Semana Tecnica (Technical Week) y Otras Cosas

Less than a month of training left to go! We have a week and a half left in our lovely training community. The following week we spend visiting the site where we'll be spending the next 2 years (wow!). Our last week of training is meetings and such at the office in Panama City, culminating with a swearing-in ceremony as Volunteers on October 20th. Following that, our group of 17 trainees will be dispersing to sites all over Panama. The next time we'll all see each other will be for a week of additional training in March!

I'm both excited and nervous for the end of our training time. When I arrived in Panama in mid-August, I didn't know what to expect. Now, I have a routine that I'm somewhat comfortable with, with the other trainees I've been getting to know. In a little while everything will be shaken up again, as I leave for my new community.

A few highlights of the last several weeks:

We had a cultural day organized by our language professors. We were supervised in creating delicious Panamanian dishes: clockwise from right, chicken tamale (formerly wrapped in a big leaf), arroz con pollo (chicken and rice), and dulce de leche. I helped squeeze oranges for orange juice punch (chicha de naranja) along with my language classmates John and Eric, and our teacher Lidiany.  After enjoying our food with community friends, we got the chance to dress up in traditional clothing from several different Panamanian cultures, which our teachers brought for us. I am wearing a shirt called a basquiña and a full skirt called a pollera.  We also tried some traditional dances!

I've been coordinating with other students to hold a basic English class of four one-hour sessions. The first session was last night. We had about 35 students, split into two groups, older and younger. The younger ones had tons of energy! Next time we are going to try and engage the kids with more games so they won't throw as many wads of paper :) but I think those who wanted to learn got something out of the class.

We spent last week in a town in the Comarca Ngobe Bugle (a reservation for the indigenous Ngobe people). This is the same people group from my volunteer site visit a month ago, but a different location.  Many of us will be working in Ngobe communities, which are often remote and have water, sanitation, and health needs. During our week there we had technical classes all day. 

host family for tech week

The first language of the people is Ngoberi. Spanish is taught in school but many older community members know little of it. We each stayed with different host families. I stayed with a couple, their two daughters and grandma. Grandma knew only a little Spanish and I knew no Ngoberi, so we would talk at each other in our respective languages, each hoping the other would get something out of it.  Reuben and Damaris, father and daughter, spoke excellent Spanish and we had some good conversations. This photo is me with Damaris, mother Ceclia, and baby Gibeli. Everyone has both Spanish and Ngoberi names. Their one room home is humble but very sturdy. The floor is hard packed earth, and in general, I need to learn their strategies for dealing with the mud. I am a total mudball in just one hour in their town but they remain clean... "bien limpia."

We adapted to a different schedule of sleeping between 8 pm and 5:30 am (corresponding closely with daylight hours). It's the rainy season now, and it rained steadily for most days in the afternoon. Given that the town doesn't have electricity it felt pretty dark and gloomy during the rain. On the bright side I found the temperature pleasantly cool, or "fresca."

We also worked on adjusting to a different diet- staples are rice and boiled green bananas-Most people are subsistence farmers, growing bananas, plantains, yucca, and rice. We were given the most delicious bananas I've ever tasted; small ones with a peach colored flesh which a somewhat citrus- floral flavor.

As far as our classes, we focused on practicing some techniques that we may want to use in our future communities. There is a volunteer that lives in the town already, but she focuses on business development rather than water, so we hoped to compliment her work. We spent a few days making a sketch map of the town's existing aqueduct system, installed by the Ministry of Health, which is fed from a hillside spring. We surveyed the altitude of the main line using a water level. We also questioned households about their daily use of water, to understand times of peak use (morning, typically). We finished up with a community meeting to share this information.  Also, we made a cable bridge to carry the aqueduct pipeline across a creek, or quebrada, where it had been crossing unsupported and sagging quite a bit. Finally we made 3 concrete tapstands or "plumas."  This is my first time doing plumbing- great practice!

tapstand

Our time there was good preparation for what working in a community may actually be like. It was physically challenging, and it was socially difficult to drop into and out of a community in one week's time. I think the brevity of our stay made meaningful, substantial interactions with the community a challenge. It takes time to build trust or "confianza" and I respect it all the more in the Volunteers I've seen serving. It also will take time to adjust to a different routine, schedule, and diet.

Finally, we spent a free day at the beach... my first time experiencing a warm ocean!  I've been here a month, and I all the time I'm seeing that there's a lot to learn....

Volunteer visit- Bocas del Toro

This last week, each trainee in our group had a 4 day visit with a currently serving volunteer. I visited Catherine in Bocas del Toro providence near the shores of the Carribbean. She works in an indigenous Ngobe community of about 900 people, spread out over several square miles of subsistence farms or "fincas". If Cati is visiting houses to advertise a meeting, it takes her 4 days to get to her entire community walking around the hillsides.  Catherine's main project here has been installing pit and composting latrines. She's working with a counterpart, Lucas, a strong member of the community who moved here from a nearby town that also had a Peace Corps volunteer.  Lucas is really interested in composting latrines and reforestation. A counterpart is the PC term for a particular community member with whom the Volunteer works and who provides continuity to the efforts. Cati has been there for 2 years and is leaving at the end of the month. She may be followed up by another volunteer- one of us! She has thought deeply about her time there and has a really positive attitude despite the challenges she's encountered, and it was a pleasure to discuss her experience. She also made an effort to expose me to a wide range of her activities and I feel like I know much more about what a Volunteer's life and work is like, as a result of my visit.  Her job is one that I can see myself doing; I can also  see it'll take a lot of adaptation.

Highlights included:

Meeting her fan club of neighbor children. She enjoys them and they enjoy spending time with her- so much so, that she has to set strict boundaries and "visiting hours." They were a lot of fun.

Bathing in the creek or "quebrada" with the kids

Learning about the dysfunctional aqueduct system, and hiking to see its source.

peresozo

Seeing a sloth or "peresozo" = lazy

large rainforest tree on a farm mixed with forest

Making a concrete seat for a pit latrine in a mold.

Checking on several homes that had recently finished their latrines.

Visiting community members in their homes- connecting socially is an essential part of a volunteer's job and it was good to see how she did it.

Making a stove ("estufa") out of a clay/cement/straw mixture with Eliezer, a member of Catherine's environmental youth group. We are using a design from an American ex-patriate. Most people cook on open fires in their homes, and stoves are better for air quality and use less wood because they have more complete combustion.

stove construction

Cati has done some talks about making healthy choices and sexuality in the middle school that is in the community. This is something optional that a lot of volunteers choose to do, but I'd been intimidated by the thought. It was cool to hear her talk about it empowering the youth to make informed decisions.

Attending a Protestant church in our community on Sunday. Catherine doesn't attend regularly, but sometimes visits. The sermon was long and dry but interesting to see their style of service, and the leaders were all members of the community. These people love to sing- in morning and evening, pretty much every day. One neighbor rises at 5:30 in the morning with songs of praise!

Seeing a softball game on Sunday against a neighboring town

Eating yummy food- I really enjoyed

tropical fruit
"johnny cakes", a fresh bread made with coconut milk, baked on an open fire in a dutch oven
eating lots of veggies, American style
fresh coconut milk
hot chocolate made with cacao grown right in town.

cacao pod

Also, eating cacao right out of the pod- you can't eat the bitter beans themselves raw, but can eat the slimy, sweet jelly that surrounds the beans in the brightly colored pod. Many area families grow cacao on a small scale for export through a coop in Almirante.  Cati told me a lot of it ends up in cosmetics but some goes to a factory in Seattle.  To prepare the beans for market, families dry the beans out in special sheds. For home use, the beans are then roasted and ground up.




As a challenge, there is definitely poverty here, though some volunteers are serving in more extreme situations of sickness and hunger. Some volunteers are also serving in more remote situations, with difficult hikes and boat rides to get to their sites.

mother and son

But the main challenge is that it's a different culture.  Cati's latrine project is the first time that the community has organized to do anything. Cati worked on the latrines with only the people who were most interested and motivated to work with her, but even within that group it can be hard to keep the fires of interest going. Ngobe people don't have the same sense that Americans do that they can have control over their own lives. Life is tough, but many people don't feel they can change it- whether that's in the realm of families,  farming, employment, education or health.  Peace Corps' training is all about empowerment or "capacity building" using many tools that come out of our American way of seeing things.  So it brings up- what is contextually appropriate for these people? What do they need? How does my faith inform what I've seen?  I've seen Ngobe culture now, but a Latino culture would be different yet again- with other challenges and  opportunities.

Today we are heading back to our regular training community for more classes.

See more photos here.

Also, check out Catherine's blog.