Some Days

Some days I realize where I am. Sometimes the realization comes as I help Irenes knead the morning's hojaldras on her wooden batea, the smell of coffee drifting from inside her yellow, mud hut. Sometimes I realize where I am as I stand sweating and dirty with Anacleto, hiding from the Panamanian sun noticing how puny a 500-pound pile of sand and gravel looks in comparison with the mountain of effort it took three people, hacking through the jungle, stepping over snakes and tarantulas to dig it from the river and haul it over slippery, moss-covered rocks in plastic saccos over our shoulders to get it there. Sometimes it hits me when we are out pasearing, “Damn, I am in this random Panamanian house, listening to this guy with only a couple of visible teeth who seems older than the hills and actually understanding what he is telling me about this palm fruit that he harvested this morning.” There are times when nothing on my plate is from a package. There is hand-ground maiz from the monte that Jeronimo carried home yesterday on horseback, packed in the husk and boiled to make bollos, guineo-chinos from the tree in the bottom corner of the property, yucca pulled from the rich Panamanian tierra negra, chicha made from lemons plucked off the tree this morning, or a sweet lemon tea from the limoncina plant that grows near the shower. Oh yeah, and then there is the chicken that I saw earlier that day with feathers still on it. Sometimes as I walk by the blue tienda with its new ceramic-tile bench in the morning and hear the friendly, “Buenas,” from Maria-Eugenia as she looks up from her sombrero-making, the fibers wrapped around her toes as she tightly weaves them into a ribbon to wrap around her wooden mold I think to myself, “No one would believe what I am doing right now.” No one would believe just how loud the rain is on the zinc roof. No one would believe how everyone here knows how to put every single different natural material to use. This type of wood makes better embers in this type of stove. This preparation of mud cured my son's auto-immune disease. This plant is for headaches. That plant makes peppers hotter than habeñeros and they look exactly like those from this plant that makes the sweet peppers we use in every single dish, don't mix them up. Sometimes I realize where I am when Panamanian folks start arguing about the best phase of the moon to cut wood. It seems silly to ask which is the best phase of the moon to visit Home Depot ™, which is how I “cut” wood. The stories we hear about the lives of people in our community are often of incredible hardship, but told with a smile and a selflessness that I won't ever forget. Parents harvesting a coffee plant, drying, grinding, and packaging fifty baggies to sell six hours away on horseback at the market. “Thankfully we sold a lot so we had enough money to buy our son's school supplies for first grade.” We even start losing our grip on science and proof and fact. It seems so logical that Baukti was born with a weak right leg because he was conceived after his dad almost died from an equis snakebite on his right toe. It is pretty weird. I can just be going about my day when I get one of those feelings of realization. I live in Panama now. I speak Spanish now. I drink coffee now. I still don't like rice now. Maybe the feelings of realization mean I am a little bit more conscious of just how different life can be around the world. Maybe they mean something else. Whatever they mean, the feelings are good and I like them.

A Beautiful Day

Wake up. A beautiful day is. Is it a beautiful day? What is a beautiful day? Today was a beautiful. Here it is. All of the day and what lies therein which made it a beautiful one. There was that sense of dirty accomplishment as you dove into the cool, cleansing Rio Mula to wash the mud off. The mud came from the house and the fresh smell of wet mud was not far at all. Because do you know how the muddy walls of a freshly muddied house smells? Smells like dirt. Dirty like all our friends working with us, our friends and our teachers because here in San Juanito they are often the same people. Our teachers are actually teachers but also kids and their smiles, laughs, and games. Our teachers have boots that squish tarantulas. All this they do for us because they have that deep kindness, that kindness that wakes up with our campesino friends in the morning and goes to bed with them at night. But you had better wake up early because it takes a long time to mud a house, even just the inside, which was all we did. The kindness is also given as a drink. Cane coffee cut with machete and served with a smile. All the time watching Nena with her perico and how happy that little green bird made her and how it laid on her lap as she laid on the lap of her smiling father as he laid in the hammock held together by a thin, thin, thin cord that won't ever break... ever. But you've gotta be SO careful. Oh so careful. Should you dare someone to collect the oranges you need to be prepared and well-prepared to help them down after they have collected you more than you can carry. When oranges are eaten here, they are peeled in one swift chop, sometimes victims of machetes, and then the juice is sucked out from a pool, deftly formed atop the orange. It's good. Trust us. We won't ever go back. Just like we can never go back from what we are experiencing second to day to second that we would never trade for anything in the money world. I can never understand Baukti's accent. Love it all the same. It hit me as I was walking down the road and carrying the oranges down the hill in my sombrero and I was having a conversation with them in Spanish and they were laughing and the sun was shining and it was just one of those weird moments. Yeah it itches! Hell yeah it itches! Sometimes so much that I can't stand my skin and no matter how much alcohol I spritz upon the bites they just don't subside. And then there is the wisdom of our current Panamanian mom and her slow careful assessment of just about everything. What pain she takes to put our lives right with chica. It got ironic at that point because we listened to the “Everybody in the Club Getting Tipsy” song in the deep campo jungle. But that will fade. What remains is the beauty of the day. A beautiful day. Go sleep.

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.

The first few weeks in site

Wow! Time is flying by in our new home of San Juanito. Alex and I have been doing lots of different things in order to get to know our community better, and we have already started some mini projects. I'll list some highlights to give you some idea of what we are up to!

1. We had our first English lesson with the teachers at the school.  Alex and I decided that we are going to team teach the class, but switching off who creates/teaches the lesson every other week. Alex took the first class and used music as his first teaching tool. He brought his banjo to the school and played an Avett Brother song in English and Spanish. The teachers LOVED it, and it was so cool to hear them singing along in English! It's fun to be the teachers of students that actually want to learn. The teachers are so enthusiastic and are looking forward to the classes to come.  In exchange for English the teachers want to help us with Spanish so on Tuesday afternoons we have Spanish class and on Thursday afternoons we teach English.

2. On Thursday mornings we also spend our time at the school working in the school garden.  The garden is really cool and includes a variety of plants and projects, including bell peppers, green beans, yuca, bananas, rice tanks, fish tanks, pineapple, cucumbers, (I'm sure I'm forgetting some here) they even have chickens for eggs and for meat. Needless to say there is lots of work to do at the school.  La escuela also has an organization called Madres y Padres de La Familias. This includes all the moms and dads that have children in the school. They are all required to do some type of work at the school and if they don't, they get fined. The moms come during the week and make lunch for the kids and the dads come to the school on Saturdays to do work in the gardens, we've started working with the dads on Saturdays too.

3. We've continued with the stove project of the previous volunteer, making more stoves for families in the community. Alex may have touched on this in the previous  blog, but I'll add my thoughts too. The stoves are really neat because they are more efficient than the traditional stoves (which includes a fire with 3 rocks around it for a pot to sit on top.) The traditional stoves smoke A LOT, use a TON of firewood and take a LONG time to cook anything. The new stoves are made of all natural materials, use less fire wood, they smoke less and they boil water muy rapido!

4. We planted banana trees and platino trees with a community member on his property, unfortunately a lot of his banana and orange trees are dying from some bugs/bacteria.  I was able to share some of my agricultural knowledge I learned in training about some organic pesticides. He is very interested in working with me in the future with agricultural techniques so I am looking forward to that.

5. We started collecting some plants for our garden we are going to make at our permanent house. So far we have basil, celery, and some lemon grass. The lemon grass is sooo delicious. Our host mom makes tea out of it every morning for us. We also started talking about the improvements we want to make on our house. The community has been so awesome and they are willing to add an addition for a kitchen to our little mud hut. I'm looking forward to the construction, because then I'll know how to build a house out of mud.

6. We really have no idea what kinds of projects we will end up doing because there are SO many opportunities. Some ideas so far have been: a girl's group led by Lauren and a boy's group led by Alex, an environmental youth group called Panama Verde, trash clean-ups and disposal systems, composting at the school, bettering the soil for local farmers, some people still are not connected to the water system so they drink from creeks, very few folks wash their hands after going to the bathroom/before eating, raising bigger fish in fish tanks, enhance the community farm because prices are rising in the markets, getting the older kids to train for a running race in Panama, improving the school's computers, showing movies at the school for a fundraiser and to talk about movie ratings, and on and on and on.  "Gracias a Dios" we don't really have to decide, it will be the community that tells us what to focus on!
I think that's about it for work related stuff...I'll share some things/quotes from normal everyday Peace Corps life tambien!

1. On average I see at least one toucan every day.
2. "I think I am slowing starving to death on rice." - says Alex
3. "Who invented indoor plumbing? They should be a Saint." -says Lauren
4. Our host sister got stung by a scorpion and our mom had to call an ambulancia because the venom was traveling up her arm. Pobrecita!
5. "That drink tasted like a tootsie roll ran through a car motor" - says Alex
6. "I wish I had a bomb collar for the roosters, and it would go off every time they crowed, and they'd get blown into a million little pieces."- says Lauren
7. We've been playing with the same three pieces of paper with Baukti (our 5 year old brother) for four days, they always say the same thing... treasure maps.
8. Lauren-"Remember when you picked the ants out of your jello?
Alex- "Yep."
Lauren- " I just ate the ones in mine."
9. After a hard days work we venture to the river for a relaxing swim...it's like the Jungle Book. If Alex and I get a cat to keep the bugs away we are going to name it Bageera or Sherkhan. haha!
10. It's been way too long since I've had chocolate.

Well that sums it up for now!  We have been working on a detailed community map so that we can include everybody in future work and it is a great challenge to hang onto the names we learn.  The trail system is pretty complicated and we aren't allowed to go on some routes because there are perros bravos!

Check Facebook for some updated pictures! :)

Todo bien

Hi everyone!

We have been officially sworn in to protect and defend the constitution and such as PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEERS!!!  Wow.  It has been a long road to start a long road, but we are incredibly grateful to be where we are at right now.

So... WHERE ARE we at right now?

We bought a mattress in Penonome today so we are here to stay.  Our new address is:

<<One of our names>>

Cuerpo de Paz

Entrega General-0229

Correo de Penonome

Panama, Rep. de Panama

And don't forget to put that Holy Cross or "Jesus is Watching" sticker on any packages you send to make folks think twice about getting sticky fingers, hahahaha!  It's uncommon, but it can't hurt to take a precaution if you are going out of your way to send us something!

HOW are we right now?

Great!  Here in the campo they often say, "Aqui en la lucha," which translates to "Here in the fight" and has the rough meaning of "Fighting the good fight, but in a way that makes me happy."  Lauren has gotten some bug bites, had a nasty cold that made her weak with fever for a whole day, and she dropped a shovel on her toe yesterday at La Granja (remember La Granja from our last post?)  San Juanito folks like to work and work hard so to start integrating, we have simply started working hard too.  Here is our first week happenings:

Domingo - We arrived and got settled in our room.  It is a super nice room and our hosts are SO gracious, we have the BEST luck with host families!  Mud walls, cement finished floor, zinc roof, wood plank bed, a small desk lamp for nighttime, shower next to the kitchen, and latrine next to the chickens and ducks!

Lunes - Went pasearing (a Spanglish word that means visiting folks) in Santa Cruz (a neighborhood in San Juanito) with Anacleto (our ever-valiant and kind community guide).  Afternoon meeting with the ever-vibrant and super-amazing school teachers about our first mini-project of English classes, teaching the teachers English so they can provide their students the best quality English classes.

Martes - Lauren was sick and held down our hamaca (hammock)... THANKS MABEL!!!  In the afternoon she felt better so we went up to our future house and Abuelo Cholo and Abuela Chola helped us clean it up and we discussed possibly adding a kitchen in the back and finishing the mud walls to lock out those scorpions and tarantulas for good!

Miercoles - We worked with Pastoral Social at the property of some community members who just lost their father.  Pastoral Social is a church group that helps those in need around San Juanito, which is really cool and shows the kind of attitude they have here.  This involved much sweating as we hacked away on the mountainside with our machetes from 9 to 3.  The first task was a hillside of yucca, which is tricky because you have to hack everything EXCEPT yucca, hahaha!  Then we watched in awe as the six guys with us sped through an even bigger mountainside clearing everything there (trees, bushes, grass) as we ourselves got about ten feet up from the bottom!  Hahahaha!

Jueves - We worked at the school in the morning planting and cleaning parts of the school gardens.  Alex ended up helping some guys to unload two palettes of cement bags and giant pieces of zinc roofing... whew!  The afternoon was reserved for a celebration of "El Dia de los Ninos" or "Kid's Day," which involved raucous games and the questionable decision to load the kids up on ice cream AND Jello AND cookies AND candy!  Isn't every day kids day?!?!?!  Hahahaha!

Viernes - We worked at La Granja.  Lauren could be heard saying, "I wish my parents were here!'  Alex responded with, "Yeah!  So they could see you filling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of dirt!"  To which Lauren replied, "No, to HELP because they LIKE doing stuff like this!"  Much laughter.  In the afternoon and evening we completed our first Peace Corps construction project with Jacobo (the volunteer we are replacing) and built a pretty nice looking fogon (or stove) out of mud, cement, and sand.  We will likely be cranking out many more of those in the coming month.  We ended the day watching an ultra-violent movie at El Rancho and reflecting on the affects of violent media on the youth of San Juanito, not to mention the U.S. and rest of the world.

That was the week in all it's glory!  Fun, hard work, some hassles, reflection, constant Spanish improvement, beautiful toucans, and so on.  We are thinking that this sort of schedule will be indicative of the coming few months as we stretch our legs in San Juanito and get to know everybody and work til we can't get out of bed in the morning!

Much love,

Alejandro y Lorena

First impressions

We are looking forward to becoming true Coclesanos, citizens of the Cocle province, but man does it feel like a long way off. There's the language challenge that we face on a daily basis. Even though our Spanish is improving in leaps and bounds, there are still too many moments when someone will say something, or worse ask something, and our blank stares reveal we haven't the faintest idea in the world what was just said! We typically just laugh it off, smile and nod, and suffer whatever consequence of what we just blindly agreed to. Usually that just means another helping of soup, but now, the language barriers seem more important to overcome as we try to get into the Coclesano culture.

Oh yeah, Alex will have to learn how to dance, which is perhaps a far more immense barrier than language deficiencies! Hahahaha!

But we think integration is a challenge well worth undertaking. Sit back and relax as we take you on a little tour of the places we have gotten to know so far in San Juanito. Remember we are on the start of a journey here and these are first impressions full of our gringo biases and such.

Abuelo and Abuela Cholo's Rancho... A of all, these folks are our host grandmother and grandfather. B of all, the closest translation we came up with for cholo was "hillbilly." C of all, a rancho is like an outdoor gazebo with a roof made of penca palm fronds. This rancho is incredibly large and serves as kind of this downtown hangout area. We watched a pirated version of Men in Black 3 here. On the far end there is a light-switch that turns on the latrine light, which is a short walk up the hill from the rancho. At night, this walk must be made while carefully avoiding sizable toads.

El Mirador... This is the look-out and boy-howdy what a look-out it is. If you haven't navigated over to our Facebook album, do it, now! There are pictures of El Mirador there. Consequently, this is also a zone of great cellphone reception. It's about a 30 minute hike from town.

La Granja... Lauren will likely have a lot of work here. On the route to El Mirador, you can take a detour into La Granja or community farm. There are all kinds of things growing here including organic fruits and vegetables, pigs, fish, and recently bread in the ovens they have on site! There seems to be a lot of interest in San Juanito for increased productivity in their fish tanks, which falls into Lauren's area of expertise. A fish tank system is essentially a way to grow fish for food. There are typically several pools for different stages of development in the life of a fish, seems like an easy concept, but to cross the T's and dot the I's there are LOTS of details to consider. At some point during the day we were visiting the fish tanks of the town Lauren got some chiggers on her and they ATE HER UP pretty well!

La Toma Principal... It is looking like the community will be looking to Alex for troubleshooting and enhancement of the water system or the community's aqueduct. A first pass San Juanito seems to have a pretty rockin system of providing potable water to its residents, which is quite the feat as it involves taking spring water from the hills above the town and delivering it to the households below in a way that won't get everyone sick. Like the fish pools the devil is in the details so to speak. Alex's advantage is that the committee in charge if the water system is well organized.

Casa de Irenes and Geronimo... This will be our first home-stay family and we are super excited to live here! They have three kids and our host dad plays the accordion like a magician.

La Escuela... San Juanito is home to a national-award-winning primary school. It boasts over 40 kids, two computers, three delightful and dedicated teachers who jumped for joy when they learned we were moving in for two years, an equally dedicated parent's group, awesome facilities including flush toilets and a kitchen, bright, beautiful classrooms supporting grades K-6, and a school garden system that garnered the aforementioned awards. Needless to say, we arrive on a Sunday and Monday we plan to get to work acquainting ourselves with La Escuela de San Juanito.

That brings you up to speed on our new digs! Hopefully you feel a little more oriented and keep these places in mind as we start the road to becoming true Coclesanos!

Hugs and kisses,

Lauren and Alex

Pictures

A quick post for those of you that don't have facebook, here's a link to some pictures that I have been able to post! Enjoy! :) 

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151848567350077.871590.661385076&type=3&l=23a433231b