Ti ka Begui (My name is Begui)

My group of 16 Environmental Health volunteers was sworn in on Thursday October 20th at the elegant and spacious home of the US Ambassador to Panama. The ceremony was pretty short and was attended mostly by Peace Corps staff, some other volunteers, as well as some representatives from the Panamanian government. The head of ANAM, the Panamanian environmental agency, was an honored guest. The Ambassador administered the oath- as a group we held up our right hands and swore to uphold the US Constitution and do the duties of a Peace Corps volunteer.  I and other volunteers have had two days to relax in Panama City prior to heading to our work sites on Sunday Oct 23.

My site, in the native language Kubabo, is in the first set of mountains facing south towards the Pacific ocean. From the village's ridgelines we can see broad plains dotted with farms and the distant ocean with islands on the horizon.  Around 120 people live in Kubabo. In general they are subsistence farmers, cultivating the steep slopes with rice, fruit trees, cacao, coffee, and root vegetables.  They may sell to outside if they have a good crop but generally they eat what they produce. Some members of the community work outside, or "afuera" in agriculture, housekeeping, or manual labor.  The people speak their language, Ngabere, at home, but are also fluent in Spanish. The women and girls wear homemade, brightly colored cotton dresses called nagwas. Some women make traditional style clothing to sell in town. The community is located near many services, but has no infrastructure within itself (no running water, electricity, or latrines).  Students attend a primary school a short walk away in one direction and a secondary school 20 minutes walk away in the other direction. In the large town with the high school, there's also a government run health center staffed by some passionate Ngobe nurses and a doctor, and the district government offices.  There are also several churches in the larger area that I would like to visit, both Catholic and Protestant. I have yet to discover what kind of Christian community there is here but I'm hoping for some fellowship.

The view from Kubabo

I will be just a 20 minute and 40 minute walk away from my two closest other volunteers: Winston who works in agriculture, and Erica, in my same Environmental Health group, who also keeps a blog (link on the side).   I'm excited about the opportunity to collaborate, both on Environmental Health projects and learning about agriculture. Our main focus will be on our respective communities. There are also other volunteers in the wider area. Several will be visiting our area in one week for a marching percussion band festival/ competition hosted by the high school, which should be both fun and loud.

The first 3 months in the community is called "Proyecto Amistad"- Project Friendship. It's a period of time to ask questions, visit around, participate in festivals and harvesting and whatever else is going on in the community, and to survey their health situation. During this time I hope to use a set of community analysis tools developed by the Peace Corps in order to learn more about the community.  During the first three months we are not to start any major projects- this time is meant to be the foundation on which successful projects and activities are built.

Francisca and Mindo pound homegrown rice to remove the husks.

Mindo shows off a bundle of rice while holding his rice harvesting blade. This rice is very flavorful and nutritious.

My site visit last week was good; the people were welcoming and excited to both work with me on health projects and teach me about their culture.  I'll tell a bit more about how this visit played out.  The Peace Corps hosted a one day conference for the new volunteers and a representative or guide from each of the community.  We talked about the work of the Peace Corps and our expectations for each other, as well as safety and security details. My guide, Chitoj, takes his responsibilities very seriously. He is my first counterpart, the Peace Corps term for an individual in the community with whom you work closely.  I hope to have others, too.The next day after the conference we set out for Kubabo. My site feels like a remote mountain village, but it's not that hard to get to. From San Felix, the large town on the highway, I just need to take a chiva (small, pickup truck bus).  The journey takes about an hour on a windy gravel road uphill. For how much stuff I brought, I was very glad that I didn't have a several hour long hike like some of my compañeros.

The Water Committee called a community meeting for me to introduce myself and for my guide to share the details of the conference. They also voted on a native nickname for me: "Begui."  (Most people in the community have both Latino and Ngabere names.)  The remaining days of my visit were spent visiting different homes in the community as well as the local offices and schools. 

home!

For the first few months, I'm staying with a host family: Chabi, a lady in her 50s whose kids are studying away from home. She has a great sense of humor. I look forward to a better Spanish level so I can capture everything she and the others say. She's also a great cook.  Her relatives dug a pit latrine out back for me to use (the only one in the community). There are also 7 neighbor children that live across the street (6 of them siblings), who like to come over and color with some crayons I brought. On another occasion,  kids showed me how to dance the hegi, a traditional line dance.  It is really fun to be with them. I'm working on learning the names of children as well as adults- it's going to take a while!  One challenge was that most of the time everyone talked in Ngabere. I definitely want to learn more of this! They were really happy that I was trying to speak it, fumbling as I was, and happy to teach me new words.

We are discussing holding a weekly English class for members of the community- there's a lot of interest, mostly from children and young adults. They do take English classes in school but have a long way to go towards holding a conversation.  I plan on doing this in order to build relationships; I'm not an expert teacher, especially of kids. But I think it'll be good from a friendship and cultural exchange point of view.

Well, I'm heading back to the community to live. I'm excited to spend more time with my new Ngabe friends.  I do think it'll be complex and challenging to find out more about what's really going on in the community and work with them to improve their own health- but that's why I'm there. 

I'm planning on checking email about every 10-14 days when I spend a day doing errands in town, so it remains a pretty good way of being in touch.  I also enjoy connecting by cell phone. Email me your number and I'll call you! And for those of you who are praying for me, thank you so much.  I was so encouraged to have a positive site visit. It'll take longer to understand the community and what God is doing there, but I hope to connect with other believers in the area soon.

Comunidad Hermosa

We are swearing in as Peace Corps Volunteers tomorrow, October 20th. For me, that'll be my new reference point. Since August 16th, our group of 17 has been together as Trainees. Tomorrow, we will be called Volunteers. Also starting tomorrow, everything is measured from October. This commitment, God willing, will last 2 years until October 2013. There are medical check ups and training events, and evaluations throughout at 3, 6, 12, and 21 month marks.  It's strange to look at a tentative schedule so long in advance.  I can look forward with anticipation to hoped-for visits of loved ones.  Time passes a bit differently in the campo (countryside)- I hear that while the pace of each day is slow the two years feel very short. I pray that I will be able to live fully in the present, with patience, humor and perseverance.

I'll be writing more about my experiences in my week-long site visit later this week, before I head back on Sunday to live there. Today I'd like to write an appreciation of our host community where I've spent the last few months. I appreciate very much the love and care of my host family, Jilma and Amadis. I dropped in on them after a last minute change of plans but they took it in stride and welcomed me right in.

Host mother Jilma was person at home number-one for me. She is an expert multi tasker, often caring for her two baby grandchildren while cooking, cleaning, and doing the laundry.  She definitely expresses her love and care in service to other people. For instance she would wash my clothes frequently, even when I didn't consider them exactly dirty, and wouldn't rest until my white socks were brush- scrubbed very clean.  If she were to see my white socks a few months from now, she might be disappointed in my washing efforts because I don't have her high standards for undergarments.  She also cooks each simple meal from scratch and dishes up individual plates. It's true that compared with the other women in the house, I don't really do housework, but they have their schedule and don't seem to mind... Well, I appreciate how my family has cared for me in many ways.

My host father Amadis always conducts himself as a gentleman. He keeps busy with lots of work- from his full time job in maintenance at the hospital, to weekends freelancing in construction, building furniture out of scrap wood, or cutting hair for the neighborhood.

My host parents displaced their 13 year old son, Edward, from his room in order to give it to me, and when he came home from school he didn't even grumble. He's a bright and funny child with an enthusiasm to learn.


21 year old host sister Jeidi is very loving and serious, taking after her mother in many ways. She is studying early childhood education in college and definitely wants a career rather than starting a family young (which is very popular here).




Host brother Eli was a bit of a tease. He likes to share about sports and is on the town soccer team. Eli's wife Sujeidi invited me to a tiny home church on Thursday nights, which I attended twice. It was nice to study the Word together. Their baby Elian learned to walk during my stay. He's a growing boy, and he doesn't even cry that much. Or, at least, his room was on the other end of the house.

Edward and his nephew Elian

There's more family outside the house- grandpa Julio, brother Julio and his wife Omira and son Jair. They are friendly and quiet, and their 8 month old baby serious and exploratory.

Aunt Mary, Uncle Samuel, and cousins Anet and Glorisel would often stop by and visit. Generously they invited me to come and visit more at their house as well. One Sunday we cooked a meal together with a home grown chicken "gallina de patio" which I helped to clean and prepare. We also made banana bread together. Even though I didn't visit them that much, they were always very welcoming.

making cinnamon rolls with Glorisel, Edward, and Anet

The rest of the community, too, was so inviting. It can't be easy to have a bunch of foreigners drop in on your tiny town for classes, asking questions, and so on.  But they opened their hearts and their homes to us and for that, we are very grateful.  They have invited me to visit them again, and I would like to do so.

Preparing arroz con pollo with another host family for our goodbye party

Pinata time at our goodbye party!

Take a look at my Picasa albums (link to right) for more photos.

Nyantori! Hello!

It's official- I'm headed to a small town of 100 people, more or less, in the mountains above San Felix in the Comarca (reservation) Ngabe Bugle. I'll be working with the indigenous Ngabe people as the first volunteer in this particular town. It's a popular area for Peace Corps- there are 4 other volunteers within an hour's hike, and 13 out of 17 trainees in my group are headed to Ngabe sites either in the Comarca or in the nearby province Bocas del Toro. In my town itself, as far as I know, there's no water or sanitation system, but there is cell phone reception. Though my town is small, we are just 20 minutes' walk from a larger town with schools and some services. On Oct 9 we visit our sites for one week, to confirm that we really want to do this before swearing in. A member of the community will be meeting me, and we'll go together to the pueblo. I'll have more to report in two weeks when I return.

I expect it to be climatically and culturally similar to our Technical Week location (described in my previous post). So I have specific things to be excited about and specific things that I was getting tired of last week- the monotonous diet and the rain. However, in my site I need to just take it as it comes, and trust that God knows what's good for me. :) Among other things, I'm looking forward to learning the Ngobe sense of humor, at times slapstick silly.  I also know I´ll grow a lot!

Next week we have introductory classes in Ngabere. The Spanish teachers said that some English speakers find Ngabere easier to learn in some respects than Spanish (!) because the verbs are unconjugated. I'll report back on that, too.

In other news, we are also gearing up for our big "community analysis" meeting here in our host town on Oct 7. In the past 2 months we've been talking with people about health issues defined broadly: the water system, household sanitation, medical care, education, and gender roles. We've visited the components of the locally-run water system as well. We'll share what we've found at the meeting and facilitate a community discussion about these issues. This project is a warm- up for the lengthy community analysis we'll be doing in our long-term sites.

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.

Familia Panameña

My extended host family

Our training community is a small town of several hundred people in Panama province. We have been here for a week and a half. It's not that far from the main roads and a major town, and has a tiny tienda (store), a paved main street, electricity, and running water (for several hours a day). Many men commute to Panama City for work and most women are housewives. There's a grade school here for the many children of the community. The whole community knows the volunteers and is very welcoming!  We are the second group of trainees to be located here. There are some really cute kids who know my name and call it out - I hope to know more of their names, in time. There are a few large family groups in the community; if you stay here a while you're bound to become cousins!  

The 17 trainees have been studying Spanish in the morning and technical training in the afternoon.  Both classes are very interactive and genuinely fun. The technical training, so far, has focused on how to work with a community, facilitating meetings, and identifying needs. This weekend we spent a partial day exploring the water system for this town.  That was interesting!  It involved a hike up a creek bed to a hillside spring, or "ojo de agua". Some of the community's water is piped from that source, but most comes from a more recent well that taps the groundwater.  The community put in the water system in the 1970's. Before that, they carried water from the river. We looked at it as an example of the kind of system we could be working on in our communities. We also found some large spiders in the creekbed!

My host family is an extended family of seven: mother Jilma, father Amadiz, and children Elis, Heidi and Edward.  Elis is married; he shares our home with his wife Sujeidi and baby boy Elian. The oldest son is Julio, he's also married with a baby son and lives up the street. The family is kind and extroverted; they like to talk with me!  It's exciting to be able to communicate entirely in another language! I don't understand everything yet- and can't really yet follow a conversation that's not directed at me. I've gotten better since I've been here, though, and my mind is coming up with the Spanish a lot more easily, instead of having to translate everything! My host family works hard, and when they're not working they tend to stay home and rest. It's a big thing in this community- and in all Panama- to visit other homes (this is called to "pasear").

Most of the community, including my host family, is Catholic.  Unfortunately the church is only open once a month- the priest has 20-some small communities that he rotates between. I hear the priest is Korean!  It's an interesting connection with the outside world.  As I understand it, few people from this small town travel much (or have the opportunity to).

My time here has been good so far; I'm particularly pleased with the friendly community and the excellent classes. It's also been a challenge in that our schedule is quite busy and my previous routines have all changed! I've felt quite unsettled at times due to the changing situation, but they say that's normal.

Each trainee or "aspirante" like me, is assigned to visit a volunteer in their site of service over the first weekend in September, to get a better sense of volunteer life. For me this involves a lengthy bus ride to Bocas del Toro province on the Carribbean side.  I'll let you know how it goes!

El Fuente

I and the Water Committee Secretary, one of the team that escorted us to the village

After 2 days of training at the Peace Corps office in Panama City, we headed out today on a site visit!   We visited a rural, Latino pueblo (village) of about 200 people in which Peace Corps currently has an Environmental Health volunteer (my type of project). We did this to see an example of a volunteer's life style, community, and projects. I have quite a few photos in the album (link to it on the right side of the page) in addition to those highlighted here. This community is Latino; only 20% of the projects in Environmental Health are in such communities. The other 80% of projects are in indigenous areas, which will be quite different socially and economically.  This ratio is for the Environmental Health sector specifically; many Volunteers work with Latino communities in Panama.

In this pueblo, to generate income, the residents work on their own small scale farms and also make beautiful Panama hats for sale in the regional center. These hats are made from a single, coiled braid of palm fibers. Most people in the pueblo make them- men, women, and children- in addition to their other tasks.  The pueblo has both an elementary school and a health post (puesto de salud) with a health worker who is there 5 days a week and serves the whole surrounding area.

Health Center

Panama Hats- the lady to the left is holding the braided palm of which this is made.

The Peace Corps has been in this community for about 4 years- two volunteer terms. This volunteer, Katherine, was just finishing up her term.  The Peace Corps has facilitated latrines and an aqueduct- that's a pipeline that carries water downhill from, in this case, a spring, to the pueblo. This is the first time I'd seen such a thing, but it's apparently a type of Project that Peace Corps works on frequently.

Amazing view to the south- the Pacific must be just beyond view.

To get to the project site: After a two mile walk on una caminita (a trail) away from the dirt road where we left our vehicles, we reached a natural spring (el fuente) in a high hillside. The fuente is covered with a new, concrete and stone cap called una toma (an intake) that captures water from the spring and channels it into a PVC pipe. The pipe runs down to a holding tank and then splits off to individual homes. The community pays into a fund for the water.

Water Intake at the Spring

Water tank for village supply

This project was begun by a Panamanian government agency about 30 years ago, but it had fallen into disrepair since. A main job of the Peace Corps volunteer in this location is to mobilize and facilitate the villagers (campesinos), who have set up a Water Committee. The Water Committee and she have been renovating this older aqueduct system part-by-part.

The community served us a delicious lunch at the open-air school cafeteria, featuring a tasty traditional soup with chicken, yucca, and yams, rice, and homemade juice from a tart tropical fruit.  We had fun talking with the women, men, and the kids in Spanish. Laughter eases the way. I was happy with how much I was able to communicate with them, but I have a long ways to go towards fluency!

 

Our hostesses, the cooks (right)

Delicioso!

On the way back we experienced a thunderstorm with heavy rain but since it was still pretty warm, it was all right. We slogged around in some serious mud on the way down! 

In training, the Peace Corps has been advocating "capacity building." The PC approach is that it doesn't put much capital money into projects themselves- volunteers are expected to work with and educate community members to organize themselves.  Funding would come through grants to Panamanian agencies or NGOs (nonprofits).  The idea is that the people of communities will be able to advocate for themselves instead of living from one handout to the next. This is a different approach than that the  Aids Care and Treatment project in Ethiopia takes (I spent a two week mission trip there with my church in 2008). The Aids Care and Treatment organization's primary purpose isn't "development", though they do work in the field with other NGOs. 

Tomorrow we head to our training town where we'll spend most of our time through November  busy with technical and language training.  I will also meet my host family, with whom I will stay during that time!  My mailing address is still through the main office in Panama City. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.