I think the cat looks pregnant

In recent news, our house has turned into somewhat of a rejected animal sanctuary. There are now two semi-resident pets. One, is a dog named Carmencita, which rarely gets fed by old man Carmen and has taken to haunting our porch and house at mealtimes... and at ANY time. She comes in wagging and whining looking for any sort of food. Alex feeds her sometimes because everyone else in town hates her because she is a notorious food thief. Two, is a cat. Alex, for one never thought for one minute before in his life, would he have a cat, but there it is. We have named the cat Goma, which means glue in Spanish, because we are literally stuck with it. Lauren had been seeing a cat around in the jungle for about a month and at first thought it was a tigrillo, or actual jungle cat. On Monday however, that myth was cleared up because some dogs had this cat treed in our shower. (For those of you playing the home game, yes our shower has trees in it). Alex was headed for a nice shower and found it mewing away, scared and vulnerable. Lauren chased the nasty dogs away and, of all things, gave the cat an entire can of tuna. Needless to say, the cat hasn't really left our house and porch since. It is a weird sort of cat and has some bizarre behaviors. It comes when called, begs for food, and eats cookies. Above all, it is so unbelievably lazy and has a slightly oversized belly. We like to think that she is just recovering from her stint alone in the jungle, but we know it is a distinct possibility that the cat is pregnant. Abuela Chola guesses that someone didn't want it and left it out in the jungle. So, yeah... we have a thief-dog and possibly pregnant cat seeking refuge with us.

Goma la gata

On the work front, Lauren has been doing her best to support some of the young gals in our town with some empowering, not to mention super-fun activities. Maudy, our beloved host sister, applied and was accepted to a youth camp put on by the Gender and Development group in Peace Corps Panama. On Monday, Lauren helped Maudy get on her way by accompanying her to a drop-off point in Penonome. Irenes, her mother, of course came too. It is a super big deal for Maudy because she hasn't really been away from home by herself before. She was quite nervous, but she bravely introduced herself to the other participants and set off in the bus for Capira, an hour and a half away. She is slated to learn about self-esteem, goal-setting, healthy choices, and create her own community project that Lauren will help her implement. She comes back Friday, but we have been thinking about her all week.

In that same vein, Lauren organized a hike to our local look-out point for some of the girls. It was a great success. They saw a helicopter, ate snacks, and marveled at the view before descending for a swim at the river. Pretty cool outing, Lauren wants to plan more of these mini-trips in the future.

Alex is riding the roller coaster that is being a volunteer. After devoting hours, days, weeks, and months of stress to developing the beginnings of a water project, the whole thing is likely to be called off. To make the longest, most arduous story of Alex's professional life short, Group A wants Group B's water and Group B doesn't want to give it up. All is not lost due to the mountain that Alex learned along the way, but it is a little depressing to see the ship sinking.

We have started up an odd little side project of documentary-making. We have no idea how and if it will turn out, but the basic theme is to capture part of the Coclesano music culture. Geronimo, our host dad, has a musical group called Geronimo Hernandez y Su Conjunto: Orgullo de Mi Tierra, that is Geronimo Hernandez and His Band: Pride of My Land. Alex was particularly struck by their various stories of musical passion in this crazy back-woods campo setting where they live. No one in the group tunes their instruments, nor do they know how to use their sound equipment, but they manage to rock the campo on a regular basis. They arrive at gigs covered in mud with their equipment packed in rented 4 by 4 trucks or on horseback and maintain their image as some of the coolest cats in the campo.

Other than that we have been keeping busy making stoves for folks, passing out our finished community document in snazzy plastic folders, planting a new garden of watermelons and green beans and bell peppers, fixing up a pig pen, learning how to pluck chickens, and riding horses up the mountain. "It's a hiker's paradise here," says Lauren referring to our most recent excursion to a far away hill, which we discovered has a household right on top. The Señora there is a regular chatterbox and we had no idea their house even existed! We trekked over to a neighboring community called Papayal to say hi and check in. In the coming couple of weeks we are going to have a community meeting over there to see if we can help out with anything. And... yeah. We'll let you know about the pregnant (?) cat, which is currently devouring butter cookies.

P.S. Just now Lauren saw a coral snake slither across our yard and into a tarantula hole under the cement of our porch. This was not good because the coral snake has one of the most potent venoms in the world. Armed with shovels, sticks, and our neighbors Tony and his brother Manuel we managed to kill it, but not before it creeped us out by slithering in and out of holes under our porch. It is sad to see these creatures, which rarely bite because they are calm, die, but we just can't have them near the house, it is too dangerous. Another day in the life right? Another great save by our San Juanito friends!

P.S.S. For those of you that don't have Facebook and want to check out some more pictures of our adventures, you can follow this link to Lauren's photos.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151848567350077.871590.661385076&type=1