Weird Things About Panama (or maybe just weird things about me)

I don’t properly know how to explain my time here, since everything is so varied and unexpected, so I decided the best way was to list as many things I could think of that were weird.  Figured it was better to do this sooner than later, since I’ll eventually acclimate and won’t be able to remember what is weird anymore.

I can sum up the first month with this conversation with Ángel:

The good thing about my first month is that everything is new and different!  (Everything is exciting and interesting and there is so much to learn and do and I never know what to expect every day!)  The bad thing about my first month is that everything is new and different.  (There’s too much to learn and it’s overwhelming and I have to become accustomed to many things about life and work and language and people that are different and often challenging and I never know what to expect every day.)  And then Ángel asked, what’s the ugly thing?  The good, the bad, and the ugly?  It’s the people who only look out for themselves and don’t care about making the community as whole better.  Yes, Ángel, the ugly is that there are some things that aren’t new or different at all.

And this is why I get to end of some days feeling like everything is possible.  And other days everything feels impossible.  And there may be only the smallest of differences between them.

To better illustrate all that is new and different:

·         Food

o   While pasear-ing, I was given some pork to eat.  It was almost entirely fat – though I think there was a little meat – as well as a layer of skin.  The skin still had hair on it.  Maybe I’ll start keeping kosher.

o   Every meal (or at least every lunch and dinner) involves an entire two-pound bag of rice.

o   I get ridiculously excited to eat eggs.  And every time I’m served vegetables (I take back every time I complained about salad as a kid, Mom).  And when there is enough sauce to flavor all of the rice.  And plantains that are fried instead of boiled.  And love getting gifts of fruit – oranges, mandarins, limes, mamones, mangotones, pipa (coconut) water – right now all the citruses are ripening, so the next fruit season will be different things!

o   It is impossible to find a drink without sugar added to it.  I suppose sugar and water is cheaper than fruit juice, even in this land filled with amazing fruit.  Unfortunately.

o   Try as I might, I just can’t make myself like pifa (peach palm).  It’s supposed to be something of a miracle food in terms of nutritional value, and everyone here grows it and eats it and makes chicha out of it, but every time I force myself to eat one, I have less and less success finishing it.

o   On the other hand, I find myself perfectly happy to eat fish with the spines still in it, and canned sardines, and even broccoli if it ever happens to show up (highly unlikely at this point).  And I take back all those times I turned down raisins when my Dad offered them.  I went so far as to buy some as secret emergency food to store in my room with the peanut butter.

o   I had a dream about food.  For the first time ever.  The best part was the mashed potatoes.

·         Entertainment

o   Action movies are apparently the best for sharing when you don’t have languages to offer other than English – Pirates of the Caribbean, Jackie Chan, and Indian Jones were all hits (my host family doesn’t believe me that my laptop is actually for doing work).  Davy Jones is now a household name and the local boogeyman.

o   Random family members always come and eat dinner and crash on the floor for the night at my host family’s house.  It’s rare that just my host family is in the house for the night, or at any time during the day.

o   Turns out Mechi is a pretty darn good goalkeeper.  So far I have only played fútbol with the family and neighbor kids.  On a field that is half mud, that when the slightest bit damp makes it practically impossible to stop or change direction without falling.  Might be the most frustrating field ever.  But that won’t matter when I finally go persuade the muchachos that a girl can play on the grass field with them.  In the meantime, it’s good host family bonding.  And I got to play volleyball, which is apparently co-ed.

o   I was asked to sing the US national anthem while walking on a path through the jungle.  I think that’s the only time I have sung it by myself, a cappella, with an audience.  Probably best to keep it that way.

·         Communication

o   Guari-Guari is the local creole that is a mixture of English, Spansh, and Ngӓbere, spoken by several community members, especially those who often travel to the towns, where it is the primary language of the Afro-Antillean population.  However, it does not actually sound anything like English – more like changing English words to make them pronounceable in Spanish with a Caribbean accent – and aside from being impossible to understand as a native English speaker, is rather painful to hear.

o   It is a relief to hear and speak Spanish – when compared to the numerous Ngӓbere conversations I am either excluded from or ineffectively included in.

o   Viagra jokes apparently still apply in the campo of Panamá.

o   Didn’t realize my name could be 1) such a source of entertainment for others, and 2) such a source of irritation for me.  Every child who doesn’t know me calls me Gringa.  I tell them this is not my name.  Every child under the age of 5 who has learned my name loves to say it.  Over.  And over.  And over.  “Alex.  Alex.  Alex.  Alex.  Alex.”  Regardless of how I respond.  My tactics have ranged from responding in Spanish “Yes?  What?  How are you?  How can I help you?  What do you want?” to saying they will kill my name from overuse to completely ignoring them to giving a long speech in English about how annoying they are.  All met with the same reaction.  “Alex.  Alex.  Alex.”  Turns out there’s also a community division in the use of my elected Ngӧbe name, Chinӧre – some like it and use it, some don’t like it and chose a different Ngӧbe name to call me.  As it I weren’t already confused enough.

o   No one ever has saldo (money on their cellphones).  Or else they are lacking battery or service.  So no one can ever effectively call anyone.  And the perpetual question is, “Do you have saldo?  Can you lend me your phone?”

o   The wet rocks in the streams are super slippery – when I told Nayelis that the rocks are like ice and you can skate on them, I realized the simile was completely useless.  She can’t possibly know what it’s like to skate on ice.

o   I get to explain physics sometimes – which makes me feel like a nerd and is awesome, though sometimes I wish I paid better attention in class – how does a prism work?  (Got to explain light, with UV treatment of water as a bonus.)  How does an airplane work?  (Got to explain using the “lift” demonstration on a piece of paper.)  How do pilots not fall in the military planes that do flips like you see in movies?  (Got to explain centripetal force in terms of swinging a bucket.)

o   Some days I walk around muttering to myself in English, cursing babies.

·         Housework

o   “Going to do laundry” means taking all your clothes and soap to the stream.  Now, as an environmental health volunteer, I am hyper aware that this is the same stream that lots of my community members use as their bathroom up the hill, and it’s where all the wastewater, all the drainage for the watershed goes.  I was taught how to do laundry on my second day.  First, I put my dirty clothes in the poopy water of the stream and then slap them as hard as I can against a big rock.  Then I rub soap all over them and slap them against the big rock again.  I have no idea how the big rock is helping me remove the dirtiness from my clothes.  Then I rinse the soap out using the poopy water of the stream.  I don’t feel like my clothes are very clean, but it was a lot of work and took a long time.  As a bonus, I got to bathe in the stream when I was done – which means soaping up and rinsing off in the poopy water.  So much cleaner now.

o   Being not thrilled with this experience, I took the advice of a fellow volunteer and built a manual washing machine.  It’s a bucket with a hole cut in the lid and a plunger with holes cut in it in the middle.  Clothes, water, and soap go in the bucket, mix with the plunger.  Still using poopy water, but at least it felt easier, faster, and more efficient.  And Mechi, my host mom, tried it out – now she wants one.  Ángel and I think we’re going to start a business.  Buy materials for $3, sell washing machines for $5.  This is how he is going to make $10 million – the ongoing joke we have.

o   Apparently the best accelerant for starting fires for cookstoves (the more “natural” alternative to using gas stoves, as people tell me) is using a plastic bag.

o   I learned how to chopear with a machete to clean up the school grounds.  At first all the men laughed at me, but once I got the hang of it, I kicked some serious vegetation butt.

·         More observations

o   In Panamá, winter is defined as the rainy season and summer is the dry season.  In Bocas Del Toro, there is no true dry season, so “summer” is just any day or week or month when there isn’t any rain.  No one can predict when this is going to happen.

o   I have had amoeba-induced nightmares about Peace Corps Monitoring and Evaluation – under what outcome indicator can I categorize sleeping?!  Every moment has to be identified as work!  That was a bad night.

o   I am told constantly, “Don’t fall!”  Every time I leave the house.  Any house.  Haven’t had my epic fall yet – that the people will talk about for years, like they do about the previous volunteers – but I’m sure it’s coming.

o   Chacos: endorsed for cockroach smashing.

o   Walking up the hills in the community led me to admit that I do not like going down – because as soon as you cross the little stream between the hills, you’re just going right back up again.

o   Giant banana-bearing trucks braking while going down the hill may be the only thing that is loud and obnoxious enough to drown out the sound of crying babies.

And there’s some pictures to go along with weird things as well:

·         Critters

o   Spiders, everywhere, crazy-looking spiders

o   Little crabs that live in the streams – according to the water committee, the big ones poke holes in the aqueduct pipes

o   Mono perezoso!  Literally translates to “lazy monkey” – this is the first sloth I have caught in the daylight.  In the training community, I saw one booking it down the electrical cables; it was the fastest sloth I’ve ever seen.  This sleepy guy was hanging out in a tree on Ángel’s farm.
o   So many cool frogs!  And my host family loves putting them on people -- is a theme, apparently.

·         People

o   Sharing some oranges fresh off the tree.  Turns out oranges are ripe – and orange on the inside – when the peel is still green!  Would never know that going to the grocery store in the States.  Also, everyone peels their oranges with machetes (or just a knife if you’re at home).  When I peeled one with my hands, I was told I had the nails of a tiger!

o   Another victim!  Arcadia learned French braids, too!

·         Scenery

o   I like big trees.

o   Chiquita Banana leaves out of Almirante, the port town twenty minutes away.  Big boats coming and going constantly.  The use of the word “banano” is everywhere – not actually a word in any language – some combination of the English banana and the Spanish guineo, I suppose.  Still sounds ridiculous.

o   Dawn looking out my host family’s house.

o   Highest point in the community.  Tasty oranges.

o   Same spot, one day apart.  One day there’s no line on the horizon, the next day the sun lights up everything (and is super hot!).

·         Work

o   Getting some participation at a community meeting to discuss my role in the community, community expectations, and environmental health priorities.  Turns out the women will only participate in front of the whole group if men and women are split up to discuss first, then present.  The picture is of the men’s turn.

o   Community charla (“chat” or seminar) on latrines – Omar helped me in planning and presenting.

o   Toured a couple of the existing aqueducts that the previous volunteer built – community members proudly showed me the tanks that they hauled up the mountain as part of the project.

I hope that’s a fairly accurate representation of my range of experiences so far.  I realize I haven’t discussed much about my “actual work” – the process of collecting information, mostly (and there has been plenty of that) – maybe more on that for the next post!