My appologies for the spelling errors and gramatical mistakes. This entry was written on my phone with no spell check and editing on my phone is tedious... I will revise and edit later. Hopefully the ideas still are clear! Photos to come!
Current Music: Calle 13 (unfortunately very little music)
Current books: A Peoples History of the United States, Harry Potter y le piedra Filosofal, Breakfast of Champions, Brief Conversations with Hideous Men, Shantaram, Rumi: Delicious Laughter, The Power of Now, The Omnivores Dilema, lots of National Geographic en Español
Changing of the Seasons
Three and a half months have passed in site. What was once unusual is now the norm and as my mind adjusts, my body morphs to fit the demands if this new life. My back is adjusted to sleeping on a thermarest. The microbes that squat my stomach are now of Panamanian Nationality. My hands no longer are callased to climb, but rather to grip a machete or axe. My legs no longer burn (as bad) after a few mile hike and my mustache well it simply hasn't been trimmed. And as my mind normalizes and my body grows new skin and fosters new inhabitants, the natural world around me changes. The night sky now rains the light of the stars instead of sending droplets to play percussion on the zinc roofs. Once muddy puddles crack as their moisture is pulled towards the ocean or sucked into the sky. The dry season will last until June, or so I am told, and its arival is in unison with my shift from living with a host family to moving into my own space.
Overview and Food
For the past three months there was rain every afternoon but I was saturated (culturally) night and day. I had my own room in a house where 11 slept and their noises: snoring, caughing, shifting, peeing, rat hunting, scorpion killing, talking, laughing, praying, playing, listening to music or the radio, and/or sleep talking was a rather constant acompanyment to the melody of the wind, rain, frogs, dogs, pigs, chickens, roosters and insects outside (and occasionaly inside) the thin wooden walls. When I was not trying to sleep, I passed my days living the life my host family and community members live: visiting friends and family, cutting monte, harvesting rice, harvesting corn, carrying firewood, carrying food, carrying wáter, eating, drinking coffee, drinking cacao, talking, laughing, the occasional trip into town, and when I wanted a break from it all, reading. To cover the logistics, we would carry wáter from a spring source a short walk away, poop in a hole in the ground that had a concrete cover and bathe in the shallow creek with a totuma.
We always went to sleep with full stomachs, occasionally stuffed like teddybears with a heaping bowl of plain (but delicious and recenetly harvested) rice, but usually were given a bit of vitality with an accompanyment. The accompanyment would always come in a separate bowl and could be squash shoup, beans, new beans, a fried song bird, iguana eggs, bird eggs, chicken eggs, a tomato slice, ripe bananas, potato, an unusual cousin of potatos, charred bees nest, charred bees, any part or organ of a cow or pig or chicken, gathered mushromooms or vegetables, or storebrought seasoning or sardines. If rice was not harvested or the rather arduous process of roasting, dehusking, and purifying was not completed we would eat corn. The corn could be mixed with sugar and wáter to make a delicous drink called chicheme or rolled in tamale like meals called bollo. If there was no corn we would boil green bananas and sprinkle salt to flavor (green bananas are almost flavorless). If there were no bananas, grandpa and I would go visit a neighbor who would gift us food while the women and kids waited until more food was gathered or bought.
Grandma would cook with a pot balanced on three large stones over a wood fire made on the dirt floor. The smoke would settle near the roof and slowly be ventelated through the panca leaves. Flashlights would emerge when the sun set but many conversations were had to the dim light thrown by the fire as it engulfed the charred pot that heated our dinner. There was a limited number of spoons, so Grandpa, the older brothers and I always ate with spoons, Grandma and the kids often ate with their hands. There was one knife, which was used from everything to skinning cows to cutting tomatoes. The Life of the Knife warrents a story in and of itself.
opinión (feel free to skip) The food was quality, although simple. The majority came from the land, was grown organically, and was prepared within hours of being harvested. Consequently, there was no monetary exchange in acquiring the food and Grandpa once said that ´work is food´ and if you don´t work, you go hungry. They would ask me about the rice I harvested at home or the cows my family cared for and I'd explain that work is money where I come from and money is the bridge to food. They´d ask me how money was made, where it came from, why the US made their money, and if you needed lots of education to make money. I'd do my best to explain. I wish I could take Grandpa to the La Jolla farmers market and show him that people pay for what he has and that you work to live, however that may be, and while their gold may not be a rare mineral it can be ground and sweetened into a delicous drink called Chicheme.
We always went to sleep with full stomachs, occasionally stuffed like teddybears with a heaping bowl of plain (but delicious and recenetly harvested) rice, but usually were given a bit of vitality with an accompanyment. The accompanyment would always come in a separate bowl and could be squash shoup, beans, new beans, a fried song bird, iguana eggs, bird eggs, chicken eggs, a tomato slice, ripe bananas, potato, an unusual cousin of potatos, charred bees nest, charred bees, any part or organ of a cow or pig or chicken, gathered mushromooms or vegetables, or storebrought seasoning or sardines. If rice was not harvested or the rather arduous process of roasting, dehusking, and purifying was not completed we would eat corn. The corn could be mixed with sugar and wáter to make a delicous drink called chicheme or rolled in tamale like meals called bollo. If there was no corn we would boil green bananas and sprinkle salt to flavor (green bananas are almost flavorless). If there were no bananas, grandpa and I would go visit a neighbor who would gift us food while the women and kids waited until more food was gathered or bought.
Grandma would cook with a pot balanced on three large stones over a wood fire made on the dirt floor. The smoke would settle near the roof and slowly be ventelated through the panca leaves. Flashlights would emerge when the sun set but many conversations were had to the dim light thrown by the fire as it engulfed the charred pot that heated our dinner. There was a limited number of spoons, so Grandpa, the older brothers and I always ate with spoons, Grandma and the kids often ate with their hands. There was one knife, which was used from everything to skinning cows to cutting tomatoes. The Life of the Knife warrents a story in and of itself.
opinión (feel free to skip) The food was quality, although simple. The majority came from the land, was grown organically, and was prepared within hours of being harvested. Consequently, there was no monetary exchange in acquiring the food and Grandpa once said that ´work is food´ and if you don´t work, you go hungry. They would ask me about the rice I harvested at home or the cows my family cared for and I'd explain that work is money where I come from and money is the bridge to food. They´d ask me how money was made, where it came from, why the US made their money, and if you needed lots of education to make money. I'd do my best to explain. I wish I could take Grandpa to the La Jolla farmers market and show him that people pay for what he has and that you work to live, however that may be, and while their gold may not be a rare mineral it can be ground and sweetened into a delicous drink called Chicheme.
Laguage and Land
written on a raining night at some point in September
The language rises and falls like the hills and valleys where it was born. It is not a romantic language in any sense, its gutteral sound echo frome the base of the throat and make a conversation sound harsh and angry until that interpretations is broken by an unexpected and joyous laugh. In the same way the land is harsh with trees that seem to hsve been bred with saguaros and catepillars who invoke vomit after contact and bees who close your eyes within minutes of being stung. It is a serious land that looks like the language sounds with sudden drops and steap escarpment, until its harshness is broken with an unexpected gift. Its trees supply fruit and shade from the bright morning sun and its soil gives birth to rice and corn and yuka and its creeks give wáter to the people who have cultivated its hillsides for melenium. The land has been carved by countless tormental storms, the water moving down from the hills to the sea and the language has changed and become unique to each community after been passed down from generation to generation. I do my best to naviage the land as I do my best to learn the language but the process is slow it is easy to slip as I naviage its territory. The people and land whisper to eachother and test me, the one who does not understand.
A few fun facts about ngäbere:
Hello = ñan tore which means "i don't remember" and comes from people asking 'what were your dreams last night?' Instead of 'how are you'.. Easier to say "I dont remember" than explain your flight over a joungle with trees that bore purple fruit that looked like cat heads.
The word for sick and pregnant are the same, as well as pain and love (If my translations are correct//I remember correctly)
House
With no rooms to rent in Cerro Pita, I was left with the option of building a house or living witht he host family for two years and chose the luxary of building my own space. I contacted a guy with a chainsaw from a town a few hours away and for about two weeks he would walk fro his house to my plot at dawn and return at dusk. We cut down a variety of trees ranging in color, size, and durability and diced them into boards and I paid the community memebers in chicheme and rice and chicken to carry the heavy boards from various locations to the plot of land.
With a chainsaw, a hammar, a level and measuring tape as our tools we build a house for the cost of one monhs rent in San Diego. With the left over wood I built a table, a bed, counters, a garden and traded for rice, hot sauce and coffee. I loved the process and will let the photos tell the story.
(Photos to come...)
Project
In the case of the Peace Corps, you do not work for money, or food as a matter of fact, although both are given in return, but rather one works to in someway make a difference. Its a vague objective, and likely the objective behind lots of paid work, just more talked about in the case of the PC. As a result, I had to gather baseline knowlege and establish trust in the community and consequently the first three months of "work" was simply integrating. I worked hard physically, my hands blistered and calased and I would regularly return home dreched in sweat, covered in dirt, and with a few new holes in my shirt. I trield to pull more than my weight in contribution to family chores. I visited each house in the community, did a cencus, asked about opinions on the communities needs and dreams, and took a survey of the quality and quantity of wáter, but most importatnly tried to kill the elephant in the room: that an unusual gringo was wondering around the community grunting in a mannar that vaguely sounded like ngäbere. I had a few community meetings to learn about the culture and officially organize a committee for the water Project and I measured the quanitity of wáter coming from the spring source each month. Otherwise, I simply lived in Cerro Pita, and each broken conversation and stalk of rice I cut was my "work". I am still optimistic about the aquaduct project, but numerous seeds of challenges and doubts have been planted that will likely bear fruit before the end of service.
(Pork in the road)
