Food Confusion

I was heading home from pasearing when an old lady named Christina stuck her head out the door of her small home and hollered, “Tikan, hague!”, (Come here Sean!). She emerged from her house with a sack, opened it up and revealed that it was filled with trail mix, dried cherries and almonds, soy protein and rice packets, and bags of dried fruits. I thought I was dreaming, it was all the snacks I missed from Trader Joes emerging from this ladies stick home in Cerro Pita. She handed me a packet of rice and soy protein. I looked at it, it was covered in English, and had “packed with love by volunteers” written on the front of the package. She asked me how to prepare it. Sure enough the directions and all the nutrition information were in English, even though it was from an organization that provides food for undernourished children. You prepare it like rice I told her. She sighed in relief. “ OK, that’s what I thought, but we tried to cook this stuff,” mentioning to the trail mix,  “and even put a packet of seasoning in it, but it tasted so bad we couldn’t finish it!” I smiled and tried not to laugh. “Yes, that you eat as is,” I say. “OK, well we thought that with this beef in it you must cook it,” mentioning to a dried cherry. Admittedly it did look like dried beef. I couldn’t hold back the laughter. “No, no, that is dried fruit!” I informed her. “How do you have so much of this stuff anyway?” I ask. “Well the people from the United States were handing it out at a church conference and no one knew how to prepare these packets, and didn’t know what this (the trail mix) was, besides that it had cacao in it,” mentioning to an almond, which does look almost exactly like cacao. “As for the dried fruit, no one liked it, so I collected a sack full, because I knew you could explain it to me.” She continues to tell me a story about getting medicines mixed up and giving her daughter cold medicine for lice, because they also had english directions. It is surprising to me that an organization that provides food to undernourished children would not put the directions in the language of the people it is intended for. It makes me wonder if the food, “packed with love by volunteers”, is principally intended to fill stomachs with food or hearts with the act of kindness of packing them. I left Christina’s house with a bag full of trail mix and soy protein, mind replaying our conversation, and just wishing I had stumbled upon them boiling up a batch of trail mix, throwing some salt and seasoning in and serving up bowls of boiled cherries and almonds.

Months 3 - 7

Current Music: Amadou Et Mariam, Tallest Man on Earth, Tonolec, Odesza, New Order.

Current Books: Poisonwood Bible, House of the Spirits, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009

April 19, 2016. 4.19.16. 8:39 am.

A cup of coffee sits on a stained nancy table. Birds sing. Music, gifted from an Argentine traveler, reverberates in my small wood home. A mural of a cow and beans is my backdrop from the perspective from the door, and a painted sun forms a flaming border around my head, from the perspective of my computer screen. New art fills my home, gifts left from family, friends and loved ones. Novelty, a theme of my last long post, was left for the guests. I became to one with knowledge and understanding, and my perspective has changed. Mina, My Mother and Father, a traveler from Argentina, and various volunteers have passed through, all leaving a drop of themselves in the stream that makes my service, and the pool that makes up Cerro Pita.

The many guests were uniquely anticipated. Mina’s integration lasted a week. The kids grew fond of her, the community took her in as family, and abuela looked at her with a sense of admiration and fascination that had taken me months to foster. She brought out the hunting luck of the boys, who showed off their skill by pegging a falcon with a rock from 50m away. She joined us in the quebrada, dog paddling through the shallow pools and carrying back iguana eggs from the sandy shore. We were gifted too much food to prepare and eat. We harvested corn, and stabbed scorpions and shot rats with slingshots. The time passed quickly, and after she had gone, I had to clarify with each individual person the fact that she would probably not come back.

My parents were a different beast. They were foreign, but they were also the age of great grandparents, a combination that rarely passes through Cerro Pita. I put them on showntell throughout the community. After introductions, they would speak with in their Mexican Spanish and make people feel comfortable and appreciated. The kids would accompany us on the many different adventures, giving us a feeling of belonging. I acted as my parents personal chef, the providers, now being provided for. We prepared a dinner with my the host family, the union of seemingly distinct lives. We went to Boquete, a comfortable mountain town, after visiting site, and ate pizza and gelato and drank good coffee, but unfortunately the dream of a microbrew did not come to fruition.

The many other guests, including Sona, a traveling puppeteer who performed a puppet show for the community, Anthony, and various other volunteers each had their own flavor and have given my memory of the last five months a brighter sentiment.

However, most days are without visitors. I fill my days with tasks, to the point that my booklist is growing instead of shrinking. My desire to plant a garden and trees has become overwhelming and the arrival of rain is anticipated on many levels. In the morning, I make an aeropress coffee, water the plants, stretch, meditate, feed my cat Inch, and eat breakfast with the host families dog, Chaco. I then fulfill the tasks for the day. Usually they are project related and range from informing community members about workshops or meetings, giving the workshops and participating in the meetings, to technical studies and construction. We have finished surveying the water system, and are finishing up with the construction of the spring boxes. All the materials have been bought by the community, raised by selling tortillas and tamales. The work has been rewarding, but by no means easy. I act as the engineer for the system and direct anywhere from 5 to 15 people each work day in a mutually second language about work that I am by no means an expert in. We get by, and most work days are packed with laughter, and they enjoy making fun of me and my novice ngabere understanding. The responsibility, of successfully distributing water to nearly 200 people,  is heavy, and it is a poignant taste of the responsibility that engineering work can have.

Work days are usually about 8 hours. We eat and drink consistently throughout the day. There is a large boulder by the spring source, which serves as the kitchen. Each worker is required to bring a contribution of food that is shared with the group.

I have began to understand that my presence in the community will give quality to the project, but most importantly gives confidence. While the work is technical, it is not particularly precise. For example, Ricardo, the water committee president, approached me one day asking for a list of materials for a tank to take the the local government, in an attempt to acquire additional funding. I spent the day reading about tanks, and calculated all the necessary materials and size of the tank, given the flow rate at the spring and the projected population of the community. The following day, at a community meeting, Ricardo pulled out a tape measure and presented different size tanks to the community. They voted on what seemed most appropriate. They asked my opinion and I gave technical details about each possibility, but it really came down to what felt right. The truth is, correctly sizing a tank will save money, but a large tank has no detrimental effects. My engineering approach can give a ballpark range for the size, but more importantly it gives a green light to actually build the tank, whatever size they choose, instead of simply talk about it.

I also have spent time giving workshops on diarrhea, sanitation, water storage and treatment and HIV and AIDS.

With the lack of rain, the spring where I get water has moved, and I now have to carry water about 10 minutes, up and down hills, to my house. Relative to other water-less communities, this is trivial, but it is a profound reminder of the gravity of water, and the privilege of having water in the fosset.

I wake up before sunrise, and fall asleep when I am tired. From an outside perspective, the adventure and liberty of this life is enticing and rich. However, there are days, when I return home after working, my legs are tired, and my gallon of water is empty, or the ants have invaded my rice, or Inchu’s bag of cat food is empty and she nibbling my toes, where I miss the comfort, familiarity, and ease of home. Additionally, I am conscious of the quality of my food, the hungry eyes that watch me while I eat, and the fact that I am a rich visitor in a poor community. I try to uphold their own traditions, understanding a potential blindness to cultural differences, but it can be exhausting and weighs heavy on the heart.

Otherwise, life is light and relatively easy. The Comarca is beautiful, I feel well appreciated and useful within the community and I enjoy the peace, quiet and simplicity of each day. 

Pan Sribiri

April 23, 2016

If the culture were a woodworker, she would be it’s masterpiece. She has been carved by the physical demands, detailed by a knowledge of the land and the old traditions, sanded by the language, and stained and colored by faith in its doctrine. Now she is admired by the grandchildren which look to her as their teacher and a masterpiece. Her arms are thick from pilaring rice, her feet callused from the rocks, sand and mud that cover the trails, her tactile hands trained for fine artisan work and long nights on grinding corn and coffee. Her eyes are deep, with shadows of births gone wrong, children lost, and fear of the changing land and climate. The culture has chipped, scooped, cut, and shaped her life. I did not hear her speak a word of Spanish until I had moved out of her home and into my own house. She spoke to a friend of mine who was visiting in soft and broken Spanish, revealing a knowledge of the outside language and also her choice to stick with her sculptor, not to let another take a hold of the chisel.

Naturally, in the presence of a masterpiece, I have been humbled but interested and inspired. Through the children she would teach me the names and uses of plants, and how to harvest and prepare traditional foods, and encourages me to figure out the language. In this place, what is “ideal” had been left on the magazine racks in the checkout line of a supermarket  and replaced by a grandma.

It was quite the surprise when she expressed interest in learning how to make bread. I had advertised the ease of making bread from corn and bananas and flour, but no one had taken the bait, until she asked me in basic ngabere about “pan sribiri” - (bread work). I acknowledged and made her a drawing with the necessary ingredients and by suspending a small wok-shaped pan inside a larger one, we were able to make an oven-like environment. She prepared to bread, while I watched, her dark and wrinkled fingers, tearing open a bag of baking powder and measuring a quarter of a spoonful on the European instrument. She finished preparation and we put the bread over the fire. Within the hour, we were feasting a delicious banana bread.

A few days later I woke up and opened my door and stepped outside into a beautiful dawn. As is usual, the kids were already washed and ready for school before the sun rose. One of them called me over to drink coffee and eat bread. This is not particularly unusual, while bread is a special food, the loaves, packed with preservatives, can be found in the little tiendas in the community for a reasonable price. However, this morning Abuela had made bread from scratch, and saved a piece for me to dip in my coffee. She smiled large when she handed me the piece of bread. It was by no means the fluffy bread made from yeast found in bakeries, but it was made under a thatched roof on a three stone fire. While I had been sleeping, while two aged hands moved in ways they never had, and combined new ingredients, and willing allowed another to take up the chisel, and shape her knowledge and form. I can only hope it is not a chip off the virginity of a culture, but rather simply an extra detail on an already beautiful and solid masterpiece.