Panama Ponderings: Harold and Kumar Visit Alex

To continue with the insanity (because hosting 35 Peace Corps people wasn’t enough):

Mom and Dad showed up on the last day of Tech Week! They told me, upon arrival, that they decided to call their trip, “Harold and Kumar go to visit Alex” to properly express the road-trip-crazy-adventure nature that their vacation had already begun to take.

What was supposed to be a 9-ish-hour drive was more like 13 hours, thanks to a few confusing signs and a roadblock outside of the Comarca in which a large group of Ngӧbes were protesting the construction of a dam. And that was just the beginning.

To their credit, Mom and Dad learned to adopt low expectations very quickly – they adapted very well to the best approach to life here – and decided that each day was a good day as long as it included: 1) a solid poop, 2) staying out of the slammer, and 3) a drink. Based on those criteria, we had a very successful trip!

In addition, they masterfully took to heart the wisdom that, “The only 'plan' Pana-land allows us to make is how we plan to tell the story afterward.” They learned more in their 10 days in Panama than I did in my first 3 months, it seems! This post would probably be best written from their perspective, but at least I’ll share what we did while they were here.

Since Mom and Dad arrived as the final celebration of Tech Week was ending, they immediately had the opportunity (while exhausted from their plane flight, 13-hour drive, and handling communication in Spanish without a translator to accompany them) to meet all of the most important people in Quebrada Pastor, as well as my boss and fellow facilitators. They did so gracefully before returning to my house to get some much-needed rest.

The following day, after finally sending off all of the Tech Week visitors, we took a tour of the tank and latrine projects that were built during the week. At this point, I realized how perfectly-timed their visit was – after all, 90% of my work is walking around talking to people, which is something difficult to see and appreciate as a visitor, and they managed to arrive right after all of that work had finally produced tangible results! How fun for me to show it all off!

We also spent some time chatting with Willy’s family and with Ángel. I mediated the conversations as translator – a role I don’t often play – but we all discovered that some jokes are universal.

On Sunday, despite rain throughout the early morning, I decided it would be okay – if a bit muddy – to take Mom and Dad to Ema’s house. After all, I wanted to check on the latrines up there, Ema’s family is one of my favorites in all of Quebrada Pastor, and it had an amazing view – all things I wanted to share with them. I thought I had sufficiently described the journey – “It will probably take us two hours to hike up the hill,” – but that overly-succinct description failed to take into account the heat, the humidity, the slickness of the mud, the steepness of slope of the mountain, all of the climbs and descents that were part of the trek, crossing several streams before climbing up to the highest ridge – an elevation change of over 1000 feet.

Needless to say, it was a demanding hike. About halfway up the hill, Mom and Dad had some doubts about my sanity in taking them on that adventure, but when they persevered to the top and were greeted by Ema and her family, ready with a big bowl of banana soup, they agreed that their tenacity paid off. As always, Ema and her family were delightful hosts, and welcomed my parents as family. Ema taught Mom how to make a mochila, just like my first lesson almost a year ago.

It was very special for me to share Quebrada Pastor – my home, my people, my work, the environment, the culture, the challenges, and the beauty – with my parents after having described it to them for the last year. It was great for them to understand more completely all the things I had been talking about – now able to connect a face and a person and a place with all of the interactions I describe. And it was cool for my people to get to meet my family, who they immediately accepted as a part of theirs. That was perhaps the most wonderful thing about the whole experience, for me – that even though Mom and Dad were visitors, they got to experience campo life from my perspective, as members of the community.

Having survived the most challenging part of the trip, we left Quebrada Pastor to explore the rest of Panamá. I managed to leave behind my work (knowing that there was still more to be done on the tanks, latrines, and aqueduct), and we all settled into the more vacation-oriented (but no less adventurous) portion of the trip. This included Cerro Punta (in the Chiriqui cloud forest, the Comarca Kuna Yala (the coast and islands in northeast Panamá), the Panamá Canal and the City, and can all be narrated in the following pictures!

Ema teaching Mom to make a mochila