- Awesome salsa music on everyday radio
- Grape nut ice cream (yes, it's a flavor, and yes, it's exactly what you think it is, and yes, it's delicious)
- $2 lunches
- Falling asleep to the sound of frogs, crickets, and the river
- Morning cup of coffee with view of the river
- Commute to work is a hike
- Children yelling "Oti", lit up with excitement
- Lack of stress
- Starry nights
- Seeing shadows cast by the light of the moon
- Bus ride from Chiriqui Grande over the continental divide to David
- Boat ride from Kwite to Chiriqui Grande
- Fried chicken
- Ladies who work at Hotel Toledo
- Hotel Toledo in general
- Space cadet who works at Fonda Orly
- Omega Stereo
- Las Lajas beach
- A hot cup of tea after hiking in the pounding rain
- Santa Clara host family during training
- Holding a newborn Ngabe in my arms
- Chicha
- Feeling of excitement and anticipation of seeing volunteers, hot water, AC, and cold beer
- Cold soda after a hard day's work
- Day of manual labor
- Only checking my email once every few weeks
- Lack of BlackBerry's
- Rate of personal growth
- Time to think about life
- Candlelit evenings
- Being the first white person to visit somewhere
- Bathing in a river
- El Rio Mananti
- Going to the mountains and feeling cold for the first time in months
Friday, April 22, 2011
Reasons to Miss Panama
Though leaving is still a ways out, I already have a creeping nostalgia. There will be things I will truly miss and/or remember about my time in Panama. Here's a few. I'm sure there will be an addendum list in the future:
Community Meetings
Early on I realized that conversations in the home were more effective than community-level meetings. People open up more in their home. Women are more likely to share their opinion. In general, everyone is also more engaged in the home setting. Though some may be milling about, tending to something in the kitchen or the cries of a child, I feel like they actually hear what I'm saying if we're talking in their home.
Given all of this, I haven't had a lot of community-wide meetings during my time here. But occasionally they make sense and certainly make good blog fodder. Here's a few observations about community meetings.
Expect to start your meeting 1-2 hours after the designated meeting time. Sometimes they blow a conch shell to let people know they should start wrapping up whatever it is they are doing so that they can start thinking about going so that they'll leave the house in about an hour. A theme that transcends meeting attendance is group think. Let's wait to head to the meeting until we see others starting to make movement.
Meetings are held in the casa comunal. People sit along the periphery. The center is usually taken up by dogs roaming about, small kids running from family member to family member, and the occassional chicken that's lost its way. The women usually group up, with the more outspoken intermingled with the men, while the quieter women and elderly sitting as far as one possibly can while still claiming attendance to the meeting.
The meeting will usually start with my counterpart listing off everything we're going to talk about in Ngabere. I always talk to him beforehand about everything I want to say. This always means that by the time I get up to talk, he's already said everything I'm about to say. I don't mind because it's good to review, clarify, and repeat. After all, no one is taking notes because hardly anyone is literate. I figure repetition is a good thing.
After I'm done speaking, they'll translate what I've said into Ngabere. We usually do this topic-by-topic, alternating between my gringo Spanish and Ngabere. Sometimes they'll get off track. They'll start discussing the logistics of some other project. Again, I don't mind. They don't meet much as a community outside of my meetings, so it's a good chance to get everything out there. And, when I really get honest with myself, it's not like I had a huge list of really pressing concerns that I have to attend to after the meeting.
At the end of the meeting, the water committee will usually collect funds and people will hang around chatting. Then someone will get up on a soap box and talk to whoever will listen. Most don't. Since it's all in Ngabere, I usually don't know what's going on, so I take my leave when it seems like the timing is right. There will usually be at least 5-10 people that stay chatting for the better part of the afternoon.
My final note is probably the most interesting. I feel like community members test my patience with what we in the US would take as disrespect. This happens almost daily. But in meetings, people listen, or are at least quiet. They'll talk over my counterpart's introduction. They'll talk over whoever's after me. But they quiet down when I'm talking. It's a really fascinating dynamic that I love and appreciate about my community.
Given all of this, I haven't had a lot of community-wide meetings during my time here. But occasionally they make sense and certainly make good blog fodder. Here's a few observations about community meetings.
Expect to start your meeting 1-2 hours after the designated meeting time. Sometimes they blow a conch shell to let people know they should start wrapping up whatever it is they are doing so that they can start thinking about going so that they'll leave the house in about an hour. A theme that transcends meeting attendance is group think. Let's wait to head to the meeting until we see others starting to make movement.
Meetings are held in the casa comunal. People sit along the periphery. The center is usually taken up by dogs roaming about, small kids running from family member to family member, and the occassional chicken that's lost its way. The women usually group up, with the more outspoken intermingled with the men, while the quieter women and elderly sitting as far as one possibly can while still claiming attendance to the meeting.
The meeting will usually start with my counterpart listing off everything we're going to talk about in Ngabere. I always talk to him beforehand about everything I want to say. This always means that by the time I get up to talk, he's already said everything I'm about to say. I don't mind because it's good to review, clarify, and repeat. After all, no one is taking notes because hardly anyone is literate. I figure repetition is a good thing.
After I'm done speaking, they'll translate what I've said into Ngabere. We usually do this topic-by-topic, alternating between my gringo Spanish and Ngabere. Sometimes they'll get off track. They'll start discussing the logistics of some other project. Again, I don't mind. They don't meet much as a community outside of my meetings, so it's a good chance to get everything out there. And, when I really get honest with myself, it's not like I had a huge list of really pressing concerns that I have to attend to after the meeting.
At the end of the meeting, the water committee will usually collect funds and people will hang around chatting. Then someone will get up on a soap box and talk to whoever will listen. Most don't. Since it's all in Ngabere, I usually don't know what's going on, so I take my leave when it seems like the timing is right. There will usually be at least 5-10 people that stay chatting for the better part of the afternoon.
My final note is probably the most interesting. I feel like community members test my patience with what we in the US would take as disrespect. This happens almost daily. But in meetings, people listen, or are at least quiet. They'll talk over my counterpart's introduction. They'll talk over whoever's after me. But they quiet down when I'm talking. It's a really fascinating dynamic that I love and appreciate about my community.
A Letter to Solaite
Dear Community of Solaite,
I've been coming to your community for over a year now. You've wanted a water system for quite some time. Initially, you rebuffed my ideas about forming a water committee and collecting funds from within the community. After all, I was white. Why couldn't I just bring the tubes already? Then, little by little, you bought into "the process". Maybe it was my visiting multiple times, explaining the same thing over and over again. Maybe it was that I never brought tubes.
You formed a water committee by holding elections. Then we had training. Your committee learned how to manage funds and make receipts, not a small feat considering the most educated adults in Solaite have an equivalent education of an average middle-class first grader back in the US.
Then you collected funds, each time asking if it was enough for me to start soliciting money from afuera. I told you it was about "the process", that I need to show potential donors that you were organized and ready for the project.
I felt ashamed. It was all so paternalistic. And "the process" took so long that there reached a point where I knew it was too late to start a project during my time here. But each month I would still show up while you collected your $0.50 from each home.
A few months ago we decided that having your own volunteer would be best. I couldn't devote enough time to the community. Shortly thereafter, my boss told me that you live too far away to have a volunteer, that Peace Corps Global is tightening up volunteer safety and security, that my site was already a stretch, that Peace Corps sites are going to be increasingly vanilla. I haven't told you this until now, my dark secret in a letter you'll never receive.
Last week we went over the guide to request a volunteer for your community. I answered questions and pretended everything was fine. I'm not proud of this. The thing is, so few people show signs of hope out here. Your enthusiasm is a powerful drug.
We collected funds. You've raised over $60!!! While that won't even come close to buying materials for an aqueduct, it does send a powerful message of what a committed community can do. You gleamed with pride. I emphasized the fact that this was all your money, without any outside help.
Then you started talking in Ngabere. I could generally follow that you were talking about buying tubes for the aqueduct. Maybe you chose to speak in Ngabere because you didn't want me to know that you were tired of waiting. Perhaps you didn't want me to know that you thought my talk was cheap, my ideals BS, my paternalism complete rubbish.
How could you know that I would cherish the thought of you taking the initiative to buy your own materials? How could you know that's exactly what I wanted all along? How could you know?
Fondly,
Oti Grabu
I've been coming to your community for over a year now. You've wanted a water system for quite some time. Initially, you rebuffed my ideas about forming a water committee and collecting funds from within the community. After all, I was white. Why couldn't I just bring the tubes already? Then, little by little, you bought into "the process". Maybe it was my visiting multiple times, explaining the same thing over and over again. Maybe it was that I never brought tubes.
You formed a water committee by holding elections. Then we had training. Your committee learned how to manage funds and make receipts, not a small feat considering the most educated adults in Solaite have an equivalent education of an average middle-class first grader back in the US.
Then you collected funds, each time asking if it was enough for me to start soliciting money from afuera. I told you it was about "the process", that I need to show potential donors that you were organized and ready for the project.
I felt ashamed. It was all so paternalistic. And "the process" took so long that there reached a point where I knew it was too late to start a project during my time here. But each month I would still show up while you collected your $0.50 from each home.
A few months ago we decided that having your own volunteer would be best. I couldn't devote enough time to the community. Shortly thereafter, my boss told me that you live too far away to have a volunteer, that Peace Corps Global is tightening up volunteer safety and security, that my site was already a stretch, that Peace Corps sites are going to be increasingly vanilla. I haven't told you this until now, my dark secret in a letter you'll never receive.
Last week we went over the guide to request a volunteer for your community. I answered questions and pretended everything was fine. I'm not proud of this. The thing is, so few people show signs of hope out here. Your enthusiasm is a powerful drug.
We collected funds. You've raised over $60!!! While that won't even come close to buying materials for an aqueduct, it does send a powerful message of what a committed community can do. You gleamed with pride. I emphasized the fact that this was all your money, without any outside help.
Then you started talking in Ngabere. I could generally follow that you were talking about buying tubes for the aqueduct. Maybe you chose to speak in Ngabere because you didn't want me to know that you were tired of waiting. Perhaps you didn't want me to know that you thought my talk was cheap, my ideals BS, my paternalism complete rubbish.
How could you know that I would cherish the thought of you taking the initiative to buy your own materials? How could you know that's exactly what I wanted all along? How could you know?
Fondly,
Oti Grabu
Can You Renege a Coup?
This is the last installment on a three-part series on the Kwite aqueduct. Make sure to read The Kwite Aqueduct - A Primer first, followed by Le Coup de Grace Deux.
We had last left our befuddled buddies in the rain forests of Panama. There we learned that the Kwite aqueduct was in serious jeopardy. The owner of the watershed was cutting down trees rather unapologetically. It was now up to the community of Kwite to take action. After all, this is as much their project as that of the volunteers.
In some ways there isn't much of a story. That's a good thing. Kwite pulled it together. They had a serious heart-to-heart with themselves followed by a heart-to-heart with the landowner. The owner agreed to stop cutting down trees and would safeguard the watershed. In a long series of heart-to-hearts, they ended with a confession on Jon's porch that they had not been the best workers during his time here. They agreed to start working with a little more enthusiasm. Said enthusiasm meant that all the repairs have already been made up near the source and project is back on track!
And while we're talking about reneges on coups, I should note that Calante is talking about a follow-up volunteer. Things are going well up in Calante. We're working on another water source for the dry season. People are starting to visit and ask more questions about who I am and less about my stuff. In other words, I think I should have told them I was leaving in six months a long time ago.
I'll keep you posted on how both sites develop. For now, and it could be just for now, things are going really, really well.
We had last left our befuddled buddies in the rain forests of Panama. There we learned that the Kwite aqueduct was in serious jeopardy. The owner of the watershed was cutting down trees rather unapologetically. It was now up to the community of Kwite to take action. After all, this is as much their project as that of the volunteers.
In some ways there isn't much of a story. That's a good thing. Kwite pulled it together. They had a serious heart-to-heart with themselves followed by a heart-to-heart with the landowner. The owner agreed to stop cutting down trees and would safeguard the watershed. In a long series of heart-to-hearts, they ended with a confession on Jon's porch that they had not been the best workers during his time here. They agreed to start working with a little more enthusiasm. Said enthusiasm meant that all the repairs have already been made up near the source and project is back on track!
And while we're talking about reneges on coups, I should note that Calante is talking about a follow-up volunteer. Things are going well up in Calante. We're working on another water source for the dry season. People are starting to visit and ask more questions about who I am and less about my stuff. In other words, I think I should have told them I was leaving in six months a long time ago.
I'll keep you posted on how both sites develop. For now, and it could be just for now, things are going really, really well.
Le Coup de Grace Deux
(Read The Kwite Aqueduct - A Primer first, so you get the full context for this post.)
After writing the first coup de grace post, I didn't really expect to be double-checking how to spell deux (those tricky French). After all, everything else has been going swimmingly. A few weeks ago, Jon and I were crossing off some smaller punch list items (painting, sheathing tubes, etc.) near the source only to find someone had fallen a few trees, breaking tubes in a few places.
A brief digression. That's the unwritten story of development. Bono and George Clooney aren't talking about failure. The non-profits and NGO's don't talk about what happens after they leave in their quarterly newsletters. I'm not saying that there aren't successes and those successes are certainly worth celebrating. But equally important is monitoring, follow-up, and accountability, something a bit lacking in most development organizations.
At this point in service I have made friends with failure. No longer the awkward guy making a scene at the party, Failure is someone you can talk to, even joke with. And so you learn to brush yourself off and go at it again. We would make the repairs to the system and keep moving forward.
A week later came the more crushing blow, a certain je ne c'est quoi, le coup de grace deux. Jon and I went back to the toma (source) with the parts needed to make the repairs to the system. When we got there we found this.
Someone had cleared much of the rain forest, with huge trees breaking tubes in even more places, including one of the bridge crossings. Even worse, the new clearing is adjacent to an existing potrero where cattle graze. This means that cows could soon be closer to the water source. In one fell felling, someone had broken a bunch of tube, added the threat of cattle contaminating the water source, compromised water retention in the cuenca (watershed), and potentially flushed thousands of dollars and man-hours of work down the drain.
The next couple of days where spent trying to figure out who owned the land and next steps. Here's a handy guide of the key players.
After writing the first coup de grace post, I didn't really expect to be double-checking how to spell deux (those tricky French). After all, everything else has been going swimmingly. A few weeks ago, Jon and I were crossing off some smaller punch list items (painting, sheathing tubes, etc.) near the source only to find someone had fallen a few trees, breaking tubes in a few places.
A brief digression. That's the unwritten story of development. Bono and George Clooney aren't talking about failure. The non-profits and NGO's don't talk about what happens after they leave in their quarterly newsletters. I'm not saying that there aren't successes and those successes are certainly worth celebrating. But equally important is monitoring, follow-up, and accountability, something a bit lacking in most development organizations.
At this point in service I have made friends with failure. No longer the awkward guy making a scene at the party, Failure is someone you can talk to, even joke with. And so you learn to brush yourself off and go at it again. We would make the repairs to the system and keep moving forward.
A week later came the more crushing blow, a certain je ne c'est quoi, le coup de grace deux. Jon and I went back to the toma (source) with the parts needed to make the repairs to the system. When we got there we found this.
Someone had cleared much of the rain forest, with huge trees breaking tubes in even more places, including one of the bridge crossings. Even worse, the new clearing is adjacent to an existing potrero where cattle graze. This means that cows could soon be closer to the water source. In one fell felling, someone had broken a bunch of tube, added the threat of cattle contaminating the water source, compromised water retention in the cuenca (watershed), and potentially flushed thousands of dollars and man-hours of work down the drain.
The next couple of days where spent trying to figure out who owned the land and next steps. Here's a handy guide of the key players.
- Paulino: Jon's counterpart in Kwite, current water committee president
- Roberto: Owner of nearby potrero, brother of my counterpart in Calante
- Fernando: Owner of nearby potrero, lives in Calante
- Chavela: Fernando's sister, lives in Kwite, past water president
- Mechikon: Past volunteer's Ngabe name, started the Kwite aqueduct
Jon discussed what happened with Paulino. That afternoon, Fernando stopped by Paulino's tienda and Paulino questioned Fernando, who said the land wasn't his and claimed ignorance to all that had transpired. Well, if it wasn't his land, it had to be Roberto's who owned a nearby potrero.
The next day, Jon and I set off to talk to Roberto. We found him clearing grass about 10 minutes away from the land in question. He graciously stopped what he was doing and walked with us. "That's not my land. That's Fernando's."
After thanking Roberto, we set off back to Calante to track down Fernando. I want to pause a bit and state that none of this is out of the ordinary. People lie and pass blame all the time. I'll post some thoughts on ethics at some point in the future.
.
Fernando greeted us from his hammock. He knew why we were there. He said he in fact owned the land. Fernando then stated that he had only cut down smaller trees that hadn't broken any tubes. They had. He said he had burned the larger trees at their base and had left. He couldn't be held responsible if the trees fell down from the breeze.
"But you burned the base so that the trees would fall, right?"
"Yes, but don't worry. I'm done cutting down the trees there."
"Great. Can you sign a contract that says you won't touch the remaining trees?"
"No because I may cut more trees down to build a house."
We weren't going to get anywhere with Fernando. It's too bad that the fact that his sister's family lives in Kwite or screwing an entire community in general wasn't enough to stop.
Jon and I then went to Chavela to see what she had to say. There we learned that Fernando had said that he was never consulted about running the tubes through his land. He was. He had originally reached an agreement with Mechikon, but we had to reroute the system and across his potrero because the original path went higher than the source. At the time, we asked Fernando it was OK before rerouting. He said that was fine. That was six months ago. For six months the tubes were there without a peep from Fernando. Now Fernando was voicing his concerns, that the tubes had been rerouting without his consent. Furthermore, she said that Fernando took issue with the original toma placement and had voiced his concerns with Mechikon. Pretty convenient for Fernando to say considering she left quite some time ago.
Fast forward a week or so. We had left it all in the hands of Kwite. The community needed to reach an agreement with Fernando or the project would not move forward. It isn't the responsibility of the gringos to force people to care, to force people to sign contracts, to force a Western code of ethics upon people that truthfully don't seem to be excited about the water system in the first place.
It's a tough pill to swallow and probably not representative of the average volunteer experience. But there it is. For everything that this experience hasn't been in terms of successful development work, it's been tenfold in terms of personal development. And while that was part of the reason why I signed up, there are days where I wish I could trade in some personal growth for a few small wins. After all, this whole experience is about "them" too, right?
The Kwite Aqueduct - A Primer
I figure I should write a primer on the Kwite aqueduct to add some context to a few upcoming posts on the epic saga that is the construction of the aqueduct in Kwite.
Kwite is located an hour downriver from my community, Calante. It's where the boat stops and from there I hike the hour upriver to Calante. Kwite is also where Jon, the nearby volunteer, lives. Jon and I are working on a water system, bringing water from the foothills about an hour and a half away. It's the closest clean source and that long distance has been the bane of our existence the past year and a half.
Upon arrival, Kwite was motivated to work. That lasted all of a month before the community started drinking to the detriment of work day attendance. Then came the rains. After a long hiatus, we resumed burying tubes. Commitment would ebb and flow for the next year. Poco a poco we advanced towards the source burying as we went. Finally we made it with the exception of bridge crossings across all the streams between the source and Kwite. We flipped the switch at the source and water... didn't flow.
After troubleshooting and surveying, we found that the original path coming down from the source, that was laid long before we got to Panama, went higher than the source. So we redirected the line and water began to flow. Then we started on the bridges to connect the lengths of already buried tube.
I'm leaving out another season of heavy drinking and heavier rain, electing a new water committee, pleading with community members to work, and general malaise over the pace and lack of interest on Kwite's part. But I digress.
So that's about where we're at. Read Le Coup de Grace Deux to find out what happened next.
Kwite is located an hour downriver from my community, Calante. It's where the boat stops and from there I hike the hour upriver to Calante. Kwite is also where Jon, the nearby volunteer, lives. Jon and I are working on a water system, bringing water from the foothills about an hour and a half away. It's the closest clean source and that long distance has been the bane of our existence the past year and a half.
Upon arrival, Kwite was motivated to work. That lasted all of a month before the community started drinking to the detriment of work day attendance. Then came the rains. After a long hiatus, we resumed burying tubes. Commitment would ebb and flow for the next year. Poco a poco we advanced towards the source burying as we went. Finally we made it with the exception of bridge crossings across all the streams between the source and Kwite. We flipped the switch at the source and water... didn't flow.
After troubleshooting and surveying, we found that the original path coming down from the source, that was laid long before we got to Panama, went higher than the source. So we redirected the line and water began to flow. Then we started on the bridges to connect the lengths of already buried tube.
I'm leaving out another season of heavy drinking and heavier rain, electing a new water committee, pleading with community members to work, and general malaise over the pace and lack of interest on Kwite's part. But I digress.
So that's about where we're at. Read Le Coup de Grace Deux to find out what happened next.
Much Ado About Poo
I'll apologize right now for both the candor and content of this post. I'm going to talk about poo, so if that's not your shtick, feel free to close your browser before embarking on this diarrheal diatribe.
I wouldn't be capturing the full volunteer experience if there weren't an entry on bowel movements. Now that that's out of the way, let's get down to business, #2. I'm talking about a chat on scat, a vent on excrement, the scoop on poop, even going so far as to say a treatise on feces.
The thing is, working in health, water, and sanitation, you deal with poop.... a lot. That may be your own compromised bowel movements due to parasites or maybe it's the BM's of community members. As a volunteer there may be latrine construction. There will be presentations and discussions about treatment and prevention of diarrhea. And that's OK. In fact, it's more than OK. Truthfully, the most uncomfortable one in the room is yourself, at least initially. Once you see that it's our culture that makes you squeamish, you learn to let go (potentially also a pun).
As volunteers, we've shed practically all inhibitions about sharing amongst other volunteers. This runs the gamut from tropical skin conditions to well... bowel movements. Here's a typical conversation with a volunteer you might not have seen for a month or two.
Volunteer 1: "How's it going?"
Volunteer 2: "Pretty good. I'm regular again, which is nice."
Volunteer 1: "No kidding. I know what you mean. Last week I was...."
Suffice to say, I wouldn't want friends and family back home to by a fly on the wall (much less potential for a pun. Flies, $#!%. I know, it's a real stretch).
It's interesting to see people out here are completely at ease with their excrement. They talk about it openly. They joke about it. That's how it goes in a world without flush toilets. Without the luxury of just pulling a handle, you have to deal with "it". And so there aren't really the kids snickering like you'd find back home. We laugh nervously out of shame or embarrassment precisely because it isn't a part of our lives. Flush and forget.
Author's Note: A good friend Luis posted a related, though much more professional and insightful blog entry on latrine construction and the challenges of behavioral change in an area where people are accustomed to using streams as their sanitation system. Click here to read on.
I wouldn't be capturing the full volunteer experience if there weren't an entry on bowel movements. Now that that's out of the way, let's get down to business, #2. I'm talking about a chat on scat, a vent on excrement, the scoop on poop, even going so far as to say a treatise on feces.
The thing is, working in health, water, and sanitation, you deal with poop.... a lot. That may be your own compromised bowel movements due to parasites or maybe it's the BM's of community members. As a volunteer there may be latrine construction. There will be presentations and discussions about treatment and prevention of diarrhea. And that's OK. In fact, it's more than OK. Truthfully, the most uncomfortable one in the room is yourself, at least initially. Once you see that it's our culture that makes you squeamish, you learn to let go (potentially also a pun).
As volunteers, we've shed practically all inhibitions about sharing amongst other volunteers. This runs the gamut from tropical skin conditions to well... bowel movements. Here's a typical conversation with a volunteer you might not have seen for a month or two.
Volunteer 1: "How's it going?"
Volunteer 2: "Pretty good. I'm regular again, which is nice."
Volunteer 1: "No kidding. I know what you mean. Last week I was...."
Suffice to say, I wouldn't want friends and family back home to by a fly on the wall (much less potential for a pun. Flies, $#!%. I know, it's a real stretch).
It's interesting to see people out here are completely at ease with their excrement. They talk about it openly. They joke about it. That's how it goes in a world without flush toilets. Without the luxury of just pulling a handle, you have to deal with "it". And so there aren't really the kids snickering like you'd find back home. We laugh nervously out of shame or embarrassment precisely because it isn't a part of our lives. Flush and forget.
Author's Note: A good friend Luis posted a related, though much more professional and insightful blog entry on latrine construction and the challenges of behavioral change in an area where people are accustomed to using streams as their sanitation system. Click here to read on.
Hay que Cuidarlas
Somewhere in between the lines of National Geographic and travel documentaries and history novels, I'd gleaned the idea that those with little take care of what they do have. I have this image of Okies mending old clothes and impoverished children cherishing their one toy. Maybe this assumption generally holds true, but I am constantly shocked by how much this area seems to deviate.
Outside of where I live, I can't say that I know many people living in poverty. I can say that I tell people to take care of their stuff all the time. The wind blows a piece of clothing off the line. It stays in the mud, then becomes a rag in the home. Trash collects outside people's homes. People let water coming from their roofs stagnant below instead of digging proper drainage. My attempts at landscaping have pretty much failed from kids trampling the flowers instead of using my gravel pathway. I taught the kids how to make bracelets. Everyone had lost theirs within a few days. I take hotel soap from David to give to community members. Though you can use the soap several times, they're usually single use because they'll leave the soap on the rocks in the river or simply let it float downriver. Last year, the government gave out a pair of Crocs to every kid in my school (and plenty of adults were seen sporting their new foot ware). Within a month, almost no one had their pair of baby blue Crocs (I know! and they were real Crocs). This year they gave out backpacks the middle of March. Here we are in the middle of April and many kids backpacks are torn they they had been a dog's chew toy for the past month. The list goes on and on.
So this begs a basic question. Why??? Why is the "rich" gringo the one mending his clothes, wearing the same bracelets he made at the beginning of service, using his soap until it runs out, digging drainage, picking up other's trash they leave in his yard? (I should point that there are a rare few who landscape, have gravel paths, etc. so it's not like I'm full of new-fangled Western ideas). If you don't have the money for a shirt, why do you let the one you do have go to $#!@?
This is a question that has confounded me for a long time. Perhaps it has something to do with the weather. The sun is intense, as is the rain. Things quickly return to the earth. Maybe that creates a sense of futility. Maybe it's that "stuff" is a relatively new idea. The idea of maintaining for the future is equally as new. These ideas of planning and investing for the future are still being woven into the cultural fabric. Maybe it's a sense of helplessness, that they just go with the flow because it's not in their power to change the way things are.
The truth is, I have no idea. It's all conjecture. It's also incredibly frustrating. But I guess that comes with the territory. I'm on the ground floor planting little thought seeds in the hopes that, long after I'm gone, the clothes will be picked up and put back on the line.
Outside of where I live, I can't say that I know many people living in poverty. I can say that I tell people to take care of their stuff all the time. The wind blows a piece of clothing off the line. It stays in the mud, then becomes a rag in the home. Trash collects outside people's homes. People let water coming from their roofs stagnant below instead of digging proper drainage. My attempts at landscaping have pretty much failed from kids trampling the flowers instead of using my gravel pathway. I taught the kids how to make bracelets. Everyone had lost theirs within a few days. I take hotel soap from David to give to community members. Though you can use the soap several times, they're usually single use because they'll leave the soap on the rocks in the river or simply let it float downriver. Last year, the government gave out a pair of Crocs to every kid in my school (and plenty of adults were seen sporting their new foot ware). Within a month, almost no one had their pair of baby blue Crocs (I know! and they were real Crocs). This year they gave out backpacks the middle of March. Here we are in the middle of April and many kids backpacks are torn they they had been a dog's chew toy for the past month. The list goes on and on.
So this begs a basic question. Why??? Why is the "rich" gringo the one mending his clothes, wearing the same bracelets he made at the beginning of service, using his soap until it runs out, digging drainage, picking up other's trash they leave in his yard? (I should point that there are a rare few who landscape, have gravel paths, etc. so it's not like I'm full of new-fangled Western ideas). If you don't have the money for a shirt, why do you let the one you do have go to $#!@?
This is a question that has confounded me for a long time. Perhaps it has something to do with the weather. The sun is intense, as is the rain. Things quickly return to the earth. Maybe that creates a sense of futility. Maybe it's that "stuff" is a relatively new idea. The idea of maintaining for the future is equally as new. These ideas of planning and investing for the future are still being woven into the cultural fabric. Maybe it's a sense of helplessness, that they just go with the flow because it's not in their power to change the way things are.
The truth is, I have no idea. It's all conjecture. It's also incredibly frustrating. But I guess that comes with the territory. I'm on the ground floor planting little thought seeds in the hopes that, long after I'm gone, the clothes will be picked up and put back on the line.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Tank Construction in Cocle
Last month I helped another volunteer, Aaron, with tank construction for his water system in the province of Cocle. Though most of my services were of the pack mule variety, it was a great chance to hang out and check out another province in Panama. I was extremely impressed by the people I met. Here are some photos of my time there.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Le Coup de Grace
As much as some days seem interminable, it's hard to believe I've been in Panama for 20 months. I have about six months left before I'll be packing my things and saying my goodbyes. Being this far into service, there's been a shift in my perspective of time. Instead of thinking about some vast quantity of time left, I've entered a phase where I'm wrapping things up, starting to think about life after Panama, and readying my community for when I go.
I've started talking to community members about whether they'd like a follow-up volunteer. And while a few have said they would like to have another, the majority have said no. At first this was a bit of shock and came as both a personal and professional blow. I feel like I've poured so much into this experience and I can't pretend that to hear they don't want another volunteer doesn't hurt a little. My time here has been framed by so much failure, so many projects and ideas that never took form. And there's been no shortage of time to reflect. Is there something I could be doing differently? Is it because I don't speak good enough Spanish? Why am I a bad volunteer?
Then I started asking why. Some had listed that they didn't think it was a good fit or that it's hard to get used to a white person hanging out in their community. But the people I'm closer with told me this:
We thought that if we asked for an American, they would bring us a lot of money.
Now before you get all riled up in your chair, you have to understand that this makes perfect sense. Like it or not, that is the image of all Americans. The last time gringos showed up, they got an aqueduct. In some ways this means I successfully broke down the stereotype because now they don't want a follow-up.
Needless to say, there's been some disillusionment on everybody's part. At first I was upset, but that quickly turned to relief. For so long I had been carrying this millstone of self-doubt, thinking there was something more I could be doing. To hear that the community had just wanted money from the beginning takes that burden away. Suddenly, my failures have a decent explanation and that explanation has little to do with my shortcomings. Truthfully, I haven't felt this happy in a long time. Of course you don't care about my health presentations or English classes or aqueduct improvement efforts or computer classes or a garden for the school or better cooking stoves or rehabilitating your fish tanks or starting a coop or starting an artisan group or even something so basic as just getting to know me. You just wanted a handout. I get it now.
I'm not mad at my community. I understand where they are coming from and the truth is, I'm kind of glad this has defined my service. When else in my life will I have a chance to fail so much, to struggle so much, to have so much time to reflect and grow? I'm still in my twenties and have a whole lifetime ahead of me with the hardest thing I will have ever done already under my belt. How liberating is that?
I've started talking to community members about whether they'd like a follow-up volunteer. And while a few have said they would like to have another, the majority have said no. At first this was a bit of shock and came as both a personal and professional blow. I feel like I've poured so much into this experience and I can't pretend that to hear they don't want another volunteer doesn't hurt a little. My time here has been framed by so much failure, so many projects and ideas that never took form. And there's been no shortage of time to reflect. Is there something I could be doing differently? Is it because I don't speak good enough Spanish? Why am I a bad volunteer?
Then I started asking why. Some had listed that they didn't think it was a good fit or that it's hard to get used to a white person hanging out in their community. But the people I'm closer with told me this:
We thought that if we asked for an American, they would bring us a lot of money.
Now before you get all riled up in your chair, you have to understand that this makes perfect sense. Like it or not, that is the image of all Americans. The last time gringos showed up, they got an aqueduct. In some ways this means I successfully broke down the stereotype because now they don't want a follow-up.
Needless to say, there's been some disillusionment on everybody's part. At first I was upset, but that quickly turned to relief. For so long I had been carrying this millstone of self-doubt, thinking there was something more I could be doing. To hear that the community had just wanted money from the beginning takes that burden away. Suddenly, my failures have a decent explanation and that explanation has little to do with my shortcomings. Truthfully, I haven't felt this happy in a long time. Of course you don't care about my health presentations or English classes or aqueduct improvement efforts or computer classes or a garden for the school or better cooking stoves or rehabilitating your fish tanks or starting a coop or starting an artisan group or even something so basic as just getting to know me. You just wanted a handout. I get it now.
I'm not mad at my community. I understand where they are coming from and the truth is, I'm kind of glad this has defined my service. When else in my life will I have a chance to fail so much, to struggle so much, to have so much time to reflect and grow? I'm still in my twenties and have a whole lifetime ahead of me with the hardest thing I will have ever done already under my belt. How liberating is that?
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