Prefiero Aqui

“Prefiero Aquí,” or, “I prefer it here,” was my response to Amalia, secretary of my personal Community Projects Committee, when I returned from technical Training in the Comarca Ngöbe-Bugle the first week of March, when she asked what I thought of the place.

The community where we attended training is located in a part of the Comarca (which is a semi-autonomous region inhabited and governed by the Ngöbe people) on the other side of the continental divide.  High up in the mountains – bigger mountains than the ones I live in – the view is spectacular:

But on the other side of the Cordillera (the continental divide) is so much drier this time of year., known as summer, here. In the Bocas del Toro province, everything is still lush and green and muddy, because we still get rain, even if there are a few more dry days than there are the rest of the year. In Las Trancas, the community that hosted our training, things are so dry that there is dust everywhere, and there are constant concerns about having sufficient water.

We had a wonderful time at training – Jess, the volunteer who hosted us, did an impressive job planning all of the work for us to do to both learn and help with her aqueduct construction. But I did think a lot about how the different climates between Las Trancas and Quebrada Pastor affected so much of life. My community has far less trouble getting sufficient water, and can easily grow food all year round, which makes life much easier. Of course, all of the water can have a negative impact, too – easier for water-borne pathogens to spread, and for mold and fungus to grow (on my clothes, between my toes, on my face).

The difference in infrastructure is striking, too – Quebrada Pastor is rather unique for an Environmental Health Volunteer's site, since it is located right on the highway. This gives my community (and me) easy and cheap access to travel – Almirante, the nearest town, is a 20-minute, $1 bus ride away, which enables my community to sell their cacao to the cooperative easily, and buy produce and other things from outside the community. It means that my host family can sell their chocolate balls and lemons and oranges and pifa at a higher price in Bocas del Toro the city located on the Bocas islands, which there is a booming tourism industry. And it means that Willy (my “host dad”) has a Facebook account and does business via email (fairly easy internet access is an advantage for me too!) – something very unusual for Peace Corps communities. To get to Las Trancas, Jess' community, one has to ride in the covered back of a pickup truck for a couple hours on a dirt road constructed mostly by hand – which might be better referred to as a roller coaster than a road.

I realize that my community has some incredible advantages – and after having been here for 6 months, long enough to call Quebrada Pastor my home, I have become very fond of the place. Like all other communities, it has its own challenges – the size and disperse distribution of the population, the divisions among the families, the diversity of the problems and interests of the various neighborhoods, the difficulty in uniting the community, the rampant water-borne diseases – but I have learned to deal with these challenges, to make them my own, and so I can truthfully tell my fellow community members that “Prefiero aquí.”

Photos from training:

Team Pumpkin Pirates show off our work on the aqueduct intake structure...

...And the ferrocement union tank.

Mary Catherine and I pose with our wonderful host dad for the week – father, teacher, store-owner, aqueduct president, and very thoughtful host.

Team Pumpkin Pirates practices doing a water storage talk for some interested community members…

...And Dylan and I demonstrate how to make a “Plubo” (Pluma + Cubo – or Tap + Bucket) – a tap sticking out of a bucket so that you don't ever touch the water with your hands, thereby reducing contamination.

Gone!

Scarcely had I posted my last thoughts, prepared to return to the land of no electricity, when all of my means of doing so were snatched out from right under my nose.

Aside from maybe a pen or two, I've never had anything stolen from me, so it was rather shocking and upsetting to find myself without a single penny on my person.

I had been in the bus terminal in David after spending a long, frustrating day of doing errands, waiting to get on the bus to go home, talking on my “US phone” (1-216-804-4735 – text me any time for free!).  After 30 minutes of waiting to get on the bus, I finally boarded, sat down, and as the bus began to pull away, looked in my bag for my “Panama phone,” which is in the same small purse as my wallet.

It's not there.

Panic.  Maybe it fell on the floor.  Maybe it's in another of my bags.  Maybe I'm sitting on it.  Increasingly frantic, I tear apart everything near me in search for it.  The guy sitting next to me gets involved, too.  Then everyone near me.  Then the bus driver finally pulls over on the side of the road, turns on the lights, and everyone goes quiet as I try to call the phone.  Nothing.  Starting to sob, I explain that maybe it's back at the terminal – and that I do not have a single centavo on me to pay for my $8.45 trip back to my community.

We turn around and go back to the terminal (only about 5 minutes away).  The place I last remember having it was only 5 meters from where I was waiting for the bus.  We search every inch of that space.  Nothing.  Somehow in the 30 minutes I was waiting for the bus, the purse had disappeared out of my bag.  And I had no idea how it might have happened.

At this point I am sobbing uncontrollably – everything was in that purse: my Panama cell phone with all of the numbers of the volunteers and the office (and at this point in my panic, I cannot recall even the Peace Corps emergency phone number; my mind is completely blank), all of my money (which I usually divide into two different locations, but didn't this time), my bank ATM card, a copy of my passport, my Peace Corps ID and my diplomatic ID, my house keys, my Missouri driver's license… Everything that allows for my ability to functionally live here.

Fortunately, I was able to use the “US phone” to call the hotel where James, a fellow volunteer, was staying.  He arrived to help (and really save my butt), along with the police.  The first thing he said, after checking to make sure I was all right (not physically injured), was that at least everything in that purse was replaceable.  This was true.  In my panic, it didn't seem like it at the time – those were all vital, essential items – but, ultimately all replaceable.  With that reminder, I calmed down enough to call the Peace Corps office, where the Security Officer (who also really saved my butt), helped me through the whole process with the police and getting a new bank card.

I ended up hanging out in David – without any money, save what James gave me to be able to buy food each day – for two extra days before I was able to sort out the bank card and get a new phone.  It was, at the very least, an opportunity to relax a few extra days in the hotel.  I was able to call Ángel, back home, to make sure that the kittens were cared for and to cancel all my plans.  And ultimately, everything was okay.

But I did spend some time reflecting on what happened.  I was angry – first at the thief, who stole $200 from me – which was the only useful thing for a thief in that purse – but more than that, stole 3 days – all the time it took to recover all the missing things that really were only useful to me – the documents, the phone numbers, the bank card.  I was also angry at myself – all of my behaviors the evening that this happened were exactly what the Office had warned us against; the problem was that I had started feeling too comfortable and didn't remember the caution – “too integrated” is how they phrase it.  I did all the things wrong:

1) I was in the terminal in the evening, after 6 pm.  It's a crowded place with tourists milling around, so there is ample opportunity for thieves.
2) I did not divide up my money like I was supposed to (and almost always do).
3) I was completely distracted, talking on the phone, not really paying any attention to my stuff.

The lesson has been learned.  Yet another fear has been faced – getting my stuff stolen in a foreign country – and I will be more cautious.  Fortunately for me, it didn't feel like I was in a foreign country when it happened, because I had the safety net of the Office and friends who could help me out.  And I didn't get hurt, or threatened, or anything – the stuff just disappeared.  I was pretty lucky.

So I returned to my community and got back to work.  I spent the month going on planned visits with the members of my committee to every house in the community so that I could talk to them about the projects I was planning to coordinate – basically serving as a door-to-door salesperson.  The two projects are 1) building a rainwater catchment system using a ferrocement tank, and 2) building a pit latrine.

The challenge – the really tough sell here – is that I am not applying for any grants to do this project.  I am asking the people in my community to pay for the materials themselves, which I will coordinate the purchase of, and then help them construct the things.  My thought is that these are both things that are inexpensive enough that my people could afford them if they saved some money or used the government payments that they receive – and if they pay for the materials themselves, it will guarantee that they absolutely want to have the thing and will therefore care for it and maintain it.  It is often a problem, especially with pit latrines, that if the materials are received for free, there is less appreciation for it, and so – assuming they even bother to use the materials to build the latrine – it is not maintained as well, eventually falls into disrepair, and then is not used at all, while the people go back to the long-standing tradition of pooping in the river.  If they really want to have it – if they are really ready to commit to the regular use of a latrine – they will be willing to pay for it themselves.  The other idea is that, once I leave, there will no longer be a Peace Corps volunteer here to apply for grants, so when more people – new families, kids that grow up and build their own houses – want a latrine, or a rainwater catchment tank, they are going to have to build it themselves.  The idea is to make the community independent of additional outside help, to be able to do these things themselves.

That's the idea, anyway.  I'm cautiously optimistic, based on the enthusiasm – and apparent acceptance of my manner of working – that I saw during my house-to-house visits.  We shall see how many people come to my mandatory meetings – and how many actually put down the money.

I also am trying to move along in the preparations necessary for aqueduct design.  I have offered this opportunity for 4 sections of the community, and one finally accomplished the initial tasks and was ready to move on to doing surveying!  I was ecstatic – finally I get to do some engineering work!!  So I called up Katy, my closest fellow Environmental Health volunteer, and made plans to go survey the area for the pipeline with the members of the Water Committee of that neighborhood.

Katy and I arrived at Ángel's house on the way up the hill, and he stopped me with a serious, “We have to talk.”  Apparently, 5 of the 7 houses in this neighborhood voted that they did not want my help in building the aqueduct.  A nephew of the family, living in the city, offered to do the project himself.

I was confused.  They had led me to believe they were excited to do this – indeed, I had already invested significant time and effort on their behalf – and I had made clear that we were going to try to apply for a grant to do this project.  I suppose I should have been happy – after all, my goal is to make my people independent of outside help, and isn't that what this would be? – but I couldn't shake my engineering bias, wondering whether this nephew had the engineering background to make sure they had a good design, and wondering whether he would go through the effort to make sure the Water Committee was properly trained, that they would be in communication and file for official status with the government health agency.  I felt pretty disillusioned about it.

Instead of surveying, Katy, Ángel, and I returned to my house and built a bed for my mattress.  Then we went on an adventure up the hill to the highest ridgeline, where I had never been before, for some spectacular views.  So I guess it wasn't too bad of a day after all.

Photos:

View from the ridge – and with Ángel, my awesome guide.

Took a break from selling tanks and latrines to enjoy the view during my visits around the community.

I had the opportunity to try out a foot-powered sewing machine!  Mom taught me how to use an electric-powered one when I was a kid, and this was significantly more challenging.  Elsa helped me make the cloth “form” that we will be using to build the rainwater catchment tanks.  And put the Santa hat on me.

I made a mochila for Ema, my teacher, which she thought was pretty awesome.

Why is it that there are these massive electrical lines passing through my community – you can hear them buzzing – and yet no one has electricity?  The inequality of the availability of infrastructure is frustrating.  Just more ponderings...

Culture Shock

January was a busy month of varied experiences, few of which had anything immediately to do with developing projects in Quebrada Pastor (since I spent so much time away):

I worked with my personal Community Projects Committee to prepare my Work Plan and complete my Community Analysis and Development Plan to turn in to the Peace Corps administration, describing everything I've learned about the community with respect to its needs, resources, and organization, and everything I plan to do in terms of primary (Environmental Health-related) and secondary (other stuff) projects.  My training group -- all 50 of us, united again -- attended more training, where we went into greater technical detail about developing our projects and presented our Development Plans.  I hosted a couple friends from the college.  And I celebrated my 25th birthday!

Some highlights of the Work Plan that we developed:

1. Offer the opportunity to organize into work groups, buy materials, and build ferrocement rainwater catchment tanks to the many people in the community who do not currently have water in their houses or whose water supply is inconsistent such that they would want to store water.  My role here is to first sell the idea of this kind of tank, with the help of my Committee -- $30 for an 85-gallon tank is way cheaper than the plastic alternative (about $1/gallon), and then show how to build the tanks, help my community leaders organize the work groups, and coordinate the purchase of materials.  I'm going to try to persuade those who want the tank that they have to pay for the materials themselves -- a hard sell in a community where many things have been handed out for free by the government and other non-profits, and where some parts of the community who didn't work with the previous volunteers don't understand the nature of Peace Corps work.  My thought is that the tanks are not unaffordable for the people in Quebrada Pastor, and they will care for them better if they pay for them themselves; in addition, after I leave, others can follow the same model if they are interested in having the tanks, too.  Part of this will also be to educate about clean water and water treatment.
2. Offer the opportunity to organize into work groups, buy materials, and build pit latrines.  My committee and I will be selling this idea side-by-side with the ferrocement tanks, with the same thought -- those who think it is a significant enough priority to spend $40 on a latrine will be more likely to use it and take care of it.  If they do not have a latrine and do not want to buy the materials, then more education is necessary so that they want the latrine in the first place.  Again, the idea is to be sustainable and self-sufficient in this kind of work.  Everyone is already well-exposed to the concept of a pit latrine, thanks to the work of the first volunteer.  Part of this will also be to rehabilitate current pit latrines.
3. Work with the Water Committee of the central/school aqueduct to make the necessary repairs to improve its function -- so far progress has been a struggle since I am depending on the Water Committee to call meetings...  More motivation may be in order.
4. Work with all five of the existing Water Committees (and any new ones that develop) to increase training and connection with the Panamanian government's water agency.
5. Help each interested neighborhood develop the necessary planning for building an aqueduct.  I have opened the offer to any interested group that I will help them through the steps of building an aqueduct -- starting with forming a Water Committee, measuring the flow rate of the source, locating all the participating houses, forming an agreement with the landowner, developing a system of monthly payment -- and as the groups complete these tasks, we can work on the next tasks -- surveying the line, quantifying the need, designing the components (intake, storage tank, transmission line, distribution system), putting together a budget, and finally soliciting funds.  The best-organized and most-motivated groups will be the ones that accomplish these tasks first, and therefore have the opportunity to seek funding.  It has to be a competitive process because there are at least four neighborhoods interested in pursuing their own aqueduct project!
6. There may be an opportunity to build composting latrines, with the government's environmental agency's help -- there is some interest (since the first volunteer build several, and they are still in use, some with great success), but we have to see what the funding looks like.
7. Miscellaneous other things -- there seems to be some interest in a Trash Management Initiative, in a Women's Artisan Group, in Ecotourism development, in building a School Library... And I will happily help with these things as my help is requested (though I am not going to push any of them too hard... Maybe the trash one).

I would be happy to explain in more detail any of these project ideas, or how the whole project thing works -- just ask me!  (Comment, email, text, phone call...)

With all of the heavy thinking of preparing the Work Plan out of the way, I was excited to attend training (with some quality beach time every evening), followed by the visit from my friends.  Training was great fun, and I was thrilled to see my friends.  However, the visit did not go as expected, in that one of them got sick the night we arrived in my community, and didn't fully recover until after returning home.  As a result, we didn't get to do most of what we had planned.  As Mary Catherine, an infintely-quotable fellow volunteer, told me in response to this: "The only "plan" that Pana-land allows us to make is how we plan to tell the story afterward."  This poignant observation applies to everything that happens here -- and everything in life, really.  What are our experiences other than a collection of our interpretations of events?  So I have spent a while processing this trip, which did not at all go according to plan, to figure out how I plan to tell the story.  I think the most significant personal lesson that I gleaned from all of it is that culture shock -- about which Peace Corps has warned us -- is real.  It can be an adjustment to settle into a new country, to be sure, but it can also be an adjustment to go back to the US.

Granted, I didn't return to US, but instead I got a little taste of cultural misunderstanding that found me here in Panama.  While my friend was sick, I found it very frustrating at times to try to help him handle his illness because he was not responding the way that I have learned how to respond to illness here in Panama.  To me, getting sick has become a somewhat (unfortunate) routine (though I'm hoping for my bowels to stay clean in 2015!), which involves recognizing the symptoms, calling the medical office, and sometimes going to the lab to poop in a cup and get medication.  Sometimes it just involves waiting it out -- lying in a hammock listening to soothing music, or reading in bed in the wee hours of the morning waiting for the next bout of vomiting to come and pass, and then finally eating some crackers and drinking oral rehydration salts as I'm starting to feel better.  Sometimes it means that I will go fulfill my committment for the day -- an hour hike to go measure the flow of a spring source, say, and stopping to have some diarrhea along the way -- and then going to the lab to take care of the problem.  So, for me, desires like wanting to lie down in air conditioning, or seeking out beef jerky (only found in Panama City, to my knowledge), or not wanting to go to the lab or the hospital to take care of things, just seemed like unreasonable ways of handling being sick.

Somehow, in the last 7 months, I had forgotten what it was like to have just arrived here, to have gotten sick the first (or second, or third) time, to feel like I was in a foreign country with no one who could understand what was wrong with me.  I had forgotten how many miserable times it took for me to develop my coping strategies, to recognize how my body responds to certain problems; I had forgotten that, somehow, Panama had become my home, and I had adapted to it, or at least learned how to deal with it.  And, after all, I have all of the support of the Peace Corps medical office staff, who will provide for me whatever I need -- visitors here don't have that luxury.  I had forgotten all of these things, and as a result, I had forgotten how to relate to a friend traveling here from the US -- not a very different traveler than I was 7 months ago.  I think the lesson to take out of this is, just like I have to adjust my way of looking at things, my attitude and perspective, to be able to understand the people of Quebrada Pastor, I also have to be able to adjust my way of seeing things to understand those back home.  This is supposed to be the great outcome of this experiment of living here -- how much can I push my understanding to be able to relate to all different kinds of people?  What does it take to develop that sympathy, that empathy, even?  And, better yet, be that bridge between the different worlds?

So, it probably was not very sympathetic of me (or very mature) to commemorate his illness in a limerick.  Even if that's how I deal with unpleasant things.

He planned a nice Bocas vacation,
Heard tales of amoeba invasion.
So hard did he pray
The diarrhea away,
That he suff'red severe constipation.

Okay, and to be fair, I can't say I've completely adjusted.  There are still some things here I don't understand.  Like my community's explanation of that massive ant invasion after I recently moved into my house:

Invading Formics! (From Ender's Game.)
Ants swarmed the house, a full-scale campaign
I killed every one,
But was told, when done,
Was just the cleaning service that came.

The ants came to clean my house?  That's just too much.

And finally, pictures!

Finished constructing the ferrocement rainwater catchment tank!  Still have to connect the pipes and begin catching rainwater...

Visit to Fort Lorenzo in Colon with friends -- hugging trees, view from the fort, requisite cannon picture, crossing the canal over the lock

Birthday on Isla Colon -- eating Indian food with fellow volunteers!

Adorning my house -- with autumn leaves sent from home, with photos (feel free to send me more!), and with...

Kittens!!  I finally adopted two kittens of the litter that was born on my mattress in November.  They are both girls, but I decided to name them Calvin (the yellow, adventurous one that is a little more independent and ornery) and Hobbes (the gray one that loves to purr all the time), anyway.

Living Alone

Here the New Year has begun and I haven’t managed to wrap up the old one!  December was a wild month – celebrating Thanksgiving the first week, doing more surveys and measuring flow at spring sources the second week, while moving into my house and preparing for a guest!  Matt, my boyfriend, escaped the Cleveland winter to keep my company for Christmas.

Moving into my rented house and preparing it for company was no easy task.  When you basically live outside – in that nothing is sealed, so that bugs and come and go as they please and there is no such thing as climate control except for a roof to keep out the rain – it is essentially impossible to keep things clean.  Now that I am entirely and solely responsible for all household chores, I have a much greater appreciation for the monumental task that some of these things are.

In my first two days in the house, I had already 1) glued together a poorly-attached joint on a branch of our aqueduct feeding a neighbor’s house that had been leaking onto my property, 2) thermoformed (used hot oil to melt PVC into a desired shape) a replacement pipe to my branch of the aqueduct that had been cut with a machete, 3) scrubbed the inside of the 150-gallon water storage tank that I use when the water goes out, and 4) locked myself out of the house.

In subsequent days, I discovered exactly how long I could store vegetables in a closed container without refrigeration before they start to rot, constantly fought off the mosquitos that seemed to be drawn to my bathroom, mopped all the floors only to have them covered with dirt again instantly, and discovered all the places that cockroaches like to hide (boxes of tea are a favorite, apparently).

And last night I was attacked by the Formics: my house was swarming with ants, in giant clusters on the walls outside, walking in lines into every room, crawling along the ceiling.  They waged a massive, comprehensive, full-scale invasion, and we fought an epic battle that began with spraying DEET around the exterior of the house, then mopping all the floors, and continuing deeper and deeper inside until I was in my bedroom crushing ants that were beginning to crawl into the mosquito net around my bed, threating my very last refuge.  It ended with picking off the remaining survivors one-by-one, hiding behind the pictures newly pinned to my bedroom wall.  I finally declared victory after killing a massive winged queen, hoped I had utterly destroyed them all, and felt like Ender (Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game).

These many observation led to a few discoveries – and a greater understanding – about life in the campo.  First of all, I have an even great appreciation for the “cuando hay” mentality that I mentioned before – not only must you eat food when it is available because you don’t know when you’ll be able to buy or find more, but also, if you don’t eat the food immediately, it will very quickly go bad, thanks to the lack of refrigeration.

I also began to appreciate more the gender division of labor that is very strongly maintained throughout the community – I found myself wishing several times that I had a wife to look after the house while I was out doing my work all over the community; it’s a lot to do the laundry, the cleaning, the cooking, and the general maintenance while trying to get work done on top of that!  Plus, when I was gone from sunup to sundown doing surveys, no one was in to house to receive guests, an important form of communication in this place with few functional cell phones and no email.  And I am only taking care of myself – imagine if there were children to care for on top of all that!  I am realizing that, while it is not completely unreasonable to do all of the house chores while working full-time in the US, the lack of modern conveniences makes house chores a full-time job here.  There’s no such thing as microwave-ready meals, or leftovers (which is often what I ate in college).  Laundry can be a morning-long (or even all-day) chore, depending on the availability of water (if you have to walk to the stream to wash it) and how much clothing has to be washed.  And as much as I hating waking up to see a pile of dishes in the sink of my host family’s house, I find the same occurrence in my sink, especially after hosting visitors and offering the requisite drink.

So I have learned a few things from this.  First, I have begun a list of the appliances I miss the most:

1)      Laundry machine

2)      Refrigerator

3)      Dishwasher

Second, the division of labor – that women are expected to perform all of these chores (and more, depending on the location and conditions of the house – like gathering firewood and root vegetables, accompanying children to school, retrieving water, etc.), lacking the technology to reduce the time spent – has continued to inhibit women from seeking other opportunities and roles in society.  Even if the man has a sufficient education to find a job instead of working as a subsistence farmer, the woman is still held responsible for all of the household labor.  So even as the subsistence agriculture lifestyle has change or evolved or shifted, allowing for more leisure time, or more educational opportunities, women’s labor has not changed.

When I held our community meeting to discuss daily schedules, I asked the participants who has more free time and who has to do more work.  The answers were unanimously that men have more free time and women have to do more work.  A few voices spoke up in favor of the men helping their wives with the chores, but the prevailing notion was that women had to do more work because the men had the responsibility of planning for the family.  Naturally, I found this very bothersome – are women not capable of doing the planning?

At the very least, I recognize that, while I can’t solve all of these things – like ease the burden of not having a refrigerator, or completely reinvent gender roles – doing something like helping to provide sufficient and consistent water in the house can go a long way to reducing the workload of household chores.

And this month, I made a preliminary step in providing one option for having water in the house – rainwater catchment!  This little experiment is illustrated below, with more explanation along with the rest of the pictures, most of which are from the time Matt was here visiting, first in Quebrada Pastor, and then traveling throughout the western side of the country:

Panama!  Can you spot the Christmas tree?  Went all the way back to Panama City for the second time this month to go pick up Matt from the airport.

We spent our time in the community doing work:

Meeting with my boss and the community, presenting the results of my 3 months of analysis

Ferrocement Tank Construction Party!  I invited volunteers from around the area to help Matt and me build a rainwater catchment storage tank, as an example to show to my community members – kind a marketing device.  A few curious and interested people even stopped by and helped us out!

Vacation time! I finally lived like a tourist for a few days!

Exploring a cave on Isla Colón; the location is used as a shrine and for holding Catholic mass

 Happy Hanukah!  In Bocas del Toro

Staying and hiking at the Lost and Found Lodge, located in the Cordillera (the spine of mountains that is the continental divide that divides Panamá)

Hiking to a waterfall near Boquete, located in the mountains, with requisite tree-hugging, admiring pretty flowers, and analyzing the aqueduct we found along the way 

Mom sent me Rosie the Reindeer, a family tradition, who kept us company for the entire trip

Venao Cove, located at the southern tip of the Azuero Peninsula in the province Los Santos.  Matt, Rosie, and I pretty much had the beach to ourselves!  We made full use of it – Bananagrams, snorkeling, building a sandcastle…

And returned back to my community in time for New Year’s: Dusk on New Year’s Eve from Ángel’s house

There it is – the Ngӧbe Mansion, as the Bocas Regional Leader calls it.  It is unreasonably large for one person – two guest bedrooms? – but the house where the previous two volunteers lived when they began living on their own, and is plenty accessible to the road and anyone (from the community or elsewhere) who wants to come visit me!

As Mary Catherine, another volunteer in my training group, would say: “A house with a hammock is a house with a smile.”

And some thoughts about my first few months in site:

Chocolate Forest

I live in a chocolate forest

Filled with tiny red frogs

And bright green parrots

And leaf-cutter ants

And gut-wrenching amoebas

I watch the sun rise over the sea

And fall behind the mountains

And rain sweep across the islands

And clatter on the zinc roof

I hear the breeze whisper through the palms

And the screaming brakes of the semi-trucks

And the wailing of a hundred babies

And the squawking roosters hours before the dawn

I smell the sweet stickiness of orange on my fingers

The gentle rotting of cacao pods

The sharp stench of chicken sh*t

The acrid choking smoke of a trash fire

I feel the mud sliding beneath my boots

Fat drops of sweat falling from my eyelashes

Giant ants biting my ankles

The slick mazorca slipping between my fingers

I taste the mamón juicily exploding on my tongue

The picante biting back at my gums

The joints of the chicken feet like human fingers

The sourness of vomited stomach acid

I live in a chocolate forest

And speak in strange tongues

And inspect the holes of latrines

And sing songs about hand washing

And wash my clothes in poopy water

I ride the bus to the internet

And call home from my talking rock

And curse the crying babies

And make bags with plastic thread

I stare at hummingbirds flitting around the hibiscus

And take pictures of giant bugs

And make plans knowing they’ll be cancelled

And tuck my mosquito net tightly around my mattress

I set my drinking water out in the sun

And French braid my hair in the morning

And run along the highway with the trucks

And hide crunchy peanut butter in my room

I think about leaky pipes

And the definition of poverty

And what I’m going to eat next

And whether I can actually change anything

I dream up grand strategies with my counterpart

Then decide all of them are impossible

I laugh and cry and sing and fall hard in the mud

I curse my boots and the rain and the path and the mud

But I stand up again and chant to myself

I live in a chocolate forest