Officially a Senior Volunteer

Training the newbies

Peace Corps Panama cycles through volunteer groups such that within each year, one new group per sector comes in and one group leaves.  We said goodbye to the senior agriculture group in June, and the newbies arrived shortly thereafter, making my group the new upperclassmen.  I’ve had the opportunity to be involved in the training of this group in a number of ways.

A shifting focus from gardens to traditional crops:

Back in March I was asked to participate in a conference called “Training of Trainers,” in which we began planning for the new group’s 9-week Pre-Service-Training.  I was informed that the Sustainable Agriculture program is shifting its focus from the home vegetable garden type of work I do to instead work more on traditional crops.  The idea as I understand it is that current traditional crop practices are alarmingly unsustainable and so of a higher priority than improving nutrition through small scale veggie gardens.  It is true that the slash and burn agriculture method of preparing land for rice, yucca, etc. is extremely damaging.  Virgin jungle trees or past crops are cut down, this nutrient-rich organic material is burned into ash, and the ash, which still contains some nutrients, is washed away by rain, leaving behind a soil of poorer and poorer quality after every burn cycle.  To make up for the bad soil, farmers that can afford it buy chemical fertilizers.  Those who cannot eventually notice lower yields and start the process over with different land.  In teaching about compost, I have emphasized that it can be used instead of chemicals and that all the organic material chopped to clear land can go into the making of this compost.  I acknowledge that collecting the acres’ worth of material is daunting and have also suggested that the material simply be left where it is instead of being burned.  This way it would eventually decompose and return its nutrients to the soil and in the meantime may help keep weeds down by blocking them from the sun.  No one has taken my advice on this, but I haven’t tried all too hard.  I have had much more success advocating smaller home composting for vegetable gardens.  The way I see it, slash and burn agriculture is deeply engrained in Panamanian subsistence farming culture.  While my community was open to working with me on the new home garden idea, my comparative lack of experience with their traditional crops makes my related suggestions far less credible.

This is what slash & burn looks like.  It hurts me to see it.

This is what a successful home veggie garden looks like.

While the new focus of the Sustainable Agriculture Program is an admirable one, I wonder how effective a Peace Corps Volunteer can be given only two years, which includes only two burn cycles.  I hope their training will have truly prepared them both technically and also culturally to slowly begin to change some views on this complicated issue.

Agribusiness:

Agribusiness remains a Sustainable Agriculture program priority for the new group, and this was the topic I was invited to present to them at the end of July.  Of the 24 of them, many have more prior experience with business than they do with agriculture, so I found them to be a very receptive audience.  I had fun answering their questions and realizing how much knowledge and experience I have gained in the last year.

Photo of Panamanian's doing the "Cost Control" activity.  I had the new volunteers try it to show them how it works, but didn't have my camera.

Hosting visitors and reflecting:

Another aspect of training is the volunteer visit in which each newbie spends four nights visiting a current volunteer (remember mine? See: http://lilabailapeacecorps.blogspot.com/2012/05/volunteer-visit-practicing-pasear.html).  This year the visit fell over the 4^th of July, so I combined forces with two neighbor volunteers and their trainees to celebrate.  We hiked out to a beautiful spot where we could grill burgers (eggplant for me) and buy cold beers, including American imported Budweiser.  The weather did not cooperate and the trainees experienced what they said was their worst downpour yet.  Welcome to Panama!

Grilling for the 4th

Ready to celebrate despite the clearly gloomy weather

The rest of the days I had some compost and garden work days planned so my two guests could see what my work is like.  As with any friends that come to visit me, I enjoyed their company and their many questions.  In explaining certain parts of my day-to-day life, I realize how many things I’ve come to think of as normal, are actually quite strange.  Here are some examples.

- Laundry.  I soak my clothes in a bucket of soapy water.  Then I pull each item out, lay them on a flat board, rub a bar of Panamanian laundry soap on particularly dirty spots, and brush the dirt and soap off with a little laundry brush.  Quite an arm work out!  Then I rinse the soap out under my spigot and hang them to dry on my line.  It always takes 1-2 hours and I always listen to music the entire time.  Yes, neighbors catch me singing and dancing.

Prettier than a laundromat 

- Pana-radio.  Even my favorite reggaeton station bugs the crap out of me.  All Panamanian DJs on all stations constantly talk over songs saying random things, promoting events, or sometimes singing along.  Occasionally they seem to realize they’ve talked over a song too much and so will start the song over again from the beginning.

- Teeth-brushing.  Since I have no indoor running water, I use a water bottle when brushing my teeth and spit out the window.

- There are microscopic ants in my latrine.  Every so often I get bit on the butt, never see the culprit, nor does it leave a mark, but the stinging lasts a while.  I call them phantom ants.

- Food storage.  I use foam coolers to attempt to keep bugs out, but frequently have to comb through my food (cereal, rice, bread, etc.) to remove ants and put food in new plastic Ziplocs that will last a few weeks (or days) before the ants chew threw them again.  Since I don’t have electricity, I’ve had to play the game of: how long can I keep what kinds of food before they go bad?  Sometimes I win at this game, but when I lose, the consequences are moldy and gross.

- Clothes.  I shake out every item of clothing before putting it on in case of ants, spiders, or scorpions.  I have found ants and other weird little bugs that I’m not sure what they are living inside and eating my clothes.  All of my clothes smell a little funky from the humidity and some items start visibly showing the small black dots that signify mold.  Needless to say, most of my clothes will not be coming home with me.

- I find cockroach poop everywhere.

- When I hear something thud against my wall, I know it is a toad.  When I hear something rattling along my zinc roof, I know it is a lizard.

- Chickens frequently come over and accompany me on my porch.

- I know it is not a party unless yellow rice with chicken and purple potato and beet salad is served.

Of course we also talked about work.  I explained that not all volunteers are as busy as me.  This experience is what you make of it and you literally set you own schedule.  I am not happy unless I’m productive, so I work hard to make sure I can be.  We talked about some frustrations with the Peace Corps and also our goals for during and after.  I acknowledged that many of the questions I came in with about how to best solve sustainable development problems have not yet been fully answered.  But I also realized that I now much more deeply understand the complexities of these problems, which I believe will help me continue working to solve them in the future.

Trainees and locals working on our church garden project

They asked me what I consider my biggest challenge here.  Without a doubt I responded that it is whenever things are completely out of my control and result in time being wasted.  I feel like this is a very American answer.  People here just do not value time the way we do.  I get so frustrated when a rain storm cancels or postpones something everyone has been waiting for, or when I sit waiting for hours for a chiva to take me where I need to go, but no one else seems to mind.  I find it infuriating when outside agencies either don’t show up or show up late to meetings they themselves organized.  I get antsy during pretty much all meetings during which I feel that Panamanians (both those from the city and those from out here in the campo) talk for the sake of talking, talk in circles, and don’t actually say much.  For me, the purpose of a meeting is to say what needs to be said, solve problems, and move on, so everyone can go home.  Here people don’t seem to mind when meetings drag on forever yet produce very few useful outcomes.  Even if I don’t have anywhere else I particularly need to be, my culture tells me that it is wrong to use time inefficiently.  That culture does not exist here.

We talked about the experience of being dumped in a foreign country with a group of other volunteers that will presumably become your best friends.  I shared my disappointment in realizing that many volunteers seem to have joined the Peace Corps because they didn’t know what else they wanted to do and wanted to travel and party more after college.  While some of us clearly care about our work, not everyone shares the same level of commitment.

We discussed how easy it is to form meaningful relationships within our communities.  One trainee said she hadn’t even considered this aspect, but that after spending just one day helping a woman and her kids make compost, she already felt close to them and cared about their struggles.  Thinking about how much I’ve grown to know, like, and care about people in El Harino makes me already sad to realize how much I will miss them when I leave.

Me, a trainee, and a family that we had just helped start a compost pile

Overall the arrival of the new group has caused me to reflect on where I started out, how far I’ve come to be where I am now, and where I plan to head next.  If one thing is certain it is that joining the Peace Corps was absolutely the right thing for me, and that it will be over before I know it.

The Little Things

Sometimes it’s the really, really little things that bring me joy out here.  Lately these types of things have been:

- I can now harvest spinach from my garden.  Oh my god I missed spinach.

SPINACH! it grows on a vine here

- Someone informed me that cabbage doesn’t need to be refrigerated.  My intake of leafy greens has increased exponentially with this discovery plus my spinach.  My mustard greens are almost ready to harvest as well.

Spinach, tomatoes, and peanuts from my garden.  Cabbage and rice from a supermarket.

Mustard greens growing good

- I love when an entire week goes by without me having to open my wallet even once.

- It’s pifá season again!  And orange season!

- I’ve been here long enough to experience seasons for a second time.

- It’s getting muddy again, but I’m not falling down this time.

- According to commercials on the radio, “Las tortugas ninja” seem to be making a comeback on Panamanian TV such that I now hear the Ninja Turtles theme song on a regular basis.

- One of my host families from a year ago has adorable kittens that I get to play with.

kitty!

- In general, getting to hold or play with any type of babies just makes me so happy.  Baby kittens, puppies, piglets, and of course baby humans.

Puppy.  Kinda sick so I'm not sure he'll make it :-/

This kid always goes straight for my lap and always makes me smile.