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

A town called San Juanito!

Not to posttwo blogs on the same day... but we have SO MUCH NEWS!!!

Site placement was on Friday! Laurenand Alex are stationed in the town of San Juanito in the province ofCoclé! Wow, wow, wow! We are so incredibly excited about it. So far wehave only tidbits of information to share with you all, but by golly,we are going to share:

• It's a rural, Latino community in the mountains with about 45 houses and 240 people.
• We are the first Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Health volunteers in the town, but we are getting to follow up 3 other volunteers from the conservation sector (meaning PC has been there since about 2005)
• There is some electricity in the town (not in our permanent house, but yes in our host family for the first 3 months)
• There is an aqueduct that provides running water, but there are lots of problems with it (hence, Alex's presence as an EH volunteer)
• There is a road (meaning 4wd road) into the community that is currently being improved upon.
• The people are extremely nice, welcoming, and excited about having a volunteer couple.
• They make really sweet Panamanian sombrero hats!
• We are excited about the music and dancing scene there and being close to Penonome and the beach at Santa Clara (who knew we would be close to where Lauren's great aunt Irma lived?!?! Crazy!)
• Lauren has options to work with kids and school gardens and the community is thinking about a fish pond project!
• The climate is hot, but not too hot and we hear there is more rain there than other parts of Cocle so the area was described to us as “jungle”

Weare so excited to learn more during our site visit coming up onWednesday. We will move most of our stuff on that day, participatein a community entrance conference with our counterparts (these willbe people from San Juanito), and stay for a week in order to get toknow folks in our community and present ourselves. This will involvelots of broken Spanish and hand gestures!

Wecan't tell you how excited we are to get this site and we feel it isa great match for us! Thanks Aimee and Leo (our Peace Corps bosses)and to anyone reading this, get ready for the adventures to come inSan Juanito!!!

And...Happy Father's Day to our fathers and fathers around the world... theword father starts to sound weird if you say it a lot.

Love,

Alexand Lauren

Learning in the campo

Peace Corps Panama puts the traineesthrough a field-based training week called Semana Tecnica. Oursemana tecnica started on Lauren's 23rd birthday. The day before weleft we hustled to make a delicious banana bread birthday cake withchocolate frosting and hustled equally fast to eat through half of itthe same night. We hung out with our friendly 9 year-old neighborand her cousin, who quizzed us on English words and then conducted apretend, but astoundingly exhaustive, interview about our lives.

We broke down and got our cell phonesituation sorted out before we left because (a of all) it isbasically a must for logistics here and (b of all) Lauren and I'ssemana tecnicas were within our own programs so we were splitting offfrom each other... sigh. I will talk about my experience and thenhand you over to Lauren so she can describe her time, I will makesure to remind her to tell you about her rapper-remix talent showact...

La semana tecnica for Salud Ambiental(Environmental Health) was in a campo town called Chichica in theConmarca Ngobe-Bugle. I learned a lot about the transportation herein Panama on my way down. I hopped two buses to split up the tripand, all told, it took roughly 6 hours to get to the base of themountains and meet up with the rest of the group. From there we rodechivas, which are large size pick-up trucks with the flat-bedsconverted to passenger areas and covered in tarps, for roughly 1 hourup a road that reminded me a little of the 4-wheel drive roads up tosome of our more remote 14ers at home.

The highlight of the week was my hostfamily in Chichica. The powers that be placed myself and anotherclimber-enthusiast trainee with one of probably only a few dozenPanamanian climbers. His name was Ruben (or Tochi in Ngobe) and Idoubt if I will ever meet a tougher dude. As a sustenance farmer hiswork week is physically tough, he lives in one of the most ruggedregions in Panama and transports most everywhere on foot, AND findsthe drive/passion/energy to summit mountains and rope-climb! Hebegan his climbing career in Boquete where he completed every climbthey put in front of him. His guide, needless to say, was impressedand gifted him a rope, harness, and zapatillos (climbing shoes). That was eight years ago and he now climbs at a few local spots anddreams of more gear to match his passion for the sport.

Not only did I make a new friend inRuben, but I felt like I got to befriend his whole family. He liveswith his 5 year-old son Aton, 22 year-old sister Ibeth and her sonGabi, his 15 year-old brother Otto, and 6 year-old brother Demetrio. During our stay, Ruben's mother was also in the house to help mindthe children because it was a holiday week. Although this family waslikely far below the poverty line for the region, they were rich inlove and closeness. One thing that struck me was their attentivenessto one another. The tiny zinc and wood-plank house was situated on apretty large property and all Mom had to do to call anyone was speaktheir name a few times and they would show up. Never yelling, neverleaving texts and cell phone messages, no white-board in the kitchen. The day wound down when the sun went down and we lit a single candleand sat around the main room talking about the day, trading Englishand Ngobe lessons, and telling stories. They gave Jordan and I Ngobenames (I am Ticho and Jordan is Conchi) and I bought a traditionaldress called a nagwah for Lauren's b-day. If you thought thingscouldn't be more precious, at the end of our visit Ibeth gave Laurenher Ngobe name Eddy and Mom invited us both to return in December fora festival they have nearby. Pretty cool if you ask me!

Back in the Peace Corps world... ourgroup learned all kinds of cement-working techniques that we willhelp teach at our sites should folks express an interest in some ofthe Salud Ambiental construction projects. Ferrocement is anespecially astounding technique in which you can build any sort ofconcrete object that you can make a chicken-wire form for. We, forexample, made 80 gallon water storage tanks. It is cheap and funbecause it uses lots of local materials, which I dig (hahaha get it?because we used mud). We built some latrine planchas and tazas(platforms and bowls) from cement over incredibly deep pits; yougotta make em deep so that you don't fill up until after about tenyears of use! Technical training in this way was great for mebecause I feel a little more capable heading into a community thatmight ask me to help with a construction project.

The last day we got up at 3:30 am.,Jordan (my roommate at Ruben's place) helped Ibeth make hojaldres andfour of us aspirantes (trainees) joined Ruben on a hike of the localpeak Pena Blanca. Fifty-one hundred feet is a pretty big deal whenyou can see the ocean from the top. It was a breathtaking day! Wetook a shortcut and our intrepid guide Ruben bounded along ahead witha machete to cut the way as us aspirantes slip-slided up the peak. We got down around 2 pm. and lucked out with a chiva on the way back,the scariest chiva ride I have taken to date. After a hustledgoodbye with Ruben and the family we traveled to the Pacific Oceanbeach Las Lajas and I finished the day body surfing in the waves,eating a monster cheeseburger from the American place there, watchinggame 7 of the Heat-Celtics series with Peace Corps friends, andstarting to fret about the diarrhea that I had been having on and offfor 5 days at that point. I would later go to the doctor and getthat issue fixed!

Let me hand you over to Lauren now:

Well...my tech week wasn't as cool asAlex's, but it was still pretty neat! My Sustainable Agriculturalgroup went to two different places. The first was "Finca de LosPerezosos" which translates to "Lazy Farm" in English.The property is owned by a gringo that served in the Peace Corps inPanama about 8 years ago, and he now lives in Panama and dedicateshis time to helping other PC volunteers and Panamanians with organicfarming methods. We stayed in a little cement house on his propertyfor 2 nights. While we were there, we learned how to build a fishpond for families to grow their own tilapia, which is great becausethe typical Panamanian diet is pretty awful nutritionally (and in myopinion tastefully as well). Building the fish pond was some of thehardest work I have ever done and I got so dirty because you have totromp around barefoot in mud mixed with chicken shit to pack itdown... yuck! At the farm we also built a "Circulo Magico"(A Magic Circle) which is basically a hole in the ground with varioustypes of plants planted around it in a circle. (Banana trees, papayatrees and otoe) You fill the circle with organic waste and over timeit decomposes and gives nutrients to the plants around it. It's avery simple way to teach families to compost and gives them fruitfrom the trees to eat.

Side note, while we were hiking to finda place to build the fish pond, I almost stepped on a GIGANTIC snake. It was longer than I am tall and I cried a little because it washuge and brown with red triangles and nasty bahahahahaha! Mytraining manager Jorge told us that it was most likely poisonous...cool. Oh, and there was a scorpion in my room, pretty much on my bedso I killed it and about a million ants were carrying it awaylater... even cooler.

Back to the training, the second placewe visited was INA. INA is a government agency whose goal is toincrease the number of organic farmers in Panama. While we were therewe learned how to clean and smoke tilapia, build rice tanks, plantspecific crops and how to make organic pesticides and fertilizers.Needless to say I have never been more dirty and sweaty in my life. Ibasically spent the entire time in mud up to my knees, I am going toinvest in a pair of rubber boots before heading back to the campo forsure.

I was so happy to return to Mabel'scooking after eating chicken and rice for 8 days straight. Let meexplain chicken and rice a little better. It is more like a chickencarcass rib-cage thing with little feathers and hairs still on itwith more dried, overcooked rice than I could usually eat. It is notjust for dinner or lunch, it is for all three meals sometimes. Ohyeah, we did break that diet with fried hot dogs and barbeque sauceand American cheese on corn mush for breakfast one day. Mabel and Imade pancakes when I first got back and I was SO happy!

Alex is reminding me to talk about myrap too. We had a trainee talent show and a group of us did a rapmontage, so obviously I rapped Eminem (this was for you Dan Mager),it was really good and not embarrassing at all.......

Despite all the nasties and the superhard work, I am ready to get out there and help!

Everything's louder in Panama.

Loud dump trucks...blaring Spanish music "Chiva! Chiva!" Dog fight...HONK! Chickens...Way too loud Spanish soap operas...BASS! More honking. Birds singing. Weed eaters! ROOSTER. Buses. Men yelling...HONK! Firework! "Cock a doodle dooooooo!" "BUENAS!!" Dogs barking! Motorcycle roar! Pig snorts! Music. LOUD semi! HONK HONK!! Screaming children! Dirt bikes! More honking! Broken fans. BANG! Lizard squeaks. More stupid roosters! Rain on a tin roof. Honk! Loud horrible pop music. Sirens! Rihanna. POP! Did I mention honking?