What is Pasear

Once upon a time there was a particularly great man with a particularly great fondness of tweed jackets and loafers. He greeted each new day with song. He would sing, “It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, it's a beautiful day for a neighbor, would you be miiiinnneee?” Unbeknownst to Mr. Rodgers his song would ring true for two particular voluntarios del Cuerpo de Paz in the interior of Panama as they too awoke to greet each new day. In order to be particularly great voluntarios and shoulder the grand pursuit of “giving voice to the voiceless” and/or “becoming an agent advocating positive change in the eyes and faces of a community” and/or “facilitating change by empowering the people themselves” said voluntarios must first know the voices, eyes, faces, and people. We must first, in the face of many bugs, much mud, and countless awkward silences, fly Mr. Rodgers' shimmering banner of friendliness and pasear.

Let us first place some caveats on Mr. Rodgers' famous sing-song to transition into some of the challenges our two particular voluntarios face on the road of pasear. Take “a beautiful day in the neighborhood,” for instance. If we carefully tweak this first stanza to read, “a muddy, wet day in a neighborhood that values clean dress and orderly appearance,” then we better capture pasear. To emerge onto someone's doorstep in a presentable state is a large portion of the overall battle. Proper footwear choice is paramount as are slow measured steps. During pasear one must avoid, at all costs, the sickening slide of sandals, which can change a lovely pair of khakis into a significantly less lovely pair of khakis. Jeans, while durable and fingernail-cleanable, can choke sweat from the very pores of one's body resulting in a similar disaster.

Considering “a beautiful day for a neighbor” we must empathize with the gracious hosts of our pasear visits and ask: for them, is it really a beautiful day for these particular neighbors to come calling? Is now a great time to stop whatever work you have and receive guests who speak an odd form of your language that you barely recognize? Do they like to sit or stand? Are they going to want a drink? Why are their khakis always so dirty? Sometimes these particular voluntarios jokingly hum the theme song to the critically-acclaimed, shark horror film Jaws as they walk up the path to an unsuspecting house. However, the cultural reality seems to be that these supposed fears are our own projections onto our hosts because we see through the lens of our locked door and window society where each unknown person to pasear is coming to sell us vacuum cleaners and/or convert us to their religion. After all, here in the campo, it really is a beautiful day for a neighbor and the result is a pretty great feeling for everyone involved in pasear. Visiting someone's home is very special here and whatever there is to share—be it bread, coffee, a great view, seeds, words of wisdom, gardening lessons, stories, or silence—will be shared with a smile and a genuine “gracias por su visita” as you part ways.

This graciousness introduces the tiny asterisk these particular volunteers wish to add to Mr. Rodgers' words “would you be miiiinnneee?” Making a new friend involves a name, a face, an experience, and a place. These “new friend qualifiers” seemingly so simple and innocuous, morph into significant challenges in the campo for these particular voluntarios. For the following, fictional names have been substituted, but the situations are all to real. Parents often press their children to say their own names. To our untrained ears, the first time around sounds like, “Hard in mania de (mumble) have landed,” which we repeat diligently, yet punctuated with that pathetic question mark of validation, “Hard in mania de de de have landed?” After a couple rounds of pardon-me and otra-vez the response elucidates to “Yariminia de Santos Hernández” or a similar name that moves the tongues of these particular voluntarios in new, gymnastic-like ways. From there the name is either immediately lost from memory, written down hurriedly somewhere to be lost later, or tried later only to learn that everyone actually calls her “Lila.” Faces are usually our best bet, but when someone gets a haircut or is wearing a different sombrero or sunglasses this becomes a pitfall. This pit is further deepened by the triplets named “Juan Edwin” (who goes by Jorge), “Jorge Edwin,” and “Edwin Jorge.” Experiences are perhaps the most valuable tool; they bring friends together on a daily basis. A wide spectrum of experiences will populate the typical afternoon of pasear from an unlucky kid with a broken leg to wild monkeys in the yard to a special gift of some delicious food to a tarantula on your boot. These are great for the memory because stories are the glue that hold people together. Pasear is also about places. Our neighborhood stretches over hills across rivers and through the jungle so these particular voluntarios never lack a beautiful view or a new type of tree or a path less traveled. The path twists and turns often so much so that hours are spent aggregating a reference community map. Discussions are heated and belabored as we argue switchbacks, river crossings, and which junctions go to which houses; this environment is far from suburbia with its cute shoebox Clinton Courts and 6^th Avenues. Names, faces, experiences, and places help these particular voluntarios get out on the beat and ask, “Would you be miiiinnneee?”

There it is. Plain as muddy waters. Pasear. Take that Mr. Rodgers.