Lila Baila, Snake Slayer

Lila Baila, Slayer of Snakes and Such

For a while the most dangerous thing I’d seen in or around my house were these spikey caterpillars that apparently sting like hell if you touch them. Whenever I see one, I grab a big spoon, carry him a safe distance away, and toss him to the ground. Not so exciting. One day I saw a scorpion chilling in my doorway when I was on my way back from the shower. He stayed in place long enough for me to grab a machete and take care of him, still in my bathrobe. Later came a battle with a spider the size of my hand in my latrine. He jumped quickly, but my machete was quicker. That was messy. One morning a swarm of wasps started making their home under the roof of my porch. At the suggestion of wise neighbors, I waited until nightfall to act. While they slept close to their half-done nest, I quickly attacked with Raid by the light of my headlamp and then sprinted to the safety of my mosquito net. When I gathered the courage to poke my head outside, I saw that all the wasps had fallen dead to the ground. Whew.

wasp nest

And then as I was tidying up one recent Friday afternoon, I saw something slither out of the corner of my eye. Probably a lizard? I looked closer and saw no legs. Holy shit that’s a snake! I dropped what I was doing and grabbed my machete. I contemplated calling for the neighbors, but what if I looked away and he hid only to find me again later? No. Now was my chance. I swung down and hit the neck perfectly. He fell from the wall to the floor, but snake skin is tough and I saw no blood. I struck again piercing through the neck until I hit the concrete below. Got him! I grabbed the camera to document my victory:

Snake down!

I took up the machete, preparing to lift the lifeless snake body and get him out of my house, but as soon as I touched him he started moving. What? I chopped down a few more times and to my horror, bloody snake pieces started squirming around my floor. Remember in Fantasia how Mickey Mouse kept splitting a broom into pieces except the pieces kept coming back to life?* Like that, except worse. SO GROSS! How is this possible? I started screaming and ran outside. The uphill neighbors looked down on me in wonder. “There’s a snake in my house!” I called up. A 17-year-old with a machete made his way down and asked permission to enter my house. When he saw the scene he said, “You killed it already.”

“Yeah, but it’s still moving.”

“Yeah, they do that.”

“Oh. This is normal? I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll take it out for you in a few minutes.”

“Thanks.”

Ever since, my whole community has been laughing at me for screaming after I killed a snake. In any case, Lila baila is now officially a snake slayer.

*Fantasia clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSTWy25hRiI (scroll to 6:15)

Inception

In Peace Corps we try to get projects going by using what we think of as the “Inception” factor. For those who haven’t seen “Inception,” the basic point is that you have to get people to think they came up with an idea in order for it to really stick. In sustainable development, it’s proven true that when individuals feel they are truly the owners of a new idea or project, they are much more likely to stick with it.

When it comes to project like home gardens and fisheries, everyone knows that these are new ideas I’m helping bring in from the outside, but I still try to encourage their ownership as much as possible. When I show up for a garden work day, I bring the fencing, but everything else is up to them. They ask me questions about how to proceed, but I try to ask them more:

“Where do you want the door to be?”

“How many raised beds do you want and how should they be arranged?”

“What do you want to plant in each bed?”

“Have you started more compost for when you run out?”

The way I’m teaching how to make a garden here is 1) Remove the top layer of dirt full of weeds, 2) Dig and remove soil down about a half-foot deep, 3) Start adding back in the soil, making sure it is loose, and mixing it with layers of composted fertilizer, rice husks, coffee husks, ash, whatever other organic material they have around. I try to teach that there is no exact right quantity or mixture and that they should experiment with what they have. I do the first bed with them, but depending on time, try to encourage them to work on the others without me. While I’ve gotten quite a bit stronger, we all know manual labor isn’t really what I’m here to help with.

New home garden beds that Pascuala's been wanting for a while

Margarito trying to work despite annoying chickens

The same type of process goes with fish ponds. I teach what I know and then it’s on them to think about:

“How big do you want it?”

“How high should the walls be to avoid rain water rushing in or out?”

I don’t pretend to have all the answers and try to make them realize that they are capable of figuring these things out as they want, because this is their project.

Proud kids showing off the fish in their pond project

Working hard on a fish pond

I am not going to extend for a third year …

… But I understand why people do. At first when I heard of the surprisingly popular Peace Corps trend of extending an extra year, I didn’t get it. What more could you really get out of that last year that you didn’t already learn in the first two?

But work here is slow and patience, a critical virtue. Whether I am trying to plan home garden work days with local farmers (challenging) or trying to coordinate with outside agencies for support with fish tanks (near impossible), I find that delays and reschedulings are inevitable. While a day here or there may feel slow or dragging, the months somehow fly by, and progress can be a tricky thing to measure. My projects are going well in the sense that people are still engaging me to work and help them try new things, but concrete examples are slow in coming. In May with the help of my all-star visitors Rebecca Powell and Aloni Cohen, I kicked off my home vegetable garden initiative. So far I’ve helped start 6 gardens, but only three are complete (and I only know of five still going that began with the previous volunteer here). Of the seven families I helped start compost piles at the end of last year only about three have started a second pile after using all the good fertilizer produced from the first. And then there are the fish ponds. Of the six or seven families who’ve begun construction only one or two have completed, functioning fisheries. BUT the rest have not necessarily given up on any of these projects… They are just taking their time and managing higher priorities first.

Rebecca and Aloni taking a break from home garden labor

Segundo did most of this work on his own initiative - Awesome!

MIDA agency people finally coming out to check on our new fish pond projects

MIDA agency people visiting a completed fish pond

I still have a year left here, and I’d like to say that within that time all my projects will be successfully completed and that my community members will be well-nourished with goods they produce in an environmentally sustainable manner. But I need to be realistic. Knowing I want to continue in the international development field, I greatly appreciate the ground level experience I am getting with just how long it really takes to implement sustainable changes. While I’m sure it would be nice to see the additional progress made in an extra year here, I know I will be ready to move on with what I’ve learned and will leave the next steps for my community in the hands of its leaders and perhaps to a new Peace Corps volunteer.

Realistic Goals for Year 2:

- Eat less peanut butter

- Savor my simple dinners of plantain, eggs, tomato

- Put on three nationwide Agribusiness seminars

- Be able to work with a machete for 3+ hours and not get a blister

- Israeli dance in front of my own community (already have in front of others)

- Keep supporting and following up with anyone who’s shown interest in vegetable gardens, compost, fisheries, money management, etc. And keep explaining the benefits to those who have not.

- Go to a soccer game in Panama City (preferably Panama vs. US in October)

- Go salsa dancing (what? It’s been over a year since I did this in the states?)

- Stay in site for three weeks straight (current record is 19 days)

- Celebrate 4^th of July by teaching community members to play corn hole – this is already planned

- Apply to business school

- Keep as many Tuesday afternoons free for my reading group as possible

- Play more soccer at the school

- Soak it all in, because if this year goes by as fast as the first, I will be home tomorrow.