Unfortunately, I'm a seven hour bus ride from my camera's transfer cable, so photos are going to have to wait. In the meantime, let me paint you a picture of a sweet Ngabe community nestled riverside in the Comarca Ngabe-Bugle...
The 3.5 hour boat ride seems short when you're looking up at lush rainforest along the river banks. Houses on stilts with palm thatch roofs sprinkle the landscape. This is a beatiful place. As you motor up the river, the water becomes shallower. The men get out of the boat and help push while a boy encourages his horse to help pull. It's the end of the brief dry season in the region, so we won't need to push the boat much more this year. The boat ride ends in the community where another volunteer will be living. From there, I have to hike another hour alongside the river.
My community is charming to say the least. The center of the village is the recreation area. Kids run barefoot and kick soccer balls. The adults play volleyball. The sun is setting so I make my way to my host family for the night.
The family set aside a room for myself. The walls had a few magazine cutouts of girls from shopping catalogues, obviously the handiwork of their older son. Otherwise, the room was pretty sparse. I'm glad I had my mosquito net and thermorest combo.
The following day, I had my town meeting. The meeting was supposed to start at 8am, so we began promptly at 9am. Hora panameña. I gave a speech to the community (around 50 showed up) about why I was there and how I could help. As an aside, I'll talk more about my thoughts on development work and such in later posts. The community has worked with gringos before, so it wasn´t a novel speech by any means. My 10-minute speech was followed by a 30-minute discussion in Ñgabere. Awesome. Needless to say, learning Ngabere is up there on my to-do list.
The later part of the meeting was spent on deciding my Ngabe name. All the people in the community have a Ngabe name and a Spanish name. The Spanish name is decided when they fill out their paperwork for their cedula, which is the Panamanian version of your Social Security number. My Ngabe name is Oti. Since there are other Oti's in the region, I needed a last name. My new full name is Oti Grabu, Grabu being the Ngabe name for the river on which the community is situated.
During the rest of the week, I checked out neighboring communities and examined my community´s water system. My water system is in excellent shape and I feel good about the source and storage system. Other communities along the river need aqueduct systems. A good part of the next two years will be focused on water in neighboring communities, building latrines, and tons of charlas (presentations) on the merits of handwashing and soap. On that note, my last day in site I was laid out with a 24-hour homage to bodily fluids. I´m pretty sure it was from either the food or the cups/plates the food was served on. I´m feeling 100% better today and now I´ll have a story to reference during my presentations on hygiene.
Everything is going great and I´ll post pictures from my visit soon!
