Ema

Ema is my adoptive grandmother.  I’ve certainly mentioned her and posted several pictures, but I want to write a few words about her, to try to capture her, in the way I did before with Ángel.

The first time I visited Ema was just about a year ago – Ángel was guiding me to all the neighborhoods throughout the community, and we made the long trek up to her house.  I was struck by the marvelous view of the Bocas archipelago and the friendliness of the whole family.  And every time I have been back since (probably a couple dozen times at this point), I appreciate those things all over again.

The second time I visited Ema was when she taught me how to make mochilas.  I excitedly adopted this new craft as an opportunity to keep my hands busy when I was waiting for dinner or initiate conversation with the otherwise taciturn women at houses I visited.  In subsequent visits, she taught be the more complicated steps – how to finish the mochila, how to start, and finally, how to make the strap.  Each time with incredible patience, and increasing excitement at my eagerness and commitment to learn.  She loves that I call her my “maestra” – my teacher, master of the art.

The third time I visited Ema was completely fortuitous.  Zack, a Volunteer who lives a half-hour bus ride away, dropped by for a surprise visit, and we ran into Ema about to climb up the hill, on her usual path, which was previously unknown to me.  We slowly followed her up the path, and when we arrived, treated to a drink and snack and rest, Zack told me, “You know, this is a great place to take visitors!”  And I have since kept that advice.

I have brought almost all of my visitors – at least, most of the ones who expressed an interest on going for a hike – to Ema’s house.  It has been a special experience every time: presenting Matt with the mochila I made with Ema’s help to him in front of her, following one of the Scavenger Hunt groups up to her house on the day of the Passover Potluck, sending a group of Tech Week Trainees to spend the first night up there prior to building latrines the following day – and knowing how incredible the night and the dawn are from that point, having spent the night there myself.  She is always thrilled to have visitors – even those days when she is feeling sick and weak, she gets up and bustles through the house to serve us a drink and the best food they can offer.  The best food that I have had in the community is hers – fish and coconut soup with chocolate to drink is my favorite.

She is also an entertainer.  Her storytelling has become increasingly dramatic with each visit – she loves to tell about how she had to “grab me by the ear” to teach me how to make the mochila strap – and then demonstrates by grabbing my ear and yelling into it, “Aprende, Chinuare!!” much to the amusement of my visitors.

My parents loved visiting her – how she genuinely welcomed them as family, offered all they could, even taught Mom her first mochila lesson.  And fellow Volunteers, who are accustomed to the sometimes muted expressiveness of Ngӧbe culture, especially around visitors, are delighted with her energy and warmth.  No one else in the community pinches my cheeks and hugs me goodbye and kisses me on the face when I finally get something right.

Her house is a special, safe, happy place.  I am grateful to have Ema as my abuelita – my little grandma.  Her lovely presence makes this place my home.

Pictures:

I love the view from her house.  Always.

First mochila lesson!

And the finished product of my first mochila (which I still use every day).

The second mochila -- which I gave to Ema, of course.

Making a pyramid with Ema's grandkids and visiting Volunteers in the front yard during the Passover Scavenger Hunt.

Ema's husband, Jose, helping me check out the spring source that they use for water.

Ema giving Mom her first mochila lesson!

A gift from Mom and Dad!

The first latrine plancha in Ema's neighborhood -- she insisted that it was important to take part in the project during Tech Week, so that the family could finally have latrines.  Building two planchas meant lugging 40 bags of sand/gravel mix and 2 bags of cement up the hill -- a hike which usually takes me at least an hour.  Her kids and grandkids worked hard to make it happen -- and 13 Peace Corps Volunteers and Trainees spent the night in her house to work for the jefa -- the boss -- the next morning.

Next Generation

Now that I’ve been around for a year, I guess that makes me an expert.

Or at least that is how I have been made to feel through the last couple months.  First Tech Week gave me the opportunity to teach aspiring Volunteers about work and life in my community.  Then – after serving as translator and guide for Mom and Dad – a senior design class group from Michigan Technological University visited for a week to do some field data collection here.  Then – before they had even left – I ran back to Panamá City to co-facilitate the final week of Pre-Service Training.  And then this last weekend we held the Project Management and Leadership Conference (PML – the same one Ángel attended with me back in May) here in Quebrada Pastor.

Training the new Environmental Health group – during Tech Week, but especially in the training community – gave me an overwhelming sense of nostalgia.  Not that long ago, I was the one with a million questions, full of anxiety and nervous excitement and big ambitions and hidden fears, about to embark on my roller coaster through Quebrada Pastor.  That roller coaster sure hasn’t stopped, but it is a much less jerky ride, as I’ve learned to hold on a little more firmly and anticipate some of the bumps and turns.  And a year’s worth of perspective on this place gives me a great deal more confidence managing my work and life here, accepting the unexpectedness of life that is the norm here.

The visit from the Michigan Tech students took me one step even farther back in my reminiscence; relating to the Peace Corps Trainees required remembering my state of mind of only a year ago, but for the seniors I had to go back to when I was in college, traveling for the first time with Engineers Without Borders, curious and motivated and full of book-smarts, but without a detailed picture of development work.

The 4 students (with a student mentor) that visited Quebrada Pastor are taking an international senior design class in which they partner with a Peace Corps community, visit for a week to gather data, do field surveys, and experience campo life, and then spend the semester using the data to design their final senior design project, which they then offer to the Peace Corps Volunteers, who can use it, if desired, to implement in some form.  I had heard of this program back in March from another Volunteer in my group, and invited the professor to send a group of students to me – thinking, back then, that I didn’t have anything planned for August (soon discovered to be false).  Despite the intensity of plans on both sides of their visit, I was thrilled to be a part of the program.

To me, this is a very cool program.  These students are excited to learn about the world, are excited to help people, and are excited to use their engineering educations to do something useful.  I was (and, a couple degrees later, still am) just like those students.  To get to travel for a week, do some useful work, and get a taste of development while being welcomed into a community to learn about the life and the people there is both a practical and an eye-opening opportunity – perfect for engineering students.

The difficulty is the “doing useful work” part of that.  Without the context of the place, and a thorough needs assessment and understanding of the community, trying to find that “useful work” in a vacuum is very difficult – to the point that the resulting work may not be useful, or worse, damaging.  (I did make a point to share my story from Sustainable Development = Empowerment with the students to illustrate my perspective on development work; they appreciated the lesson in it.)  The cool thing about this program is that, partnering with Peace Corps, all of that assessment and establishing context and forming relationships has already been done by the Volunteer, who can then easily point to and coordinate a project that will benefit the community in which the students can be treated as a useful resource.  This way, the people in the community are still in control of the project, the students can offer their technical expertise, and the Volunteer can serve as the bridge that understands both the perspective of the community and of the students, thereby helping them understand each other even when language and cultural barriers arise.

In our case, the “useful work” was the measurement and evaluation of the school aqueduct.  Willy and I had started doing this, but finding the time to make it happen was a slow process, and I would not be able to analyze the flow and pressure problems without first collecting a full set of data.  The students managed to survey the whole system, measure flow, take water quality samples, and assess demand in the houses and school in just five days.  They will spend the semester analyzing their data, producing a design, and giving us recommendations for the improvement of the system, which I hope to implement next year.

I appreciated this opportunity to be responsible for training the next generation of engineers – whether or not they go into development work, they have a better idea of the kinds of challenges people face in another part of the world.  And I hope that my commentary on sustainable development – as well as seeing it firsthand – sticks with them if they continue with other kinds of short-term work abroad.  It’s tough to do good development walking into an unknown context, so a bridge is important.

I suppose the final phase of my service will be weaning my community off that bridge, since there will no longer be Peace Corps Volunteers here, at least for a while.  I need to leave them feeling sufficiently empowered and capable to find help and resources and achieve things themselves.  They were already well on their way before I arrived – Lucas had managed to secure several different projects here, and Willy’s rapidly expanding network of contacts and clients for his chocolate business continues to improve his opportunities.  It was Ángel’s idea to bring the PML coordinators to Quebrada Pastor to give more people in the community an opportunity to learn leadership skills, and he and Lucas were responsible for planning the whole thing.  It was quite the success – 15 people attended, and over half of them were under 25.  Looks like Quebrada Pastor is also ready to train its own next generation.

                                                                                                                                                               

Pictures:

Measuring flow with Michigan Tech students

Awarding certificates at the completion of PML-In-Site Conference