ve had to other cultures, it’s about their attitude and their approach to people who are different.

When my parents arrived at Ema’s house, tired from the hike and anxious not to offend anyone, Ema immediately made them feel at home, made them feel comfortable, accepted them instantly as fellow human beings in need of nourishment after a tough climb, no questions asked, made them banana soup and eagerly taught them her mochila-making trade, as she had for me.

This, I believe, is the true definition of celebrating diversity: to take pride in where you come from, the parts of your culture that you wish to celebrate, while accepting that there are people of different cultures who wish to celebrate theirs, too – and being open to sharing with and learning from them.  A beautiful balance of pride and tolerance that I witness Ema’s family living all the time.  We can use a lot more of that in our world.

As I consider my upcoming return to America, I think about how much so many Americans need to hear that message and learn from Ema’s example.  It is good and right to be proud of being American, and all the other cultures within that.  But only if we balance that pride with tolerance for other cultures, respecting that other people are different, and being curious about their differences, seeking to understand instead of fear.  It’s about our attitude with which we approach other people.

Thank you, Ema, for sharing that with me, along with everything else.  You have been my abuelita and my maestra for two years – and you and your family are very special teachers, indeed.

Pictures:

Ema gives me the new nagua…

Then it’s time for a photo shoot!

And giving Ema a few small gifts, too.

A few other things going on in Quebrada Pastor:

Latin American democracy in action!  A roadblock to try to get electricity for the school.  These roadblock things have worked in the past.  For the record, I was OBSERVING, not participating – Peace Corps does not permit Volunteers to participate in political action.  So taking pictures, handing out water to people, hanging out in the road to chat with the other people who also happen to be in the road is observing, NOT participating, got it?

Another opportunity to explore Quebrada Pastor’s little slice of the sea.  José and his daughter took me through the mangroves and out to sea in their little dugout canoe on a perfect calm and sunny morning.  Got a great look at Quebrada Pastor’s coral reef, complete with dozens of starfish, sea urchins, anemones, a couple manta rays, thousands of jellyfish, and a the end, a little family of dolphins!  A few came within a 100 yards or so and flipped their tails at us in greeting.  Or perhaps a salute in parting.

The Beker despedida – presented with the Leaf Plate of Honor, signed by the whole family

The Lopez despedida

The Santos despedida

A year later, and Ema’s family has ALMOST finished her latrine – just missing the structure around it for privacy (time scales work differently here).  They promise to send me a picture at its “inauguration.”

Ema walked all the way down the hill in the rain to attend my “big” community-wide despedida!  She escorted me to the event– wearing my princess dress that Willy’s family had given me for my birthday – then spent the night at my house.  Pretty big honor for me, that she would make that effort.

Sigh, I’m really gonna miss this kiddo.  But Chelsea’s going to take great care of her.

Wrapping Up

It’s time to say goodbye.

Well, it’s been time for a while, saying goodbye little by little, slowly extricating myself from the community in all the ways that I’ve become entangled here.  Reflecting on my time here, what we’ve done, looking toward what I’ll do next.  Having last conversations with people – some whom I’ll miss, other whom I won’t – and relinquishing every last shred of responsibility for all the projects to their owners.

The construction of the aqueducts was entirely completed at the beginning of July.  Finally.  There was no pomp and circumstance in their completion, just relief for me and water for their users.  We had our final meetings – tying up loose ends, collecting information for the final grant closeout report, and mostly reassuring me that they were ready to handle the operation and management of the aqueducts.  The As-Built Report was submitted and a copy printed for each Water Committee.

When I gave Angel his copy, he told me that this document – nicely bound and filled with all the details about the work we achieved – was the best of all the gifts I had given him.  With this report, he said, he could now be the next Peace Corps Volunteer of Quebrada Pastor.  It was incredibly satisfying to hear.  In giving him all the information that went into the project – the data, calculations, designs, maps, resulting structures, agreements, construction schedule, final budget – information I had been using and controlling throughout the process, I had finally turned over the last part of the project over which I had any influence, my last contribution.  With that, he and his water committee became total owners of their aqueduct.  I like that Angel thinks of himself as the next Peace Corps Volunteer.  That was the idea, in the beginning.  He is already involved in helping the neighboring Volunteer with her Environmental Health work, inspiring the leaders of her community – so he is well on his way.

Also in July, I repeated the WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) surveys that I had conducted during my first 3 months.  I went to every house in the community – all 116 – in 8 days, and did 84 surveys (it was exhausting).  But it was also very satisfying, a fitting symmetry to my service, a means of comparison to the community’s health upon my arrival, and a summary of how Environmental Health concerns turned out after Quebrada Pastor’s 7 years of Peace Corps Volunteers – which I hope Peace Corps can use going forward.  I got to see the results of the direct impacts I had, and even some improvement in places where I didn’t do any work.  Finally, people were building their own latrines without waiting for someone else to do it for them!

I’ve had to write my own Description of Serve, the official document signed by the Country Director that explains how I spent my time in Peace Corps, used primarily for job application but also stored in the Library of Congress (cool!).  This is the Summary of Accomplishments on mine:

1.       Ms. Litofsky designed and implemented 2 new aqueducts to serve a total of 180 people and trained 2 new water committees and their users to build, maintain, and manage their new aqueducts.

2.       Ms. Litofsky hosted, organized, and facilitated the week of Field Technical Training for Trainees during Pre-Service Training, which included the construction of 5 pit latrines, benefitting 22 people and training 6 people, and 4 rainwater catchment tanks, benefitting 17 people and training 5 people, and experience for 11 community counterparts as trainers and facilitators.

3.       Ms. Litofsky supported the existing school aqueduct water committee in analyzing technical and management problems with the aqueduct, training water committee members, and making repairs to the aqueduct that serves 116 users plus the 300 students at the school.

4.       Ms. Litofsky facilitated community members’ organization of a Project Management and Leadership Conference In-Site to improve leadership skills of 16 leaders of 5 community organizations.

5.       Ms. Litofsky developed youth leadership by bringing 5 attendees and 1 co-facilitator from Quebrada Pastor to the Acting Out Awareness Theater Camp and 1 attendee and 1 co-facilitator to the Sport and Development Girls Soccer Camp.

6.       Ms. Litofsky assisted the efforts of the community-run cacao products business Heidy Organic Chocolates to increase sales, diversify products, and expand the current and potential client base through promotion, translation, communication with potential clients, and training events.

Of course, all of those things were only possible because of the leaders of Quebrada Pastor, and the relationships my previous Volunteers, Eric and Catherine, developed working here before me.  And now, as I tell every community member who asks why no follow-up Volunteer is coming here after me, Quebrada Pastor doesn’t need us anymore.  We’ve taught all we can teach about Environmental Health.  Everyone who has wanted to work with us could.  Plenty of people here can advance Environmental Health development without the help of Volunteers.  Time to move on to communities with greater needs.

All work complete, all that is left is to say goodbye.  I’ve been invited to several family goodbye parties, and a final community-wide farewell is scheduled for August 20.  Then (teary-eyed, I’m sure), pack up and leave August 22, to wrap things up in the office in Panama City before my flight back to Columbia, Missouri on September 2.  And start a new adventure!

Note:

If you have any suggestions about what that new adventure could be (preferably water resources engineering related), let me know!  I’m still looking.

Another note:

I’m going to have to say goodbye to Hobbes, too.  She’s been a faithful companion, but Panama is her home.  She’ll be adopted by Chelsea, my neighboring Volunteer, who will take amazing care of her.

A few pictures:

A mother sloth and her baby spotted (by a community member, I still never notice them without help) while doing WASH surveys.

Anaica’s birthday party!  Classic brownie cake and the gift – a couple puzzles – enjoyed by all

Volunteer visit – hosted a new Trainee for a week (like when I visited Michelle, two whole years ago) – spent a lot of time with Chelsea and her Trainee, doing all the fun things – like reading Goodnight Moon to Heidy, going on Willy’s ever-more-perfected cacao tour, etc.

Angel’s birthday!  More brownie cake!

Undu’s birthday!  Best gift of all: a trip outside the house around the center of town.  Not easy navigating that wheelchair on the rough terrain, but a super special experience.

Gonna miss that view.

Angel: the new Quebrada Pastor Peace Corps Volunteer – now all decked out in the appropriate uniform (just missing Chacos)!

Things I'll Miss (And Not)

My flight back to the US is scheduled for September 2.  That’s less than 8 weeks away!  The countdown begins.

With the end in sight, perspective has shifted, perceptibly.  Things that before I had been tolerating – with minimal internal or external complaining – I now meet with the refrain: That’s something I’m not going to miss.  I know that as the end gets closer, I’ll become increasingly conscious of what I am going to miss.  For now, I’ll try to reflect on both.

Food

Food may be the most basic way to experience a place, or so it seemed in the beginning, when food from my host family was the most visceral adaptation I had to make – and I was aware of it constantly.  Now, I have adapted to the food my people eat to the point that I get excited about eating chicken necks – because at least it’s not chicken feet or canned sardines.  With such little time left, now every time I get a bowl full of rice with half a sardine on top, I think about how much I look forward to only ever eating food I enjoy.  Not even specific foods.  Just always enjoying it.

On the other hand, I’ll miss all the produce – coconut water and oranges from my front yard, cacao freshly processed from the finca, avocadoes and pineapples and mangoes and passion fruits and yellow bananas – all from here.

Energy and Connectivity

I’m looking forward to washing my clothes in a machine that is not simply a bucket and a plunger and my own hand power.  And it will be nice to just “have” the internet whenever I want instead of “going to” the internet.  And I’m tired of poor phone connections and dropped calls and keeping track of every minute I talk so I don’t run out of money.  It will be nice to know more about what’s going on in the world, and in the lives of my US friends.  And I appreciate how nice it will be to have a refrigerator.  And a way to recycle cans and glass and plastic.

On the other hand, I’ve lived well without constant electricity and internet connectivity – which is what my people do their whole lives.  Heck, I have it easier than a lot of other Volunteers – “going to” the internet isn’t that far away, and at least I do have cell service in my house.  My personal ecological footprint is certainly miniscule compared to my US lifestyle.  How much of this reduced-resource-use lifestyle can I bring back with me?  There are some advantages to living in a little tropical country.  The vegetables come from just down the road all year long – rather than the other side of the country.  My solar panel and battery meet my essential electricity needs – lamp, phone, podcast-playing device.  The rain falling on my roof and my storage tank usually meets my water needs – when the community aqueduct isn’t working.  I’m more conscious of what I consume and the trash I produce because I have to take personal responsibility to dispose of any waste – there are no collection systems.  Cheap public transportation and walking takes me basically everywhere I want to go – even if personal space is nonexistent and the 12-hour bus ride to the capital is always miserable.  Hey, I get to walk to work through a chocolate forest every day.  That’s a commute I’ll be dreaming about.

Nature

This place is beautiful.  I get a glimpse of the sea every day.  I live and work on the steep, lush slopes of mountainous rain forest, filled with tropical flowers and birds.  I still can sit on my hammock and watch the emerald-colored hummingbirds drink hibiscus nectar all day.  I can climb to the ridge and look out over the never-ending jungle valleys and mountains to the west and the Bocas archipelago to the east.  I hear birds chirping all day long, and a chorus of frogs and insects all night.  Little bright red frogs and sapphire butterflies cross my path wherever I go.

Of course, I do essentially live outside.  I sweat pretty much constantly.  The only place I can truly escape the bugs is inside my mosquito net tucked tightly around my bed.  Even the 30-second jaunt to the bus stop sometime involves enough mud to get my knees dirty.  I’m not going to miss the semi-trucks engine-braking past my house, the babies crying 20 yards away, the inharmonious evangelical singing next door at any hour of the day or night – because I can never actually shut my door to the noise, and the concept of noise pollution doesn’t seems to exist here.  Not going to miss the smell of chicken poop or trash fires wafting onto my porch – which is also inescapable.

Work

Some days I think I’m really going to miss setting my own schedule.  Other days I look forward to more structure – and people to work with who have my same sense of schedule.  I do enjoy that I choose what I work on – so that I only do what I’ve decided is important, based on the context and my own interests.  I rarely have to do things that I don’t believe in doing.  And I have lots of time and space to evaluate and question everything, constantly reconsidering whether I still believe in it.  I fervently hope I’ll be able to find that again – work that I believe in doing.

Being “special”

There are some perks to being different.  I’m afforded some extra allowance for being weird – because after all, I’m weird here anyway.  I can blend myself into my people’s world or into the middle-class city-Panamanian world.  Peace Corps enjoys a warm and respected reputation in Panamá, so my Volunteer status gets me better treatment, information, and leeway than the average tourist (as my visitors have witnessed) – as does having an understanding of how things work here.  I can talk to just about anybody.  More people know my name than I can possibly know.

But being different is something a very individual burden.  While I’ve adapted to many cultural things here, that are some boundaries I have not been able to cross, some ways in which I’ll never be at home here.  When my community friend and often counterpart, Omar, died last month from injuries due to a freak accident, I – like the rest of my community – mourned him greatly.  We have all been so sad.  During this period of grieving, I missed the more familiar cultural traditions that we have in the US for the process of mourning.  I wanted to be part of the community grieving process, but it was something I just could not adapt to emotionally.  I wanted to talk about Omar and share memories and hug people and cry and bring over a ziti casserole to the family’s house and… well, that’s not how it’s done here.  I attended a few days of the 9-day vigil and sat around quietly in the dark with dozens of other people.  I offered to help the family however I could.  I talk with his mom about what an inspirational man and father and leader he was.  I just got to the end of it all wishing that I could be at home in the US, grieving from within my own culture, instead of being here and being different besides being sad.

In the end, the last two years have provided in many ways a sharp contrast and a new perspective.  I’d like to think that I can see most things from both my native point of view and that of the people of Quebrada Pastor.  I can here hoping to develop an appreciation for another way of life – and I believe I have found that, in many senses.  Of course, at the same time, I developed a greater appreciation for my way of life from before – and I look forward to enjoying some of those things again.  The trick in the future will be how to adapt into my life the best of each of these worlds – and continue discovering new ways to open my mind to appreciating ever more different perspectives…

Just a handful of recent pictures that also represent things I’ll miss…

Puppies!!  So many baby animals in the campo.  And, of course, Arcadia.

Ema.  (With her brand-new reading glasses sent to her by my mom, and little mochila to keep them in!)

Birthday celebrations with Willy’s family (always featuring a brownie-cake that I make with his cacao!)

Willy + Heidy Organic Chocolates

Like a few other individuals in Quebrada Pastor, I wanted to shine the spotlight on Willy, who has also played a huge role in my life here.

Willy has a fascinating story, and one I know well.  After all, his family was my host family, so I lived with them for my first three months, and I still see them, hang out at their house, and do work with them all the time.  We work together on aqueduct issues (he’s the president of the school aqueduct water committee), he enthusiastically helps me with trainings that I host for Volunteers and for the community, he loves helping me host visitors, and I help promote his business.

For a 24-year-old, he’s incredibly accomplished.  He just officially registered his business, Heidy Organic Chocolates, a year ago, and has regular clients all over the Bocas Islands, expanding into other provinces in Panamá, and occasionally buyers from other countries.  That’s pretty darn impressive for a guy who runs his business in his family’s house, usually just with the help of his wife and another person or two, making chocolates by hand without any electricity whatsoever (unless you count the solar-panel-powered lamp that allows them to make chocolates sometimes until 3:00 am).

He is passionate about his business because he is passionate about his home.  He was raised by his dad and his grandmother, but when she died, Willy was 12, and his dad’s muscular dystrophy caused him to deteriorate rapidly thereafter, so Willy became the sole caregiver for his dad, at the same time he was attending high school and working at a store in Almirante to support the two of them.  He was forced to grow up fast.  He’s an unusually fast learner (he picked up speaking some Mandarin just by working at the Chinese-owned store, and he learned how to survey with an abney level faster than some Peace Corps trainees), and he was almost always the best student in his class, with a never-ending appetite for learning.  Though he was offered special study abroad opportunities as far away as Ecuador and France, he chose to stay in Quebrada Pastor to care for his wheel-chair-bound father – which also excluded attending university to study science and become a professor, as he had wanted.  So he turned his energy and ambition to making a better life in Quebrada Pastor.

He married Mechi and they had a daughter, Heidy.  Then he turned his high-school business degree – with his daughter as inspiration – to the creation of Heidy Organic Chocolates.  Though at first he and Mechi were working his father’s land to grow cacao and other produce to sell in Almirante, his business instinct led him to improve upon this model – Why sell cacao beans to the cooperative if you can process them into a consumer product – bars of baking chocolate – and sell that directly to customers, maximizing your profit?    And why sell cacao bars in Almirante when you can get a better price selling them to tourists on the Bocas Islands?  And isn’t it easier and more reliable to sell to regular clients (the tourist industry), ensuring a consistent demand, than just selling to random tourists on the street?  And what if he could make other cacao products that consumers want, like cocoa powder, cocoa butter, dark chocolate candy bars, and cacao nibs?  So with his charisma and work ethic, he built a network of clients – hotels, restaurants, and stores – and reliably followed through on delivering their orders each week.

Calling the business Heidy Organic Chocolates was no accident – he had been thinking about the future from the beginning – he wanted this to provide Heidy with the opportunities he had wanted as a child.  And he wanted to do so in a sustainable, responsible way.  He is well-versed in the concepts of sustainable agriculture, organic produce, and fair trade, and uses these both to guide his business model and to promote his products to consumers.  His vision is community-oriented; he hopes that one day, the associates of the business – fellow community members – will share in the work of running the business and in the profits, benefitting other families of Quebrada Pastor.  He hopes that, with more help, they’ll be able to produce more cacao products and host cacao tours for visitors.  He hopes that when the business becomes truly profitable, they can invest in the Quebrada Pastor school and other community projects – that it can be a force for community-run development, and an impetus to improve the community – say, through better solid waste management, an example he often cites as a priority.

And to me, community-initiated, community-funded, and community-run development is indeed an appealing thought.

So even though I have no expertise in business or marketing or tourism or agriculture or food products (well, except for my ability to consume chocolate) – I agreed that I would help however I could.  So I connected him to the Peace Corps network – which helped him sell to eager new clients (Volunteers all over Panamá) and opened up opportunities to connect with new clients owning stores and restaurants in other parts of Panamá.  I’ve helped orchestrate trainings by agro-business and cacao Volunteers.  I’ve tried to provide some ideas, or at least be a sounding board for his creativity.  I’ve facilitated communication, sometimes through translation, and encouraged setting up systems to make transactions easier.  And I’ve been his promoter, following up leads from other Volunteers, inviting friends to go on his cacao tour to give him practice, brainstorming and helping pursue ways to raise money to invest in growing his business.

To that end, I’m always looking to connect him to new resources – be that potential clients, sources of grants and funding, more information about business and cacao products, agro-business training opportunities, or people who want to go on a cacao tour – so if you know of something that could be helpful, please let me know.  Or better yet, let him know yourself, at heidyorganicchocolates@hotmail.com or Heidy organic chocolates on Facebook, or even his website when he gets that up and running.

And do let me know if you want me to bring you any cacao when I return to America in September… J  I hope by the time I’ve run out of my supply, he’ll be shipping chocolate directly to me in the States!

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Pictures:

Willy loves giving cacao tours.  Every time I have visitors, we go on a tour -- and he's been improving the content each time.  Little-by-little, he's been increasing the amount of English he uses in the tour.  He's getting ready for a legitimate ecotourism aspect to his chocolate business!

From some of the more recent tours:

(He doesn't let tour participants cut open cacao pods with machetes anymore.  Probably wise.  We'll call that a win for teaching about America's (litigious and liability-oriented) culture.)

Willy's tour was part of Tech Week last year!

Willy also loves the opportunity to share food with visitors, which he likes to include in the tour.

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The Business:

From the official founding of the company, with its associates

Some of the lovely lady associates of the business, including his wife, and my good friend Nayelis (who has been working for Willy to save up for college next year).

Preparing the scene for the cacao photo shoot -- Willy had a WWOOF Volunteer for a few months, who has been helping him set up a website and continue developing his ecotourism component.

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Willy has been involved in every seminar we've done in Quebrada Pastor -- here's a few:

Willy helped organize the Project Management and Leadership Seminar for several leaders in the community - and still cites things from the Seminar that have helped him be a more organized and better leader

And he hosted a cacao grafting training - given by an Agriculture Volunteer.

Willy was the only person from the all aqueduct groups in the community I worked with who wanted to learn how to use the abney level for surveying -- and then mastered it quickly -- to help gather information about the school aqueduct for making repairs

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Celebrations!  Willy is always pleased for me to make a birthday brownie cake (using his chocolate, of course), or to take part in whatever silly American traditions I come up with...

Heidy's 3rd birthday

Willy's 24th birthday

New Years 2016

Mechi's 20th birthday
 

On a family outing, harvesting oranges and lemons and cacao, during my first month

Celebrating Rosh Hashana 2014 with Willy's dad, Bernardo

Everyone enjoyed the apples and honey -- and the Hebrew prayers.

Willy really got into taking the pictures for the scavenger hunt from Passover 2015

It's been a lot of fun working and playing together!