Adventures

Project Management and Leadership Conference with Angel was fantastic!  He was so excited about it that he wanted to share the experience with everyone back home.  So he asked the conference facilitators if they could hold the same conference in Quebrada Pastor -- and they agreed!  Then he went home, got 10 signatures of people who wanted to attend, and decided which were the most important sessions.  I didn't really have to do anything -- which is exactly how it should be!  We're shooting for September -- because, after the craziness of Tech Week is over, we'll need something else to keep us occupied!  (Before cacao season begins in earnest, anyway.)

One of the coolest things about the Conference was that we had a session called, "Llenando Tanques" -- or "Filling Tanks."  The idea is that all of us have a tank that can be filled with positive thoughts, words, and interactions, or emptied with negative ones.  We should always be striving to fill each others' tanks -- and just about every Peace Corps event involves putting our names on envelopes (our "tanks") and filling everyone's envelopes with nice thoughts.  During this session, however, before the envelopes, Volunteer-and-Counterpart pairs stood in front of the group and one-by-one said their nice thoughts to each other.  I told Angel basically a summary of what I wrote in the last post, and he told me that he loves me like his own daughters.  It was pretty powerful -- I even teared up a little.

I'll narrate some of the rest of what I've been up to with the following photos:

Surveying -- we're almost done!  With a little more information, I can start designing one (or two) aqueducts for two parts of the community without water in the house.  Then I can finally feel like an engineer again!  The leaders in each of these neighborhoods have been impressive in doggedly organizing work days and insisting that others are available to come help -- a good sign for work moving forward.

 

Some rainy afternoons spent with some good company -- Calvin and Hobbes, and Calvin and Hobbes.

After PML, I attended a Workshop for revising the Water Committee Seminar manual -- a great exercise in thinking through what it takes to effectively teach the (wide variety of) topics related to water system operation and maintenance.  We had a free evening, so we took a bus down the road to the tiny town of Rio Hato -- for the Mango Festival!  Aside from displays of dozens of kinds of mangoes (who knew there were so many?), there was also a parade and even a Mango Queen... on a float that was, of course, pulled by a John Deere tractor.

Another day of a surveying, another adventure -- I haven't seen a walking stick in ages!! This one made its acquaintance by falling on my head and getting its legs stuck in my braids.

Hiking adventure!  This is the view from the ridge, the highest reach of Quebrada Pastor, looking out over the Bocas archipelago.  This ridge -- of the first set of mountains rising up from the sea -- has a trail that stretches all the way from Chiriqui Grande to Almirante, the two port towns in the Bocas del Toro province.  Apparently, once upon a time, cattle were driven along this path.  Angel, Nayelis, and I walked a short section of it on our way to Quebrada Pita to visit Abby, one of my nearest Volunteers.  It was a tough hike, but a great adventure!