Maybe this is a blog about Christmas, I havent decided yet. A quick warning, I am writing this, typing rather on a computer in a small cramped internet cafe without air conditioning while the owner is blasting and singing to tipico music on a spanish keyboard, close to every word I type is underlined in a read squiggly and I have under thirty minutes left, so if the grammar or spelling is worse than ususal, it is only because I rely too heavily on spell check.
Christmas in Panama was nothing like Christmas in the United States, but then again, my Christmas experience in the United States is nothing like the general Christmas practices of the majority of citizens in our fine country.
I am not going to describe word for word my recent Christmas experience, because like I said Ive only got thirty minutes and I would get very bored with that. Here are some key words and phrases to describe my recent holiday experiences. Sweaty, whiskey, chicken decapitation, poker, whiskey, hats, yo-yo. I think that is sufficent and paints a wonderful picture. Voy a seguir, those words arent squigglied. These are.Anyway.
What I am wanting to share is how Christmas feels to me, not hot and humid, but emotionally. I dont feel as though I am a person who loves Christmas as much as I love the idea of Christmas, and not the true meaning of Christmas, I like that Christmas is a day with presents and food, a day where you give you love to others in a solid, tangible way and it isnt weird. I like that at Christmas families suddenly grow and morph to include almost anyone. Christmas is acceptance and understanding (ideally). I like that about Christmas. And I had that here.
Christmas, to me, is not snow (luckily), or Jesus, or Santa Claus. Christmas is a day to be happy with people I love, or at least enjoy the company of, and I have that here in Panama, and I had it the US, in Michigan, in Ohio, California. I could have Christmas anywhere at anytime with any combination of food, loved ones, gifts, or alcohol and it would still be Christmas to me.
I am not sure this blog makes sense, but I am not sure that I make any sense eiether. What I am saying not so eloquently or even efficently is that I had a great Christmas, and I am lucky to have a life filled with so many wonderful and welcoming people all around the world at Christmas time, and always.
Im out of internet time and I have a boat to catch, but Happy Holidays to everyone, everywhere, except maybe Blackhawks fans. Just kidding... ish...
Saturday, December 27, 2014
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
The truth about life.
I started writing on paper today because I was upset by what seemed like a never ending chain of a million tiny problems one right after the other, an unconscious stream of sadness and rage from a lack of sleep to a lack of money, dishonesty, rude employees, obnoxious bus drivers, slowness in the office, perceived injustice, a cold from nowhere, an excruciatingly long wait for a boat, ant infested cockroache infested food, and invaded privacy. I wrote it, ink on paper, college ruled, line after line, the kind of writing you don’t share with others because it is sad, depressing, raw. Its whiny, makes you look weak, it shatters the illusion of the perfect life typed up in blogs and reflected in shiny white smiles in photographs. Nobody likes complaining, in person, let alone uploaded to the internet. We like happiness and we like absolute tragedy, there’s no space in-between to share a rough day. Don’t tell me about your obstacles until you’ve crushed them or they’ve crushed you. Let your problems stew within you, bottle up the demons, bottle up the darkness, one little problem at a time, let them fill you slowly until all you see in the world is suffering and inconvenience.
I was going to procrastinate this blog and write about how great everything has been, like always. Save the world, myself from reality. But hey, fuck that.
Sometimes life sucks, but living doesn’t suck. I am unhappy today and it is my own fault, it is the fault of Panamanians, the fault of Americans, it is the fault of people in charge of me, my neighbors, friends, bacteria. I am unhappy and sometimes I am just unhappy. I am not going to complain about all of my problems, and I am not going to bad mouth anybody, because sometimes other people are unhappy, stressed, overworked. Sometimes we are unlucky, we make the wrong decisions. Sometimes we are exhausted. Its cloudy, it rains. Life.
Today I doubted my service, I second guessed being in Panama, I tried to decide whether I actually wanted to be here, or if I am just too proud to quit. I contemplated whether my service is challenging or actually miserable. Is what I am doing here worth my time, will I live up to expectations of my community, my boss, my country? Do I even care to help people, who don’t seem to help themselves? Do I feel invested in a community where I cannot share any aspect of my personality? This isn’t the first time I’ve asked myself these questions, and I really doubt it will be the last considering I haven’t found any answers.
What I did find was an envelope of post it notes written by both Panamanians and other PCVs that had been squished and wrinkled and left unread, forgotten in my bag during all the adventures I had following the seminar. And on the post it notes I read praise for my spirit, positivity, and energy. While I do not feel as though I am living up to the praise at this moment. I remembered that people, PCVs, Panama, LIFE is beautiful. Life makes us unhappy sometimes and it can suck, but in the end life is living. Because I am alive, I am lucky, happy even when I am unhappy.
And so at any rate, I will still be here, but I just want to say it is hard sometimes, really hard. And if you’re reading this blog, there is a ninety percent chance that I miss you very much and really appreciate everything you have done for me, whether a smile, a letter, a loan, a hug. There is a ten percent chance you’re planning on or contemplating joining the Peace Corps, and I don’t mean to sound like a recruitment poster, but if you decide Peace Corps service is for you, it will be the toughest job you will ever love. Go out there and live life.
P.S. The volcano, Chiriqui, Thanksgiving, the beach, and the Comarca were great. Thanks to everyone who took me in for a night or two, and showed me the west side. I am so lucky to be in such a solid group of great people.
I was going to procrastinate this blog and write about how great everything has been, like always. Save the world, myself from reality. But hey, fuck that.
Sometimes life sucks, but living doesn’t suck. I am unhappy today and it is my own fault, it is the fault of Panamanians, the fault of Americans, it is the fault of people in charge of me, my neighbors, friends, bacteria. I am unhappy and sometimes I am just unhappy. I am not going to complain about all of my problems, and I am not going to bad mouth anybody, because sometimes other people are unhappy, stressed, overworked. Sometimes we are unlucky, we make the wrong decisions. Sometimes we are exhausted. Its cloudy, it rains. Life.
Today I doubted my service, I second guessed being in Panama, I tried to decide whether I actually wanted to be here, or if I am just too proud to quit. I contemplated whether my service is challenging or actually miserable. Is what I am doing here worth my time, will I live up to expectations of my community, my boss, my country? Do I even care to help people, who don’t seem to help themselves? Do I feel invested in a community where I cannot share any aspect of my personality? This isn’t the first time I’ve asked myself these questions, and I really doubt it will be the last considering I haven’t found any answers.
What I did find was an envelope of post it notes written by both Panamanians and other PCVs that had been squished and wrinkled and left unread, forgotten in my bag during all the adventures I had following the seminar. And on the post it notes I read praise for my spirit, positivity, and energy. While I do not feel as though I am living up to the praise at this moment. I remembered that people, PCVs, Panama, LIFE is beautiful. Life makes us unhappy sometimes and it can suck, but in the end life is living. Because I am alive, I am lucky, happy even when I am unhappy.
And so at any rate, I will still be here, but I just want to say it is hard sometimes, really hard. And if you’re reading this blog, there is a ninety percent chance that I miss you very much and really appreciate everything you have done for me, whether a smile, a letter, a loan, a hug. There is a ten percent chance you’re planning on or contemplating joining the Peace Corps, and I don’t mean to sound like a recruitment poster, but if you decide Peace Corps service is for you, it will be the toughest job you will ever love. Go out there and live life.
P.S. The volcano, Chiriqui, Thanksgiving, the beach, and the Comarca were great. Thanks to everyone who took me in for a night or two, and showed me the west side. I am so lucky to be in such a solid group of great people.
Friday, October 17, 2014
Laundry Day
Today is laundry day, as were the last three days, but today I am serious. I don’t have any clean pants I have to do laundry. I have to get out of bed and I have to do laundry. I have to wear pants, it’s not appropriate to pasear nude from the waist down, not in an evangelical town, not anywhere. Remember how the office thought your name might be Evangelica when you first got to Panama, thank god it’s not. I need to get out of bed, if I get out of bed in the next ten minutes, you don’t have to work out, deal? Yeah washing clothes is definitely a work out in itself, bending, scrubbing, and squeezing for hours, and in the sun too. Hace calore. This bed is so uncomfortable, is it raining, or is that the wind blowing through the roof? I squint through the cracks in the wall, not raining. What day is it? What time is it? How long have I been here? Shit it’s been elven minutes, do some crunches as punishment, it’s good for you. Remember when you used to run, before it started raining and the whole town turned into the most awful, suck-in-your-shoe-and-never-let-go-mud? Get out of bed, turn on the radio, put a shirt on, not a bra, just a shirt, too early for bras. Do crunches. 100? A couple more, 300. OK, can you do a pull up yet? No, but I’m closer. Boil water, oatmeal and tea for breakfast, casual. Oatmeal is weird, hey? Im almost out of food, get over it, look at all those dry beans, eat those. Ok. Cool, Wonderwall is on the radio. Eat breakfast, whatsap your girlfriend, “morning, babe.” Collect dirty clothes, they’re everywhere, hanging to avoid mold growth. Hamper; check, bucket; check, dirty clothes; check. Gross a cockroach, “La cucaracha, la cucaracha, ya no puede caminar…” Squish! Fuck you cockroach. Off to the shower to wash clothes, the sun is coming out. Swell! “Ill get some color. Fill up the bucket with water dirty clothes and shampoo. Fuck, where’s the soap? Go to retrieve the soap. You should let your clothes soak and burn some of this paper trash. Yeah. I have a make shift incinerator made from a paint can. Burn paper, tweet, Facebook. What day is it? 25 percent battery, unplug the solar light, PLEASE CHARGE. No more paper, back to laundry. Remember when you bought a second towel, fucking stupid, two dirty towels. Start with jeans, they’re hard but not as hard as towels, let the towels soak, they’re moldy. You’ve always hated doing laundry, but never quite this much. Blog about this later. This could be a good blog. The sun is hot. Sunshine, I’d really like to see you, oh my sunshine… Scrub. I look at my house, I bet things would charge better if I rotated my solar panel, do that after laundry. I won’t. Sing songs; follow you into the dark, ballad of love and hate, monsters, all about the bass, what? Why does everyone hate that song, love it. Anaconda, not so much. “My anaconda don want none…” SHIT! La cucaracha, la cucaracha…” Fuck Congo, where’d that come from? Ah well, gone now. Nice, done with pants. Towel time, tho. Hang up pants to dry first, need pants, the reason for the day. I should start washing my clothes daily, you won’t. Nah. The sun, hot. I just where shorts when I do laundry, three tarps protecting me from the outside world, wet shirts are the worst. Viene Mirrian. “esta lavando?” obviously. “Si, hace calor!” “Si, angie, el sol.” Back to work. Towels, Fuck. Scrub. I need to get out of site, but I don’t have any money. What should I teach Monday? Things in the outdoors. Perfect. What day is it? Shit, you need to pay rent. I’ll go today. You should call your dad. Can’t, next time I have saldo. I need to get saldo. You won’t. True. Ya viene your other neighbor with a huge ass iguana, “Que Paso?” zone out. “Esta bien, dale!’ I’m totally going to get iguana today, score. Free food. Woah another Congo? Or is that the same one? They live under the table, of course! I’ll kill those later, you won’t. Almost done scrubbing, rinse cycle soon. Its getting cloudy, its going to rain, always. At this point I stop scrubbing my clothes, too tired, they’re clean enough, you’ll just get them dirty again. Fill bucket with water, dump, fill, squeeze, fill, dump, squeeze, repeat. Good enough. Hang up clothes. The line is saggy, my clothes are touching the ground. Into the jungle with a machete to find a big stick to prop up the line. What happened to the old one? Used it to make the fence for the garden, ah yah. Is that a snake!? Vine, Relax. Chop down this little tree its perfect. You’ve done enough today. It starts to rain, move all my clothes to hang on porch. They’ll be moldy by tomorrow. “Anyi! Vamos por bañarse!?”
Thursday, September 25, 2014
vaya con la corriente
Its been a while.
The thing about life is that no matter how hard we try, our best efforts, it is impossible to schedule life. We can say we are going to do something and we can make damn sure that we do it. We can even say and do that thing as planned, but it will never be a perfect symmetry. I love this about life, its arguably my favorite thing about life, its terribly unpredictable, keeps me on my toes, I know you're thinking, "Angie!? But where are you going with this? I'm here to read about this, 'Peace Corps' business in Panama," my friends, I know, and its coming I promise, just follow me for a second, you won't regret your decision when I get to the big reveal, you'll have a lot to gossip about and then I'll tell you specifically about events in Panama.
This tangent in this tangent is for the purpose of making it clear that Panama isn't me putting my life on hold for two years, this is my life, a continuation, its fluid, connected. Love like life, is a very fluid, very unpredictable thing and like life we can try our hardest to plan it, our hardest to control it, but despite our very best attempts it moves and develops on it own terms, independent of our wishes and plans for it and those wishes and plans we have for life. We can section seconds into days, group them into months, and name them, but this is classification, not control, never control. This is getting abstract.
I fell in love and I went to Panama, love didn't care that I planned to be in Panama and love didn't care that we were the same gender. I recently changed my relationship status and I recently have been deflecting a lot of questions. The basics are I am not dating a Panamanian, I am in love with a wonderful girl, and I have been in love for over a year now, but I have been hiding it, we have been, "dating," Its a long distance relationship and it sucks, its really hard, but it was only harder as a giant secret. Now its out, its common knowledge, think what you will. She makes me happy even with an ocean between us. That's that.
The other day I was Floating in the river, completely submerged except for the smallest portion off my face possible to breathe, while fish nibbled, bit, at all my limbs, and the occasional flea escaped my best efforts at drowning it and everyone it loves, to find sanctuary at the tip of my nose just long enough to come to terms with life and existence before being flicked off my face, fish food. Suddenly it started to rain, and I wondered to myself if Panama was the right decision. Was floating in a river to drown fleas really the best way to spend two years of my life, what the hell am I even going to do here when I am not drowning fleas?
For that second question, I don’t have an answer, more of a vague clustering of ideas and topics floating around my brain in broken Spanish, from clean water to learning how to play guitar, composting latrines to mastering the art of doing a handstand, the seeds of goals are planted somewhere deep behind my eyes, waiting.
And in regards to the first question, I lack the ability to form an alternate present for me, if I wasn’t in Panama I do not know what I would be doing, I never had a plan b, and so I feel that I can say with some confidence derived from that, that drowning fleas is in fact a good way to spend a portion of my next two years, and in fact is quite a relaxing experience.
Jump two months. I had a meeting to identify an prioritize needs in my community. The people and I had similar ideas but maybe didn't identify the same urgencies, at any rate. It seems my community is most concerned with improving the quality of water, eco stoves and more help with growing the ecotourism group. I have a lot of ideas and its overwhelming as fuck.
I'm going to write another blog with details and plans and everything, but I have internet right now and just realized I can in fact use Netflix in Panama. I have priorities.
The thing about life is that no matter how hard we try, our best efforts, it is impossible to schedule life. We can say we are going to do something and we can make damn sure that we do it. We can even say and do that thing as planned, but it will never be a perfect symmetry. I love this about life, its arguably my favorite thing about life, its terribly unpredictable, keeps me on my toes, I know you're thinking, "Angie!? But where are you going with this? I'm here to read about this, 'Peace Corps' business in Panama," my friends, I know, and its coming I promise, just follow me for a second, you won't regret your decision when I get to the big reveal, you'll have a lot to gossip about and then I'll tell you specifically about events in Panama.
This tangent in this tangent is for the purpose of making it clear that Panama isn't me putting my life on hold for two years, this is my life, a continuation, its fluid, connected. Love like life, is a very fluid, very unpredictable thing and like life we can try our hardest to plan it, our hardest to control it, but despite our very best attempts it moves and develops on it own terms, independent of our wishes and plans for it and those wishes and plans we have for life. We can section seconds into days, group them into months, and name them, but this is classification, not control, never control. This is getting abstract.
I fell in love and I went to Panama, love didn't care that I planned to be in Panama and love didn't care that we were the same gender. I recently changed my relationship status and I recently have been deflecting a lot of questions. The basics are I am not dating a Panamanian, I am in love with a wonderful girl, and I have been in love for over a year now, but I have been hiding it, we have been, "dating," Its a long distance relationship and it sucks, its really hard, but it was only harder as a giant secret. Now its out, its common knowledge, think what you will. She makes me happy even with an ocean between us. That's that.
The other day I was Floating in the river, completely submerged except for the smallest portion off my face possible to breathe, while fish nibbled, bit, at all my limbs, and the occasional flea escaped my best efforts at drowning it and everyone it loves, to find sanctuary at the tip of my nose just long enough to come to terms with life and existence before being flicked off my face, fish food. Suddenly it started to rain, and I wondered to myself if Panama was the right decision. Was floating in a river to drown fleas really the best way to spend two years of my life, what the hell am I even going to do here when I am not drowning fleas?
For that second question, I don’t have an answer, more of a vague clustering of ideas and topics floating around my brain in broken Spanish, from clean water to learning how to play guitar, composting latrines to mastering the art of doing a handstand, the seeds of goals are planted somewhere deep behind my eyes, waiting.
And in regards to the first question, I lack the ability to form an alternate present for me, if I wasn’t in Panama I do not know what I would be doing, I never had a plan b, and so I feel that I can say with some confidence derived from that, that drowning fleas is in fact a good way to spend a portion of my next two years, and in fact is quite a relaxing experience.
Jump two months. I had a meeting to identify an prioritize needs in my community. The people and I had similar ideas but maybe didn't identify the same urgencies, at any rate. It seems my community is most concerned with improving the quality of water, eco stoves and more help with growing the ecotourism group. I have a lot of ideas and its overwhelming as fuck.
I'm going to write another blog with details and plans and everything, but I have internet right now and just realized I can in fact use Netflix in Panama. I have priorities.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
pub crawls, parades, panama
I always read the last blog before I post a new blog to avoid unnecessary overlap and to try to figure out how to continue, and man the grammar in that last one was rough even for me.
I am currently the sickest that I have been since arriving in Panama and the sickest I remember being in a longtime before coming to Panama. Ive made two very serious and effort filled attempts to go and pasear but I was ultimately discouraged because both times I was overcome with an overwhelming feeling that I was about to shit myself. Which wouldn’t really be that bad since I haven’t eaten for about 22 hours, at this point I’m just shitting out water I think, I’m no doctor. Anyway now I find myself in a hammock double fisting oral rehydration salts and water in hopes that I will be well enough to fully appreciate the magic that is my twenty third birthday tomorrow without shitting myself on the bus to the city.
Now that I’ve introduced you all to the love hate relationship that Panama has with my intestines, I guess I can speak about less shitty things, and yes, pun intended.
Panama, oh Panama, what can I say, it feels like home, I’m happy, I literally lack the ability to imagine my life any other way. I haven’t really started doing much yet, I’m only two months into service after all and the first three months are strictly to integrate and prepare a community analysis. Sometimes I’m overcome with having a feeling of absolutely nothing to do, how many times can I possibly talk to the same eighty people when I have the vocabulary of an intelligent eight year old? The answer of course is infinitely.
There have been days when I succumb to the feeling of having nothing to do and do nothing, but those days are more than outnumbered by the days where I go somewhere, anywhere and talk to someone. Ive found the key to successful pasearing is just to speak enthusiastically even if I am sure what I am saying doesn’t make any sense. And speaking of sense, I do feel like I am starting to make more and more of it. I also feel really integrated and welcomed into this community, and I have almost no peña about pasearing, except for in barrio, I still don’t feel entirely comfortable there. Today I was going to go there too, but my bowels wouldn’t let me, and so it is a thing for me to begin to focus on, a way to feel a larger sense of urgency in my days of pasearing. It’s good to feel included in a community and to realize that the people have a genuine concern for your well-being and more importantly to me, to know they are genuinely happy to see me walking up to their porches.
And on that note I really think everyone in my community is really swell, except for my host family. I really dislike my host family, and I feel super bad for saying it, and I almost didn’t, but I convinced myself there was no way they would learn English and find my blog and then read it. I have tried so hard to like them and to get them to treat me as part of the family, but I can’t move past feeling like an inconvenience. I bring them gifts on occasion, I make them popcorn, say please and thank you, converse, and just all the things I know how to do in order to be a good person, yet nothing works. I’m constantly finding myself locked out of the house, not told plans, without lunch, and other inconveniences. I can’t decide how much it bothers me and for the most part I try to brush it off, but I will attempt to get permission to move out early, because being in a bad mood makes me want to be alone, and alone isn’t the best way to change the world or whatever.
Happier things. I do not have Diarrhea anymore, It has been a couple of days since I started typing this blog, and I had it for a lot of those days, but after my run today, it was gone, gracias a dios. I need to stop talking about the specific present, because I have a hard time focusing long enough on this blog to finish it in one day.
Things that have happened but do not feel like are exciting enough to describe in more detail:
I went to a goat roast in Metati where I helped to make goat kabobs and goat curry with almost all the volunteers from both Darien and Panama Este and then the next day we went to La Palma where a couple of us stayed in a really gorgeous hotel, for a really boring and equally uneventful meeting followed by a very eventful and not at all boring bar crawl through the very happening 4 or so cantinas in La Palma starting with a long walk into the jungle and ending with finishing a box of wine by drinking it out of a metal bowl.
There was a fourth of July party on the fourth of June in Canita after a rousing day of walking all over Chepo to find agencies that I have already forgot the location of and pizza that I will never forget the location of.
Some kids and some doctors from the USA, specifically Alabama, I think, came to introduce an evangelical community to God, which seems to me like a waste of time, but they also gave out medicine and water filters and you can’t go wrong with drugs and clean water.
I went to Chepo and bought a lot of paint and then I painted my house, yes it is gorgeous, it took forever. And I discovered there is some sort of fly here in Panama that has a very strong fondness for oil based paint, not my favorite discovery in the world.
I also discovered a scorpion in my house which I enjoyed even less than the flies, but got a little bit more enjoyment out of when I killed it with a machete, there were a lot of guts, I was surprised, pleasantly.
I assisted with a few English classes in the school and I am planning on very soon to start talking with the teacher there about how I can help with environmental education, and things I actually think are worthwhile.
We are also in the first steps of building a incinerator, the find an old oil drum step.
I turned twenty three, I feel a lot wiser and a little bit older. I already had my quarter life crisis so I am feeling pretty tranquil about the whole situation and it was nice to get to see so many shining faces in the city and of course drink a little beer and a little whiskey.
But more importantly the day after was pride in Panama and a lot of us went to support the cause, it was an amazing experience, lots of energy and lots of really good vibes. I got a free t-shirt; my main motivation in life, held various signs and flags, did some bad dancing in the streets, ran around, and most importantly felt that I was in some way actually helping to make a difference.
I think that’s all that really happened, that wasn’t just all in a days work, but also I just feel really detached from this blog, I think I need to start writing about events as they happen, because when I finally sit down to type up a blog everything seems so irrelevant and in the past and there are so many things that I just list them all out without much regard to detail or emotion.
And so, I hope the next blog will actually be good and exciting to read.
Also days later, I am in Santa Rita for a week of language reinforcement and living in what could be the nicest house I’ve ever lived in in my life or at least a very close second. Running water inside. Electricity. Need I even say more? We also might have internet, but if so I don’t understand how to use it, but I promise I’ll post this blog before I leave civilization and if not I’ll just delete this sentence. How many promises have I made that are nothing more than deleted sentences, how many licks to the center of a tootsie pop, what’s the meaning of life? The world may never know.
I am currently the sickest that I have been since arriving in Panama and the sickest I remember being in a longtime before coming to Panama. Ive made two very serious and effort filled attempts to go and pasear but I was ultimately discouraged because both times I was overcome with an overwhelming feeling that I was about to shit myself. Which wouldn’t really be that bad since I haven’t eaten for about 22 hours, at this point I’m just shitting out water I think, I’m no doctor. Anyway now I find myself in a hammock double fisting oral rehydration salts and water in hopes that I will be well enough to fully appreciate the magic that is my twenty third birthday tomorrow without shitting myself on the bus to the city.
Now that I’ve introduced you all to the love hate relationship that Panama has with my intestines, I guess I can speak about less shitty things, and yes, pun intended.
Panama, oh Panama, what can I say, it feels like home, I’m happy, I literally lack the ability to imagine my life any other way. I haven’t really started doing much yet, I’m only two months into service after all and the first three months are strictly to integrate and prepare a community analysis. Sometimes I’m overcome with having a feeling of absolutely nothing to do, how many times can I possibly talk to the same eighty people when I have the vocabulary of an intelligent eight year old? The answer of course is infinitely.
There have been days when I succumb to the feeling of having nothing to do and do nothing, but those days are more than outnumbered by the days where I go somewhere, anywhere and talk to someone. Ive found the key to successful pasearing is just to speak enthusiastically even if I am sure what I am saying doesn’t make any sense. And speaking of sense, I do feel like I am starting to make more and more of it. I also feel really integrated and welcomed into this community, and I have almost no peña about pasearing, except for in barrio, I still don’t feel entirely comfortable there. Today I was going to go there too, but my bowels wouldn’t let me, and so it is a thing for me to begin to focus on, a way to feel a larger sense of urgency in my days of pasearing. It’s good to feel included in a community and to realize that the people have a genuine concern for your well-being and more importantly to me, to know they are genuinely happy to see me walking up to their porches.
And on that note I really think everyone in my community is really swell, except for my host family. I really dislike my host family, and I feel super bad for saying it, and I almost didn’t, but I convinced myself there was no way they would learn English and find my blog and then read it. I have tried so hard to like them and to get them to treat me as part of the family, but I can’t move past feeling like an inconvenience. I bring them gifts on occasion, I make them popcorn, say please and thank you, converse, and just all the things I know how to do in order to be a good person, yet nothing works. I’m constantly finding myself locked out of the house, not told plans, without lunch, and other inconveniences. I can’t decide how much it bothers me and for the most part I try to brush it off, but I will attempt to get permission to move out early, because being in a bad mood makes me want to be alone, and alone isn’t the best way to change the world or whatever.
Happier things. I do not have Diarrhea anymore, It has been a couple of days since I started typing this blog, and I had it for a lot of those days, but after my run today, it was gone, gracias a dios. I need to stop talking about the specific present, because I have a hard time focusing long enough on this blog to finish it in one day.
Things that have happened but do not feel like are exciting enough to describe in more detail:
I went to a goat roast in Metati where I helped to make goat kabobs and goat curry with almost all the volunteers from both Darien and Panama Este and then the next day we went to La Palma where a couple of us stayed in a really gorgeous hotel, for a really boring and equally uneventful meeting followed by a very eventful and not at all boring bar crawl through the very happening 4 or so cantinas in La Palma starting with a long walk into the jungle and ending with finishing a box of wine by drinking it out of a metal bowl.
There was a fourth of July party on the fourth of June in Canita after a rousing day of walking all over Chepo to find agencies that I have already forgot the location of and pizza that I will never forget the location of.
Some kids and some doctors from the USA, specifically Alabama, I think, came to introduce an evangelical community to God, which seems to me like a waste of time, but they also gave out medicine and water filters and you can’t go wrong with drugs and clean water.
I went to Chepo and bought a lot of paint and then I painted my house, yes it is gorgeous, it took forever. And I discovered there is some sort of fly here in Panama that has a very strong fondness for oil based paint, not my favorite discovery in the world.
I also discovered a scorpion in my house which I enjoyed even less than the flies, but got a little bit more enjoyment out of when I killed it with a machete, there were a lot of guts, I was surprised, pleasantly.
I assisted with a few English classes in the school and I am planning on very soon to start talking with the teacher there about how I can help with environmental education, and things I actually think are worthwhile.
We are also in the first steps of building a incinerator, the find an old oil drum step.
I turned twenty three, I feel a lot wiser and a little bit older. I already had my quarter life crisis so I am feeling pretty tranquil about the whole situation and it was nice to get to see so many shining faces in the city and of course drink a little beer and a little whiskey.
But more importantly the day after was pride in Panama and a lot of us went to support the cause, it was an amazing experience, lots of energy and lots of really good vibes. I got a free t-shirt; my main motivation in life, held various signs and flags, did some bad dancing in the streets, ran around, and most importantly felt that I was in some way actually helping to make a difference.
I think that’s all that really happened, that wasn’t just all in a days work, but also I just feel really detached from this blog, I think I need to start writing about events as they happen, because when I finally sit down to type up a blog everything seems so irrelevant and in the past and there are so many things that I just list them all out without much regard to detail or emotion.
And so, I hope the next blog will actually be good and exciting to read.
Also days later, I am in Santa Rita for a week of language reinforcement and living in what could be the nicest house I’ve ever lived in in my life or at least a very close second. Running water inside. Electricity. Need I even say more? We also might have internet, but if so I don’t understand how to use it, but I promise I’ll post this blog before I leave civilization and if not I’ll just delete this sentence. How many promises have I made that are nothing more than deleted sentences, how many licks to the center of a tootsie pop, what’s the meaning of life? The world may never know.
Monday, June 2, 2014
didnt proof read
Today is one hundred and one days in Panama.
I meant to blog sooner and I started one before I left site the last time but I just didn’t have the focus or motivation to finish it and I’m not super impressed with what I had going so if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, but If you’re reading this it means the second time I did succeed so really just try again not try, try again.
I like run on sentences, they’re a metaphor for life, fluid, running on.
Being in site, being a volunteer, its like, it is a little bit difficult to describe.
Right now it is having almost nothing to do, but feeling busier than ever before. Maybe its just my level of Spanish, but I am exhausted pretty regularly.
I have no idea how to structure this blog, there are so many things I feel I need to convey, I should’ve blogged more. I guess ill just start from the beginning of this new adventure in Panama.
Around eight in the morning at typical beach hostel, a couple nights after swearing in as Peace Corps Volunteer, at a beach a couple hours outside of the city I find myself looking for a shoe that was lost somewhere among the commotion, wreckage, excitement of our last night together, the last night the hostel was open, and a lot of free “equal opportunity” shots. I can probably make a metaphor out of looking for my shoe and the building up of emotions inside of me, but I would really have to reach for it, so ill spare you all that gem.
Long story short I never find my shoe, but my next morning buzz gradually evolved into something I thought was a hangover, but soon realized was just a lot of anxiety and maybe a hint of pure undiluted fear. And then all at once I found myself on a bus to the terminal as one by one our numbers grew smaller, and then I found myself in the terminal, and then suddenly I found myself on a coaster bound for Puente with a wad of anxiety the size of a small village in my stomach, completely alone, on a bus with people jammed tight in the aisle.
I stepped off the coaster in Puente and as my phone died, I sat and waited for a boat bound for my new home in Pueblo Nuevo, and I waited, and waited. Then I heard a voice and my saviors had arrived to take me home, but of course nothing in Panama is as easy as waiting for two hours in the scorching sun, for as soon as we were preparing to leave it started pouring and we stood under a tree and pretended that we and everything I owned wasn’t getting soaked.
Eventually I arrived in Pueblo with a backpack full of soaking wet clothes and a really expensive, but completely useless iPod shaped paperweight. And I was greeted with such surprises as a roommate and cow slaughter.
The first two days in site for me were really difficult, between elections, being separated from my friends, watching a cow be slaughtered, a bunch of wet clothes, not being able to communicate effectively, and a new host family, different from the one I stayed with during my site visit, I was about one broken nail away from launching into a spiraling depression. It never happened, thankfully, I have unnaturally strong nails, and things got better quickly.
The good thing about a rough start is how much better things can get.
I would be lying if I said there weren’t times when it is still rough, but I would also be lying if I said there weren’t times when I am full of confidence and happiness.
Alright, the hard part, how to put into words all the things that have happened, my triumphs, my failures, the funny moments, all the really good exciting shit that people want to know about, and all the shit people don’t really care about that I think is super exciting. I’ll try to chronologically order this but sometimes exact order gets lost in the fluidity of the run on sentence of life.
Every morning I wake up around six or seven or seven thirty, it doesn’t matter that much because I usually don’t have anywhere to be, but getting up earlier is better because I run every or close to most every morning, sometimes I can’t for reasons that will probably be revealed at some point in this blog, but anyway, getting up earlier is better because if I wait too long to run, it gets really fucking hot and I hate myself the whole time I’m running and my clothes are more soaked with sweat than usual and it takes all the magic out of a morning run through the jungle with all the monkeys and birds and tranquility and shit. Sometimes when I run, I stop and Rio tigre and explore the river and the caves there, and watch Morachos run across the surface of the water on two legs, or sometimes I stop during my run and pasear with some of the people that live a little bit farther out there. At times I run out to the lake and skip rocks or try to run along the muddy shore that sucks my shoes off my feet. Quite often when I run I get in a stare down with cows that are blocking my path and I have an unrealistic fear of, and I plead to the cows in English and Spanish to please move out of my way. Other times I spot monkeys in the trees and stop to watch them swinging around in the tree tops and scream loud as fuck.
Apart from running the only other thing I’m sure to do every day, usually, is pasear. My whole job right now is basically to pasear. But pasearing is different every time in every way and usually isn’t a hundred percent of any given day.
So, what do I do? What am I doing? Questions I ask myself everyday with usually incomplete answers if anything.
A typical day of pasearing is anything but typical. There have been days where pasearing for me has just been sitting on someone’s very crowded porch while about six Panamanians talk way too fast for me to understand and I just turn my head, nod, smile, laugh when others laugh, just basic faking it until I make it. And then there have been times when pasearing for me has been sitting with one other person in silence for what feels like an eternity until I make an excuse to leave. Sometimes pasearing is watching the news and swatting mosquitos or watching sisterhood of the traveling pants with a couple thirty year old men that are way too into it. Sometimes pasearing is a lot of food, or more likely a lot of creama, because everyone knows I hate coffee, which inevitably sparks a conversation not about why I hate coffee but an out how it is even possible. Sometimes pasearing is standing in the middle of the hill to barrio trying to convince myself that I can pasear in barrio, and sometimes it is believing myself and other times its turning around. Sometimes I use it as an excuse to harvest the avocado or mangos or star fruit or guava that grows by the house. Sometimes pasearing is a really long walk through the jungle to shoot the breeze for fifteen minutes about literally nothing. Sometimes pasearing is literally, “how old are you?” “do you have a boyfriend?” “do you want one?” Sometimes it is like an interview for me and sometimes I am secretly interviewing them. It has been a conversation about how I’m different, but the same as other gringos, about how much my clothes cost, my Spanish, or the success and not so much of previous volunteers.
But more and more often pasearing is really good conversations where I talk more and more about myself and things I want to do and learn more and more about what the people here want.
Alright that is the meat of my time but like all Panamanian food the meat isn’t everything, its all about that white gold, arroz.
A lot of my time not pasearing is spent scratching mosquito bites, I think there is a pretty good chance I will have at least one mosquito borne illness when it is all said and done, but it won’t be malaria, it has gotten so bad that I’ve recently started wearing bug spray sometimes when I remember. I literally have mosquito bites all over my body, like they’re on my butt.
I am also continuing my new hobby of profusely sweating.
I play a lot of socceer with kids and at times older folks as well, and sometimes when I play with the kids they cheat so much that I have to rage quit and go for a walk in the woods, which adds to the mosquito issue, it’s all connected, such is life.
I also recently started playing a lot of cards with my host siblings which also involves a lot of really blatant cheating.
I’m trying to make Frisbee happen here but I think the ninos are a bit too small to really get it going.
I have a garden behind my future house that I’ve recently started putting a lot of effort into which is good because I’m really hurting for some vegetables right about now. And speaking of that future house I’m planning on starting to paint it soon and do some basic home improvement. I already rehung the tarps around the shower, they now actually offer a bit of privacy, which is pretty exciting for me.
I spend a notable chunk of time searching for, opening and eating coconuts, there is nothing quite as good as fresh coconut water after struggling for about half to peel and open the coconut on a hot ass Panamanian winters day.
I do my laundry by hand about once a week by hand because I only have three pairs of pants that are constantly dirty, I’m looking to add a fourth lucky pair to the arsenal probably around the time I post this blog.
Ive also spent some time very recently get invited to go plant some crops with Manuel and cook some food for tourists, so I’m looking forward to that on the horizon, actually it will happen before I post, so I might actually talk about that right here. But I won’t.
I get sick about once a week, like diarrhea and vomit sick, which sometimes stops me from running, but sometimes, it just makes the run a bit more interesting and interrupted. I think it is because of the water, but you know who knows.
I don’t sleep well at all, and I think it’s a combination of not eating any vegetables and just having a lot on my mind, but I will hopefully remedy that soon, with a new pillow to rest my mind and lots of vegetables to fix my insides, if I can get out of site often enough to load up and the garden comes through.
Yesterday I went on an expedition to find a medicinal plant to make tea out of to help me sleep called Tilo, located it, made the tea, drank it, but the results were less than exceptional.
I meant to blog sooner and I started one before I left site the last time but I just didn’t have the focus or motivation to finish it and I’m not super impressed with what I had going so if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, but If you’re reading this it means the second time I did succeed so really just try again not try, try again.
I like run on sentences, they’re a metaphor for life, fluid, running on.
Being in site, being a volunteer, its like, it is a little bit difficult to describe.
Right now it is having almost nothing to do, but feeling busier than ever before. Maybe its just my level of Spanish, but I am exhausted pretty regularly.
I have no idea how to structure this blog, there are so many things I feel I need to convey, I should’ve blogged more. I guess ill just start from the beginning of this new adventure in Panama.
Around eight in the morning at typical beach hostel, a couple nights after swearing in as Peace Corps Volunteer, at a beach a couple hours outside of the city I find myself looking for a shoe that was lost somewhere among the commotion, wreckage, excitement of our last night together, the last night the hostel was open, and a lot of free “equal opportunity” shots. I can probably make a metaphor out of looking for my shoe and the building up of emotions inside of me, but I would really have to reach for it, so ill spare you all that gem.
Long story short I never find my shoe, but my next morning buzz gradually evolved into something I thought was a hangover, but soon realized was just a lot of anxiety and maybe a hint of pure undiluted fear. And then all at once I found myself on a bus to the terminal as one by one our numbers grew smaller, and then I found myself in the terminal, and then suddenly I found myself on a coaster bound for Puente with a wad of anxiety the size of a small village in my stomach, completely alone, on a bus with people jammed tight in the aisle.
I stepped off the coaster in Puente and as my phone died, I sat and waited for a boat bound for my new home in Pueblo Nuevo, and I waited, and waited. Then I heard a voice and my saviors had arrived to take me home, but of course nothing in Panama is as easy as waiting for two hours in the scorching sun, for as soon as we were preparing to leave it started pouring and we stood under a tree and pretended that we and everything I owned wasn’t getting soaked.
Eventually I arrived in Pueblo with a backpack full of soaking wet clothes and a really expensive, but completely useless iPod shaped paperweight. And I was greeted with such surprises as a roommate and cow slaughter.
The first two days in site for me were really difficult, between elections, being separated from my friends, watching a cow be slaughtered, a bunch of wet clothes, not being able to communicate effectively, and a new host family, different from the one I stayed with during my site visit, I was about one broken nail away from launching into a spiraling depression. It never happened, thankfully, I have unnaturally strong nails, and things got better quickly.
The good thing about a rough start is how much better things can get.
I would be lying if I said there weren’t times when it is still rough, but I would also be lying if I said there weren’t times when I am full of confidence and happiness.
Alright, the hard part, how to put into words all the things that have happened, my triumphs, my failures, the funny moments, all the really good exciting shit that people want to know about, and all the shit people don’t really care about that I think is super exciting. I’ll try to chronologically order this but sometimes exact order gets lost in the fluidity of the run on sentence of life.
Every morning I wake up around six or seven or seven thirty, it doesn’t matter that much because I usually don’t have anywhere to be, but getting up earlier is better because I run every or close to most every morning, sometimes I can’t for reasons that will probably be revealed at some point in this blog, but anyway, getting up earlier is better because if I wait too long to run, it gets really fucking hot and I hate myself the whole time I’m running and my clothes are more soaked with sweat than usual and it takes all the magic out of a morning run through the jungle with all the monkeys and birds and tranquility and shit. Sometimes when I run, I stop and Rio tigre and explore the river and the caves there, and watch Morachos run across the surface of the water on two legs, or sometimes I stop during my run and pasear with some of the people that live a little bit farther out there. At times I run out to the lake and skip rocks or try to run along the muddy shore that sucks my shoes off my feet. Quite often when I run I get in a stare down with cows that are blocking my path and I have an unrealistic fear of, and I plead to the cows in English and Spanish to please move out of my way. Other times I spot monkeys in the trees and stop to watch them swinging around in the tree tops and scream loud as fuck.
Apart from running the only other thing I’m sure to do every day, usually, is pasear. My whole job right now is basically to pasear. But pasearing is different every time in every way and usually isn’t a hundred percent of any given day.
So, what do I do? What am I doing? Questions I ask myself everyday with usually incomplete answers if anything.
A typical day of pasearing is anything but typical. There have been days where pasearing for me has just been sitting on someone’s very crowded porch while about six Panamanians talk way too fast for me to understand and I just turn my head, nod, smile, laugh when others laugh, just basic faking it until I make it. And then there have been times when pasearing for me has been sitting with one other person in silence for what feels like an eternity until I make an excuse to leave. Sometimes pasearing is watching the news and swatting mosquitos or watching sisterhood of the traveling pants with a couple thirty year old men that are way too into it. Sometimes pasearing is a lot of food, or more likely a lot of creama, because everyone knows I hate coffee, which inevitably sparks a conversation not about why I hate coffee but an out how it is even possible. Sometimes pasearing is standing in the middle of the hill to barrio trying to convince myself that I can pasear in barrio, and sometimes it is believing myself and other times its turning around. Sometimes I use it as an excuse to harvest the avocado or mangos or star fruit or guava that grows by the house. Sometimes pasearing is a really long walk through the jungle to shoot the breeze for fifteen minutes about literally nothing. Sometimes pasearing is literally, “how old are you?” “do you have a boyfriend?” “do you want one?” Sometimes it is like an interview for me and sometimes I am secretly interviewing them. It has been a conversation about how I’m different, but the same as other gringos, about how much my clothes cost, my Spanish, or the success and not so much of previous volunteers.
But more and more often pasearing is really good conversations where I talk more and more about myself and things I want to do and learn more and more about what the people here want.
Alright that is the meat of my time but like all Panamanian food the meat isn’t everything, its all about that white gold, arroz.
A lot of my time not pasearing is spent scratching mosquito bites, I think there is a pretty good chance I will have at least one mosquito borne illness when it is all said and done, but it won’t be malaria, it has gotten so bad that I’ve recently started wearing bug spray sometimes when I remember. I literally have mosquito bites all over my body, like they’re on my butt.
I am also continuing my new hobby of profusely sweating.
I play a lot of socceer with kids and at times older folks as well, and sometimes when I play with the kids they cheat so much that I have to rage quit and go for a walk in the woods, which adds to the mosquito issue, it’s all connected, such is life.
I also recently started playing a lot of cards with my host siblings which also involves a lot of really blatant cheating.
I’m trying to make Frisbee happen here but I think the ninos are a bit too small to really get it going.
I have a garden behind my future house that I’ve recently started putting a lot of effort into which is good because I’m really hurting for some vegetables right about now. And speaking of that future house I’m planning on starting to paint it soon and do some basic home improvement. I already rehung the tarps around the shower, they now actually offer a bit of privacy, which is pretty exciting for me.
I spend a notable chunk of time searching for, opening and eating coconuts, there is nothing quite as good as fresh coconut water after struggling for about half to peel and open the coconut on a hot ass Panamanian winters day.
I do my laundry by hand about once a week by hand because I only have three pairs of pants that are constantly dirty, I’m looking to add a fourth lucky pair to the arsenal probably around the time I post this blog.
Ive also spent some time very recently get invited to go plant some crops with Manuel and cook some food for tourists, so I’m looking forward to that on the horizon, actually it will happen before I post, so I might actually talk about that right here. But I won’t.
I get sick about once a week, like diarrhea and vomit sick, which sometimes stops me from running, but sometimes, it just makes the run a bit more interesting and interrupted. I think it is because of the water, but you know who knows.
I don’t sleep well at all, and I think it’s a combination of not eating any vegetables and just having a lot on my mind, but I will hopefully remedy that soon, with a new pillow to rest my mind and lots of vegetables to fix my insides, if I can get out of site often enough to load up and the garden comes through.
Yesterday I went on an expedition to find a medicinal plant to make tea out of to help me sleep called Tilo, located it, made the tea, drank it, but the results were less than exceptional.
Monday, April 28, 2014
no time for titles
I typed this really good blog post about the end of training and the challenges I foresee in service, I mean I really articulated myself beautifully and conveyed my emotions perfectly, I read it over and I was moved to tears not just by the content by my amazing use of language it was like a symphony in type. Unfortunately the power went out as I was typing and when my tablet told me it was running low on battery I went to save my masterpiece and as I was typing “blog 4,” my tablet decided it was not meant for this world any longer and it took the beauty of my words with it. Such is Panama.
So this is the less beautifully articulated slightly annoyed version of that post.
I had to write an essay about whether or not I am ready to spend the next two years of my life serving in The Peace Corps here in Panama. I didn’t write the essay. Instead I scribbled pictures with really vague descriptions, which I determined to be fitting as the style of The Peace Corps is to be as vague as possible for as long as possible and also the particular essay asked very specific not fun questions about training materials, but it did get me thinking about what I have gotten myself into and if I am ready and how I am ready. So without further ado and for the second time what the essay I was supposed to write would have sounded like if I wrote it without having to answer silly overly specific prompts.
It’s safe to say Panama is a lot different than the United States even though at times it’s really similar, sometimes when I am in the city I all but forget where I am. And where I am going to be spending the next two years is incredibly different than where I am now, in fact really the only similarity between Santa Clara and Pueblo Nuevo is that they both happen to be in Panama. In the US the power goes out and I’m frustrated because there is no WiFi, in Santa Clara the water goes out and I’m frustrated because I have to buy water and I can’t wash my sweat off, in Pueblo Nuevo there is no electricity, a solar panel just strong enough to charge phones and run a single light at my house families house, and the water there is not always safe to drink and not always available.
I’m thrilled about my site, but at the same time estoy nerviosa more than I have ever been about anything in my entire life. But before I get too far into where I am going I should talk about where I have been.
Training is seventy long days, twenty malaria pills, roughly 100 heaping bowls of rice; probably more, more than a few sleepless nights, a few moments of questioning myself, a lot of dancing, endless hours of classes, a lot of sweat; a lot a lot, a constant rotation of rashes, bug bites, and mystery scrapes, and of course, countless new and exciting experiences.
Training is frustration, but a good frustration at times. I have learned a lot from my formal technical and language classes here in Panama but I think the things I have learned outside of classes solely through existing here in Panama are equally if not more important.
For example in Panama a bus is never really full, yes all the seats have people in them the aisle is jammed with standing people, and people are hanging out the door, but there is always room for one or four more, this is especially true of diablo rojos. Or that with a little skill a lot of luck and quick hands it is possible to sneak a portion of your rice mountain to a nearby hungry dog while saving the feelings of whoever provided said mountain. Or that there is a huge difference between telling someone “Yo voy a bañar en el rio” and “yo voy a el rio.” And beyond these silly things I’ve actually learned about the culture here.
In Panama family isn’t everything but it’s really really fuckin close. When I run out of things to say I take comfort in knowing that all I have to do is ask about family and not only will I not have to say anything for a while, I will learn that they are related to half the town and where they all live and then in the future while Pasearing I can tell them how I’ve met their family before and then they can tell me all about their family and the cycle continues. And beyond the importance of the literal family there’s the way everyone is treated like family here in Panama.
Another important part of the culture here in Panama is Pasearing a word I know I’ve used a lot already with no explanation. The verb pasear literally translates as to pass, it’s a bit of a modismo here in Panama but it is essentially used in the same way to pasear is to visit with neighbors, its stopping by to shoot the breeze, catch up on the latest bochinch, and share a cup of sugar with a splash of coffee. What was going to be swinging by someone’s house to remind them of a meeting turns into a two hour tour of the neighborhood with multiple dinners. It’s a beautiful amazing norm that makes my job of getting to know the community exponentially easier, even if I still have a lot of pena about it.
And finally the last thing I believe is essential to know about Panamanian culture is the role of seasons here in Panama. There are two rainy and dry season or winter and summer. Right now in Panama it is the dawn of the rainy season. During the rainy season the country is green fruit bearing trees begin to share their goodness and crops are planted. Kids go to school in the rainy season, laundry is a bit harder and Pasearing isn’t as frequent, because nobody likes walking around in the rain and it’s impossible to hear with rain pounding down on a tin roof, I’m not planning on letting that stop me though . The dry season is like a vacation. Days are spent at the rio, kids don’t have school, some people visit far away family. But in dry season there isn’t much growing and it’s really just hot as fuck and carnival.
And that is a spark note version of Peace Corps training mas o menos.
And let me just say the first time I did this it was a lot more poetic and emotionally touching, but I guess this will have to do for now, I also ranted about waste management last time, and I’m not sure how to fit that in this time. I guess I could just do it right here. Condensed. Waste management here in Panama is all but non existent for the most part trash is burnt or thrown into rivers, lakes, forests, ditches, streets, wherever. They way I understand it, and I could be wrong, I often am, is that at one time it was chill to just throw things on the ground because all that was being thrown out was just food scraps and when food scraps are thrown out they decompose or are eaten by animas, the circle of life, decomposition, beautiful, cycles. Then one day packages came to Panama and with packages did not come the infrastructure for removing the packages when they were empty. The people did what they knew, what worked, and threw it outside or they burnt it, and it was fine, nothing happened and then one day everything happened. Water quality was lower and people were getting sick from smoke and there was just trash everywhere, but still the infrastructure did not exist. In places with time it came but there are still places that are unlikely to see waste management services for a very long time if ever. And it is culturally acceptable here in Panama to throw trash on to the ground, because what else are we going to do with it.
“Hola soy Angie, soy una voluntaria de El Cuerpo de Paz. Yo quiero ayudar con manejo de basura.”
And finally I will end it with what I am feeling about the future, my next two years, being the only gringa in an isolated town with no electricity, readiness to serve or whatever.
Am I ready?
Fuckkkkkkk no, what kind of question even is that? Am I ready for the next two years? What? Ready for two years? That is literally LITERALLY impossible.
I would say I am ready for the first day and I am feeling good about the first week.
And I’m a little terrified but a lot excited. I’m worried about language. I’m worried about feeling isolated. I’m worried about the intense evangelical religion of the majority of my community. I’m worried I don’t have the knowledge they’re expecting me to have or the ability to convey it. And I’m terrified I’m going to fail.
I’m stoked about my site; it’s gorgeous, I’m stoked to work with kids. I’m stoked to improve my language in order to better teach and learn. I’m stoked about helping with the tourism groups.
I may not be ready for the next two years or the next two months for that matter. But I am ready to learn from each new day in order to prepare myself for the next day. Life after all is a fluid process it’s a river carving out its banks, changing as the sediment around it changes, always adjusting, always flowing. I don’t feel like these next two years are going to be any different, they will be a process, and I’m sure they are going to be incredibly difficult, but it is going to be an awesome and amazing kind of difficult. It’s life, it’s my life, and it’s what I’ve always said I would do and I’m doing. And yeah I’m not 100% ready but dang it’s about time. I
’m going to take a moment to say that I make paragraphs when I type these blogs up in Word but then Blogger gets rid of them and that isn’t my fault at all, and I just had to get that out because it was bothering me and this is a safe space. Also I don’t know if I used those semi colons right, but I don’t give a fuck.
Also last minute addition to this already unbearably long blog post, yesterday I went to a bull fight, well I guess mot really a bull fight more of like people doing stuff with bulls, a Panamanian bull fight. Honestly I don’t even know. Let me set the scene, it’s raining everyone is crowded under this rickety ass tent near this hastily built fenced in circle where this bull is just relentlessly slamming its face into the walls. All of a sudden it just busts through the fence. I have never seen so many Panamanians run so quickly and I couldn’t even enjoy it because I was too busy running for my life. Everyone runs into the casa communal and the bull follows luckily the backdoor was open and nobody got hurt and the bull was caught the fence was repaired and the games continued and so did the rain. And for the rest of the time I stood ready to run.
Anything can happen.
So this is the less beautifully articulated slightly annoyed version of that post.
I had to write an essay about whether or not I am ready to spend the next two years of my life serving in The Peace Corps here in Panama. I didn’t write the essay. Instead I scribbled pictures with really vague descriptions, which I determined to be fitting as the style of The Peace Corps is to be as vague as possible for as long as possible and also the particular essay asked very specific not fun questions about training materials, but it did get me thinking about what I have gotten myself into and if I am ready and how I am ready. So without further ado and for the second time what the essay I was supposed to write would have sounded like if I wrote it without having to answer silly overly specific prompts.
It’s safe to say Panama is a lot different than the United States even though at times it’s really similar, sometimes when I am in the city I all but forget where I am. And where I am going to be spending the next two years is incredibly different than where I am now, in fact really the only similarity between Santa Clara and Pueblo Nuevo is that they both happen to be in Panama. In the US the power goes out and I’m frustrated because there is no WiFi, in Santa Clara the water goes out and I’m frustrated because I have to buy water and I can’t wash my sweat off, in Pueblo Nuevo there is no electricity, a solar panel just strong enough to charge phones and run a single light at my house families house, and the water there is not always safe to drink and not always available.
I’m thrilled about my site, but at the same time estoy nerviosa more than I have ever been about anything in my entire life. But before I get too far into where I am going I should talk about where I have been.
Training is seventy long days, twenty malaria pills, roughly 100 heaping bowls of rice; probably more, more than a few sleepless nights, a few moments of questioning myself, a lot of dancing, endless hours of classes, a lot of sweat; a lot a lot, a constant rotation of rashes, bug bites, and mystery scrapes, and of course, countless new and exciting experiences.
Training is frustration, but a good frustration at times. I have learned a lot from my formal technical and language classes here in Panama but I think the things I have learned outside of classes solely through existing here in Panama are equally if not more important.
For example in Panama a bus is never really full, yes all the seats have people in them the aisle is jammed with standing people, and people are hanging out the door, but there is always room for one or four more, this is especially true of diablo rojos. Or that with a little skill a lot of luck and quick hands it is possible to sneak a portion of your rice mountain to a nearby hungry dog while saving the feelings of whoever provided said mountain. Or that there is a huge difference between telling someone “Yo voy a bañar en el rio” and “yo voy a el rio.” And beyond these silly things I’ve actually learned about the culture here.
In Panama family isn’t everything but it’s really really fuckin close. When I run out of things to say I take comfort in knowing that all I have to do is ask about family and not only will I not have to say anything for a while, I will learn that they are related to half the town and where they all live and then in the future while Pasearing I can tell them how I’ve met their family before and then they can tell me all about their family and the cycle continues. And beyond the importance of the literal family there’s the way everyone is treated like family here in Panama.
Another important part of the culture here in Panama is Pasearing a word I know I’ve used a lot already with no explanation. The verb pasear literally translates as to pass, it’s a bit of a modismo here in Panama but it is essentially used in the same way to pasear is to visit with neighbors, its stopping by to shoot the breeze, catch up on the latest bochinch, and share a cup of sugar with a splash of coffee. What was going to be swinging by someone’s house to remind them of a meeting turns into a two hour tour of the neighborhood with multiple dinners. It’s a beautiful amazing norm that makes my job of getting to know the community exponentially easier, even if I still have a lot of pena about it.
And finally the last thing I believe is essential to know about Panamanian culture is the role of seasons here in Panama. There are two rainy and dry season or winter and summer. Right now in Panama it is the dawn of the rainy season. During the rainy season the country is green fruit bearing trees begin to share their goodness and crops are planted. Kids go to school in the rainy season, laundry is a bit harder and Pasearing isn’t as frequent, because nobody likes walking around in the rain and it’s impossible to hear with rain pounding down on a tin roof, I’m not planning on letting that stop me though . The dry season is like a vacation. Days are spent at the rio, kids don’t have school, some people visit far away family. But in dry season there isn’t much growing and it’s really just hot as fuck and carnival.
And that is a spark note version of Peace Corps training mas o menos.
And let me just say the first time I did this it was a lot more poetic and emotionally touching, but I guess this will have to do for now, I also ranted about waste management last time, and I’m not sure how to fit that in this time. I guess I could just do it right here. Condensed. Waste management here in Panama is all but non existent for the most part trash is burnt or thrown into rivers, lakes, forests, ditches, streets, wherever. They way I understand it, and I could be wrong, I often am, is that at one time it was chill to just throw things on the ground because all that was being thrown out was just food scraps and when food scraps are thrown out they decompose or are eaten by animas, the circle of life, decomposition, beautiful, cycles. Then one day packages came to Panama and with packages did not come the infrastructure for removing the packages when they were empty. The people did what they knew, what worked, and threw it outside or they burnt it, and it was fine, nothing happened and then one day everything happened. Water quality was lower and people were getting sick from smoke and there was just trash everywhere, but still the infrastructure did not exist. In places with time it came but there are still places that are unlikely to see waste management services for a very long time if ever. And it is culturally acceptable here in Panama to throw trash on to the ground, because what else are we going to do with it.
“Hola soy Angie, soy una voluntaria de El Cuerpo de Paz. Yo quiero ayudar con manejo de basura.”
And finally I will end it with what I am feeling about the future, my next two years, being the only gringa in an isolated town with no electricity, readiness to serve or whatever.
Am I ready?
Fuckkkkkkk no, what kind of question even is that? Am I ready for the next two years? What? Ready for two years? That is literally LITERALLY impossible.
I would say I am ready for the first day and I am feeling good about the first week.
And I’m a little terrified but a lot excited. I’m worried about language. I’m worried about feeling isolated. I’m worried about the intense evangelical religion of the majority of my community. I’m worried I don’t have the knowledge they’re expecting me to have or the ability to convey it. And I’m terrified I’m going to fail.
I’m stoked about my site; it’s gorgeous, I’m stoked to work with kids. I’m stoked to improve my language in order to better teach and learn. I’m stoked about helping with the tourism groups.
I may not be ready for the next two years or the next two months for that matter. But I am ready to learn from each new day in order to prepare myself for the next day. Life after all is a fluid process it’s a river carving out its banks, changing as the sediment around it changes, always adjusting, always flowing. I don’t feel like these next two years are going to be any different, they will be a process, and I’m sure they are going to be incredibly difficult, but it is going to be an awesome and amazing kind of difficult. It’s life, it’s my life, and it’s what I’ve always said I would do and I’m doing. And yeah I’m not 100% ready but dang it’s about time. I
’m going to take a moment to say that I make paragraphs when I type these blogs up in Word but then Blogger gets rid of them and that isn’t my fault at all, and I just had to get that out because it was bothering me and this is a safe space. Also I don’t know if I used those semi colons right, but I don’t give a fuck.
Also last minute addition to this already unbearably long blog post, yesterday I went to a bull fight, well I guess mot really a bull fight more of like people doing stuff with bulls, a Panamanian bull fight. Honestly I don’t even know. Let me set the scene, it’s raining everyone is crowded under this rickety ass tent near this hastily built fenced in circle where this bull is just relentlessly slamming its face into the walls. All of a sudden it just busts through the fence. I have never seen so many Panamanians run so quickly and I couldn’t even enjoy it because I was too busy running for my life. Everyone runs into the casa communal and the bull follows luckily the backdoor was open and nobody got hurt and the bull was caught the fence was repaired and the games continued and so did the rain. And for the rest of the time I stood ready to run.
Anything can happen.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Into the jungle
Today is day fifty four in panama but tomorrow when I post this it will be day fifty five. Damn.
I have these moments here when I’m on the bus crammed with people, that hasn’t moved more than twenty feet in the last 37 minutes, pinned against a women that smells like eggs and the window in the seat right above the wheel, knees to my chest, soaking wet with sweat, backpack wedged between my legs, starving, with a really full bladder, just coming to the realization that I forgot my malaria pills, with a weird rash all over my forearms, after a week in my future site, holding god knows whose baby when I realize that I am really really happy.
My future site. Pueblo Nuevo. It is the site I dreamed of when I got my invitation to serve minus the ocean, but hey, they tell me I have to be flexible.
It’s a bus and a boat out of the city, I’ll say four hours to be safe depending on when a lancha is heading to town. It’s a small town with 152 people and 63 houses, spread out over a pretty good distance. The town has four parts Pueblo, Nuevo York, Barrio, and Isla. The highest concentration of people is in Pueblo and I live between pueblo and Isla. The church, comador, tienda, and school are all in pueblo. Barrio is mostly people not in the church and it has another tienda and a cantina. I didn’t visit Nuevo York but I hear there’s about six houses up there and Isla as well. My site is in the jungle, fruit and monkeys galore. There’s a couple rivers and alligators which I’m pretty sure are actually crocodiles but that’s one of those battles I’m not sure I want to tackle. There is not electricity but there are solar panels and some peoples are better than others. My host family’s home is on stilts, made of wood, and has a zinc roof, the shower is a spigot and a bucket surrounded by tarps, the bathroom is a latrine. I love it. The people are perfect, beyond nice and I have a really good feeling about integration.
There’re a lot of projects I can’t wait to try and tackle from forming an ultimate team at the school to pushing for a new aqueduct, from home gardens to eco stoves. And without electricity there will be time for me to paint my house, hammock appreciate, master the guitar, run, learn how to handstand and whatever else I decide is an essential skill. Maybe I’ll write a best-selling novel.
Day one in site, I get off the lancha to the whole school on the beach there to greet me. I met my host family who I will be living with for the next three months, Mirrian and her daughter Mani minus my host dad, Ovidrio, who was out logging. We bonded over sharing a last name. And then I swam in khakis and a button down shirt with my host sister in the rio, got some mango, tripped over a barbed wire fence and cut the shit out of my leg, and settled in for the most part.
On another day I went and helped mas o menos cook for a birthday party in barrio, a different part of the town.
There was a day I met the teachers at the school who are amazing and have a lot of great energy and ideas, helped to make a map of the town, taught a little English, swam some more, paseared, rode in the back of a pickup that was the first car to cross the river on the newly cut dirt road.
On a different day I went for a run on the new road got some avocados, got some eggs, saw some rivers, farms, and cliffs, bushwhacked to a large tree, got a weird forearm rash, and ate a couple breakfasts.
Another day started with a tour of the caves by some kids in the town which were beautiful, minus a well justified snake murder, a drowning bat, and a bit of trash. Later in the day there was a trip to the Darien for an evangelical church service involving a little speaking in tongues and a lot of clapping, an empanada, a police checkpoint, and a late night/early morning boat ride.
There was a day in there when a boat of tourists sank on their way out of town and had to swim to an island formerly occupied by a Columbian drug trafficker, and I stood on the porch unable to do anything to help, until we decided it would be good to get a better look.
On another day I visited barrio again to help make sancocha I think mas o menos to celebrate the new camino and I also helped to collect a lot of guava, got called out on only sort of understanding what was going on, and went to an ecotourism meeting where we all struggled to fill out my site locater form and I was given a cup of sugar with a splash off coffee while I learned the goings ons of the eco-tourism group that I really look forward to working with.
I’m worried about feeling isolated and how I will deal with such a large intense religious presence. I’m excited about literally every other aspect. Literally.
I have these moments here when I’m on the bus crammed with people, that hasn’t moved more than twenty feet in the last 37 minutes, pinned against a women that smells like eggs and the window in the seat right above the wheel, knees to my chest, soaking wet with sweat, backpack wedged between my legs, starving, with a really full bladder, just coming to the realization that I forgot my malaria pills, with a weird rash all over my forearms, after a week in my future site, holding god knows whose baby when I realize that I am really really happy.
My future site. Pueblo Nuevo. It is the site I dreamed of when I got my invitation to serve minus the ocean, but hey, they tell me I have to be flexible.
It’s a bus and a boat out of the city, I’ll say four hours to be safe depending on when a lancha is heading to town. It’s a small town with 152 people and 63 houses, spread out over a pretty good distance. The town has four parts Pueblo, Nuevo York, Barrio, and Isla. The highest concentration of people is in Pueblo and I live between pueblo and Isla. The church, comador, tienda, and school are all in pueblo. Barrio is mostly people not in the church and it has another tienda and a cantina. I didn’t visit Nuevo York but I hear there’s about six houses up there and Isla as well. My site is in the jungle, fruit and monkeys galore. There’s a couple rivers and alligators which I’m pretty sure are actually crocodiles but that’s one of those battles I’m not sure I want to tackle. There is not electricity but there are solar panels and some peoples are better than others. My host family’s home is on stilts, made of wood, and has a zinc roof, the shower is a spigot and a bucket surrounded by tarps, the bathroom is a latrine. I love it. The people are perfect, beyond nice and I have a really good feeling about integration.
There’re a lot of projects I can’t wait to try and tackle from forming an ultimate team at the school to pushing for a new aqueduct, from home gardens to eco stoves. And without electricity there will be time for me to paint my house, hammock appreciate, master the guitar, run, learn how to handstand and whatever else I decide is an essential skill. Maybe I’ll write a best-selling novel.
Day one in site, I get off the lancha to the whole school on the beach there to greet me. I met my host family who I will be living with for the next three months, Mirrian and her daughter Mani minus my host dad, Ovidrio, who was out logging. We bonded over sharing a last name. And then I swam in khakis and a button down shirt with my host sister in the rio, got some mango, tripped over a barbed wire fence and cut the shit out of my leg, and settled in for the most part.
On another day I went and helped mas o menos cook for a birthday party in barrio, a different part of the town.
There was a day I met the teachers at the school who are amazing and have a lot of great energy and ideas, helped to make a map of the town, taught a little English, swam some more, paseared, rode in the back of a pickup that was the first car to cross the river on the newly cut dirt road.
On a different day I went for a run on the new road got some avocados, got some eggs, saw some rivers, farms, and cliffs, bushwhacked to a large tree, got a weird forearm rash, and ate a couple breakfasts.
Another day started with a tour of the caves by some kids in the town which were beautiful, minus a well justified snake murder, a drowning bat, and a bit of trash. Later in the day there was a trip to the Darien for an evangelical church service involving a little speaking in tongues and a lot of clapping, an empanada, a police checkpoint, and a late night/early morning boat ride.
There was a day in there when a boat of tourists sank on their way out of town and had to swim to an island formerly occupied by a Columbian drug trafficker, and I stood on the porch unable to do anything to help, until we decided it would be good to get a better look.
On another day I visited barrio again to help make sancocha I think mas o menos to celebrate the new camino and I also helped to collect a lot of guava, got called out on only sort of understanding what was going on, and went to an ecotourism meeting where we all struggled to fill out my site locater form and I was given a cup of sugar with a splash off coffee while I learned the goings ons of the eco-tourism group that I really look forward to working with.
I’m worried about feeling isolated and how I will deal with such a large intense religious presence. I’m excited about literally every other aspect. Literally.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Empezar
Blogging is literally, LITERALLY so hard for me to find time to do, I only have time at night in the dark when my screen beckons all the unseen insects in the darkest corners of my room to show themselves by repeatedly dive bombing not only the illuminated screen of my tablet but my face as well. It’s possible that this blog is increasing my risk of dengue by 30 percent, possible. Yet here I am selflessly blogging in order to keep the ones I love informed about the goings on in Panama.
What is crazy is that after an eventful and tiring week in vallerriquito for tech week, today while returning from language class I found myself saying to myself it will be good to have a few normal days of class and routine to relax a bit. If you didn’t catch the subtle message in that, it is that today I considered living in panama to be not only normal but a little mundane as well.
Panama is starting to feel like home halfway into training. Novelties are becoming commonplace and I find myself getting upset when a bus costs over 45 cents or when I was charged 1.50 for a beer on the beach.
Things have happened since the last blog. Probably most notably was tech week but there were other things as well.
A couple of days after that blog we spent a day in Panama city learning how the metro buses work and where important things are in the city like a grocery store with American food, a medical center, a couple of hotels, a fish market with dollar beers and a brewery that charged five.
Then there were days when we worked in the school in Santa Clara and I helped to teach a group of kids where their food comes from and what their food needs to grow in Spanish to the best of my ability.
There was also a day we took a long walk to a river jumped off some different cliffs and played tag like small children while listening to Ryan Seacrest tell us the top 40 songs in America on a portable radio.
And then there was a busy and stressful and amazing and truly beneficial week in Los Santos in the town of Vallerriquito. A town containing the most wonderful and kind people I have ever met. It was in Vallerriquito that I realized that no matter where they tell me I will be living and working for the next two years in Panama, I am going to be really really happy. The first night of tech week set the tone, I told my family how much I loved fresh coconut water and coconut in general and my host brother hunted down and opened a coconut for me with a machete, finding the coconut was easy but opening one with a machete is no easy task. He managed to hack into it in just a couple of minutes when a few weeks prior I tried without success for much much longer. It’s true that I am here to teach and help the people of panama but it is more than obvious that there is just as much for me to learn from them. From there the week continued with a lot of teaching not only in the schools with kids but also to other community members about waste management, recycling, and how to have an organic garden. I was at first intimidated and really stressed about needing to facilitate so much in a language I’m only just beginning to comprehend but the experiences were truly great and helped immensely to boost my confidence and shrink the peña I have about speaking in Spanish. In fact every day in Panama my confidence in myself and my ability to communicate grows.
For the entire time I have been in Panama the office has been telling me that flexibility is key and I think I kind of have just been shrugging it off up until now my future in Panama has seemed so unknown and foreign but tech week gave me a real taste of what it is like to be in site and how common it is for things to change and how often they do change. I think more so then technical skills, the main thing I learned during tech week is that it is important to choose battles, one, and more importantly, most importantly take pride and find joy and fulfillment in the smallest of victories because in the peace corps a butterflies wings truly is enough to cause a hurricane. A good hurricane a hurricane of sustainable development.
I am not here to build a million stoves or dig a gazillion latrines, or even reforest a watershed, I am here to empower and give the local people the skills they need to help themselves.
My site for the next two years in Panama, the town I will be devoting two years of my life to is Pueblo Nuevo de Bayano in Panama Este.
What is crazy is that after an eventful and tiring week in vallerriquito for tech week, today while returning from language class I found myself saying to myself it will be good to have a few normal days of class and routine to relax a bit. If you didn’t catch the subtle message in that, it is that today I considered living in panama to be not only normal but a little mundane as well.
Panama is starting to feel like home halfway into training. Novelties are becoming commonplace and I find myself getting upset when a bus costs over 45 cents or when I was charged 1.50 for a beer on the beach.
Things have happened since the last blog. Probably most notably was tech week but there were other things as well.
A couple of days after that blog we spent a day in Panama city learning how the metro buses work and where important things are in the city like a grocery store with American food, a medical center, a couple of hotels, a fish market with dollar beers and a brewery that charged five.
Then there were days when we worked in the school in Santa Clara and I helped to teach a group of kids where their food comes from and what their food needs to grow in Spanish to the best of my ability.
There was also a day we took a long walk to a river jumped off some different cliffs and played tag like small children while listening to Ryan Seacrest tell us the top 40 songs in America on a portable radio.
And then there was a busy and stressful and amazing and truly beneficial week in Los Santos in the town of Vallerriquito. A town containing the most wonderful and kind people I have ever met. It was in Vallerriquito that I realized that no matter where they tell me I will be living and working for the next two years in Panama, I am going to be really really happy. The first night of tech week set the tone, I told my family how much I loved fresh coconut water and coconut in general and my host brother hunted down and opened a coconut for me with a machete, finding the coconut was easy but opening one with a machete is no easy task. He managed to hack into it in just a couple of minutes when a few weeks prior I tried without success for much much longer. It’s true that I am here to teach and help the people of panama but it is more than obvious that there is just as much for me to learn from them. From there the week continued with a lot of teaching not only in the schools with kids but also to other community members about waste management, recycling, and how to have an organic garden. I was at first intimidated and really stressed about needing to facilitate so much in a language I’m only just beginning to comprehend but the experiences were truly great and helped immensely to boost my confidence and shrink the peña I have about speaking in Spanish. In fact every day in Panama my confidence in myself and my ability to communicate grows.
For the entire time I have been in Panama the office has been telling me that flexibility is key and I think I kind of have just been shrugging it off up until now my future in Panama has seemed so unknown and foreign but tech week gave me a real taste of what it is like to be in site and how common it is for things to change and how often they do change. I think more so then technical skills, the main thing I learned during tech week is that it is important to choose battles, one, and more importantly, most importantly take pride and find joy and fulfillment in the smallest of victories because in the peace corps a butterflies wings truly is enough to cause a hurricane. A good hurricane a hurricane of sustainable development.
I am not here to build a million stoves or dig a gazillion latrines, or even reforest a watershed, I am here to empower and give the local people the skills they need to help themselves.
My site for the next two years in Panama, the town I will be devoting two years of my life to is Pueblo Nuevo de Bayano in Panama Este.
Friday, March 14, 2014
viva
So blogging in Panama, there are harder things in the world but there are also easier things in the world.
I have been in the country for about twenty days now, when we got here they said that the time would fly by and yet the first few days seemed like weeks but here we are a couple weeks in and the weeks are beginning to feel like days.
I don’t know where to start or how to start, I don’t know what to say to describe how amazing I feel, how beautiful this country is, or how extraordinary the people are. How do I begin?
I wouldn’t say I’m constantly happy, but I’m the farthest from sad, its hard and I get frustrated, but it’s fun and I’m learning amazing things, so to describe my feelings about panama exactly I would have to say I feel correct, right. I feel as though right now there is nowhere else I should be there is nothing else I should be doing. Panama is correct I feel no regrets in my choice to come here and each day I am more excited for the next.
The country is gorgeous and I can’t wait to see more of it, I just wish there was a bit less trash, but hey that is what I am here for. I love the mountains, the beaches, the canal, el campo, and the jungles. I love the bus system and I love the relaxed way of life here. The people are more or less good, I’ve had nothing but kindness unless I just can’t understand that Spanish well enough to notice people being mean.
I am currently living in Santa Clara with a wonderful Panamanian family that has opened their wonderful home to me. They are amazingly patient with my lack of language and always willing to help me learn more. We live a short walk up a hill in a four bedroom cinder block house with a tin roof. I have my own room but share a ceiling with my host parents. We have electricity, running water, and a television but no toilet and our shower and kitchen are on the back porch. Along with my parents two of my siblings live here as well and two of my siblings kids. My other two siblings live in adjacent houses. Most of Santa Clara is related to most of Santa Clara. I also live with 14 chickens, 3 dogs, 11 puppies, 3 ducks, and countless geckos.
A typical day in my life as a CEC PCT in Panama begins at 6 am when I wake up and do some abs on the floor until 630 when I shower and eat some breakfast and drink some luke warm tea. Following that I rush to do my Spanish homework that I did not do the night before, at 740 I walk across town to Spanish and start my constant sweating. After four riveting hours of learning and harassing one another in Spanish I continue sweating as I walk home for a hearty lunch of what is most likely chicken and rice. Following lunch I walk to the school for 2 hours of learning technical information in an air conditioned classroom where I do not stop sweating even for a moment. Following that I spend two or three hours doing such activities as making fertilizer, getting people to pee in a bottle to make pesticides, digging holes with a koa to build a fence, removing the top from an oil drum with a machete to build an incinerator, cutting the grass with a machete, using the machete in all ways possible, watering the garden, planting seeds, burning trash, and using a pickax as a rototiller among other things. Following that I continue my sweating as I return to my house where I am greeted with what is probably a heaping plate of rice and chicken or my other favorite chicken and rice, and I sweat as I eat it. I shoot the breeze as best I can with my family, kick around a soccer ball and retrieve that soccer ball repeatedly from the pond/river/lake/hole with water. I do some Spanish homework maybe and attempt to read the newspaper aloud for my family. I might watch a bit of tv but without a doubt I am sweating, so I eventually shower and crawl into bed where I continue to sweat until I fall asleep. Rinse and repeat.
Plot twist, not all days in panama are typical. In fact most are not even close to typical. I guess I will just list things now that I think are noteworthy events thus far in my Panamanian life in attempted chronological order.
Every Sunday I take two malaria pills and have tripped out dreams.
We played some futbol with the youth of Santa Clara and all got shown up by an eight year old.
A couple of us went to the rio together and bought a watermelon for the walk jumped off some rocks and had a super grand time. I got a sun burn. Going to the rio is an innuendo in Panama, but we actually just went to the rio.
Some days we go spend eight hours in the office and get injected with some vaccines, watch some PowerPoints about diarrhea, botflies, and dengue and maybe grab some ice cream, crash the internet, get some money. Today is one of those days.
Also Carnaval happened while were here but we weren’t allowed to drink, but we still danced like Caucasians in a circle, followed la reina around for hours, and watched while the majority of the population get plastered.
We visited the nearby city of La Chorrea and talked to strangers while figuring out the bus situation. And I bought a 4 dollar egg shaped soccer ball.
Then we all headed out in different directions to visit PCVs in their communities and get a feel for what our next two years will be. In my case I did a lot of sweating, jewelry making, seed planting, kid entertaining, pasearing, wine appreciating, river swimming, hitchhiking, not chicken and rice eating, learning, and getting excited. I also watched some chickens eat the head of a different recently killed chicken.
Some of us met up Chitre after out visits and let of some steam by eating burritos, drinking some beers, dancing tipico, playing pool, and talking to taxi drivers.
And I guess that is panama so far in a nutshell.
I have been in the country for about twenty days now, when we got here they said that the time would fly by and yet the first few days seemed like weeks but here we are a couple weeks in and the weeks are beginning to feel like days.
I don’t know where to start or how to start, I don’t know what to say to describe how amazing I feel, how beautiful this country is, or how extraordinary the people are. How do I begin?
I wouldn’t say I’m constantly happy, but I’m the farthest from sad, its hard and I get frustrated, but it’s fun and I’m learning amazing things, so to describe my feelings about panama exactly I would have to say I feel correct, right. I feel as though right now there is nowhere else I should be there is nothing else I should be doing. Panama is correct I feel no regrets in my choice to come here and each day I am more excited for the next.
The country is gorgeous and I can’t wait to see more of it, I just wish there was a bit less trash, but hey that is what I am here for. I love the mountains, the beaches, the canal, el campo, and the jungles. I love the bus system and I love the relaxed way of life here. The people are more or less good, I’ve had nothing but kindness unless I just can’t understand that Spanish well enough to notice people being mean.
I am currently living in Santa Clara with a wonderful Panamanian family that has opened their wonderful home to me. They are amazingly patient with my lack of language and always willing to help me learn more. We live a short walk up a hill in a four bedroom cinder block house with a tin roof. I have my own room but share a ceiling with my host parents. We have electricity, running water, and a television but no toilet and our shower and kitchen are on the back porch. Along with my parents two of my siblings live here as well and two of my siblings kids. My other two siblings live in adjacent houses. Most of Santa Clara is related to most of Santa Clara. I also live with 14 chickens, 3 dogs, 11 puppies, 3 ducks, and countless geckos.
A typical day in my life as a CEC PCT in Panama begins at 6 am when I wake up and do some abs on the floor until 630 when I shower and eat some breakfast and drink some luke warm tea. Following that I rush to do my Spanish homework that I did not do the night before, at 740 I walk across town to Spanish and start my constant sweating. After four riveting hours of learning and harassing one another in Spanish I continue sweating as I walk home for a hearty lunch of what is most likely chicken and rice. Following lunch I walk to the school for 2 hours of learning technical information in an air conditioned classroom where I do not stop sweating even for a moment. Following that I spend two or three hours doing such activities as making fertilizer, getting people to pee in a bottle to make pesticides, digging holes with a koa to build a fence, removing the top from an oil drum with a machete to build an incinerator, cutting the grass with a machete, using the machete in all ways possible, watering the garden, planting seeds, burning trash, and using a pickax as a rototiller among other things. Following that I continue my sweating as I return to my house where I am greeted with what is probably a heaping plate of rice and chicken or my other favorite chicken and rice, and I sweat as I eat it. I shoot the breeze as best I can with my family, kick around a soccer ball and retrieve that soccer ball repeatedly from the pond/river/lake/hole with water. I do some Spanish homework maybe and attempt to read the newspaper aloud for my family. I might watch a bit of tv but without a doubt I am sweating, so I eventually shower and crawl into bed where I continue to sweat until I fall asleep. Rinse and repeat.
Plot twist, not all days in panama are typical. In fact most are not even close to typical. I guess I will just list things now that I think are noteworthy events thus far in my Panamanian life in attempted chronological order.
Every Sunday I take two malaria pills and have tripped out dreams.
We played some futbol with the youth of Santa Clara and all got shown up by an eight year old.
A couple of us went to the rio together and bought a watermelon for the walk jumped off some rocks and had a super grand time. I got a sun burn. Going to the rio is an innuendo in Panama, but we actually just went to the rio.
Some days we go spend eight hours in the office and get injected with some vaccines, watch some PowerPoints about diarrhea, botflies, and dengue and maybe grab some ice cream, crash the internet, get some money. Today is one of those days.
Also Carnaval happened while were here but we weren’t allowed to drink, but we still danced like Caucasians in a circle, followed la reina around for hours, and watched while the majority of the population get plastered.
We visited the nearby city of La Chorrea and talked to strangers while figuring out the bus situation. And I bought a 4 dollar egg shaped soccer ball.
Then we all headed out in different directions to visit PCVs in their communities and get a feel for what our next two years will be. In my case I did a lot of sweating, jewelry making, seed planting, kid entertaining, pasearing, wine appreciating, river swimming, hitchhiking, not chicken and rice eating, learning, and getting excited. I also watched some chickens eat the head of a different recently killed chicken.
Some of us met up Chitre after out visits and let of some steam by eating burritos, drinking some beers, dancing tipico, playing pool, and talking to taxi drivers.
And I guess that is panama so far in a nutshell.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Aquí Ahora
The first day and a half has been super hectic, as have the days leading up to actually finally becoming a trainee. In the past three nights I am certain that I haven’t even accumulated eight total hours of sleep. Too much excitement and too much to be done I suppose. Already I have learned so much and have become less nervous and more excited about whatever it is that I will be doing and we have yet to even touch down in panama. And I was thrilled to see how many people wished me well whether through texts, phone calls, or facebook it is safe to say I have never felt such an influx of love and support. There are already things I have realized I left behind and the list seems to grow, the more I think about it, I guess to solve this problem the best course of action would be to stop thinking about it. Why worry about things gone by, until I have some way of solving them. The people have met thus far all seem to be spectacular, but how could you be anything less than that and dedicate 27 months of your life to something so spectacular. Time warp, landed in Panama, walked off the plane to sunny skies, 95 degrees, signs in Spanish, and an overwhelming feeling of happiness. The language is a bit intimidating but I am finding small victories in translating signs. Its the little things. Tomorrow begins PST and our next couple of days are packed. I am ecstatic about brushing the dust of my Spanish and really trying to be one with Panamanian culture. We are currently in the lap of luxury with not only mostly running water and electricity but the added benefits of WiFi and air conditioning until Sunday when we will be off to our training communities. Sorry this blog is so dry and matter of factly, and lacking detail, but it has been a long day and I am looking forward to a full nights sleep, but felt compelled to give an update. They will get better and rarer potentially, which inflates their value.
Donations of letters accepted at:
CUERPO DE PAZ
EDIFICIO 240, 3ER PISO
CALLE VICTOR IGLESIAS
CIUDAD DE SABER, CLAYTON
CORREGIMIENTO DE ANCÒN
PANAMÁ, REP. DE PANAMÁ
ATTENTION: ANGELINA CHAVEZ
Donations of letters accepted at:
CUERPO DE PAZ
EDIFICIO 240, 3ER PISO
CALLE VICTOR IGLESIAS
CIUDAD DE SABER, CLAYTON
CORREGIMIENTO DE ANCÒN
PANAMÁ, REP. DE PANAMÁ
ATTENTION: ANGELINA CHAVEZ
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Preface
On February eighteenth I am flying to Washington DC and on February Nineteenth I leave to begin what is sure to be the most exciting adventure of my life so far.
Twenty seven months serving as a PCV in Panama. In just under three weeks I will be living one of my biggest dreams. Maybe I am a cliché for blogging about it, maybe I won't even be able to blog about it and this will be the only post, maybe you're saying to yourself, "gee willikers, people still blog," but somewhere deep inside of me I want to share my story with the spot deep inside of you that wants to hear it and I want to do it in a way that isn't obnoxious. This is that way.
This will be the story of my two years as a environmental conservation volunteer. This will be my story of transition and blending with an unfamiliar culture. My story of isolation from the life I know. Of practically using my degree in a big way for the first time. Of adventure. Of learning and accepting. Struggle and triumph. Growing and becoming. Above all else this is the continued story of my life. As much as I have tried to be prepared, I am still not a hundred percent sure what to expect. Its scary, I am really scared, really, really nervous, but mostly I am excited and most importantly I am ready.
Twenty seven months serving as a PCV in Panama. In just under three weeks I will be living one of my biggest dreams. Maybe I am a cliché for blogging about it, maybe I won't even be able to blog about it and this will be the only post, maybe you're saying to yourself, "gee willikers, people still blog," but somewhere deep inside of me I want to share my story with the spot deep inside of you that wants to hear it and I want to do it in a way that isn't obnoxious. This is that way.
This will be the story of my two years as a environmental conservation volunteer. This will be my story of transition and blending with an unfamiliar culture. My story of isolation from the life I know. Of practically using my degree in a big way for the first time. Of adventure. Of learning and accepting. Struggle and triumph. Growing and becoming. Above all else this is the continued story of my life. As much as I have tried to be prepared, I am still not a hundred percent sure what to expect. Its scary, I am really scared, really, really nervous, but mostly I am excited and most importantly I am ready.
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