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.
