Whatever you do, don't forget your towel

I was packing up the last of my things to move out of my host family’s house and into my own rental house, and at the same time pack up my things for a week spent in Panamá City followed by a day at another volunteer’s site, and remembering the few things still hanging out on the clothesline, I thought to myself, “Whatever you do, don’t forget your towel.”

I couldn’t help but smile to myself – a line straight out of Douglas Adams’ A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  And fitting: I often feel like a hitchhiker in the galaxy, making it up as I go, not really understanding what is going on all the time, trying to figure all the strange rules and ways of doing things here.  But I do try ever so hard to be prepared for all of it.  Or at least be patient and flexible.

“Any man that can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”

I have certainly had my patience and flexibility tested for the last couple months.  November and December are filled with parades and holidays and also are primary months for cacao harvesting, so it is a season of great expense but also great income; mostly it is just very busy, so people are rarely able to keep their commitments to the plans that we make.  This had been very frustrating, especially for one who rather likes to plan, who keeps an agenda book, who tries to be reliable.

Equally frustrating is the complete inability to quantify anything.  I don’t know if this is a fault of communication or of knowledge or of interest.  When I ask for directions somewhere, mostly the response is, “over there.”  If I’m lucky, they will even point in the direction with their hands.  Mostly, they will just point with their lips.  When I ask when something is going to happen, or long it will take, or how long it lasted, responses are usually “in a little bit” or “later” or “a while” or “not very long.”  Rarely is there actually a time or a quantity of minutes associated with any time-related questions.  When I ask how many times something happens, like, “How often do your kids eat candy?” while I’m doing my surveys, or “How many days were you without water this month?” responses are usually “now and then” or “several.”  The best is the circular question about rain:

“How many times were you without water?”

“When it was summer.”

“How long did summer last?”

“While it didn’t rain.”

“How many days did it not rain?”

“Oh, it depends.  Sometimes it doesn’t rain for a day, or three days, sometimes for a week, sometimes for a month.”

“So when does summer happen?”

“When it doesn’t rain.”

This difficulty in quantifying things is especially frustrating for an engineer.

I could go on, but instead I’ll just talk about pictures!

The agricultural brigade in the Almirante parade, for the Day of Independence from Colombia – really enjoyed the machete routine they did.

We had a meeting to discuss strengths, opportunities, weakness, and threats in the community – and we did the “human knot” icebreaker – or at least tried really hard to do it.

Went to measure the flow of a few springs with a few different groups to begin exploring the possibility of building aqueducts. 

Kittens!  The week before I moved out of my host family’s house, the cat decided to have her kittens… on my mattress, the one night that I was in Changuinola for amoebas.  I guess that means that I will get to claim one? 

“Ngӧbe cookies” – these are “no-bake cookies” – perfect for the campo, because you don’t need an oven!  Made with my host family’s home-grown, home-ground, and home-made chocolate, I’ve decided that “no-bake cookies” sounds enough like “Ngӧbe cookies” to make for a good pun.  These were my contribution to our Thanksgiving dinner that we held in Panamá City, and they were a huge hit.

Trying to make naguas look fashionable

Learning to braid the strap of a bag

Cool tree, leaves smell like cinnamon

Cool plants!

More pretty views!

Living Poor

Found some more amoebas; how fitting that my first three months in site be bookended by these unwelcome guests.  At least I’ve learned – from the first time – the symptoms and how to manage them: go immediately to the lab to poop in a cup and begin taking anti-parasite medication.  As a result, I have a little extra downtown with access to electricity and internet to share another post.

Got a couple new limericks, each with their own special story:

Splash of mud, flower still in her hair

Fitting end to the day for poor Claire.

But she smiled once more

At the metaphor:

“Sunshine with a sh** stain” is her flair.

This one really is Claire’s story – a fellow volunteer from my training group, she is in the Sustainable Agriculture sector, and we were roommates in our host family’s house for Ngӧbere training – but the phrase she coined seems to describe Panamá just perfectly, many days.  There is a lot that is beautiful and wonderful about Panamá, about the people who live here – and while we go into each day hoping that we will be able to enjoy the “sunshine,” inevitably, we always get to see the “sh** stains,” too.  I suppose that is the nature of our work.

You can find many other such metaphors, here: last weekend I attended a birthday party.  It was an hour hike up the hill to a house with a gorgeous view of the Bocas Islands; I spent the night up there, awoke to help gather firewood for cooking the massive pig they killed the day before, and then learned from Ema, my original mochila-making teacher, how to make the strap for my first mochila (bag).  As the day wore on, and it became clear that we would not be eating at noon as had been suggested, I began feeling quite hungry and irritable.  The mochila was finished, and without anything to occupy me, Roger began asking me bazillions of questions: “How do you say “piedra” in English?” (Rock.)  “How do you say “ahorita” in English?”  (In a little bit.  This is a silly question, because it’s really more a cultural thing of time than a language thing.)  And on top of that, a Mama Tada church service is going on in the next room (a Ngӧbe take on Christianity, the service is conducted entirely in Ngӧbere and, from what little I understood, mainly consists of the most fantastic cacophony of chanting human voices that I have ever heard).

So I’m hungry, and tired of answering English questions, and my ears are hurting from two hours of chanting, and am ready to run out the door and down the hill to escape the whole thing, when, miraculously, the most majestic rainbow appears – a complete arc across the sky, stretching across my entire community, in front of the sea (none of my pictures did it justice).  Surely, it was a sign from God that I was to be saved from this uncomfortable situation.  I ran outside to enjoy it and take pictures.  As rainbow faded, I returned inside, feeling a bit refreshed, ready to take on the unpleasantness once more.  Roger asks me how a rainbow is formed; excited to have a fun science discussion, I ramble about light and color and prisms for a few minutes.  Then he asks: but when did the rainbow begin?  I’m confused.  Do you know the story of the rainbow?

Oh.  You want to talk about Noah’s Ark.  That was really tricky of you.

So he explains to me how the rainbow was really formed, for the first time, as a promise from God to never drown the world again.  And I feel very uncomfortable, having already expressed my views on the matter – that the Bible is not a science textbook.  And so, this rainbow, a perfectly beautiful thing to be enjoyed, has had all of the awkwardness of our cultural clash smeared all over it.

  

Another example: bananas.  The Bocas province is an especially prolific producer of bananas; the port of Almirante is dominated by the giant Chiquita Banana barges, and the banana plantations stretch for miles around Changuinola.  All to ship those wonderfully delicious yellow fruits all over the world.  Bananas have always been one of my favorite fruits, but once I got into college I ate fewer of them, thinking of how far they had to travel, how energy-intensive it was to get them to me.  Now, I get to eat all the bananas I want, guilt-free!  The only problem is that everyone here eats them in their most unappetizing form: green and boiled.  Bananas – which had the potential to be wonderfully delicious mature fruits – are instead a very bland chalk-like starch when they are green.  And the reason for this habit of eating green bananas turns out to be that the food energy works out better in the immature bananas.  And, when you’re poor and practicing subsistence agriculture, it’s important to get as many calories as you can.  So no more tasty bananas: what a bummer.

That has been my primary realization for the week – it is a real bummer to be poor.

Sure, obviously, intellectually – but also physically, emotionally, I think I have finally made the intellectual connection to the physical and emotional feelings.

The concept of “cuando hay” illustrates an entire mindset, an approach to living.  “Cuando hay” means “When there is.”  It’s the answer to lots of questions: Do your kids eat sweets?  Cuando hay.  How many meals do you eat every day?  Three, cuando hay.  Do you go to the parade every year?  Cuando hay plata (money).  The thing is, you never know when “cuando hay” is going to be.  That is, you never know when you are going to have the money, or the food.  This means that when there are resources available to be consumed, they are consumed.  All of them, immediately.  When people sell their cacao, or earn their paycheck, they spend the money the same day (the 16^th and the last day of every month are crazy times to go into town).  If there is food to be eaten, it gets eaten.  There is no such thing as moderation or saving.  This has an unfortunate consequence with respect to alcohol (which so far I have mostly only heard about rather than seen), and the inability to plan ahead (like save up $20 to build a pit latrine).  But for me, it has been most vividly expressed with respect to food.

I never really know when I am going to be eating next.  I’m lucky, here with my host family, in that they do always feed me, and relatively well (which makes me better off than a lot of volunteers), but I still never know what time that is going to happen.  And when I am visiting other parts of the community, then I really am not sure whether I will be given a meal or not.  And when I go all day without having anything to eat, I do get really cranky – “hangry” (hungry + angry).  It’s really hard to do work or to have patience or to be nice when you’re hangry.  So when I am given food, I eat it – even if it’s rice and sardines and I really don’t like it – because I’m not sure when I’m going to eat the next time, and I don’t want to feel hangry in between.

And so I have come to appreciate the strong focus and connection to food – it is an entirely different perspective, a relationship with food that I am not used to having.  I spend more time thinking about food than I ever have.  The people always make the connection between food and work – Willy will say, “This food is a result of the hard work of collecting and carrying all of those lemons yesterday.”  Ángel has said, “If I don’t work, I don’t eat,” (and he enjoyed my quip that “In order to eat, you have to work, but in order to work, you have to eat”).  And this relationship is even stronger if you live in a community of truly subsistence farmers – where everything you eat is something you grew yourself.  My community at least has a source of outside income – cacao – which they use to buy food, so we get to eat a protein source every day and vegetables many times, which might not have otherwise been possible.

I remember back to my first meeting in Quebrada Pastor, when we talked in general about projects and my role as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  We had not discussed any project in particular, yet the first question I fielded after the meeting was from a woman who asked, “So who is going to provide the food for the workers on the project?”  I was baffled; we had not decided on any projects, there was so much other planning that had to happen, I didn’t even know exactly how funding for projects worked… I had no idea how to answer this question.  Finally one of my counterparts saved me: she just wants to know whether the person who is being helped (building the latrine at their house, or their branch of the aqueduct) is going to provide the food for the workers.  And now I understand why this was of primary importance.  Food is always the first thought; it has to be addressed before anything else.

I am not used to this way of thinking about food, nor do I enjoy it.  It is a really bummer part of being poor.  I am looking forward to living in my own house and providing my own food, having control over when and what and how much, having certainty with my steady (if small) Peace Corps allowance.  My ability to escape from this mindset of “cuando hay” is just one more way in which there is a difference, an inequality, an injustice between me and my companions in the community, and a vivid reminder of what I am working for, ultimately.  To be able to escape that mindset, to be able to plan ahead and save and have enough resources that they can be used in moderation as needed instead of as soon as they come into possession: to not have to live like you’re poor.

Early in training, Leigh, a fellow Environmental Health trainee, offered this definition of poverty that she had read: poverty is like living in the ocean in a boat that is just too small; you’re always trying the bail out the water, but the boat just keep filling up, and so you don’t have time to do anything else.  You can’t plan ahead, you can’t make preparations, you have no security, you can’t make any choices about how to spend your time or where you want to go, and any big wave could just completely wreck you.  That’s a hard way to live.  And that’s why we’re here – to try to help escape that trap.

The hard part, of course, is figuring out how, which I am still in the process of doing.  Nonetheless, the Peace Corps office has already asked for us to report on how successfully we have pursued our goals so far.  I submitted my first Volunteer Report Form (VRF) at the beginning of October.  There was not much to say after only a month in site, but we were still asked to submit a “Success Story” from our service.  I opened my Success Story with this limerick:

First VRF and struggling a bit:

A success story with truth and wit?

No diarrhea –

There’s an idea!

That would be some really solid shit.

Pleased with myself, I finally got back the feedback on my VRF recently; most of it was quite positive, but I did receive this gentle admonition with respect to my Success Story, which I have since memorialized into a limerick:

Submitting poop pun limericks is fun,

Just got feedback on my latest one:

“If you wouldn’t mind

Synonyms, could you find?

We do send all these to Washington.”

Pondering My Role

As I continue my time in site, I wonder increasingly what my role is going to be in Quebrada Pastor.  As the third volunteer in this community, I am probably going to be the last.  As a result, it is especially important that I leave the community with the skills to solve problems and pursue projects without help.  This is a hard thing to think about.

For example, many people have asked me to provide them with 1500 gallon plastic tanks to store rainwater or water from the aqueduct for the times when the source goes dry.  On the one hand, rainwater catchment and storage is a fantastic solution when there is insufficient water from the aqueduct or no aqueduct exists to serve a house.  On the other hand, simply giving people plastic tanks does not teach them any skills or how to get the tanks themselves in the future.  What if a tank breaks?  What happens when this person’s children build their own houses and also want water?  So I would prefer to teach people how to build ferrocement tanks (inexpensive concrete structures that use a concrete mortar and chicken wire as the reinforcement in tension) so that they can provide for themselves.  But this is harder, and requires more work, and does not solve the problem of water as quickly or easily, and is harder to convince people to do.  And I think I will face this issue in all areas of potential projects.

Turn out that these are exactly the kinds of issues that we face throughout the world.  It’s always easier to just give someone something than to teach them.  The persuasion and behavior change – changing people’s minds and actions – is always harder to developing the technology.  I have this amazing opportunity to witness all of the problems of the world in this tiny little microcosm, my own little corner of the universe, small enough for me to live in and become a part of and pull some strings and experiment, to learn what works and what doesn’t, so that maybe I can change something, help a little bit, and then perhaps one day apply that to bigger places.

Figuring out where to begin is the tough part, though.  Building aqueducts, tanks, pit latrines, composting latrines, and trash incinerators; educating about water treatment, latrine maintenance, hand-washing, disease transmission, waste reduction and reuse; training water committees and community leaders to do all of the organization of projects themselves.

And then sometimes wonder to myself if really we should all just be sexual education volunteers instead, and perhaps we would achieve more in terms of environmental health.  After all, the staggering population growth is part of the reason so many people in the community don’t have water in their houses.  After participating in an “Elige Tu Vida” or “Choose Your Life” program in Zack’s community at the end of October (which deals with setting goals in life and sexual health for 9^th graders – and how these are connected), I have thought even more about this.  I feel like the people in Quebrada Pastor – and all over rural Panama – would have so many more opportunities (less poverty, more choices) if girls were not having babies when they were 15 and women did not spend their entire lives caring for children without really having the chance to choose (starting with their own babies at a young age, and having several children, and then caring for their grandchildren).  Talking to my host mom, she did not plan to have a child when she was 16 – but the use of birth control is so limited here, and there is so little information available to young adults.  There’s a lot more that is hard to see in terms of defined gender roles and the like, but I think I will leave that discussion for later.

Still working on developing my strategy.  We’ll have to see what I come up with.

A narration of some of my other activities from the last month accompanied by pictures:

Gathering cacao – not the fun part, like cracking them open – just carrying them, in a bag with the strap on my head to put in this giant pile.

November is the month of Panamanian holidays – Independence from Spain, and from Colombia, Flag Day, the first cry of independence in Los Santos, Day of the Dead, and every province and/or county declares its own day of independence and has its own celebration.  There are parades all the time; these pictures are from Chichica, in the Comarca Ngӧbe-Bugle, where we went for Ngӧbere training.  Also got to attend my first birthday party.  “Despicable Me” minion for the piñata and everything.  And, couldn’t resist attending the Halloween party with the other volunteers at the Regional Leader house in Changuinola.  My costume is, uh, me wearing a tiara.  Changuinola even set off fireworks!  For Halloween!  Panama, you're a little strange sometimes.

Been doing more health surveys, with the help of the “Peace Corps Committee” – and maybe having a little bit of fun, too!  It’s been interesting seen the wide variety of living conditions throughout the community – and meeting people whose houses I still didn’t know existed (there are about 130 scattered throughout the mountains, I guess it takes me a while to find them all), and who don’t attend my meetings.  I have found that sometimes this is because the head of the household is sick; I met one woman who told me that the doctors in Panamá City told her she has cancer.  She explained that actually, her ex-husband had put a curse on her and the only way for her to get better was for him to lift the curse.  At first I was taken aback – even here, in this community relatively well-exposed to education and the modern world, people still believe in curses?  And then I realized that, it may as well be a curse; I don’t know what kind of cancer she has, but there may not be treatment for it, or it may be prohibitively expensive for her.

We had Ngӧbere (the indigenous language in my community) training in Chichica, located in the mountains of the Comarca Ngӧbe-Bugle (semi-autonomous region of the indigenous Ngӧbe and Bugle people; my community consists mainly of Ngӧbe people, but is part of the Bocas province instead of part of the semi-autonomous region) – and I never got tired of seeing Peña Blanca every day for a week.  The mountains are just so much more majestic there than in Bocas!!  I still like our mountains, rising out of the sea, and I like that there just seems to be more food – and definitely more water – in Bocas, too.  Makes life easier.  There’s more opportunity for outside employment, too; people can earn money growing cacao (a lucrative cash crop), working in tourism, or for Chiquita Banana.  Was definitely interesting to observe the differences.

Of course, it was also interesting to learn some more Ngӧbere, too – since it is primarily a spoken language (the written form was imposed upon the language by linguists and religious groups), the consistency of structure that I have come to expect from language (learned both as a first language in English and later, with more conscious understanding of structure, in Spanish) just does not exist in the same way.  This was at times very frustrating.  On the other hand, the much more limited vocabulary – especially for expressing complex ideas – in some ways may make the language easier to learn, but in other ways more limiting.  I couldn’t help but think of Orwell’s 1984 all week – a limited language limits the ability to communicate, and the ability to think.  How does this impact the people who primarily use this language?

We were treated excellently by our host family during training – our host mom even made us shirts!  The triangular pattern on the shirts is known as “dientes” or teeth.  Legend (and archaeology) contends that the Ngӧbe people used to wear the teeth of their conquered enemies.  This tradition is now (thankfully) represented as a pattern on their clothing.

Eric came to visit me in my community and we went for a little hike to see the sea.  Always enjoy having visitors!  I also got to visit a nearby site – it was a nasty, muddy hike up to Katy’s community, which really made me appreciate living on the road – and respect what she (and many volunteers) has to do to go in and out of her site.

And, of course, I have come to enjoy taking pictures of bugs.

High Maintenance?

New limerick!

I do hate those great times of need when

There is no latrine, so I think, then

This idea is nice:

Just eat ALL the rice!

And I’ll never have to poop again!

I do think that this actually worked – my latest case of diarrhea resolved itself without antibiotics.  Must have been all the rice.

Part of this experience is learning things about oneself.  One of the things I have learned so far is that apparently I am actually high-maintenance.  I did not know this about myself.  Perhaps some of these things will change, but for the moment:

·         I like feeling clean.  Not bathing-in-poopy-stream-water clean, but water-from-a-tap (spring water) clean.  With my hair washed with shampoo.  And clean feet.  I get to feel this way an average of 15 minutes per week.

·         I prefer soccer fields free of cow pies.  Yup, I would rather run around on poop-free soccer fields.  And also free of giant muddy puddles right in front of the goal.  And free of mud-clay so slick you cannot hardly change direction on it at walking speed.  And also lacking random holes and ditches and sidewalks going through the middle.

·         I like to sleep on a mattress.  Actually, I suppose I have to sleep on a mattress.  I thought maybe I could make it two years on my inflatable sleeping pad, or even start sleeping on the wood floor like my entire host family, but my back refused to let me sleep.

·         I do not like cockroaches.  I am not afraid of them; I would just prefer that they are dead.  I do not like them on the walls of my room.  I do not like them hiding among the dishes in the kitchen area.  And I do not like them on the wrong side of the mosquito net flying around my head at night waking me up.  This happens to result in a week’s worth of bug-themed mini-nightmares.

·         I do not like canned sardines.  I will eat them, but I do not like them.  Especially not four meals in a row.  That includes rice-and-boiled-green-bananas-and-sardines for breakfast.  I know I shouldn’t complain, because at least my family is feeding me protein (which is more than a lot of volunteers can say).  But I do not like them.  I’ve decided eating like a poor person is a real bummer.  I guess that’s the point.

·         I do not like doing laundry.  Especially in poopy stream water.  Especially when it takes two hours to do (even with my bucket-and-plunger-$3-washing-machine) and at least two days to dry and then ends up smelling like trash-fire smoke.

·         I like a sink clear of dishes.  While this is a common roommate complaint, sometimes there’s not water in the tap to do the dishes.  And after one meal, all the dishes in the house find their way into the sink.

·       I like to plan things and then follow through with a plan.  And to know other people's plans in advance.  This is apparently very challenging -- and my patience and flexibility are constantly being increasingly tested.  

·       I like it when people ask for things using the words "please" and "thank you."  "Take my picture!" is not an appropriate way to ask me to take your picture.  But these words are not really part of the culture (they don't even exist in the Ngobere language) -- it is just expected that everything is shared, and things can be demanded and accepted without appreciation.  It just makes a big difference to me to have my generosity recognized.

·         Panamá makes a child: I get unreasonably excited about popsicles and ice cream (and reward myself with them).  And I am especially cranky when I am hot, tired, bored, or hungry.

There are many things that will continue to take some adjusting -- perhaps I will learn not to feel this way after some time.

Plenty of good things, too, though!  Best described with the following illustrating pictures:

·         Harvesting lemons

·         Just another pretty day

·         Day one of working on the improved cookstove – a gift from the government conservation agency – I did absolutely nothing to deserve credit for this other than to show up, but it was cool to be a part of!

·         World Handwashing Day – I did 11 thirty-minute charlas (interactive presentations / activities) in the school (exhausting!  Kids demand a lot of energy).  We transmitted glitter “bacteria” through shaking hands, had a soap vs. no soap handwashing race, and sang the song “Lavando” – an alternative chorus that I wrote to the hit “Bailando” by Enrique Iglesias.  I believe I sang this song some 50 times that day.  Without music.   But the kids loved it anyway!

(Lavando, lavando, lavando, lavando)

Las manos después de usar el baño

Con jabón limpiando (con jabón limpiando)

(Lavando, lavando, lavando, lavando)

Antes de comer y cuando comida preparando

Enfermedad evitando

Rough Translation:

(Washing, washing, washing, washing)

Hands after using the bathroom

Cleaning with soap (cleaning with soap)

(Washing, washing, washing, washing)

Before eating and when preparing food

Evading disease

·         I got to play in TWO tournaments with the Quebrada Pastor soccer team – we even had jerseys!  The other team was pretty stunned watching me walk onto the field, and even more so the first time I juked them.  I played the whole game, at forward, in the first tournament, and had the assist for our only goal – quite an accomplishment, though we lost 5-1.  In the second tournament – on our home turf (miraculously free of cow pies for the occasion) – I only played the second half.  The most ridiculous thing happened – I was pulled off the field with only a few minutes left, and the entire place applauded me.  I had no idea what this meant (“Are they being sarcastic?”) until my Regional Leader came to visit the next day and explained that this is what they do on TV for all the star players – pull them off with a couple minutes left so they get their own personal standing ovation.  Well, I rather like that interpretation!

·         The perfect image of Ngobe children – in a fellow Volunteer’s community

·         Wildlife!

·         Carrying my bag full of lemons, Ngobe-style – while hugging a tree, of course

·         My first night walk coming down the mountain, in the rain, too – and I encountered my first armadillo, and my first Equis – one of the most venomous snakes in the area!  Good thing Ángel was walking in front of me to spot it and kill it.

·         Churches always have great views

·         Second phase of making the stove – after completing the construction for the day, Ángel suggested to me that we paint the Panamanian flag side-by-side with the US flag on the stove (in honor of the role Peace Corps placed receiving the stove).  I replied that, historically, things didn’t work out so well when the Panamanian flag and the US flag were next to each other (referencing the Panamanian flag riots).  Ángel quipped right back that that was why we would be painting them so close to the fire – it is a stove, after all.  Took me a minute to get the joke (being in Spanish), and was so surprised as the candidness of it, I could not help but laugh hysterically.

·         Praying mantis – here, they just call the insect “Jesús”

·         Pretty flowers!  Can’t help but continue to notice them

·         Bambi!  I’m always delighted to randomly find reminders of my former life – after all, Bambi was my favorite movie as a little girl.

·         Doing WASH surveys (Water, Sanitation, and Handwashing – basically health surveys) in the community – got really excited about the prospect of quantifying the Environmental Health status of the community (I get to enter numbers in Excel, oh boy!) – must be the engineer in me.

·         Another view of the school

And one last random thought (should have taken a picture):

Some kids happily showed me their school projects – I suppose they were assigned to draw Christmas things.  I asked them to explain what they had drawn:

·         Drawing of the classic American Santa Claus: “Santa Claus!”

·         Drawing of a snowman: “Muñeca de nieve” = snow doll?

·         Drawing of some fancy bells: “Santa Claus!”

·         Drawing of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: “Sheep wearing a Santa Claus hat!”

Oh, Panamá.  Close enough.