Friday, July 31, 2015

Visit to the Darien


 Visit to the Darien
July 21, 2015

Small waves lap the hull of the lancha and make a rhythmic popping sound. In a futile attempt to become comfortable, I am wrapped around a gas tank, one of about two-dozen or so on the small fishing boat. I use my lifejacket to blanket me from the wind while I listen to my friend, Aaron, breathing the breath of the blissfully unconscious. The captain has retired behind the mound of gas tanks and uses his umbrella to shield him from the wind. The popping sound and unfortunate shape of my blanket keep me awake and cold so I admire the perfect line of the Pacific Ocean meeting the starlit sky on the horizon. I stand up and take a cautiously balanced pee off the side of the rocking lancha, imagining how ridiculous it would be to fall of the side of the boat, headfirst into the sea. I would create an illumined splash in my now salty and diluted pee, the bio-luminescent bacteria welcoming me into the dark ocean with a burst dull green light. The captain would explode out from behind his umbrella and yell at me in fast and indecipherable Spanish to get my ass back onto the lancha as he would crawl over the mound of gas tanks until he reached the front of the boat and would pull me back onboard. Instead, I keep my balance, zip up, and resume my normal position wrapped around a gas tank in the bow of a fiberglass fishing boat, in the middle of the night, with an afro-Latino captain and cargo of empty gas tanks and two gringos; off the coast of a nearly deserted jungle in Panama’s notorious Darien region. Silent lightning and glowing splashes of jumping fish periodically ignite the darkness and I try and sleep, glad to not have pushed the absurdity of my circumstance overboard.  



My friend and fellow aspirante (PCV in training) Aaron and I were making our way back from our volunteer visits. We had both gone to remote sites, which required hours of bus and boat travel to access.  The site I visited, which was the portal to the site Aaron visited, is called Taimati. It is beachfront property 12 hours out of each day. During high tide, the Pacific Ocean breaks gently upon the towns sandy shore. However, during low tide, the ocean drops to reveal kilometers of mud between Taimati’s beach and the lower level of the ocean. You therefore cannot arrive or depart at low tide, unless you want to hike through knee-deep mud to or from the town. Given the tides on the night we departed and irregularity of the boat schedule, we had been forced to board a boat in the middle of the night at high tide, put an anchor in past the low tide mud fields, and wait until the sun rose. It was my first night spent on the ocean, and hopefully my least comfortable night ever.

Departure aside, the previous week had been memorable and informative. I visited a current volunteer named Austin Dill in Panama’s Darien province. The Darien is the Wild West of Panama with low population density, vast regions of untapped wilderness and the origin of the fables of drug cartels that pass through and the horrors the leave in their wake. In general, towns are small and Taimati is composed of a few hundred people. It is a sleepy fishing town organized around a grid of concrete sidewalks. There are no cars and the generator for the town doesn’t function so the power lines are a reminder of a brighter past. Running water is spotty at best. The people fish for their food and gather shellfish and crabs that they share with the community.

I spent the days pasearing with Austin, getting to know his neighbors and asking him endless questions about the life of a volunteer and his site. He told me stories, made me food by headlamp or sunlight, served me filtered my water, and tried to give me an honest taste of what it is like to be a PCV. We received gifts of food as we paseared, went for walks, sat around the house, looked at some of the initiatives he was hoping to implement in the community, and played soccer with the kids. The people hauled boat motors to and from their boats, filled buckets full with seafood, and they would extend a long “Buueeeennnaas” to us from their sun-baked lips as we wondered through the town. The days passed quickly, with rain in the afternoon and hot sun during the day with a western horizon of either mud or ocean. This was the life in Taimati and the moons position in the sky determined how the day would be spent just as much as the sun.

We also visited another volunteer named Matteo at an indigenous Woonan site, who Aaron was staying with. Austin and I walked 30 minutes through the jungle to the community of Semico. Matt’s house was surrounded by the wall-less and thatched roof structures that composed the town. The people were known for being funny and happy. They called Matt “white penis” in Woonan, and would warn him of the potentially uplifting risks of eating too much shellfish. A few kids from the town accompanied us on a tour of the town’s aqueduct, and one of them shot an iguana down on the way. We bathed in the river after the tour with what seemed like a disproportional amount of 3-7 year olds for the size of the town. Matteo told us of his hopes to bury the exposed aqueduct system, but also the difficulty in motivating his community. A few members of his community washed their cloths in the calm river in the background with a basket of recently picked fruit on the shore and joked with each other in a fast mix of Spanish and Woonan. I understood their lack of motivation and his dilemma.

The week was full of many other small stories and experiences which now compose my impression of a PCV’s life in Panama. The culture seems authentic and thus isolating for a foreigner. Free time seems to be a common theme as one must wait on unpredictable transportation or for the community to mobilize. Building capacity in one’s community seems to be just as important as implementing tangible projects. Across the board there seems to be poignant highs and lows. However, at the end of the day it appears that a PCV can rest feeling proud of the small victories of the day as they sleep under a thatched roof or sheets of zinc; or occasionally, a blanket of bright stars with silent lightning on the horizon.















Sunday, July 5, 2015

They Too Will Pasear


Current Books:
Spell of the Sensuous 
Spanish Notes  

Current Music: 
The Regeton from the neighbors yard

They Too Will Pasear 
July 5, 2015

Pasear is a Spanish verb which roughly means to go visit, but that has a special meaning in Panama. My observed understanding of the word is that it is the act of walking from house to house within the community one lives and entering said houses with a confident “Buenas!” and then passing the following minutes/hours with the members of that house before moving to the next neighbor or returning home. It is how the members of the small pueblo of Santa Rita, where I currently live, pass their free time and it will be the encouraged method of integration over the next two years.

Before arriving in Santa Rita and about three weeks ago, 47 people from various regions of the United States and Puerto Rico converged at a Holiday Inn in downtown Washington D.C. for what the Peace Corps calls Staging. Staging, in essence, is a chance for PCVs to meet their fellow volunteers, learn a bit more about the Peace Corps, and then have a chance to hightail it home to hot showers, the freedom to drive, and endless access of peanut butter.  All 47 of us, 24 environmental health volunteers and 23 sustainable agricultural systems volunteers chose to stick with it and we began the 2.25 year process of getting to know each other. After staging, I paid my respects to the monuments in Washington DC and went to sleep for a few hours before waking up in the early morning to fly to Panama.  

We arrived in Panama and spent the following 4 days in the ex U.S. military base – converted to university/public-resource-center, called Ciudad de Saber (City of Knowledge). The Panama Peace Corps office is located in this city, as well as the dorms where we slept. We were further immunized against and educated on the many snakes, diseases, insects, snakes, environments, allergic reactions, snakes, fungi, viruses, parasites and did I mention snakes that could shorten our period of service, and life in general. They introduced us to current volunteers who told us of the legends and lessons that they had obtained over the last year. We played soccer, slept, ate, and began to understand Panama together and became a cohesive unit of 47, until when two weeks ago when they tore us apart and separated us by our volunteer title into two separate training communities. I went with the Environmental Health volunteers to the small town of Santa Rita.

I live with a wonderful lady named Mabel and her 25 year old son in Santa Rita. Currently, I sit on a red and gold couch with matching curtains and pillows. Plantains, rice and beans rest on the kitchen counter and are mindfully covered to keep the flies from wiping their dirty paws on our dinner. I can hear my host mom, Mabel, speaking with her brother outside in fast Panamanian Spanish (he is pasearing).  My hair is wet from swimming in the river with some other volunteers and kids from the town. In my house I have a fan and consistent running water, both unusual of luxuries for a PCV in Santa Rita. I spend the majority of my days taking Spanish class in the mornings and attending technical training in the afternoons; separated by lunch and a 30-minute nap in a hammock. I usually swim in the river in the evening, watch soccer at night, and fuel my days with an endless supply of mangoes, maracuya and three meals a day cooked by Mabel.

The Peace Corps does not extract you from comfort and drop you into poverty with no transition. It prepares you, mindfully, in a method that is well engineered, generously oiled, and meticulously maintained. They chip away at your luxuries overtime. You go from hot showers, to cold showers, to no showers. You build friendships in Staging and in Ciudad de Saber, which they quickly burn access to. They leave you with 24 English-speaking friends, a Latin pueblo to pasear through, a fan, and occasional running water as your luxuries. It is a step towards the realities of the next two years, but currently I feel well adjusted, comfortable and content. I appreciate the red couches with matching drapes, and enjoy living with my Panamanian mom and having my 24 new friends close by, because I know that they too will soon pass(ear).