Tech Week!

We spent Tech Week in the Comarca Ngobe-Bugle, in an incredibly beautiful mountain community.

There is a lot I would like to post about the week -- from our hands-on training (finally!  Some concrete and PVC and flow rates and surveying!) to experiencing the indigenous Ngobe culture to spending the weekend at the beach afterward, but I haven't had much time to write up a post, and I wanted to post something today.  We are finding out our sites tomorrow, and that's what I'll want to talk about next!

Instead I am going going to post pictures and a limerick.  The pictures are of the training community, my host sister, a crazy giant poisonous caterpillar, and the beach were we spent the night.  The limerick is, of course, about what fun it is to build a latrine when you only have hand tools at your disposal:

Working with concrete can be a trick

When you don't have tools from which to pick.

And how I lament

For settling intent:

A vibrator's better than a stick.

• 

In the Campo

I spent the last week visiting a current volunteer, Michelle, at her site in the province of Coclé, which is a community located in the campo (countryside) outside of Penonomé, the capital of Coclé.

One of our primary activities was mango-eating (up to four times a day), which resulted in this combined effort (thanks for the help, Michelle and Maria!) to produce a somewhat excessive expression of mango love:

So soft and firm, my fingers encase,

Squeeze in my hands, a tender embrace.

A deep love so strong,

And oh, how I long

For sweet mango all over my face.

Also as part of my education about the volunteer experience, we hiked to the source of the community’s aqueduct, assisted teaching a hilarious elementary school English class, played fútbol with the neighbors, danced to merengue on the radio, and hiked to a neighboring volunteer’s site, where we swam in the river and played Settlers of Catan.

I also had the opportunity to learn the basics of sombrero-making!  I have a long way to go in terms of craftsmanship, but it seems like a good way to keep busy on slow days and get to know the local sombrero-makers.  The woman who taught us was incredibly patience and very skilled – and she showed us the whole process: harvesting the plant, preparing it for weaving, weaving the strands together, and then stitching together the woven threads to make the finished sombrero.

Then we finished our adventures with a trip to Santa Clara beach!

Things with my host family have continued to go well.  We did have one entertaining incident.  I was with my host sisters when my host mom called to us to say dinner was ready.  I walked in to see a single plate of food at the table, piled high with steamed broccoli.  Just as I was debating whether I should tell my host mom how much I detest broccoli or if I should just eat it, my host mom told me something like, “That’s dad’s food.”  Embarrassed that I automatically assumed it was mine, I retreated into my bedroom.  After a few minutes, realizing that my host dad wasn’t actually home, and still very confused, I wandered into my host sisters’ room and asked why her mom had said it was dinner time and then only served her dad’s food.  She explained that everyone in the family except Dad hates broccoli, which gave me the perfect opener: “Me too!”  So she marched into the kitchen and announced to her mom that I also dislike broccoli.  My host mom laughed and said she had been wondering why I hadn’t eaten my dinner, and I explained that I thought she said the food was for Dad.  After a good laugh all the way around, she happily scraped the broccoli off my plate, I happily ate my dinner, and attributed the whole thing to some poor language interpretation on my part.  Thanks to my host sister, Alexandra, for saving the day!

I have been working on learning some Spanish chistes (jokes).  These are maybe popsicle stick or laffy taffy quality at best, but at least I’m learning some puns!  Taking a step towards fluency!  (They are not worth translating, since they only make sense in Spanish.)

¿Qué dice la isla al mar?

¡Ola!

¿Qué dice el pez al otro pez?

¡Nada!

¿Cómo se llama un pez que no hace nada?

¡El pez-idente!

El tenedor está caminando por la calle.  Ve una cuchada.  Dice, <¡Hola!> a la cuchada.  La cuchada no dice nada.  El tenedor piensa, <Pues, quizás no escuchada.>

Jajaja.  Hope you enjoyed those.

Anyway, we’re heading to the Comarca (indigenous reservation) next week for technical training – fun stuff!! – and then we find out our sites the following week.  Very exciting!

Training Community

Since leaving Peace Corps Headquarters last Sunday, it’s been about a week and a half in my training community.  I have been living with my host family, taking Spanish and Environmental Health classes, getting to know the training community, enjoying the company of my fellow trainees, and making a few excursions.

One of the many things I have learned so far in my technical classes (which focus on drinking water, sanitation, and hand-washing – and how to help communities make these things happen) is that the concrete base of a latrine, called the plancha, is an essential construction component:

When building a latrine that’s a pit,
La plancha’s the most important bit.
Great skill this entails,
Because if you fail,
You’ll find yourself in really deep sh**.

Yes, this may be the only time in my professional life that poop jokes are perfectly acceptable, relevant, and made on a daily basis.  Maybe I’ll also have to share some of the songs we come up with, at some point.

Our days are pretty busy, with four hours of language class in the morning and four hours of technical class in the afternoon.  Sometimes I spend my evenings playing a little fútbol with a mixture of trainees and locals, other times just taking part in the Panamanian pastime of “pasear-ing,” or hanging out and walking around town to visit people.

This last weekend, a couple other trainees and I held an impromptu fútbol practice with our secondary-school-aged host sisters and their teammates – it made me appreciate my Battle High School coaching experience this spring!  The girls enjoyed it enough to ask us to hold another session this week; this is becoming a great way for us to practice implementing, in Spanish, the teaching techniques from technical class.  On Sunday, we had our first self-led adventure into Panamá City to get to know our way around – was exciting and ended in some World Cup-watching in the old part of the city (picture!).

The heat and humidity here are tremendous, but a good rain helps to clear the air a little bit.  Since Missouri’s summer started so late, I felt ill-prepared for the transition!  Thanks, Missouri.

My host family is incredibly welcoming and generous; they are willing to speak slowly enough for me understand, they are patient enough to listen to me stumble through sentences (and correct me), and they are very flexible with my schedule.  They have had a number of previous volunteers, so they know the routine better than I do!  The person responsible for my host family placement must be enjoying a good giggle, though: my host parents’ names are Magali and Alexis, and my host sisters go by Alexandra and Alejandra.  No joke.  At least I get to go by Alex, to differentiate!  Made me feel right at home to see “Happy Birthday, Alejandra” in my room upon my arrival, though (picture)!

Spanish classes seem to being going pretty well; my Spanish has already been deemed passable (or “Advanced Low”) – one would hope, after ten years of study! – and it is certainly improving with the consistent practice that each day provides.  Technical classes have so far been focused on the Peace Corps approach to development, techniques for integrating into our community, and methods for working with our community to develop a project; later, we will be doing some hands-on construction.

Training will continue to be busy – a little preview of the important dates on our schedule: next week, I will be visiting a current Environmental Health volunteer in the Coclé region, then return for more classes.  Our site announcements will be made July 30.  And the Peace Corps swearing-in ceremony, given I complete my training, will be August 28.  Then it will be time to go to my site!

Already it feels like I have been here for months, even though I only left home two weeks ago.  The days are long, and mostly too busy and stress-free, with so many new things going on, to start feeling homesick.  Nonetheless, I would love to hear what it going on back in the States – I cannot frequent the internet café very often thanks to our schedule, but I did get a cell phone!  The phone number is:

507 6788 2474

Feel free to call or text!  (But be aware of international rates.  I can make international calls of 30 minutes for $1, or send international text messages for $0.20 each.)  Would love to hear from you!