Feliz Navidad y un Prospero Año Nuevo!

Here's how I imagine the Nativity scene occurring in my area of Panama, with the Ngäbe people. A palm thatched hut shelters Mary and Joseph, who rock baby Jesus to sleep in a chackara or traditional bag. A clear summer's night shines with millions of stars; banana leaves rustle and cicadas call in the background.  A host of skyborne angels summons people- old ones, new ones, children- to see the newborn king.  He was born 2000 years ago and in a far country, but he has come for all peoples and all times.


It's not just about Christmas here: There's 3 important Panamanian holidays in quick succession. Mother's Day is celebrated on December 8th and is a big holiday on the level of Thanksgiving in the States. Christmas and New Year's as well. Each holiday is celebrated with the family, often involving a large meal and killing a homegrown chicken, if you're lucky enough to have one. In that tradition, my local church has been gathering together for a meal to mark each event. Children shoot off fireworks - usually just the kind that make a big bang and some smoke. For Christmas, there's often a piñata for the kids (I made two of them for celebrations in the community).  Some men also drink heavily, into a stupor, on each of the days.  Ken is coming for December 31st. Kids are already starting to make "Old man" scarecrows or "Viejos", representing the passing of the old year, that they'll explode with fireworks on New Year's Eve.

Youth sing a song for the mothers on Mother's Day in church

Women at church prepare a meal

December 1st, World Aids Day, was marked by a series of educational events about HIV and AIDS.  I helped out with several talks in nearby communities organized by volunteer Laura G and attended a march on December 1st in San Felix with high school students and the Ministry of Health. I also gave an HIV awareness talk for 5th and 6th graders in my own school.  HIV is growing in the Comarca (Indian reservation), with an estimated 2000 HIV positive individuals in a population of 155,000 (1%).  Families are often split up when men leave to work in coffee and vegetable harvests for several months of the year, and some seek other partners during that time. While many people have multiple sexual partners, few use condoms, and in some places with remote access they are not easily available.  However there is a dedicated clinic run by the Ministry of Health to combat HIV and provide the latest medicines to HIV positive individuals.  Schools and health centers are increasingly making efforts to educate people about the epidemic, but there's a long way to go to reach good awareness and healthy sexual behavior. Peace Corps Panama has developed a series of learning games and activities that make learning about HIV entertaining and memorable. For me, while I don't think I could develop my own original lesson plans about sex education, I can use these materials, and it's satisfying to feel that I'm giving people information that could make a real difference in their lives. 

Students loft a red ribbon banner as part of the HIV awareness march

Laura G. leads activity "Attack of the Virus"

Health worker works with women to draw and name fluids of the body- identifying which ones carry the HIV virus

It's the start of the dry season and the crops that have come into season are cacao (chocolate), oranges, papaya, and okra. Yum!  Mature okra seeds are toasted and milled to create a coffee-like drink. Cacao is toasted and milled and mixed with water to create the traditional drink enjoyed by Central Americans from ancient times. Some families still have rice they harvested in October and November, and corn.  Soon we'll be enjoying guandú (pigeon peas) a delicious pea, often cooked with rice. 

Grinding chocolate on a traditional millstone

Muchisimas gracias

A great many thanks for your donations to the latrine project. My fundraising goal has been reached in a shorter time than I expected (less than two weeks)!  The next steps are to meet with the organizing committee here, and to get people to dig their latrine holes by a target date. I've been visiting the enrolled families to discuss latrine location and other details.  I hope to organize delivery of materials for February, after some events I'm really looking forward to: Ken comes for a visit at the beginning of January and Mom and Dad at the end of January!

While I cannot accept donations for this project beyond the goal, I will certainly update you if I work on other efforts that need financial support in the future.  If you were considering donating but weren't able to, other Peace Corps volunteers in Panama are working on similar projects to improve rural water and sanitation systems, and I may be able to inform you when they are fund-raising.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving dinner

My latrine-building project is now ready to receive donations of any size, to partner with my community in construction of 65 pit latrines. A $50 donation covers the cost of one latrine. Click here to see the project description on the Peace Corps website and donate online, if you like. At the website on the right hand side, you can see how much has been donated to date and how much remains. I hope that we will be able to begin construction in February, the dry season, depending on how the funds come in.

vine-covered old growth tree

I enjoyed Thanksgiving with 160 other Peace Corps Panama volunteers at a lodge in the western rainforest. It was at a relatively high altitude and was cloudy and drizzly for the entire 2 1/2 days I was there (the area is also called the "cloud-forest"). I thought of a lot of rainy, cool Thanksgivings celebrated at home. Despite the rain it wasn't too cold, and I got to get out and hike with some other Volunteers on trails in the park near the resort.  We crossed cold streams (don't fall in please!) and saw old-growth trees or "milenios".  Magnificent hummingbirds flocked to sugar-water feeders set out by lodge staff. We enjoyed turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, and pumpkin cake which we prepared ourselves in the lodge's industrial kitchen. The area, Cerro Punta or "Point Hill" is well known for producing vegetables such as potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage, lettuce, and celery which grow well in the relatively cool climate. They even grow strawberries- I sampled a few.

This sign says the park gets 5 m of rainfall annually!

A large tree and I

This stream was a challenge to cross to get to our desired trail. Seneca is a volunteer in a community near mine.

On another note, Volunteer Jack F. has updated the Wikipedia page on the Ngäbe people with lots of interesting information the culture of the people I live and work with. Click here to take a look.

"Bron!" or Let's Go!

I have an announcement: I am organizing the construction of simple latrines to improve the health of the community in which I live and work, and I'm seeking financial support. This isn't a surprise to you if you've been following my blog here :) but I'd like to share the following statement with you, which summarizes the nature of the project.

Community analysis meeting

In the foothills of the mountains of the Ngäbe-Bugle indigenous reservation in western Panama, the neighboring communities of Guary and Alto Nube are home to nearly 500 subsistence farmers who cultivate staple crops such as rice, corn, yucca, and fruit on the steep, eroded hillsides of their homeland. They proudly maintain traditions such as cultural dress and handicrafts, and they speak their native language. I have had the privilage of living and working here in this particular community with the Ngäbe people over the last year, and in my next year here, until October 2013, will be working on health education, on improving management of existing water systems, and on improving sanitation practices. It is on the account of sanitation that I write to you today, which I expect will be my greatest effort during my 2 year service.

In Alto Nube and Guary, 72% of homes lack basic sanitation infrastructure and families defecate in the woods, fields, and creeks near their homes. This exposes people to feces, leading to high rates of diarrhea and intestinal worms.  Intestinal worms, nearly universally prevalent, also contribute to children’s malnutrition as they consume precious food. Regular medical campaigns have trained most residents in the use of pit latrines, but only 23 wooden or concrete latrines exist in 77 houses.  Health is a priority for families, as expressed in interviews, conversation, and observation, but it seems there's not a clear understanding of what steps may be taken to arrive at better health.

Some of the kids whose families plan on participating in the project

Since the community repeatedly expressed interest in building latrines as a group, I have been coordinating a project that aims to teach basic hygiene practices, hand in hand with with construction and maintenance of affordable, durable pit latrines. I invited families to a series of health workshops, focusing on prevention of gastrointestinal illnesses and on latrine construction. The 65 families that participated in the workshops are eligible to build latrines as part of the program.  The families will learn how to build small concrete slabs and seats. These latrine components can be moved to new locations as needed and are expected to last at least 20 years. The families will build outhouses of local materials, and may opt to contribute to buy a metal roof. Participants will be encouraged to model proper latrine usage and to use their new construction skills to teach their neighbors to build their own latrines. The volunteer committee that is organizing the program with me is learning valuable project management skills. This program is an effort to accelerate a slow but existing trend towards more latrine usage, and give children an opportunity to grow up with latrines, in such a way that they won’t return to the traditional, unhealthy ways of using the fields. The following are a few photos from the health and hygiene workshops:

Participants in a skit

Teaching about hygiene

A mock-up of latrine formwork

I am organizing the project using the guidelines of the Peace Corps Partnership Program, in which donations are sought in order to support the Panamanian community in reaching its goals.  Community members will provide local materials and labor, and the local Panamanian government will be providing transportation of materials from the hardware store. The community members' and the local government's contribution are a full 50% of the cost of the project. I am seeking donations to cover the other 50% of the cost, which comes to $3099 and will be used to purchase latrine construction materials and subsidize metal roofing for the outhouses.  I invite you to sponsor one or more latrines at $50 each (contributions of any size are welcome).

Tax-deductible donations can be made through the Peace Corps' website here. I am hoping that we will have funds available to begin construction in February, Panama's dry season. I always appreciate your thoughts and prayers for the work here.

Ka Ñüre (The Rainy Season)

It's now "Ka Ñüre," or The Rainy Season, for sure (say that "Kaw Nyoo-ray.") A thunderstorm rolls in about every day between 11 am and 3 pm, meaning that no events can be planned for the afternoon. The height of the rainy season lasts from October through mid-December. But October is also a time for seasonal celebrations: Bible Month, the annual rice harvest, and a big marching drum band fest at the end of the month. It's also the time when I'm wrapping up a round of meetings related to my upcoming latrine project and getting ready for the next stage of writing the proposal for the project.

Very cute and gentle, but her mother says "when she was younger she liked to throw live chicks into the cooking fire!"

My church organized a parade/walk down the main street of town to celebrate Bible Month or "Mes de la Biblia", September. Here we are, walking and singing with several other churches. It was fun! A handful of members from the local Independent drum band beat out the rhythm. (They're just warming up for a big drum-band event October 28th.)

The women are holding aloft their Bibles: "Quien vive? Cristo!" or "Who lives? Christ!"  

 

 

Teens share some tunes after the event

It is rice harvesting season in October. Many families plant a dry, upland rice on the steep slopes of our community. I had the chance to help out some friends in their field. The amount of weeds is pretty typical- after a few rounds of cutting weeds with the machete when the rice is young, the weeds or "monte" just grow up some. The heads of grain are cut with a small hand-held knife and gathered up in sacks. Later, the family will separate the grain from the stalks, dry it in the sun, toast it over a fire, and pound it to de-hull it before being able to eat it. Rice is a lot of work!

Here are some portraits to share with you. Some people, when they ask me to take their picture, succumb to fits of the giggles at this unfamiliar opportunity. It makes me smile. I try to convince them that they have nice teeth, not to cover their mouths, and that they look better smiling than serious. Ngabes generally prefer very serious portraits that look like those of our great-grandparents who had to stay still for a long time and couldn't smile. Bella and Miriam, pictured below, took several tries to compose themselves but it worked out nicely in the end. I am taking more portraits now that I've decided to do it, charging a small fee to cover the cost of printing.

Here's a portrait with a nervous bull. Stop tossing your head, you, and look at the camera!

We have continued with the latrine meetings; tomorrow is the last of a series of 5 meetings, that consist of an educational talk and some organizing details. There has been enthusiastic interest from the community, and as the meetings finish up, families are turning in paperwork and a small deposit to participate in the project. In this photo, participants take a look at a mock-up of formwork to pour concrete.


On October 20, I'll be celebrating my one year anniversary of swearing in as a Peace Corps volunteer. I've got one more year to go: halfway through my time here, I feel like I'm just getting started. And in a way I am, as far as projects and educational efforts go. I'll be celebrating with the other volunteers in my "group"- the 15 other Environmental Health volunteers that swore in on October 20, 2011.

Snapshots of September

I'd like to share some photos, briefly captioned, from the last few weeks. 

Visiting some neighbors and trying out a new tropical fruit!

 As usual, I do a lot of visiting "paseando" in Spanish to keep up with the neighbors and keep them updated on what I'm doing. One day, under a heavy rainstorm, I visited a house I hadn't been to often before. Raquel and her mother Otelia showed me some antiques they dug out of a pit: a beautiful stone mill and a clay cooking pot. I don't know how old they are: 50 years or more... or perhaps really old!! At any rate before hand cranked mills and metal cooking pots took over the scene. That was probably back in the days when people wore tree-bark loincloths, too...

Otelia shows off her antique cookpot. Note the charred sides from cookfires past.

Raquel and her aunt hold the mill: the grinding stone and the slab, a shallow basin with 3 sturdy feet (an unusual feature). Corn or chocolate would be placed on the slab and crushed with the grinding stone.

It's time to harvest corn! The beautifully colored "Indian corn" reminds me of fall in the States. Most of it is left to dry on the stalks before it is harvested.

My neighbor Federico loads up a rented horse to take grain down to the house.

After the corn is dried in the sun for several days, it needs to be taken off the cob for storage.

 

The horse mentioned above provided some nice compost to throw in my garden, shown here with my neighbor Romelio and my cat supervising from the window.

We have been continuing to hold meetings planning for latrines. I am expecting 40-50 families to participate. They need to put down a $5 deposit to hold their place and attend the meetings/health talks we are holding at the school. About 60 people have been participating each time.

Community members act out a skit about how disease is spread  In this story, the mother didn't wash her hands after cleaning up the baby's soiled pants and then continued cooking- making the rest of the family "sick." The skits were the favorite part of the meeting.

I also took Mechi, my cat, to an event with Spay Panama, a Panamanian non-profit with US ties that held a "Spay Day" in San Felix, a nearby town.  The operation took about 20 minutes and another 40 minutes to come out of anesthesia.   My friends and neighbors wonder why I would want to do such a thing when I could sell the kittens, but I'm pleased and Mechi seems fine.

Mechi baby, isn't this fun?! She just got the anesthesia shot.

Panamanian girl holds a kitten

Lindsey, another volunteer, strokes her dog while Mechi lies zonked out after the operation

Estados Unidos

I enjoyed a 2 week trip to the USA in August, celebrating my one year of being in the country of Panama! That means the next year is going to go  by really quickly! I'd like to share some stories and photos from the trip.


My first stop was in Portland to see my folks. With my parents, we attended two reunion potlucks for the extended family and enjoyed dinner with our cousins Bob, Mary, and Mindy. We also visited the family property near Corvallis to pick blackberries and apples. It's been a while since I've been in the Northwest for blackberry season. The smells of dry grass in the sun and fragrant blackberries are wonderful. We also visited friends Jon and Flip Anderson, who showed us a variety of wood-burning stoves at their house. The couple has promoted these stoves in Haiti as a way to reduce deforestation, as less wood is used to cook than on a campfire. They generously gave us blueberries as well!

Back in Portland, Mom, Dad, and I went shopping for new running and walking shoes together. I went on some bike rides with Dad and some walks around the neighborhood with Mom, their respective exercise routines. I also wandered around a huge grocery store with Mom, marveling at the size of the place, the dairy foods, and the bulk section. While in Portland I was happy to connect with a few college friends: Teal G. (on her way to U. Michigan for graduate studies in Statistics) and Tiffany and McKenzie S., and we went to see our friends Tommy and Jennifer H. and their band at a bar downtown!  It was also good to see friends at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst, who have actively been praying for me. And yes, I did get some rest time.

It was off to Boston next, where my boyfriend Ken A. was to receive me. He was preparing for a new year of studying Computer Science at Harvard and also getting ready to move to a new apartment. Lots of transitions! Ken met me at the airport. He rented a car and we drove up to Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire that evening for 2 days of rest and relaxation- a little hiking, a little canoeing, a lot of hanging out. While canoeing we saw a strange sight: a red squirrel swimming between 2 islands- maybe about 50 yards distance. I've never seen that before!  Even though in Panama I live in the beautiful mountains and go on a small "hike" just about every day, New Hampshire is different- away from the responsibilities and hardships of my daily life. The only real difficulty was navigating traffic jams, which happened on both legs of our trip. Ken saw the traffic jams as a problem to solve with the help of Google maps, and I just got a bit stressed trying to figure out the phone to look at the maps.  We realized that we can think differently in many situations; how can that be an asset?

We returned to Boston through rush hour traffic and attended a practice session that evening for Aikido, a Japanese martial art. Ken has been involved with the Harvard Aikido Club since last year. Back in 2003-05 I was practicing Aikido in the University of Oregon club, and while I'm very rusty it was fun to get on the mat and practice with Ken's new friends.  Also at Harvard, Ken's research group (the professor and other graduate students he works and studies with) invited me to talk with them about my experiences. We went outside the building to sit at a picnic table under the shade of majestic campus trees and chat. It was good for me to learn more about the people and projects that form a great part of Ken's life, and also to share my experience with them!  Many people in the research group are international students with broadly humanitarian interests. They had many questions about my work in Panama.  The group's research projects have included creating computer programs that assist people in composing music or designing websites (Ken's project), land mine location software, and computer interfaces for the disabled. Much of this falls into the field of study known as "Human-Computer Interaction."

Over the weekend Ken and I prepared several dishes to share at a potluck with church friends. We enjoyed dessert on the rooftop of Latasha B.'s elegant Cambridge apartment building, overlooking the Boston skyline.  We also tried out Disney songs on karaoke- "The Bear Necessities" and "I Just Can't Wait to be King" were hits. Psalm and Tasha are great at karaoke- I never knew. I also saw many friends at Citylife Presbyterian's Sunday service and enjoyed lunch at the Chinese Dumpling Cafe afterwards.


I was also glad to be able to catch up with former roommates Lessie T. and Minwah L.  Lessie is living in a Christian house in the inner city neighborhood of Dorchester and among other things led a month-long theater camp for disadvantaged kids!


Minwah was suffering under a deluge of fruits and vegetables from her weekly farm-share distribution. Several weeks of tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, basil, dill, cucumbers, and peaches were awaiting attention. We delved in and made several dishes to stock Minwah's fridge including this delicious and simple Thai style eggplant. Yum. As usual Minwah is involved in many different outdoors activities, organizing efforts, and future plans for lengthy bike adventures and grad school. She said my backpack didn't weigh much, which just means she's really fit from hiking a bunch of winter gear around with the Outing Club.

All of the above was just 14 days, and it went by really quickly. I was honored by the reception and care that friends and family gave me during my stay.  I know you (friends and family reading this blog) are sending me your well-wishes and your prayers and I appreciate it! When Mom and Dad, Ken and I parted, we began considering when they can visit Panama themselves. If you yourself are itching to visit Central America, drop me a line!

Acción Comunitario

We are finally moving from community analysis and needs assessment into community action!

What, action? Heeheehee.

My community will be working with me on a latrine project in the coming months. Few of the families have latrines (25% have latrines, but most of those are just holes with sticks placed over the top which can be difficult/unpleasant to use). Latrines help prevent intestinal worms and diarrhea, both of which are really common here and are transmitted by contact with feces. Most people here currently "do their business" in the bushes or in the creek, which make feces more prevalent in the environment (people wash their clothes and bathe in the same creeks, at least in the section of the community that doesn't have an aqueduct water piping system). Working with Peace Corps Panama's Environmental Health program, we are searching for outside funds to help with the cost of making simple concrete pit latrines. These are basically just a small slab topped with a concrete seat over a pit, and enclosed with an outhouse that the family will construct. Community members will be doing all the labor and contributing many of the required materials for the project. We are hoping that half the monetary cost of latrines will be funded by a nonprofit organization with which Peace Corps Panama collaborates. The other half is for me to raise.

Constructing formwork for a latrine slab in another community, which I visited to gain more practice with latrines.

We are currently holding meetings which cover logistics and educate about using latrines to prevent diseases. The idea is also to give community members practice in grant-writing and organizing a project. We will be putting together a proposal in October once we know how many families are interested (probably between 20 and 60). Around December, if things go as I hope, I will be able to send a link to the Peace Corps website where interested people can donate to the project. We hope to construct in the dry season, January through March. The goals of this process are: improving community health through accelerating cultural change towards latrine use, empowering the community to design and manage their own project, and hopefully, inspiring families in the future to continue building their own affordable latrines.

In addition to the latrines, I've had the opportunity to travel around quite a bit during the month of June, collaborating and learning from other volunteers. Here are some of the activities I've been a part of this month:

I've visited communities to help with water committee seminars. These are several-day seminars put on by Peace Corps volunteers, to train the citizen committees that run Panama's rural water systems. Our trainings include skits, visual presentations, silly games, and food. I've helped out with 3 of these trainings and plan to organize one in my area with nearby volunteer Erica in September.

I helped Volunteer Laura F. construct a "toma" or water intake structure for an aqueduct. It was a long process and I was only able to come for one day, but what I saw was a valuable learning experience.  We had to build a concrete structure that would capture the water coming from a hillside spring. The first step was to build a low concrete wall on the downhill side, into which pipes are set to carry water to the community.

The water is flowing out of the layer of soil at the upper left side. It will run down this layer of bedrock into the structure.

Laura is building a clay dam to direct water into the pipe so that the concrete wall can be poured.

Good for art as well as aqueduct construction!

On another subject, but also related to clay/mud, I  learned about Lorena Stoves - made of clay and straw.  Here's one at the house of Jason C. (Iyo in Ngabere); he uses it to cook things that take a long time, like beans and baking bread in a cookpot.  I would like to help construct stoves to learn more about them. There are many different designs of homemade stoves that aim to increase fuel efficiency, helping both with deforestation and with respiratory problems caused by breathing smoke. If combustion is more complete, there is less harmful smoke. I admire the idea but don't yet know if it's the right thing to promote in my community. Others working with stoves include Aprovecho in Eugene, OR, and family friends John and Flip Anderson of Corvallis, OR.


I want to build a Lazy Circle compost pile in my house. That means sowing plants in a circle around my compost pile. I'll let you know how it goes. I'd like to grow hot peppers, tomatoes, string beans, okra, and millet.

Lazy circle of Alvaro, an organic farmer in Jason's community

I just finished a 4 day class on Ngabere, the native language. This latest training from PC aimed to get us more comfortable with the grammatical structure and even move into using the past tense(!) I have a long ways to go, but I look forward to improving more and more during my time in Panama. Spanish is the language that I speak most in-site but everything I can learn in Ngabere shows my respect for the people and their culture, and helps me understand what's going on around me.

In the coming months I'm looking forward to:

• Attending a 4-day Peace Corps seminar on Project Management and Leadership with a leader/organizer from my community
• Meetings to kick of the latrine project
• Doing some talks on nutrition and health topics
• A trip to the US the last 2 weeks of August (14-21 in Portland, 22-28 in Boston)
• Organizing a water committee seminar in my own area for September

As always thank you for your thoughts and prayers! The work is slow, but I hope fruitful.

"May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us;
    establish the work of our hands for us—
    yes, establish the work of our hands." 
Psalm 90:17