Whirlwind

I was out of site for almost the entire month of November.  Much of the month passed with a sort of dream-like quality, but here are the parts I remember...

Wedding!

My one and only sister (Panamanians still can’t believe I have just one) got married in LA on November 10^th.  I got into town Monday night November 5^th in time to fulfill my American duty by voting on Tuesday.  The following days were spent with family, trips to REI, one night of Israeli dancing, and getting caught up on wedding logistics as a first-time bridesmaid.  It was very strange to jump so abruptly from one world to another, but it felt good to be home.  The wedding itself was lovely, and I've never seen my already pretty sister look so gorgeous.  I on the other hand felt pretty uncomfortable dressing up and, after 6 months of no make-up, sort of freaked out when fake eyelashes were stuck on me and immediately took most of them off.

Professional hair-do!

Sadie & Brennan!  Stunning.

Family

Overall it was a nice trip home and saying goodbye was hard.  Last time I said goodbye I knew I’d be home again in six months.  This time it might very well be 20.  But I wasn't able to dwell on this for very long.  I hopped on a red-eye flight and landed back in Panama Monday morning November 12^th.

IST = “In-Service Training” & Turning 26

After being in site for four months, the Peace Corps brings training groups back together for “In-Service Training.”  The idea is that by now we've identified key topics that our work will focus on and so should receive more specified training in these areas.

Coming in from the states, I was a little late for IST.  Arriving jet-lagged and culture-shocked made being greeted by our training group of 40 people I haven’t seen in a few months all the more intense.  It was good to see everyone, but hard to switch gears back into training-mode.  The first few days involved sitting and sitting and more sitting while listening to presentations.  After four very active months, this was hard to handle.  And then my birthday happened!  The perpetually drunk Canadian owner of a nearby bar got me a birthday cake, so after a nice night-swim at the beach, our group headed to the bar to celebrate.  I am now 26 years-old, and I actually do feel like it.  I am a grown-up, and I’m doing some pretty big things.

Cake gifted to me by drunk bar owner

Peace Corps training group enjoying birthday cake!

My Peace Corps program director also got me a cake, and she was the one that spelled my name wrong (the drunk bartender got it right)

26!

My group changed locations to continue more hands-on technical training (sadly, no longer near a beach).  I was impressed to notice that some of my fellow volunteers, who’d been more timid during Pre-Service Training, now seem more outspoken.  I no longer felt like I was the only obnoxious student with my hand raised in class, but rather that we all participated and contributed to the training sessions pretty equally.  I could also tell that the group’s Spanish skills have significantly improved.  Nice!  Unfortunately much of the training substance was not actually applicable to our work.  We heard from experts on corn, rice, plantain, etc. who presented highly detailed, scientific methods of diagnosing and treating plant diseases.  I was disappointed that very little of this will be useful out in the campo where our resources are more limited.

Pretty outdoor classroom

SAS 71 group after using machetes to cut off sick plantain leaves

Gringo Thanksgiving

About 150 of the 250 Peace Corps Volunteers in Panama got together to celebrate Thanksgiving.  We took over a hotel in the western highlands of Panama, not far from the Costa Rican border.  There we enjoyed beautiful scenery and a shockingly cool climate.  Being around so many Americans in one place was overwhelming.  The weekend involved an overload of both partying and gossip.  I suppose that is bound to happen whenever and wherever a large group of 20-30 year-olds gets together with no other obligations.  I found this all to be pretty intense, and although I miss my friends when I’m in site, I was pretty relieved when the party was over.

Deliciousness

Change of scenery

Intro to Agribusiness

When I touched down in Panama and turned on my cell phone after a week of being in the US, the first message I got was one asking me to co-facilitate (along with two other volunteers) an agribusiness seminar in the province of Veraguas November 26 through 28.  My first thought was that this would be an awesome opportunity to get more involved in agribusiness work – a topic that I’m highly interested in.  My second thought was the realization that this would extend my already long period of separation from my community.  I feel that so much time away is seriously disruptive to my integration and service work, but I decided that in the long term a few extra days wouldn't make too much of a difference and that it would be worthwhile to gain the new experience.

We gave the seminar to a group of participants in a rural development project, as well as to some of the employees running the project (with the idea being that they can now give the seminar to even more participants).  The mixed audience presented some challenges.  We covered three central topics in three days: farm management & planning (including how to keep track of inventory), product marketing & market analysis, and general money management (prioritizing costs and setting personal budgets).  The main challenge here was keeping topics simple enough to be clear and understood, but still realistic and useful.  Additionally while the employees running the project have graduated from universities, the campesinos have only on average received up to a sixth grade education.  We covered some basic arithmetic principles and spent about a half hour practicing how to use a calculator.  It really struck me how many things that we may think of as common sense were actually acquired through years of formal education.  To expect campesinos to catch on quickly is unfair and unrealistic.  Slow and steady.  Overall, I was impressed with how well the audience paid attention, and it seemed as though they got something out of it.  The unfortunate thing about working seminars like this, which are outside of our communities, is that we can’t do any follow up to see if people are actually using the tools or ideas we gave them.  

Practice with calculators

Me explaining the basics of personal finances and why it's important to save money.

I’m FINALLY heading back to site tomorrow.  I've heard it’s been raining a lot so hopefully my house hasn't been too damaged.  I’m really looking forward to spending some time tranquilo, reconnecting with my community and settling back into the campo life :)

Ashley's Guest Entry!

During the first week of November, my easy-going, driven, talented friend from college Ashley Thompson came down to visit.  A graduate of Rice University's School of Architecture and a frequent world-traveler, Ashley managed to squeeze in some time for me before she ships off to spend two years in Japan as an architect in the US Air Force.  Below is Ashley's guest blog entry:

Let me start by saying that everything you ever knew about Lila Holzman is absolutely true, she may very well save the world and may indeed be EVEN MORE incredible than we all ever suspected. 

I´ve been in Panama for less than a week and am blown away at what Lila is doing in this part of the world.  Not only is she a ´trooper´ (as Mallory put it best) but she is the happiest, hardest working, most organized girl-with-a-plan to have ever trooped into the Panamanian countryside.  

It´s clear that she loves being here, loves what she is doing, and most importantly, is making a very real positive impact in her community.  Peace Corps is lucky to have her. 

Our adventure started on a Diablo Rojo: these fantastically painted and decorated decommissioned school buses from the US.  For 90 cents, we were slammed into a packed bus and bounced all the way out to Chorrera, the major city in her region.  

Diablo Rojo

A chiva, which is a steel-cage outfitted pick-up truck, took us the rest of the bumpy way (also jam-packed full).

Outside the back of a chiva

Further and further from the city, on a roller coaster of a road, the country opens up into beautiful rolling hills covered in tropical forest.  Where the pavement stops, down a steep path most typically made quite precarious by slippery mud and bounding barbed wire, and a little yonder, is Lila´s house.  The entire time in the country, I really couldn´t help but think how beautiful this place is.  To elaborate, while it is certainly beautiful, it is also very humid, very wet, relatively buggy (although mostly it's mosquitoes and ants that are causing the problem), it can be extremely muddy, there isn´t indoor plumbing or electricity, and the shower is cold.  Which depending on how you feel about some or all of those things, may affect your perception of beauty.  But I think definitely for Lila, and for my short visit, it was incredibly peaceful and perfectly disconnected from the hectic world we all live in.  

Home sweet home

That said, It definitely is easy to grin and bear whatever the discomfort when you know you´re only visiting and will be out in X number of days, so all the more credit to Lila for her immersed experience (and the people for whom this is their daily reality).  She tried to give me a little taste of what her typical life out here is like.  We pasear-ed - which apparently translates into a visit-driven stroll, however is much more like rigorous hiking - to both her host families´ homes.  One was much more accessible than the other.  Her first host family is about a 30 min hike from the road up and back down a very high hill for the area, it was the first real "whoa, you and everyone who lives back here does this at least twice a day, including the kids going to and from school!".  The head of the household gave me a tour of his coffee farm, fish tanks, home garden, and mill for grinding sugar cane.  It is so impressive to see someone with so many natural resources under their domain- they survive off of what the earth yields them, literally.  Less romantic, his young wife got her hand caught in that same mill and lost 4 fingers.  Terrifying in general, I also am mortified at how hard it must have been to get her out and to the hospital.  

Between the rain and the holiday, Panama´s Independence Day, there wasn´t too much time for working.  But we also spent a morning building Lila a seed tray, and another afternoon helping a community member set up their home compost.  Lila´s most recent action item has been to galvanize compost in the village in order to be used for their upcoming home gardens (The ultimate goal to grow a wider variety of food and diversify the group´s diet beyond rice and yucca).

The other primary event of the week were the holidays. Friday there was an event at the local cemetery, Saturday celebrated Panama's independence from Colombia, Sunday was Flag Day, and Monday was Colón Day.  For this occasion there was an excellent presentation and parade put on by the school´s children (preschool through 6th grade) and also a baile at the local cantina.  The kids were very cute and did a great job as coached by their senior teacher despite having forgotten to sing the national anthem (and announcing this in order to reconvene).  Also their electronic set up (powered by the school's solar panels) was quite amusing, apparently the mic connection to the speakers only works at justttt the right angle, which the teacher was constantly fiddling with the cord to find, and when he did, would freeze in whatever odd position his arm happened to land in. 

For the baile, Lila graciously hosted other nearby peace corps volunteers at her house (the furthest came from 2 hours by hike).  We celebrated with white-cheddar cheese popcorn, macaroni and cheese, and boxed wine.  Around 9pm - very late when you usually go to sleep with the sun- we attempted our hike to the cantina faced by an ungodly amount of mud.  I've never imagined in my life so much mud, everywhere, every inch, and a few inches deep.  The cantina was the same, an entire inclined yard of mud, making it a challenge for sober people to stay upright, and impossible for the drunk-off-their-butt Panamanians.  People who were too drunk to carry on often just crashed to the ground and decided they may as well stay there.  People actually passed out !and remained! in the mud - hopefully not face down. 

All in all my week with Lila went by much too fast.  I´m so happy that we were able to make my trip out here possible.  I know everyone who is able to visit Lila will be amazed and impressed with the work she is doing and how quickly she adapted to this new and challenging environment.  I know I couldn´t do what she is doing, really, it´s hard to capture her life in pictures and through her blog, it´s certainly even hard for a short-term visitor to understand the full impact of what she will accomplish and the barriers/difficulties/discomforts she faces.  But take my word for it and be oh so impressed with our wonderful Lila. 

Panama Protests, Parties, and (organic) Pesticides

Panama in Protest

For about a week, listening to the news scared me a bit.  Panama passed a law making it legal for the government to sell off land in the free trade zone to other countries.  The general public was very much against this and took to the streets to show it.  Peaceful protests turned violent and both civilians and the police seemed to cross unnecessary lines leading to some messy situations.  The Peace Corps limited our ability to travel during this time and both Panama City and the entire province of Colón were off limits.  Just when I was worried things were getting particularly ugly out there and that the comparisons of my Peace Corps experience to “The Hunger Games” would continue (Panama seems eerily similar to Panem, with a capital rather distant from the discontented exterior regions), the government repealed the law in question and everything calmed down to normal.

Time to Celebrate!

The entire country quickly switched gears in time to begin celebrating the many holidays that come during this time of year.  My incredibly wonderful college friend Ashley Thompson arrived to Panama City on October 31.  In the city, Halloween was indeed recognized and we met up with another Rice alum / local tour guide Mallory Pierpoint to check out the Halloween scene in Casco Viejo.

Rice University chicas

Back in site, we observed a very low key Day of the Dead ceremony in our small town cemetery.

On November 3^rd Panama turned 109 years old.  My town kicked off the day with some cultural acts at the school followed by a parade down the main road.

Raising Panama's flag and saying their Pledge of Allegiance

Dancing in typical dress

Parade down the main road.  Very small girl + very big flag = very cute.

In the evening I played host to some neighboring volunteers and Panamanian teachers who came to pre-party before a relatively large dance held in my town.  As always, I loved the part where I got to dance to some típico music.  Watching Panamanian men (some that I knew, but most from out of town) get completely plastered was somewhat disturbing yet entertaining.  Combined with the intense mud that was ever-present, it was hard not to compare the stumbling drunks to zombies, especially the ones that slowly tried to stand up after having spent some time passed out, lying in the mud (creepy!).  Despite a few slippery falls, my team of gringos made it home safe and sound.

Volunteers and Panamanian teachers

Gringo gathering

Tipico dancing!

So. Much. Mud. 

Garden Work Continues

Protests and parties aside, agricultural work has continued!  Since my compost talk, families have slowly but surely been inviting me over to help them get their piles going.  I’ve now been involved in a total of 6 compost projects throughout the community.  Not bad!

Kids helping out with a compost pile

I’ve also been collaborating more with the First Lady’s organization that helps with our school garden.  Recently we trained on the making of organic insect repellents and also oversaw the construction of a semillero, or seed-starting table.

Brewing an insect repellent

Very tall seed table -- they said they made it with me in mind ... Ayayay

Ashley helped me get my own semillero seed table started so that when I return from this month’s travels, I can get going on my own veggie planting!

Semillero-making

I left my site on November 5^th and won’t be back until after Thanksgiving.  Until then I will be home briefly for my sister’s wedding, will spend two weeks at a Peace Corps training event, and will spend Thanksgiving with a large group of Peace Corps volunteers (there are about 250 of us total in Panama).  Exciting times!