Images from Training

I wanted to take this opportunity – having not sufficiently collected my thoughts about my first week in site yet to write something – to describe a few of the most poignant images of Panamá since my arrival that I could never properly capture with a camera:

The Canal – I’ve had the great pleasure and fortune of riding across several bridges over the Panamá Canal.  Most of the time, I can look one way and see the canal open up into the Pacific Ocean, with boats of all sizes queueing up to enter, and then look the other direction to see the channel of water cutting through the green mountains and jungle to form one of the great man-made wonders of the world.  Even after crossing it a dozen times, I still hold a moment of silence to enjoy and contemplate the achievement – the feat of engineering and construction and planning and politics – and also the incredible sacrifice for that achievement, not to mention the unintended consequences.  And it is still amazingly impressive every time.

Mountains of the Comarca – I still feel a twinge of jealousy towards those placed in the Comarca Ngӧbe-Bugle way up in the mountains (not talking down my view of the sea or my cacao trees at all, of course).  One of the most striking images of Tech Week occurred while sitting on the roots of a massive ancient tree (dubbed the Tree of Wisdom) hanging on the edge of a precipice overlooking a deep, lush valley, watching a thunderstorm roll in.  Looking down the valley, streaks of lightning struck from the clouds creeping swiftly between the mountain ridges, bringing with them the thick mistiness of rain.  And as the storm played out in the distance below, punctuated by the rolling peals of thunder, I sat calmly, high above, at the base of the tranquil tree.

Hummingbirds – On the first evening of Tech Week, I had just settled in with my host family and as we ate dinner in their yard, I watched something like five hummingbirds darting among the branches to drink the nectar from the beautifully delicate purple flowers of the tree not fifteen feet in front of us.  Their iridescent emerald heads were reminiscent of the ruby-throated variety that we had been enjoying at home in Missouri thanks to the purchase of a new hummingbird feeder.  The scene was perfect – the sun setting, turning the sky pink, the mountains slowly fading into shadows around us, and hummingbirds having a field day, their buzzing, humming wings zipping about this tree.

Stars – In the campo, the stars are magical.  All of Tech Week had a new moon, and every night around 4:30 am I managed to awake in need of a good pee, which also gave me the perfect excuse to sit beneath the flawlessly clear sky and gaze upwards from a lawn chair placed precariously on the slope in the middle of the yard.  The Milky Way streaked across the sky in a cloud of stars as meteors flashed every few minutes through the dense twinkling.  Only saw one plane and one satellite all week; strange reminders of the world of technology that is really never too far away; something oddly alien but slightly reassuring in that remote mountain village.  Managed to pick out the Seven Sisters and Cassiopeia; need to learn more constellations this far south.  My host sister seemed to appreciate the identification the one night she joined me in my gazing.  I hope there will be a few clear nights in Bocas.

Bioluminescence – In Nueva Gorgona, walked down to the beach in the dark to swim among the bioluminescent plankton that made the water sparkle under the starry sky, with the ocean calm and the darkness so deep that the blackness of the sky faded into the blackness of the sea in an infinite abyss with no line on the horizon.  Every movement of the hand, just slow enough beneath the surface of the water, exploded in trail of glitter; dancing among the slow rise and fall of the waves in the blackness was endlessly mesmerizing.

Yet this set of lovely images would not be complete without some balance:

Chickens – Chickens are perhaps one of the strangest animals.  Ever.  Cannibalistic, aggressive, waking-at-three-in-the-morning monsters.  Clearly descendants of dinosaurs.

One evening during my site visit we prepared chicken necks for dinner.  In the States, you can go to the grocery store and buy chicken thighs, legs, breasts, wings.  Here, you can also buy necks, livers, feet – all the parts, really.  So we bought necks, and I was charged with preparing them for cooking.  This mainly involved finding the hard cartilage within the neck – the trachea – and ripping it out.  The ridged tube is reminiscent of a slinky.  But the most disturbing part is tossing the removed trachea out of the kitchen to land below where the current family chickens fought over that little tube to devour it.  Strange food chain, here: chicken eaten by chicken eaten by human…?

On the last day of my site visit, my family found a giant black scorpion hiding in a box in the house (four-inch body, equal length tail).  But the best part was the dozen or so tiny baby scorpions crawling around on the back of the big scorpion.  Still makes me shiver to remember it.  So my family did the only sensible thing – cut off the tail of the big scorpion and tossed the whole package – big mama and all her babies – out the window where the chickens fought over the crunchy treat.  Proud to be at the top of that food chain.

But the victory in chicken absurdity goes to this image.  The morning I was my most sick during site visit, I had tried to go for a run, and returned feeling pretty crummy.  I ate a Nature Valley bar to try to calm my stomach, to no avail.  Feeling miserable, I called a friend back home from the only window with service, just as my family decided it would be a good time to start a trash fire.  Inhaling the toxic plastic fumes, I immediately began to feel significantly more nauseous, and abruptly ran away from the window to vomit out the window of my bedroom.  I watched as the waterfall of nice, rich, Natural Valley bar vomit projected out of my mouth and fell toward the ground, where the chickens were already fighting off the dogs to be able to eat that nice, rich vomit.  So I was watching chickens eat my vomit as I was still vomiting.  May have enhanced the vomit process, slightly.

Hope you have enjoyed a taste of Panama!  (Too soon?)

Will be working on a proper introduction to Quebrada Pastor, complete with pictures!