I´m famous!

Check out this article in Panama´s national newspaper La Prenza about the Peace Corps. Of all 170-some volunteers, the blogs of only two were mentioned, one of them being mine. The article is in Spanish but just scroll to the bottom where my name is mentioned. I´m famous!


LA LABOR DEL CUERPO DE PAZ.
Un esfuerzo genuino
949743Betty Brannan Jaénlaprensadc@aol.com

WASHINGTON, D.C. –Mientras que los publicistas de la Casa Blanca y del Palacio de las Garzas no descansan en su esfuerzo de rehacer la imagen de Jenna Bush –aquella hija traviesa de George W. Bush que pasó unos meses de paseo en Panamá y ahora nos la quieren vender como prácticamente una Madre Teresa–, hay unos jovencitos norteamericanos que llevan décadas de estar haciendo una labor mucho más abnegada y genuina en nuestro país, sin recibir el reconocimiento que merecen. Estos son los voluntarios del Cuerpo de Paz, que sin ostentación y parampanadas nos regalan dos años de servicio social en condiciones duras e inapreciadas por los que (como yo) nunca hemos visto de cerca cómo es la pobreza rural en Panamá.
Lo de Jenna, por contraste, es puro marketing sin contenido. Recientemente fui a una librería aquí en Washington donde ella estaba haciendo una presentación de su libro, Ana’s Story [La historia de Ana] que supuestamente cuenta la historia de una joven panameña que sufre de sida (aunque la obra no contiene un solo dato que permita verificar la autenticidad del relato). Es un librito sencillo y con mucho espacio blanco en cada página, supuestamente destinado a lectores jóvenes; eso tiene la ventaja de no requerir mucho esfuerzo intelectual por parte de la autora y de permitir la venta del libro al por mayor a las escuelas. En la presentación a la que asistí, trajeron cientos de alumnos de las escuelas vecinas y era obvio que el libro les había sido distribuido de antemano. Para no tener que decir algo original, Jenna se limitó a leer brevemente del libro y mostrar un video preparado por UNICEF, sin aceptar preguntas. Ella eventualmente accedió a responder a algunas preguntas de los estudiantes –quienes preguntaron cosas triviales, como era de esperarse– pero no de adultos. Todo el evento me pareció una burla.
Mientras tanto, descubrí por internet los blogs de algunos voluntarios del Cuerpo de Paz en Panamá, que me impresionaron muchísimo. Los invito, por ejemplo, a buscar www.rlittle.blogspot.com. Este joven ingeniero, Rob Little, trabaja con los ngöbes, viviendo como ellos (entre alacranes, gusanos, arañas y culebras), comiendo lo que ellos comen (arroz y bananos), y compartiendo su pobreza y marginalización en todas sus dimensiones. Él construye letrinas, ayuda con las cosechas, y trata de usar sus conocimientos como ingeniero para solucionar problemas. Ellos, en cambio, no comprenden porque este "gringo" carece de esposa y se han afanado bastante por buscarle una. Rob escribe de todo esto con mucha perspicacia y gran humor, de paso revelando un choque cultural casi inimaginable y un estilo de vida más que primitivo. Su blog tiene momentos divertidos –como cuando un gusano se le metió bajo la piel y su host mom [mama anfitriona] intentó curarlo con una medicina que claramente decía, en inglés, for use on cows only [solo para usar en vacas]– pero también tiene reflexiones sobrias sobre lo que ha aprendido de vivir entre estos indígenas. En cuanto a calidad de análisis y talento como escritor, la diferencia entre Rob Little y Jenna Bush es del cielo a la tierra, sin hablar de la diferencia en autenticidad de lo que Rob está haciendo comparado al paseo de Jenna.
También les recomiendo el blog en www.sarabethinpanama.blogspot.com. Sara también trabaja con los ngöbes, en el pueblito de Nudobti en Bocas del Toro. Ella está tratando de organizar una cooperativa de artesanías y otra para el cultivo de cacao pero también tiene entre manos varios proyectos de salud, que incluyen educación sexual e higiene elemental. Sobre estos últimos dos temas, prefiero no entrar en mucho detalle aquí, pero les diré que Sara describe sus experiencias y frustraciones con refrescante franqueza e inteligencia.
Rob y Sara son solo dos de los 174 voluntarios del Cuerpo de Paz que están actualmente en Panamá, haciendo una labor valiosa pero invisible que ni siquiera se acaba con su partida del istmo. Hay una asociación de ex–voluntarios – "Peace Corps Panamá Friends" (www.panamapcv.net)– que publica un boletín cibernético y está planeando una reunión en Panamá en 2008 para celebrar los 45 años del Cuerpo de Paz en nuestro país. Además de que esta asociación apoya obras de caridad en Panamá, un grupo de ex–voluntarios se unió en 2003 para crear una organización llamada "Native Future" (www.nativefuture.org), dedicada al apoyo y la protección de los Wounaan en Darién.
Estos son esfuerzos que sí merecen nuestro aplauso. También nuestro agradecimiento.

http://mensual.prensa.com/mensual/contenido/2007/12/02/hoy/opinion/1192070.html

Panama's farmers resist hydroelectric projects

Please read this articles from the Miami Herald about the dam project near my community. Where the article was written from is about a 45 minute walk from my house and Ive even meet one of the men mentioned in the article. I have also meet the director of the company AES to ask him how he felt the project is handling the displacement of the people and if there were independent scientists doing inventories of the resources that will be effected in the watershed of this NATIONALLY protected park.

http://www.miamiherald.com/business/story/257243.html#recent_comm

And if that site doesnt work, try this one:

http://burica.wordpress.com/2007/10/02/panama-people-resist-hydroelectric-projects/

And also this little audio slideshow that shows pictures of the area where I live so you can get a better idea of what its like:

http://www.miamiherald.com/static/multimedia/miami/panamadam/index.html

My sobrinto y hermanito.

Check out my little bro´ rocking the taxi driver with my white headed sobrinito de un añito. Precioso, digo yo.

The Panamanian government cares for its indigenous people and protected forests.......

Like I’ve described in past posts, there is a multinational corporation in the area where I work and live which is in the process of damming the River Changuinola, about a 45 minute walk from Nudobti. Now please keep in mind that this project is something that is supported by the Panamanian government, although the area is a nationally protected rainforest and it’s construction will significantly effect the biodiversity of its ecosystem, damage the nearby watershed and displace thousands of indigenous people and effect thier unique culture. They have already begun displacing people and houses have begun being constructed in my community (only a house - minus a farm to cultivate food and income for the families...) for some of the effected people by the company. Unfortunately, the whole project is being administered in an incredibly unsustainable and culturally insensitive way. The people, being uneducated, living in some of the most extreme poverity in Panama and situated in inaccessable and remote villages dont quite realize the severity of the situation and are receiving a small amount of money for their farms and to turn their heads to the issue.

Check out this website, and read a little bit more about it:

http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/panama_biosphere/

Check out this website

A Peace Corps friend of mine had a visitor from the states last year who is a professional photographer. All of the amazing photos he took were taken in Nudobti (where I live) and Valle de Risco (neighboring town), including my host familiy´s house (where I lived for 6 months of my young life) and some friends of mine in the community. Check out his website and click on ¨Galleries¨¨and then ¨Panama¨:

http://www.andrewlamoreaux.com/

Don´t throw fish bones to the dog!

So, I have been collecting Ngäbe myths. Certain things have become such common, excepted knowledge that I too have began too embrace, until I have a moment of clarity and think, ¨Wait a second, that goes against any sort of logic according to my traditional Western upbringing.....¨

- When you cut your hair you are to put the clippings under a tall tree so that your hair will grow back quickly and long. In my town you see little piles of hair under trees all the time.

- When you eat something with bones, you are to through the bones in the fire (there is an open fire in the center of every house in town) instead of out the window or to the dogs because if you do, the person who hunted or caught that animal will never be able to kill another one of them again. The first time I threw fish bones to the dog, the family I was with literally kicked me out of the house.

Traditional ¨kra¨ - made from kiga

- When a girl gets her period for the first time, she is secluded in a room or area of the house by herself and no one talks to her for three days, except for one woman elder. The woman bathes the girl everyday and takes her to the jungle to show her how to harvest fiddlehead ferns (this food represents the feminine strength of Ngäbe women). During those days the girl sits and makes a bag out of kiga (a natural fiber).

Henry hauling bananas

- Women wait between 6 months to a year to name their kids. All the kids in my town of that age range are simply called ¨chi¨, which in ngäbere means both ¨small¨ and ¨child.¨

Melina and some chiquillos

- Traditionally, Ngäbes were polygamous and most men of my grandparents generation had more than one wife. There are at least three men in my town that still have two wives that all live in the same house together with their montaña of kids.

- Apparently, the powers of the pregnant woman are both bad and good. For instance, if you have a cut or a blister, the best cure is for a woman who is with child to message here saliva into the wound to cure it and prevent infection. However, say you are sick with something and a pregnant woman visits your house, under any other circumstance it is expected that vistors should be gifted food, but if you gift a pregnant woman food, your ailment will become worse.

- If you are sick, you must cook and eat separate from the rest of the family and some also say that no one can even watch you eat.

- Sister-in-laws and brother-in-laws that are related by marriage never talk to each other (this is another one thats becoming out dated). Now normally, the adult children of one solo matriarch all live in the same house with their partners and their children. I´ve been in certian houses where none of the sister and brother-in-laws have ever talked to one another and don´t even know each other´s names even though they live, cook, sleep and eat together under one roof that have no walls and thus no private rooms.

- Women of the older generation file their front teeth to be serrated like the edge of a bread knife. I have gotten a million different reasons why, but I think it may be an aesthetics thing. For some reason these women are the most sought after (well, I guess in the past because very few of the modern generation do it).


I think I may have a million more, which are slipping my mind, other than the usual ¨hexes¨or ¨curses¨ that they put of one another when someone falls ill. Apparently, according to one woman, someone has put a curse on me before. Who really knows.

Check out all the pictures I´ve ever taken

So although it took me half of my Peace Corps service to do, I finally put all the photos that I have taken online. In one spot. For all to see. Check her out, although it may take you forever to review them all.

http://flickr.com/photos/84362300@N00/

Enjoy!

One Year in!

Its amazing how time passes without being noted in the day to day activities of life. And in PeaceCorps/Sara world, this is surely the case. Its true that I have arrived at my one year anniversary in country and my time here is half over, but I still like I have barily scratched the surface of it all. What the hell did I do for the last year of my young life? I know that I moved to Panama, lived in a varity of towns, with a variety of families, none of them my own, for various months, struggled to learn two different languanges, probably walked about 10,000 miles collectively, and saw some really weird stuff, some of which has become totally normal background scenery to me, others I´ve personally absorbed forever (Ne!). I´ve loved and hated, fought with and against the people, and somehow always came back for more, like a disfunctional relationship, the Ngäbes use and mistreat me, yet we love eachother just the same. So here I am, one year later, hopefully wiser and stronger or whatever, but probably just a little exhausted and jaded on the idea of sustainability. I´ll fully admit that I´ve become a Peace Corps cliche and found Buddism along the way to help me fight the anger that I sometimes feel for the people that I´m trying so hard to love and to help, to fight that American gene in me that tells me I must produce, be productive, have a purpose. But I have those rare afternoons when I sit with the people in silence for hours on end and watch the clouds slowly creep from one end of the sky to the other or watch a horse eat grass as if it was an opera and I feel totally content and OK with life. My favorite are those conversations when I´m asked to describe snow, or how a total eclipse works, or how the dollar bill is fabricated and if its the paper itself that has value, or what this whole HIV-AIDS epedemic is. And they sit and listen, captured, and I know that I´m describing something that they would have never ever considerd before. But on the flipside, I have those days when people come to my house and ask for money, don´t show up to work days they´ve asked me to plan, make fun of me to my face in a Ngäbere specificly because they don´t want me to understand, or they won´t give me the time of day because I´m a women and then ask me for money.
Oh, Panama. What have you done to me? Me dejaste en la selva y me perdí. Ahorra me estoy poniendo india..... What a sad entry. The truth is, there really is no other place I´d rather be. Psychoanalyse that one.

What I do in the Peace Corps.

Despite what one might think, that the Peace Corps is a two year vacation, I am indeed very busy. Yes, it´s true that I spend a lot of my time lounging in my hammock, watching the sun descend upon the horizon, traquiling strumming my banjo in the late afternoon, reading books and working on a mess of craft projects. But I´m a resourceful busy beaver and one all of a sudden has a lot of time on their hands when they go from living in the inner city to living in a rural rain forest. But I digress......

Women's Group Project:
Ngäbe women, when not bearing children, feeding children or schlepping 1,000 lbs. of bananas around on their heads, make bags called ´chakaras´. One is not truly a women in Ngäbe culture if you aren´t constantly breast feeding or if you don´t make chakras. They are made from a natural fiber that is pulled out of a cactus-like plant called ´pita´, washed, bleached in the sun, dyed with natural dyes from jungle roots and berries and finally hand rolled into string called ´kiga´. Since I arrived, I have helped the women in town organize themselves into an artisan group. We have made connections with a local artisan cooperative where we now sell their products. Besides basic business skills I am aiding them in a variety of agricultural projects also. One of them is to a communal artisanal garden of pita and also the roots, berries and vines that have to be found deep in the jungle which usually remains far from the town, and rare or difficult to come by. The idea is to cultivate the materials of this traditional craft to them both accessible and to promote cooperatively.

Cacao Project: This will probably be the bulk of my Peace Corps service. The mission of this project is, with community leaders, other participating neighbor communities and local government agencies, including the Bocatoreño cacao cooperative, we will coordinate a series of educative seminars on cacao farm improvement. The themes will cover everything from improvement of agroforestry techniques to promote farm biodiversity and crop yield, to cacao maintenance through pruning, organic fertilizer use including worm castings and green manures to grafting. If all goes down as planned, we should kick off by June, si dios quiere.

Misc. Health Projects: I have been helping out a neighbor volunteer who comes from the next town over and whose main project is to make an aqueduct for my town as currently we get our water from the filthy stream that runs through town. This usually means rolling up the sleeves, throwing the shovel around and using the ol´elbow grease in the hot sun. We have built a water holding tank and buried over 3,000 ft. of PVC tube from the spring of the water to the pueblo below. You should see my biceps is all I have to say.

A past volunteer years ago did a composting latrine project and Nudobidi had about 15 made. Soon I will be conducting a house to house inspection to make sure the people are still clear of how to maintenance them and how to harvest and utilize the compost. (Hell yeah you can use human waste to fertilize your garden!) With that will come workshops for the whole family about why you shouldn´t shit in the river which is one cultural tradition that just can´t seem to die even though every man woman and child is riddled with more worms, intestinal parasites and skin infections than I care to talk about.

Sex ed!! is my favorite subject ever. I love it. I have done a couple condom on the ol´banana demos and HIV-AIDS workshops in some neighboring communities (which makes me feel weird as bananas also happen to be the main food staple here). But my brain child is to the Peace Corps-Bocas del Toro Sex Ed Tour 2007!!! and I´ve recruited a mess of other volunteers to collaborate in a one day seminar, first in our sites and eventually when we become famous visit every PCV site in the province and possibly beyond. We will cover everything from the ´birds and the bees´ (you would be surprised how many teenage mothers have no clue what the culprit of their three pregnancies was) to the variety of modern birth control that is available and accessible to the common impoverished undereducated rural women (rhythm method what?) to STDs and HIV ed. I´m banking on a UN program that I´ll be meeting with next week who may donate mad condoms to us because I already have my two tiendas on board to sell them for 5 - 10 cents a pop to raise money for the health committee. For our slogan I want to rip off Nike : ¨Family Planning: Just do it!¨ or perhaps ¨One less mouth to feed, who already have ten¨. Sorry that was insensitive.

And then theres English class, playing volleyball almost everyday and random farm visits which consist of schlepping around bananas on my head, planting bananas, cleaning cacao, harvesting cacao, harvesting corn, oh, did I mention schlepping bananas around on my head?, washing clothes in the river and of course, strumming my banjo on my front porch. I´m like a modern day Doc Boggs but my backdrop is jungle and Caribbean islands rather than the Appalachian Mountains.

Ju Tigwe (My House)

My new home is certainly not perfect, but nothing short of amazing because its mine. It finally happened after after 10 straight months of living with host families all over Panama, coast to coast. I began to feel comfortable with the idea of my general state of health, both physical and mental, in the hands of another. From the food they give me and the sanitation practices they abide by (or not), hearing their 20 children screaming at all hours, or having my basic privacy raped of me, I know with independence my healthfulness will return.
We cut down three threes (actually yelled out ¨NO!¨as I watched the cedar fall because I had no idea they were going to cut it down, which they still bring it up daily how hilarious and ridiculous I am), fixed the stairs, the porch, the bed, the windows. The house itself is stilted about 8 feet off the ground. Ones enters by climbing the stairs from beneath and emerging onto the porch of 6 x9´which holds a new sweet smelling cedar table and one cloth hammock courtesy of my two little hands. The door leads you into a 5 x 9´room which has enough room to hold my bed and a small table that my gas stove sits on. And that's all theres space for. Oh, and theres a shelf that hold things, which when the kids see the mountain of books resting on it their mouths drop and the tornado of questions begin. And I know I have blown their minds. (How many are there? How many pages are in each one? Can you read all of them? How many pages have you read? How many books have you read? Are they in pure English? Why don´t they have pictures?) The palm thatched roof (penca) towers about 15 feet over head, which is an ecosystem in and of its own. It houses bats, sparrows, cockroaches, ants, termites, 100 different species of spiders, and more scorpions than I care to talk about. I´ve killed about 7 in this week alone. The location down right sucks because its the most public place in town, which is what the people wanted. Now they´ll never be bored again what with the little stage (my porch) right before them, more entertaining than watching the grass grow or the clouds moving which is what they usually turn to to pass the time. It also makes it quite easy for the 7,000 children that roam free in the community like a large pack of wild coyotes to come and go as they please, or cualquier passerby on their way home from the finca, usually thirsty and expecting something. Now what you have to understand about the Ngäbes is they are obsessed with food, not the quality (as boiled bananas is it, salt on top if you´re lucky) but the quantity. And so the people visit each others house when they are either hungry, too lazy to cook or when they don´t have any food in their own house. The custom is when you see someone going to their house with food (usually as their walking home from the finca) you give then a little bit of time to prepare it before coming over and then you only eat a little, wrap the rest in a banana leaf and bring it home for the kids. I have been permanently marked as ¨greedy¨ because I can´t seem to get the para llevar part down. I want to think that when people stop by my house its to say hello, but this is not the case. The first few people who came by, usually with their 2 - 7 children when I moved in would come up the stairs, sit down, painfully try to make small talk (which Ngäbes are nearly incapable of) before asking ¨Where´s the food?¨ Yes, they say it just like that, as there really is no filter in Ngäbe culture. And you can imagine the shock when I tell them there is none (I mean come on, that's a lot of boca to feed). Lets just say that the instances of visits have been getting less and less as the word gets around about ¨Sara Mescina¨ (¨Greedy Sara¨) Fortunately I have a lot of nicknames.
Independence tastes good. The first morning in my place I woke up and made a cup of hot black bitching strong coffee (they drink it cold and resembles sugary water more then anything else, says the caffeine addict) and layed in my hammock to watch the sun rise over the misty forested hillside in peace and quite and I actually shed a little tear and then I went back to bed just because I could.

Nudobidti, Bocas del Toro, Panama

The small community of Nudobidti, which resides in the protected Palo Seco Forest Reserve, is nestled in the mountains between the Caribbean Coast and the River Changuinola. The climate is very much so the climate of a rain forest with moist rainy breeze, mud for ¨roads¨, every tropical disease known to man (such as Leshmaniasis, Dengue Fever and Malaria to name a few), and glowing green lushness as far as the eye can see. Coffee, cacao, root vegetables, bananas, plantain, and pifa thrive here.The indigenous Ngäbe-Bugle culture has a history in Panama that started long before pale skinned Spaniards came crashing on the shores of Central America. Nudobidti is a pure Ngabe village (except for the one white girl from Libertyville, Illinois that can be found roaming among them). Historically the Ngäbes are a hunter-gatherer society, which makes appropriate agricultural cultivation difficult. Generally their diet consists of bananas and pifa, which are crops that requires almost no maintenance whatsoever. With the pressure of the developing world and increased tourism growing up around them, their efforts to stay in par with the market demand and modernization is a constant struggle for their reserved and tranquilo ways. The neighboring town of Valle de Risco has a brand new school that was built last year and is a huge hope for the youth who speak mostly Spanish and want the opportunity to obtain something that their parents never had - a middle school education. Most adults are illiterate cacao farmers who know very little Spanish, a huge hindrance as many desire work outside the community as production levels have plummeted in the last generation and subsistence farming is something that few to none accomplished.Currently a multi-national company has moved into the area and plans are underway to do a huge hydro electrical dam project in the Rio Changuinola which will supply electricity from Costa Rica to Colombia (the communities it will be directly effecting won´t get to reap those same benefits though). As mentioned before, this community resides in a nationally protected forest, but the government has been paid to close their eyes while plans are being made to relocate entire communities, add to the degradation of the peoples native culture and ultimately endanger the fragile rain forest ecosystem. And so another classic story of a big business taking advantage of undereducated underprivileged people (and coincidentally enough, indigenous as well) in the name of progress.For the most part, the women of Nudobidti wear modern clothing, unlike their more traditional cousins in the Comarca Ngäbe-Bugle who exclusively wear naguas, the Ngäbe traditional dress. Naguas are decorated with colorful zig-zag designs which mimic the markings of venomous snakes and are meant to represent power. Some women also file their front teeth to a serrated edge for the same aesthetic purposes. Generally an entire extended family live together in one single house, including the grandparents, their children, their children's´children and then usually some random cousins. In the case of my host family, at one point I counted 24 people living with us, including myself, the majority sleeping in one single room. The houses are made of wood and are stilted, capped with a mess of penca (thatched palm). Basically, they look like little ewak huts. Women share children rearing responsibilities as well as house maintenance and food gathering. Living is basically communal in every sense.But the people are happy. You can find them fishing the river with nets, playing volleyball, echar-ing cuentas in town, where on a lucky day they have ice in a cooler over Coca Cola in the glass bottle at the store in town. (I say ¨town¨which is Valle de Risco. Imagine Valle de Risco as New York City and Nudobidti as say, Albany)

One More Baby and One Less Baby.

I told her I wanted to be present when the baby was born. I spend a lot of time with my host-sister Mariella, but because of the way timid Ngäbe culture is, it´s sort of taboo to talk about being pregnant and giving birth or women's health in general, or even admitting to the number of children you have. This always seems very strange to me because there are SO MANY kids everywhere and men measure their masculinity by how many kids they have and with how many different women. But Mariella and I had built up enough trust that this request wasn't totally ridiculous to her. However, she must have forgotten all about me at 5 AM in the morning when she went into labor. So apparently by candlelight, in the middle of night, on the kitchen floor without water or soap, she gave birth to a little girl, delivered by my host-granny (who's about 100 years old, by the way).
To them it´s no big thing when a new baby is around, because there´s practically a new one every day. Its hard to walk down the street or enter a house or do a jumping jack without running into about 5 naked, smiling Ngäbe children. No one bothers to remember their names until they are of school age because there are so many of them, and instead simply call them¨che¨which is Ngäbe for either ¨small¨or ¨child¨. But I still weeped like a little wussy when they handed me the hours old little babe of Mariella in the morning with my breakfast and coffee.

My friend Ramon and I had been working for two days, fixing up the little palm roofed hut that will soon be my house....all mine. We had to replace the stairs, build a table, some holes in the porch, etc. He was really excited to cut down trees with the chainsaw we solicited from the Junta Comunal (wait, aren't I suppose to be reforesting?). On the third day, he informed me that he had some things he needed to do in the house, and so I offered to help as a way of thanking him for helping me. We cut some wood to make what looked to be a small box, and I asked what it was for curiously. A few days before, in the house next to mine, a month old baby died. The whole family hiked 10 hours out to the Cordiara (mountain) to harvest corn and plant bananas a week after this child was born, staying in a rancho and sleeping on a dirt floor next to a smoldering fogon for three weeks. And still no one understood why this baby became sick and wouldn't respond to the herbal medicine a curandero recommended to them. Some say the devil came in the night to take its soul and caused a ruckas as it left the house the day it died. So turns out, I was helping Ramon make a 2 foot long coffin.

My house still isn't finished.

New Years Resolution with Haiku

I don´t know if I believe in formal New Years resolutions, but I do know that the beginning of the new year should be a good time to begin some of those things that you´ve ¨been meaning to do forever¨ or I suppose to pick up where you left off with unfinished business. With that said, this online journal is for those of you who may ask yourself from time to time...¨What the heck is Sara doing out there anyway?¨ As I walked away from Chicago on the 4th I realized that the most of you really don´t know. My trip home brought me the kind of perspective and insight I needed to document some of these unimaginable experiences out here in the jungles of Bocas del Toro. So read on you..... and welcome to my world....

Spent 2 weeks at home. I can say that too much has changed and at the very same time, too little. Had a bit of a hard time in conversation (had nothing to do that it was in English) ... wasn´t there for this, never heard about that. Its a strange feeling when your Granny gives you the low down on pop culture common knowledge. But, I too got some blank stares when talking openly about living in a hut and eating with my hands. Being in Chicago was also like a mental vacation from the alternate reality I have going in my little village of Nudobidi. How easy it was to get used to driving and consuming and showering.... Was greeted by Panama with a big ¨F-you Sara¨ as I killed three days in Santiago waiting for my lost baggage. Maybe it was meant to happen that way because I ran into some folks from my old community in Veraguas at the bus station who told me that my old host Mom has been worried about me and wants me to call her, which I´ve been meaning to do anyway, as well as visiting her in March. I wore the same Chicago-appropriate long sleeve shirt and woolen socks for three HOT days in the meantime ... maybe I wasnt ready to say goodbye to my Midwest. I forgot how beautiful those barren cornfields are when covered in snow and crowned with an icy gray cloudless sky.
I´m happy though to be walking into a busy month. I have back to back compermisos until the beginning of February, which include, but are not limited to: the beginning of my English class in the dirt floored school in town, participation in a fish tank building seminar (the kind that you do in a big hole in the ground), a three day Ngabere class, and a workshop that I coordinated with the local cacao cooperative for my community which will be facilitated by two Ngabe men in their indigenous language about how to properly prune and graft cacao trees. But what I´m really looking forward to is starting my Muchachas Guias (Girl Guide) group.... more info to come, so stay tuned. I was asked to write a haiku for the in-county Peace Corps newsletter (which I also submitted with a priceless photo of my host sisters playing my banjo). So I´ll leave you with this as my final good-bye to America:

Ngabe Children Don´t Where Pants or No Hay Latrina

Barefoot all day long

I step in human feces

Again and again

To view the online La Vaina (In-country PC newsletter), click on: http://www.panamapcv.net/lavaina/index.html