Justice and Mercy and Credit

Almost all of the people who attended the first mandatory training session for participating in the Pit Latrine Project live along the road. There were three people there who made the trek from up the hill to attend, but in the end, they were not prepared to commit to making the $50 payment required to buy the materials to build the latrine foundation.

 The people who live along the road have certain advantages. It is easier to travel, and as a result transport their products to sell and buy thing and bring them to their houses. (This is something I really appreciate, even if it mean listening to engine braking all night. At least that occasionally drowns out the sound of crying babies all around me?) It is easier – and, in times when the streams are swollen with rain, less dangerous – to send their children to school. It is easier to organize, neighbors live closer, it is easier to know when something is going on, to attend meetings, to get information, to communicate. And the people who live along the road have the first access to help.

 For example: of the latrines that were constructed with the help of the first Peace Corps Volunteer, the vast majority went to people who live along the road – there are maybe 5 of the 25 located more than a 10 minute walk from the school, which is the center of the community, right on the road. Of the existing aqueducts, the one built by the government to serve the school also serves all the houses around the school, and 2 of the 3 built with the help of the second Peace Corps Volunteer are also located farther along the road.

The remaining latrines from the first Volunteer's project tended to go to the houses of the most put-together people in the other parts of the community – the people who are the most hard-working, ambitious, “with it,” and otherwise capable of pursuing help.

This raises an interesting and troubling point. Do I help the people who actually showed up at my mandatory training session? Or do I try to help the people who wanted to but can't?

So far in my work here, I have striven to be absolutely fair. When I was advertising these two current projects (building a ferrocement rainwater catchment tank, building a pit latrine), I walked to every single house in the community to let them know what was going on. And I made sure to send out invitations, so that every household was reminded. Everyone is expected to do exactly the same things to participate in the project – attend two mandatory trainings, pay for the materials, and do the construction work for themselves and for those in their work group who helped them. Every group that is interested in pursuing an aqueduct project has been given the same set of instructions and the same offers for my assistance in getting organized so that they can advance towards the production of a design and the solicitation of funds. I have tried very hard not to make special exceptions, seeking ways within the rules I have laid down to help people meet the demands.

Working in this manner has a few observable effects. First, I will only help people who want my help. I am making an equal amount of effort to offer my help, and then only continue to extend that effort when they return the effort in a show of seeking my help. Peace Corps only works with communities that solicit our help – and I only work with people who show that they want my help. But second, this method of fairness is to the advantage of those who are most on-the-ball. The people who are best able to pursue help are the ones who get the help. This method speaks of justice but not of mercy. What about the people who need my help, who want my help, but who don't have it enough together – in terms of organization, or free time, or health – to get it? What about the people who are still so much living day-to-day that they can't sacrifice the time spent working for their food or tending to their children, or dealing with their illness to come to my meetings?

These are the hardest people the help. The people who always get skipped over. The ambitious, motivated, hardworking people might be able to make things happen for themselves even without my help. I'm just providing a little boost.

 We talked in training about going after the “low-hanging fruit.” Our time here is limited – Volunteers themselves are the limited resources, as are the trained skills we have to offer. We must make the most of the time that we have, try to have the greatest and most effective and most sustainable impact possible. So we can't spend our time on people who don't want our help, who are not able to maintain the projects that we help them attain. It is a better use of resources to go after the easier targets, to make an impact on the first ones who ask for it and can handle it. But this is a tough thing to deal with. We want to help the people who need it most – but sometimes, we are not able to offer the kind of help that they need. That might better be a role for the Panamanian government, or their families – a more permanent fixture in their lives than a two-year stint. Then, maybe they will be ready to build themselves tanks and latrines and learn about handwashing.

 I still don't know if I have this conflict settled in my mind, but there is another issue that came to my attention this week, as well, which is remarkably clear.

 We finally began surveying the school and central aqueduct – surveying data of the as-built (and modified since its original construction) system will be useful to help me better understand the hydraulics and diagnose its problems and where to focus the solutions. Only Willy (the new Water Committee president, and my host “dad”) and Eduberto (another member of the Water Committee) showed up to help, the bare minimum for doing this effectively.

I decided to use an Abney level to do the surveying – a nifty little tool that measures the angle off of level so that you can use basic trigonometry to calculate the change in elevation – even though it is significantly more complicated to use and understand than a water level, because it is a heck of a lot faster (if only we had a total station…). We were advised during training that we probably needed to work with other volunteers rather than our community members to use the Abney level, but I decided that I could do it alone, or even offer to teach any interested Water Committee members

Willy was fascinated to learn how to use the Abney level. He's a smart guy, and when I showed him how to use it, it only took a couple practices before he was making the exact same readings I was. So, naturally, as is his nature, he took over the whole business, took control of my pen and notebook to write the measurement, took all the measurements, and even started bossing me around!

 I was a bit struck by this. First of all, this is a Peace Corps Volunteer's dream come true – I had just empowered Willy to do this himself. He was learning how to do the work necessary to improve his aqueduct, was taking control of the situation, was making it his own, taking responsibility for it. I only had to step back and let it happen, to teach and then not get in the way, to work less instead of more, to hand over the responsibility and the ownership. All of this was exactly as it is supposed to be. I should be thrilled!

And yet… the tiniest little prideful part of me was hurt.  I mean, they told us Peace Corps would be humbling, but... What is doing bossing me around? Who is the engineer here? I taught him how to use this thing not 15 minutes ago, and already he is the boss?

And that's the lesson. We're not here to be the boss. We're not here to take the credit. We're not here to be the “lead engineer,” to feel smart and important, to have our names written on things.

We're here to give all of those things to our communities.

Pictures:

Pretty flowers!



 

 

 Measuring flow – yet another potential aqueduct



  Building the platform for my rainwater catchment tank












 Kittens!



Pretty soon they'll be catching rats instead of cockroaches...

... If they can escape the children

 

 

...or don't just fall asleep.

 

 Adventure to the mangroves – we didn't get to go fishing, but we found lots of cool stuff! And had lots of fun. It felt like the first few months all over again, with the sense of fun and adventure and newness and unexpectedness…












































  Children love my map



 Surveying!




 Still finding big bugs amusing...



 

Panama Cookies

I returned from Training to find school in session, a brand-new Water Committee governing the school aqueduct, and lots of rain.

The former Water Committee president disappeared to the Darién (the exact opposite side of the country) until November, so a new Committee was elected, now with Willy, my “host dad” as president.  This will have some advantages – he is not going to flee to the Darién, he is (usually) responsible and dependable, he has been president before, he is well-educated and knows how to pursue connections,  he is motivated to work – and we still have a reasonable rapport, so there is more hope for working together on improving the aqueduct.

School starting also meant that in the afternoon, after primary school classes were over, the neighbor kids were looking for entertainment – so they came to hang out on my porch.  The entertainment I provided was paper and colored pencils, and a Toy Story puzzle that my brother Josh sent me for Christmas!  (We have a long sibling history with Toy Story – this was supposed to remind me of home.  Turns out it was useful for many things!)

All the rain – and waiting for meetings – meant that I had some time to produce another “mochila!”

Calvin and Hobbes continue to be a source of entertainment.

The members of my Community Projects Committee and I gave our first talk to those interested in building a ferrocement rainwater catchment tank – seven people committed to participating in the project.  We started our talk, which focused on safe water storage, with a game that Nayelis introduced to the group.

And last Friday, I went to a double birthday party in Changuinola (my provincial capital) for a couple Volunteers, and I have spent the last few days in Boquete (a touristy town in the Chiriqui mountains located next to Volcán Barú, the tallest peak in Panamá), at a workshop for revising the Water Committee Seminar Manual, which many Volunteers use to teach their Water Committees how to better take care of their aqueducts.  It's been a great week – learned a lot, had a lot of fun with other Volunteers.

In preparation for all this fun, I decided to make “Ngöbe Cookies” – a favorite of mine, and my fellow volunteers – which are No-Bake cookies (oatmeal-and-peanut-butter-based chocolate cookies that can be made without an oven, perfect for here) made with Ngöbe chocolate (my host family's chocolate balls).  (“Ngöbe” is  more or less pronounced no-bay, so when you say “Ngöbe cookies” it sounds like “No-Bake Cookies” – it's a pun.  Haha.)  I was required to bring a dessert to the birthday party, and I wanted to offer some treats to my fellow workshop participants, so I planned to make these Friday night.

The following short story is illustrative, sometimes, of my efforts here in Panamá:

I committed to making these cookies – I bought all of the other ingredients.  Then I asked Willy, my “host dad,” if he would be making any chocolate balls this week.  He promised me two dozen chocolate balls Friday evening.  Perfect.  I planned to make the cookies, and bring some of the chocolates to sell to other Volunteers (everyone in the rest of the country craves Bocas chocolate), and I even wrote in a letter to a friend that I was sending her chocolate, which I planned to mail this week.

Basically, I counted all of my chickens before they hatched.

Friday evening, Willy came to my house to tell me that he was unable to procure enough cacao, so he couldn't make the chocolates.  Should have figured.  All of those plans that I had made for the chocolates instantly failed.  But I still needed a dessert to bring to the party.

So I opened the jar of Nutella that Mom sent me for my birthday, and put in the equivalent quantity in the cookie recipe.  When I introduced the cookies at the birthday party, they were a huge success.  I called them “Panamá cookies” because “Panamá happened” to them.  Instead of Ngöbe chocolate, they were flavored with a dash of failure and a sprinkle of innovation – which tastes remarkably like hazelnut.  (Thanks, Mom, for saving my butt on that one.)

Prefiero Aqui

“Prefiero Aquí,” or, “I prefer it here,” was my response to Amalia, secretary of my personal Community Projects Committee, when I returned from technical Training in the Comarca Ngöbe-Bugle the first week of March, when she asked what I thought of the place.

The community where we attended training is located in a part of the Comarca (which is a semi-autonomous region inhabited and governed by the Ngöbe people) on the other side of the continental divide.  High up in the mountains – bigger mountains than the ones I live in – the view is spectacular:

But on the other side of the Cordillera (the continental divide) is so much drier this time of year., known as summer, here. In the Bocas del Toro province, everything is still lush and green and muddy, because we still get rain, even if there are a few more dry days than there are the rest of the year. In Las Trancas, the community that hosted our training, things are so dry that there is dust everywhere, and there are constant concerns about having sufficient water.

We had a wonderful time at training – Jess, the volunteer who hosted us, did an impressive job planning all of the work for us to do to both learn and help with her aqueduct construction. But I did think a lot about how the different climates between Las Trancas and Quebrada Pastor affected so much of life. My community has far less trouble getting sufficient water, and can easily grow food all year round, which makes life much easier. Of course, all of the water can have a negative impact, too – easier for water-borne pathogens to spread, and for mold and fungus to grow (on my clothes, between my toes, on my face).

The difference in infrastructure is striking, too – Quebrada Pastor is rather unique for an Environmental Health Volunteer's site, since it is located right on the highway. This gives my community (and me) easy and cheap access to travel – Almirante, the nearest town, is a 20-minute, $1 bus ride away, which enables my community to sell their cacao to the cooperative easily, and buy produce and other things from outside the community. It means that my host family can sell their chocolate balls and lemons and oranges and pifa at a higher price in Bocas del Toro the city located on the Bocas islands, which there is a booming tourism industry. And it means that Willy (my “host dad”) has a Facebook account and does business via email (fairly easy internet access is an advantage for me too!) – something very unusual for Peace Corps communities. To get to Las Trancas, Jess' community, one has to ride in the covered back of a pickup truck for a couple hours on a dirt road constructed mostly by hand – which might be better referred to as a roller coaster than a road.

I realize that my community has some incredible advantages – and after having been here for 6 months, long enough to call Quebrada Pastor my home, I have become very fond of the place. Like all other communities, it has its own challenges – the size and disperse distribution of the population, the divisions among the families, the diversity of the problems and interests of the various neighborhoods, the difficulty in uniting the community, the rampant water-borne diseases – but I have learned to deal with these challenges, to make them my own, and so I can truthfully tell my fellow community members that “Prefiero aquí.”

Photos from training:

Team Pumpkin Pirates show off our work on the aqueduct intake structure...

...And the ferrocement union tank.

Mary Catherine and I pose with our wonderful host dad for the week – father, teacher, store-owner, aqueduct president, and very thoughtful host.

Team Pumpkin Pirates practices doing a water storage talk for some interested community members…

...And Dylan and I demonstrate how to make a “Plubo” (Pluma + Cubo – or Tap + Bucket) – a tap sticking out of a bucket so that you don't ever touch the water with your hands, thereby reducing contamination.