Nobody’s perfect – the story of the stolen backpack.
One word I frequently use to describe myself is “organized.” I don’t lose things frequently, I am good at figuring out logistics, and I’m always prepared for whatever is coming next. But I make mistakes.
Coming back from a Peace Corps conference on Project Management & Leadership, I waited at my chiva stop in front of a mini-mart for my chiva to arrive. I had a few bags with me: purse, groceries, backpack, and duffle bag. The chiva pulled in and we all crowded around to board. I handed my duffle bag to a helper to put it on the roof, and up it went. I started taking my backpack off hoping to take it inside with me, but instead handed it to a helper as well. While I don’t like putting my backpack full of electronics (laptop included) on the roof, I could tell this would be a very full chiva (20 people ended up squished back there) and with sunny weather I didn’t think there was risk of rain. I hustled on the chiva to secure a seat.
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| A typical, crowded chiva |
After about an hour of traveling, the weather turned dark like it was about to rain, and when we made a stop I asked the driver to take my backpack down since my laptop can’t get wet. But the backpack was nowhere to be found. I pulled the rest of my stuff off the truck and hopped on the next chiva going back out to town. The chiva drivers all started calling each other to see if the bag was accidentally thrown on the wrong chiva going to a different location, but with limited cell signal, it was hard to reach anyone. I was back at the chiva stop within two hours of leaving it and asked everyone around if they knew anything about a missing backpack. I gave my number to chiva drivers and to the owners of the store from where the chivas depart. I spent the night crying in a hotel and was back at the stop by 7am in search of any information. I waited as the chivas came and went, asking each if they’d seen the bag and giving out my number in case they heard anything. I know the chiva drivers, and they know me. I think I trust them. But I do not know all the bag helpers by face. Is it possible that I just handed by bag to some random guy and didn’t pay attention to the fact that he didn’t put it on the roof? I guess so. I remember he looked a bit older and was wearing a straw sombrero – the normal look for humble country folk around here.
After I’d seen and talked to several chiva drivers, I gave up and went home. I cannot express the personal value (not to mention monetary) of everything in that bag, or the frustration I feel for having lost it. I made a careless mistake and was taken advantage of. But life goes on and crying about lost things doesn’t make them reappear. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me to attempt to replace or recreate important materials, but I know I can handle it and make the most of whatever else gets thrown at me.
THANK YOU to my parents for your support throughout this mess. Love you.
Guys Pay to Dance … if they can stand up straight
Every once in a while my town hosts a typical baile in the cantina. The day of a baile some men begin drinking early in the morning. The first act comes on around 8 or 9pm and is called a cantadera involving a guitar and singing about the daily woes of life in the campo. Since this music is not danceable, the men continue drinking heavily as they listen. Women start to show up around 11pm when the main act comes on: a live band playing típico music. This is danced to in a similar manner as the Texas-two-step in which you move around the dance floor in a circle with your partner. The rhythm and the steps are monotonous, and the songs are long so you are stuck dancing with the same partner for quite a while. I miss dancing so much that I partake in this activity, but continue to wonder why other Latino dances like salsa, merengue, and bachata have yet to make it here from the nearby cities.
Everyone pays a $2 or $3 cover at the door, but guys who want to dance have to pay a steeper price. As people dance, security enforcers search around with flashlights to make sure men have the appropriate dancing ticket stapled to their collar. Some guys try to avoid the flashlights and hide as they circle around with their partner, but they will inevitably get caught and be forced to pay up. The pair is stopped mid-dance and the guy has to get his wallet out, pay as much as $6, and get his dancing ticket stapled to his collar before the couple can continue to dance. Rather awkward and embarrassing.
All of this of course is assuming that the guy can still stand up straight. While I have seen binge drinking in the U.S., it does not compare to what occurs here. Men consume entire bottles of straight Seco – the local Panamanian rum-like hard liquor. They often pass out on the ground asleep and wake up later only to drink more and pass out again. It never fails to rain on the day of a baile ensuring that these drunks will soon be covered in mud from head to toe. It is not uncommon for me to see passed out, mud-covered men around town on the Sunday or even Monday after a Saturday night baile. What is the appeal to this? Poor men waste all their money and don’t even remember it. When sober, they all admit how bad the problem is, but come baile-time, it’s always the same. I try to lead by example to show what it is like to have two beers, dance for a bit, and go home happy. It doesn’t seem to be catching on.
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| Responsible, yeah? |
One other added oddity to the scenario is the Panamanian gritar. Traditionally, men working out in the field call to each other with a shout that somewhat resembles the bark of a dog in order to greet each other and keep morale up. When drinking, this shout is practiced all the more. At bailes I have typically see grown men partake in what I can only describe as a barking match in which two will gritar into each other’s faces with increasing volume and frequency. It is so bizarre. OUUUAHH.
Learning to Learn
The people I work with are smart. They are resourceful, hard-working, problem solvers. So why do they need my help?
Growing up within the U.S. formal education system, I was told I was being taught critical thinking skills, but I didn’t really know what this meant. I have always been a proponent for experiential learning and the idea that I learn better when I see the practical applications of whatever concept is being taught. I’ve been frustrated when I felt I was not getting much out of classes, even those covering topics of high interest to me.
But here, I’ve gained a deep appreciation for my educational background. My community members struggle with ideas that I had previously considered common sense, but now realize are learned, practiced skills. Here are a few of the many examples:
- After some of my presentations, I like to give quick quizzes to make sure the important points were learned. Community members cannot grasp the idea of a multiple choice question. I thought this would be the easiest way to quiz since they only had to write down one letter corresponding to the correct answer. I explained the process thoroughly, but I think these quizzes did more to confuse than to help.
- With such little access to information, community members lack the ability to judge what is logical. When talking about the strange hot, dry weather we’ve had during what should already be a rainy month, I explain that there is something called Climate Change in which pollution is causing the world to get warmer. My neighbor told me that maybe it could be that, but that also she’d heard the sun lowered itself in the sky these days, so it’s been hot because the sun is so close right now. Hmmm.
- Giving a recent talk on Agribusiness in my community, I realized that the mathematical concept of division is really challenging. I tried to explain that in order to find the cost of production of one bucket of coffee beans we needed to divide the cost of maintaining a hectare of a coffee farm by the number of buckets of coffee the hectare produces. I lost everyone.
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| Practicing basic arithmetic like long division |
- I recently attended a Peace Corps conference on leadership where volunteers were accompanied by one member from their communities. The first person I invited cancelled on me three days before the conference, because he’d been really busy lately and needed to work on his farm. He excused himself, “Sometimes you think you can do something, but as it gets closer, you realize you can’t.” I explained to him that in my culture, if you plan to be out of town for a week and you know about it months in advance, you plan your time and commitments to make sure you remain available. Sigh. Luckily I found someone else last minute.
- Meetings here last forever and accomplish very little. There is no organization (no agenda), and no one seems to mind when presenters or attendees go off on tangents or repeat points already over-covered. And at the end of the meeting, people seem happy as long as there is a meal provided, even if no solution has been reached.
- The technician helping with our school garden project required us to maintain a nursery so we can always have plants in stock to replace old ones in the main garden. We already had a table that could have served this purpose well, but all decided that they needed to build a new table and modify the other for a different use. Huh? Seemed like extra, unnecessary work to me.
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| Improvised nursery table |
Basically I see people here working harder instead of smarter and content with make-shift solutions that fall short of solving long term problems. And this is where I come in. Not only do I have infinitely more access to outside information, but I can absorb such new information quickly, trouble-shoot possible solutions, and explain the process to others. I may not have all the answers, but I know I can help find them and am learning how to best communicate them to people whose backgrounds so differ from mine.
#Third World Problems (of a first world girl)
- Text message received from a nearby volunteer: "Ohhhh life. I have giardia."
- Back when I had a laptop ...
Misc. Photos
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| Community counterparts enjoying rare time at the beach. The one on the left came with me. The one on the right came from a closeby community and had never seen the beach before. |
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| Introducing campo Panamanians to Gangnam Style |
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| Me and my community counterpart presenting a new slogan for our community government: "Juntos trabajamos y asi progresamos" which in English means: "Together we work, and this is how we progress" or something like that. |
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| A year's worth of charlas! |
