Dark days

Date this one back to December 21!

"¡El diablo, ese bicho nunca se duerme!" -Herminio Guerrel, Regidor, San Juanito

December 21 is the shortest day, the darkest day. I certainly feel it this year. It seems as though I am always running up against the far edge of the day recently. Arriving to my house in the dark or cooking in the dark or reading by headlamp. As a disclaimer, this blog is a bit of a downer today. It ends on a positive note and we continue doing great and thriving despite the dark days.

San Juanito has had a crime rate of about 0.0001%. The campo is perhaps the safest place to be. All one needs to do is watch their feet for snakes and one can enjoy a vibrant, safe life. Friends and family abound in the campo and folks are too poor to rob anyway. With the construction of the road two yeare ago the seeds of crime were sown. More travel means more temptation to accost someone and make a quick buck. It means more strangers around. In early November, a group of three masked men built a rock roadblock and robbed a fish truck outside of town that enters San Juanito to bring some delicious protein and assorted veggies. They succeeded in taking $300 and significantly scaring the poor pueblo. In a possibly related incident, three masked men robbed an elderly man, his wife and daughter in mid-December after a "día de pago" where the government distributes $100 to those above 70 years old. This 78 year-old tried to defend himself with his walking stick only to be thrown to the ground suffering a knock to the head that took four stitches to fix up. The daughter was pushed down and suffered a severely sprained ankle. Don't get me wrong, we are talking about very minor incidents in the face of the violences perpetrated worldwide every day, but I think it is affecting me because everyone around is so shocked and frustrated. We love these people so much and when harm comes their way it feels like an attack on all of us as a community. People are mad, sad and embarrassed that San Juanito is getting a bad reputation, frustrated as the culture of fear touches them in their tranquil campo.

My view on the issue...pardon the French here, #$!* people who rob people! The worthless and morally void folks who prey upon the weak and vulnerable are behaving like the scum of the earth to lazy and weak to pick up a &@>%#+<?! coa and earn a living like the rest of us. Get help and stop making good people fear the road where they once tread in peace. That aside, the whirling suspicion is that the suspects are youth, which cries out "at-risk" in my mind and makes me sad.

Unfortunately, we got swept up into the fear frenzy too. All over a six-by-eight, blue tarp. It is common for volunteers struggle with little things here and there being taken around their homes. For us it has been a piece of wood one time, a bag of avocados another and most recently in late November a plastic tarp I use to make small mixes of concrete and such. When the tarp showed up at our neighbor's house with the back-story that some kids had sold it to this 80-something year-old, I thought to myself, in this growing local atmosphere of unpunished crimes and loose ends, justice should be pursued. Long story short, after much and much deliberation between Lauren and I we went with a local option and called on the local sheriff to help us get to the bottom of it. The suspect kids only stood to make $2 off the sale and I would have honestly prefered my old neighbor to keep the stupid thing, but hey. We confronted the kids and their parents. They denied everything and said, in fact, the old man had offered to sell it to them for $2. Awkwardly, the kids, their dad, the sheriff, Lauren and I all marched to the old man's house, but he barely understood what was going on and when asked directly about the tarp, did not accuse the kid at all, instead claiming the kid had stolen $20 from him. It was all too jumbled and direct in a world that revolves around indirect communication. The sheriff ruled we should take tge taro back, no harm, no foul style. The whole hassle leaves a sour taste in my mouth. It stinks of agism and bent truth. Should we have left well enough alone? Was there a different strategy that would have solved it better?

"El unico requisito de morir es vivir" - Raul Guerrel Hijo, San Juanito

If god is up there, he sure worked a mystery on Christmas Eve in taking our friend, mentor and leader Brandon Valentine from our world. Brandon was Peace Corps Panama's young, vibrant training manager, a father and expecting another he was friend to all. His presence will be missed very dearly in the Peace Corps community. He welcomed me to Panamá, taught me to salomar and bark like a dog. He introduced me to pasear emphasizing how its better done on an empty stomach and made me think about using my radar. He said, "don't reinvent the wheel, just pimp it out" and me animó to listen to people around me. He never failed to give me a pat on the back and shake my hand when we crossed paths in the office or in Penonomé. One time he made me put on pants when it was only clean shorts left, a friendly reminder of the value of professionalism. Brandon's gone and its up to the rest of us to tread the waves looking for reason in this. It should be easier with such a brilliant torch to carry and though I expect to falter, I also expect to get back up because Brandon would have liked that way better than just sitting on my butt. Brandon man, you live on in my heart!

"No es el sol que mueve en los cielos, es la Tierra dando vuelta así." - Teodora Gonzalez, San Juanito

So there you have it. Dark, heavy events for short, dark days. How tempting it is to close up shop and hang up the sign. Retracing our steps to the comfy, safe middle class that holds its door open for us would be straightforward and the light has been left on. Wouldn't you? How easy it is to let the dark in and start to spiral. The little complaints get amplified on you: slow projects and slower transport, thinking you got through to someone only to watch them back-track, spiders and all those eye-rolling cousins of inconvenience out there. We are bothered morally too. After all, we are confronted with the barbarity of humanity in general on a daily basis. Our crimes against Mother Earth are many. Our money-lust leads us to kill our soils, push animals to extinction and hurt one another making daily wastefulness our religion. Hypocrisy can rule if you let, but she is a harsh queen. We don't persevere trying to believe in the positive here in Panama because its a goal or contract. We are here because this is our camino to walk right now as hard to explain as it feels. Adventure is about feeling all feelings and stamping out the numbness of ignoring something nasty. We stand for adventure. You will find methere  and for all it makes my heart hurt sometimes, it makes my heart full too.

Abuela came up to our porch on December 21, the darkest day of the year. She asked me to explain how the seasons change in Colorado. We talked about how it gets really dark in the extreme north and south of the planet. She said come June and July the days are very long again, which is something to look forward to.

Stay strong and follow your dreams,

Alex