Apparently I missed the real rain

Upon arrival

When I hopped off the chiva back in El Harino the short, steep, muddy entrance from the street to my path home was too scary to attempt while carrying all my stuff.  I had to take the long way around.

The first thing I saw when I opened the door to my house after being gone for almost an entire month was a frog hopping across my floor.  Could be worse.

Otherwise, my house was exactly as I’d left it.  In a way in felt like a weird time warp and memories came rushing back of packing things up while Ashley was still visiting.

A scary amount of ants moved into my latrine.  Raid took care of them quite nicely.

My T-shirt-turned-pillowcase completely molded over.  Luckily I brought a couple real pillowcases back here with me.

The disconnected feeling that comes with remembering that I can’t just shoot a quick email or text whenever I want took a few days to get used to…

I realized the physical adjusting my body had accomplished to Panama’s hot, humid climate was significantly set back.  I made sure to continuously chug water to combat the dehydration.

The New Things

My 25-year-old host-brother got a whole set of new fake teeth!  No more gap-toothed smile.

There are some pretty flowers around my house.

The school garden beds are growing wonderfully.

School Garden!

There’s a new baby in town (so far a baby has been born every month that I’ve been here).

A neighbor who had said she didn’t want to have any more kids is pregnant.

One family is constructing a new house pretty close to mine.  Hmm less privacy.

The teenagers at my up-the-hill neighbor’s house found a new reggaetón song to play on repeat all day long.  Luckily I like it too.

One of my host-families got an adorable new puppy.  Sad to see how much the kids torment it.

Rain & Holidays

December has been a very calm month, and it seems as though I missed pretty much nothing in November.  Everyone tells me that after I left the real rains came.  When I arrived at the tail end of November it rained day and night for three straight days.  Apparently this was the norm for all of November.  How depressing!  Evidently not much work got done and all projects are in exactly the same stage as where I left them.

Now the weather has significantly improved, but December is yet another month of holidays.  Panama celebrates Mothers’ Day on December 8^th, which really means several days before and after.  My up-the-hill neighbors threw their sons a big birthday party dangerously close to my house on December 15^th.  Schools having been wrapping up with graduation activities before their two month summer vacation (January and February are summer here).  And of course Christmas and New Years are coming up fast.  So basically, no work is continuing to get done this month either.

So I’m taking a little breather, and it’s been nice.  After a week of being back in site I felt I was slowly getting back into the swing of things.  I looked at a calendar and planned the next training sessions I want to put on for January.  Just putting things down on paper helps me feel better oriented and more productive.  I reminded myself that part of my work here is to be an active member of the community.  I did a round of pasear-ing just to say “Hi” to everyone and exchange stories from the past month.  In the process I was invited to several other community activities and my social calendar booked up rapidly.

So I may have gone to a Catholic rosary on the first night of Hanukah ... Oy.

"Posada" acting out of the Christmas story

Mothers' Day "Queen Mother" competition at the school

 Graduating 6^th graders are still hopeful that we may get a 7^th grade teacher hear next year.  Otherwise they will have to hike to schools in other communities or simply quit going to school at all :(

Last Day of School!

Making appearances at events that seem to have no relevance to my agricultural work is an important part of gaining trust here.  Would you rather work on projects with someone in your town who’s super awkward and antisocial or with someone who you can talk to about anything?  One woman in particular opened up to me quite a bit recently.  Viviana invited me to her family’s Mothers’ Day celebration.  Her house is nearly an hour’s hike from mine, but I went with pleasure.  There was a lot of food and playing with the kids.  And then Viviana told me her story.  She had her first child at age 16.  She acknowledges she wasn’t ready to start a family, but that’s what happened.  Four more kids and several years later she separated from their father.  She didn’t tell me why and I didn’t press it.  Viviana spent about eight years working in the city, sending money back home to support her kids whom she’d had to leave behind with her mother. In the city she met her current husband.  After much convincing she moved in with his parents here in El Harino along with her three youngest children (the two oldest are away attending high school).  Her husband comes home to see them once a week.  Viviana told me how hard it was for her to get used to El Harino and how two and a half years later she still struggles to feel accepted.  It felt very good to have such an open conversation and reminded me that despite our differences, I am forming strong friendships here.  Viviana and I also talked about her home garden (started with the last volunteer), which took quite a beating during the recent rains.  I assured her that I will be here in the coming months to help get it going again.

Mothers' Day lunch with Viviana and her family.  I ended up going to four Mothers' Day meals all exactly the same: spaghetti, chicken, rice.

In the meantime, I’ve started planting my own semillero!  Now that I’m done traveling for a while I’m hoping to really get stuff growing as an example for others and of course so I can eat fresh veggies more often :)

Growing!

I’m slowly starting to reconnect with local agencies.  And I still kind of dislike them.  Trying to figure out when promised food for two of our fish tank projects would finally be delivered here took a ridiculous amount of phone calls.  I left my number hoping they would call me when they had information.  When news finally came that the food was en route, the person I talked to said she tried to call me three times but that my phone was off.  Of course my phone was off!  Anyone who works with communities in the campo should know that there is no cell phone reception or electricity here.  Leave a message, silly.  

We had a town hall meeting with special guest county government officials and ministry of health representatives.  They were shocked by the low attendance.  “When you are all notified that there is a town meeting, why isn’t everyone here?”  Their lack of understanding of the daily lives of people out here frustrates me.  People here work hard to feed themselves and their families and are constantly asked to attend “required” meetings related to the school, the church, health, etc.  These meetings often take forever and cover very little substance.  This particular town hall meeting, which was called for 10am, started around 11am and lasted until nearly 4pm.  I’m still not sure what the point of the meeting was – so many tangents and so much rambling.  Seeing reunions like these makes me all the more determined to make sure the few meetings I hold are actually useful and efficient.

Now that school’s out, the kids are visiting me frequently.  Sometimes cute, sometimes annoying.  We play basketball, look at the maps on my porch, and play with my camera.  Next month I plan to start a reading club and invite kids over to read once a week.  The general literacy level around here is pretty low, and I’ve recently acquired some adorable kids’ books in Spanish ranging from “Eres mi mamá?” to “Charlie y la fábrica de chocolate.” (Thanks mom!)

Cuties

Bball champ

Whew, this was a long blog entry!  If you’re still reading, I’m impressed.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!