Last Thursday I Helped Dig a Grave

La Semana de los Muertos

On Sunday, November 3^rd, a man in my community drowned in a river.  The Rio Indio divides the province of Panama Oeste from Coclé, and the community El Harino from Vallecito (where my close friend and neighbor volunteer Siobhan lives).  November 3^rd is Panama’s Independence Day, which means a lot of parties go on.  Teodoro was partying during the day in Vallecito, but planned to come back to El Harino in time for the big baile at our cantina that night.   Crossing the river (whose depth varies from knee-high to neck-high depending on the rains) drunk and in the dark is an obviously bad idea, but many do it regularly.  Teodoro’s family began to worry on Monday that he hadn’t come home.  Frantically organized search parties found his body downstream on Tuesday morning.

The loss to his family and to the community is tremendous.  While I personally did not know him well (he’d attended a few of my charlas but never invited me to work with him), his family has always been very kind to me, and I know they are a family that has already suffered many hardships.  One of his daughters is only 16 and has already had two babies, the most recent of which died as a 1-month-old in August.  The husband of one of his older daughters (who is a good friend of mine) died years ago in a mudslide.  She is one of the strongest women I know.

Leave it to Panama’s bureaucracy to make death all the more painful to deal with.  When the body was found Tuesday, the law is such that he had to be taken into the city for an autopsy.  The ensuing paperwork lasted longer than 24 hours and the body was not returned to the community until late Thursday.  By that time, I had helped a large group of men dig his grave (definitely a first for me, and hopefully a last), but his family preferred that he spend one last night at home.  Friday morning the coffin was carried to the church (about a 20 minute hike) for a short prayer session and then to the cemetery (another 15).  His family retained composure throughout the morning, but as soon as the coffin was lowered into the grave they lost it, and so did I.  Panamanians very rarely show strong emotion, which made their grief all the more powerful and saddening (the word “wailing” came to mind).  A few relatives spoke, mostly saying thank you to all the community for showing support.  On behalf of the immediate family they asked that support continue to be given either in the form of money, food, or work (fields of the family’s rice need to be harvested as soon as possible).  I heard people talking about how even the cheapest of coffins cost more than $100.  This amount of money is extremely hard to come by.

On November 2^nd, much of Latin America celebrated El Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).  We had celebrated that day with a service at the cemetery.  These are Teodoro’s daughters paying respects to their recently lost baby.  Less than a week later, they buried their father here as well.

Procession from the church to the cemetery.  The coffin is being carried up front

Every evening for nine days following the death of Teodoro, a prayer session is held at his family’s home.  This altar was made for this occasion.

Siobhan, who crosses this same river regularly, has been working with Engineers Without Borders groups on a bridge project so that people and horses will be able to cross safely at any time.  We are hopeful that construction of the bridge will begin as early as April.

 

Surveying a possible bridge location

During this same week I received news from home that the father of two close friends from high school passed away.  These friends have stayed in my thoughts and heart and I wish them all the strength and love in the world as they get through this hard time.

On a Happier Note

Aside from such significant challenges, life and work have continued to go well for me in El Harino.  Here are some highlights:

- I helped facilitate a workshop called “Choose your life” for school kids in Siobhan’s community.  The workshop focused on helping teenagers develop goals and identify resources and steps to help them achieve their goals.  A session on sex-ed is also included.

Explaining different types of resources they might have available and that money isn’t everything.

They did an activity where they had to guess if HIV could be transmitted or not transmitted.  Alex went through and explained that actually no, you can’t get HIV from somebody coughing, sneezing, sharing a cup, etc.

Practicing how to put a condom on.

- During Panama’s Independence Day, I accompanied the school kids on their annual parade down the main road.  That night some neighbor volunteers came over to hang out and we made a brief appearance to dance some típico at the baile.

School parade

Baile at the cantina

- I hiked the long way out (through Siobhan’s community on the Coclé side of the river) to make it to a Peace Corps Halloween house party in Coclé’s capital city Penenomé.  The hike took close to three and a half hours.  The party featured costumes, dancing to American music and playing the American game of beer pong.

Pretty hike

Halloween sheriffs.  Don't worry, my gun was 2-D

- I collaborated with Panama’s Center for Environmental Development to host a talk on reforestation and tree-nursery management with our 7^th grade.

Filling seed bags with a good soil mix

Watering in a small tomato plant

Wanderlust for Life

 Comarca Ngobe-Bugle

At the beginning of October I had the opportunity to visit the Comarca Ngobe-Bugle for the first time.  The term “Comarca” refers to an indigenous reservation.  People who live inside comarcas are citizens of Panama, but also follow a separate set of rules established by their tribe.  About five tribes have such status throughout Panama, and the Ngobe (pronounced no-bay) are one of the biggest groups.

A good friend said that the group of farmers turned gardeners he is working with could use some help with agribusiness, so he invited me out to give an informal talk to his group.  After getting off a six hour bus ride in a city called Tole, Reid met me and together we hopped on a chiva which took us across the line into the Comarca.  After that, we began what Reid warned me would be a two hour hike.  “The good news is that the hike is half downhill,” Reid said cheerfully, “but that means the other half is uphill.”  He was not kidding.  Down one mountainside, across a bridge over a river, and up the other mountainside was quite a trek that my asthma was not so happy about.  Luckily it was gorgeous the whole way.

Shortly after making it to the community La Tijera, the daily afternoon downpour began.  We hid inside and Reid taught me how he makes chocolate from the cacao found around the area.  Yum!

The next day, five of the seven members of Reid’s group turned up for the charla (pretty decent turn out!).  The talk went well and the group seemed interested and caught on pretty quick.  I had heard the stereotype that many Ngobe are stone-faced and reserved.  While the people I encountered throughout this trip did seem a little more reserved than the louder Latinos I live with, and I did notice I was getting openly stared at by serious-looking eyes everywhere I went, Reid’s group had no problem participating in the session and even laughed at our jokes.  Whenever the conversation slipped into the local Ngobere language, I said the one phrase Reid taught me, meaning: “I don’t understand what’s going on at all,” and that seemed to go over well.

I really enjoyed this visit.  While I fully believe I would have been happy wherever I ended up and that each site has advantages and disadvantages (physical, cultural, etc.), I was struck by how different my life would have been for these two years if I had as intense of a hike in as Reid does.  Leaving for appointments, bringing home groceries, having friends visit … These things are complicated enough for me as it is.  A two hour sweaty, wheezy climb would add a whole new level of challenges.  Additionally, it was hard to imagine how this community functions so far off the path.  People must haul in heavy materials like zinc sheets for roofs and food for the small stores.  If someone gets sick, they are carried all the way out in a hammock.  One advantage of the higher altitude community of La Tijera is cell phone signal everywhere.  Overall I feel lucky to live where I do, and lucky to have the chance to travel and experience sites like Reid’s.

Reid and I talked a bit about what the future holds.  We still have eight months here, and sometimes that seems like a lot, but time does fly.  Reid says he has really enjoyed this experience, but he thinks it may have satisfied his wanderlust and that he will now be ready to settle down in the U.S. permanently.  I have to say that I do not feel the same way.  It is true that I am looking forward to spending time stateside and plan to attend business school somewhere in my native country.  However, for me this experience has confirmed that I want to continue working in international development and has strengthened the connection I feel to Latin America.  Right now I cannot imagine myself in a long-term lifestyle that does not involve traveling abroad.  So we’ll see what the future holds, but something tells me, my wanderlust may not be curable.

Fútbol-Mania

I made it to the Panama vs. U.S. soccer game and it was a pretty awesome experience.  I had carefully planned my schedule so that I would be in the city at just the right time.  Several things almost went very wrong that could have led to minor disasters, but somehow it all worked out great.

I came out of site on a Monday to go to a city called Penonome in order to give an agribusiness training session to the government agriculture organization MIDA.  My volunteer team powered through the all-day training session on Tuesday, cutting off Panamanian tangential rants left and right, and somehow wrapped things up by 2pm.  From there we hopped on a bus and after just over four hours we’d made it through rush hour traffic to get to the hostel in Panama City.  A quick change and a few beers later we were en route to the stadium, again with much traffic and the added pleasure of a totally sexist cab driver transporting four independent female volunteers.  Ayayay.

MIDA employees taking the stage

Explaining how to calculate production costs with small scale farmers

Finally made it to the stadium before 8pm for an 8:30 kick-off (although the tickets said 9:00) .  For some reason, they split the entering line male/female and only females were required to get an invasive pat-down (by female officers), so as always, the girls line was insanely slow while the boys walked straight in.  The women started getting pushy.  I am usually a wait-in-line kind of person, but by this point, I was in dire need of finding a restroom, so I pushed my way in and made a run for it. 

Girls line to enter the premises

Disaster!  They seemed to have oversold my section and had closed the doors.  I waited with angry Panamanians who tried to bully the security guards into opening the door.  I let it be known that I was just trying to get in so I could pee, and the Panamanians instantly supported my claim and called the security guards out for their shameful treatment of foreigners in their country saying things like, "I bet the U.S. wouldn't do this to people at their stadium!" (a little extreme, but then again, seriously, put some bathrooms on the outside!).  A door squeaked open and all rushed in.  I saw security guards pulling out the pepper spray.  AHH!  I approached one and calmly asked where the bathroom was.  She looked sympathetic and pointed where to go.  Finally! Relief!  And then … Uh oh, where are all my friends?  I had bolted and left my large gringo group somewhere behind.

I made some phone calls, but no one was answering / signal was not so good (of course).  I started watching the game.  I got a few weird looks since I was a white girl by myself in a sea of Panamanians.  A couple people nearby started making conversation and once I told them I was rooting for Panama, all were instantly friendlier and invited me up to get a better viewing spot.  And then Panama scored. GOOOOOOOAAALLLL.  Beer rained down and the energy was contagious.

I spotted a few volunteers walking by.  I latched on and we explored a different section (supposedly you were only allowed the sit in your assigned section, but I found this was not totally the case, especially considering they’d oversold mine), and we were thrown free Panama jerseys along the way.  Eventually we made our way to where a large group of volunteers had congregated.  Many were decked out in vibrant U.S. apparel and were very loud in supporting the stars and stripes.  I personally kept rooting for Panama just because I think a win would have meant more to Panamanian citizens than to Americans who generally barely care about soccer.  After a few more goals and beer rains, the game was approaching its end and Panama was up 2 to 1.  So exciting!  Then the U.S. scored.  Woah!  It’s tied.  The score board had not even caught up and then BAM the U.S. scored again!  It was done.  Just like that the U.S. came through 3 to 2 and Panama’s hopes were destroyed.  I felt bad, but the excitement of the other volunteers was hard to resist.  U-S-A! U-S-A!

Overall, the soccer game was an extremely disorganized adventure that could have gone terribly wrong at a few different points, but ended up being one of the coolest activities I have experienced in Panama City.

Agribusiness Grant Update

I again wanted to thank everyone who contributed or considered contributing to my Agribusiness Seminar Project.  My grant has been completely funded!  Over the next months I will begin planning these three seminars to take place within the December to May time frame.  These seminars will present all kinds of new logistical challenges for me to conquer and will certainly keep me busy working on something I really care about.  I will keep you posted as the project moves along!

That Time Came Where I Asked All You Awesome People for Money

**UPDATE ON THE BELOW REQUEST FOR FUNDING**

**Update!** Just about two weeks after my project proposal went online, it has been completed funded.  I feel humbled by and incredibly grateful for the support of all who donated and all who thought about it, but found it was already done.  Thank you all.  Panama's farmers and future businessmen say "Gracias" as well.



Have I mentioned how nice you look today?

Yes, that time has come where I ask all you awesome people to support one of my more capital-intensive projects.  As you might recall, I first got involved with Peace Corps Panama’s Agribusiness Initiative back in November, by helping co-facilitate a three-day agribusiness seminar for farmers participating in a government-sponsored program in the province of Veraguas.  Since then I have continued teaching agribusiness topics both within my community and throughout Panama.  I applied for and was selected to be this year’s Agribusiness Coordinator back in May.

So what does it mean to be Agribusiness Coordinator?  For one thing, I travel on request to other volunteer communities to help them train farmers in agbiz topics.  I also train new volunteers on how to present this material in their communities.  I long ago realized the Peace Corps Agribusiness Manual was not user-friendly enough for our standard audience that, at best, received up to a sixth grade education.  I significantly edited this document, simplifying its dense paragraphs of text and trying to clarify in local terms how to keep inventory records (people here are not used to using formats like spreadsheets).  This Initiative has caught the attention of local government agencies, and I have been invited to provide agribusiness training sessions in regions lacking a Peace Corps presence.  Additionally, I work with Panamanian agency professionals to teach them how to present this material themselves.

But none of those things are what your money will go towards.  As Agribusiness Coordinator, I am responsible for organizing and facilitating three agribusiness seminars in different regions of Panama.  These seminars will be made available to farmers all over the country in areas where they are working with Peace Corps volunteers and will take place sometime between December and May. 

Here are the benefits of helping me fund these three agribusiness seminars:

- Farmers will be trained in critical skills like: farm planning, keeping inventory records, problem identification and prioritization, setting goals and making calendars, group organization, supply chain management, financial record keeping, production cost calculation, value-added products, price fixing, product quality, customer service, market analysis and strategy, money management and setting budgets, use of calculators, etc.

- Some of these skills may seem like common sense to those of us with a formal education or other relevant experience.  These skills ARE NOT COMMON SENSE to people who stopped going to school around age 10, have never kept records, have never practiced the idea of planning things out before they plant crops arbitrarily throughout their never-been-measured plots of land, have never calculated the cost of production to see which of their products result in a profit, and which ones result in a LOSS, and have the deeply-engrained tendency to spend money as quickly as it comes in without thinking much about the future.

- Farmers will be able to use the previously mentioned skills to increase their income generation and sustainably improve their quality of life.

- By putting on three different seminars, Peace Corps is expanding the impact of this initiative to reach farmers whose communities I might not otherwise have a chance to visit.

- By making the seminars available to farmers from Peace Corps communities, the volunteers from those communities will be able to provide necessary follow-up to help farmers implement the skills they learn during the seminars.

Want to know what, specifically, your money will be spent on?

- Travel costs of the farmers to get to the seminars.

- Food for the farmers to eat during the seminars.

- Paying local cooks to prepare the food for the farmers to eat.

- Paying local families to host farmer participants in their homes during the seminars.

- Basic seminar materials like poster paper, markers, notebooks, pens.

- Travel costs of volunteers like me to get to the seminars.

- Believe it or not, this stuff all adds up fast.

Let me put it this way—many of you know I like to think of myself as a “practical environmentalist.”  I want to protect natural resources, help people, and do so in an economically feasible, sustainable way.  The farmers I work with have the chance to profit from their sustainable agriculture businesses; they just need some help developing the skills they need to make it happen.

Please help me help them to make this happen.  Any size donation is welcome!  Also FYI this tax deductible donation will be acknowledged by an official email from the Peace Corps, and they will not put you on any lists for future solicitations.

In case you are more motivated by pictures than words, here are some of those as well:

Farmers selling yummy produce

Practicing arithmetic

One of last year's agbiz seminars that the coordinator put on out in the Darien

My community members doing an activity that teaches how to break down the steps involved in a production chain

More arithmetic practice

What I look like when I explain how to set goals and put activities on a calendar to make sure you accomplish those goals

So here’s the link to donate:

https://donate.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=13-525-035

Gracias.  You really do look nice today.

In Other News

Aside from my outside Agribusiness Coordinator duties, I continue to be busy in El Harino as well.  Some families are finally coming around and only now inviting me to help them start compost of a home garden.  Others are already pro’s and now asking for help expanding and adding beds to the gardens I helped them start months ago.  MIDA, the national agriculture organization, continues to be a pebble in my shoe.  I have visited their office and called their regional director countless times to check on the progress of getting us the PVC tubes we need to bring water to the fish tank projects that some six families are waiting to complete.  MIDA continues assuring me the paperwork is in process and they will let me know when the tubes are purchased … patience … so much patience …

More compost making

She's so happy with these two garden beds that we made a third one last week.

This family started from scratch a month ago making compost and now are finally ready to start planting

The Sustainable Agriculture Systems Peace Corps program trainer recently visited my site and requested a meeting with my community.  At the meeting, we reviewed my community analysis and action plan from when I first arrived (remember this? http://lilabailapeacecorps.blogspot.com/2012/09/community-analysis-report-given-to.html).  We agreed that we are indeed making progress toward the goal of improving nutritional variety, and that some families are further along than others.  We discussed that I should keep doing what I’m doing and following up to support people with the projects we’ve been working on.  We also highlighted some areas that clearly need reinforcing and some that will be new to everyone, but that people expressed interest in.  Such areas include: organic insect repellents, worm composting, developing a seed bank at the school garden, etc.  I heard people say out loud something that I’ve realized, but is bothersome: people would rather me go house to house teaching things than attend a charla on a given day, at a certain time.  They said sometimes they can’t go to my charlas, and that even when they can, they don’t, so it’s better if I work with families individually.  I acknowledge this seems to be true, but tried to emphasize to them that in this case, they need to take the initiative to tell me they are interested in trying something like organic insect repellent.  Only then will I come to them.  I cannot give such lessons at every single house in El Harino because there is not enough of me to go around and I cannot read minds to know who is truly interested.  With about nine months left, we’ll see what I can do …

Action Plan from last September.  Only a couple check marks.  The rest is still in progress.

Action Plan Part II

Community members who gathered to talk about the work I've done so far and what we can do with my time left.

I was banished during part of the meeting so the SAS program trainer could ask my community to evaluate how I’m doing.  She told me later they asked if there was any way they could request Peace Corps to have me stay an extra year.  Cute.  No, but still cute.

Ups and Downs

Ups and Downs

It amazes me how many ups and downs I can go through in very short periods of time.  Here are some examples.

+ I got invited to a very cute buffet that the seventh grade put on.  The teacher’s idea was to show kids what some restaurants are like and introduce the idea of serving yourself a portion of each item you want.

7th grade all dressed up

+ Watching the teacher explain that at restaurants you eat with forks and knives instead of just spoons was hilarious.

 - Something about watching the teacher explain first how to use a napkin holder and then how to use a napkin made me sad to realize how little these kids are aware of the rest of the world.

Learning to use a napkin dispenser

- The teacher had the kids get in a specifically ordered line and practice going through the buffet.  Later, when the kids were allowed to get seconds, they were so wrapped up in staying in the correct order and going through the line as they’d been instructed, that they ended up sitting in the reverse order in different seats.  I don’t quite think that’s how it works in restaurants.

+ They had salad in the buffet.

- Hardly anyone ate the salad. 

- I thought for the first time ever the quantity of food set out was appropriate (or maybe even light) for the amount of people.  And then a ridiculously enormous plate of rice showed up.

-/+ All of this took place just days after I’d returned from eating at fancy buffets at a luxury resort to celebrate with other volunteers that we’d been here over a year.  This stark contrast reminded me how privileged I am.

Getting ready for a nice dinner at a beach resort

The outside of a buffet restaurant at the beach resort

+ After having recently given a talk on keeping records, one farmer invited me over to help him get started.  We walked around his farm and counted how many of which type of trees he had.  In some way it reminded me of when I used to take inventory of the installation parts in our warehouse when I worked at Astrum Solar, but with a significantly different backdrop.

+ We compared notes at the end, and they mostly matched up.  However, it took him a very long time to sum up his totals.  Looking at the notes he’d taken as we walked, I realized that tally-marks are not universal.  I showed him my way of making the fifth mark diagonal through the last four and how this helped me count faster.  He practiced drawing the arrangement of marks on his piece of paper and said he’d learned something new.

learning to tally

- Despite my efforts to make our Agribusiness Manual document more user-friendly, this farmer still struggled quite a bit to understand how to input information into the correct columns of a spreadsheet.

Inventory spreadsheet

+ This family had apparently all talked about the idea of keeping records after the woman of the house attended my charla.  Their grandson was so enthused he said he will double-check our counts by actually marking each tree with a number to make sure he gets an accurate count.

- The woman of the house shared some bochinche (gossip) about me.  Apparently some people in town have said they don’t want to work with me because I don’t give out material things and therefore am no help.  They also said they don’t want to send their kids to read books in Spanish with a Gringa.

+ She then shared that her seventh grade grandson really likes coming to my reading group because I expose him to different kinds of books than what he studies in school, and he can practice reading.

+ This particular couple said they think it’s great that they have a Peace Corps volunteer in the community because of the new ideas I bring and that I help everyone by being a “human resource.”

- This house served me lunch: a big bowl of rice with a couple pieces of some very fried meat on top, which I assumed was pork.  Trying not to be rude, I ate a couple bites, and threw the rest to the dogs when no one was looking.  I was later informed that this was actually the meat of a conejo pintado, an endangered species.

- Leaving this house, I stopped to visit another and actually screamed when a ferocious dog came running at me.  Luckily all he did was bark, but I couldn’t stop shaking for a while.

- I got a haircut from the same friend that cut my hair last January.  This time he cut double what I’d asked for.

+ That friend cuts my hair for free.

+ Months after I began advertising my help starting compost piles and home gardens, new families continue taking me up on my offer.

- One of those families recently stood me up for a compost date.

+ At the end of my last charla I read “The Lorax” in Spanish out loud to the adults present to emphasize the need for farm planning.  I think it may have been the first time in their lives that anyone read a book to them.  They were mesmerized.

+ Our school recently celebrated its birthday.  We crowned a Queen of the School, who turned out to be a second grader.  The whole royal court made “recycled” dresses for the occasion.

- These “recycled” dresses required the purchase of confusing amount of new materials. Nevertheless, the kids looked adorable.

School court

+ At the school’s birthday celebration, I Israeli danced for everyone.  People seemed to enjoy it!  I’ve gotten some entertaining questions about it since then like “So that’s how people dance in your country?”  Me: “Umm only some people.”

Lila baila

- One of El Harino’s founding fathers is very sick and bed-ridden.

+ This sweet old man recently celebrated his 70^th birthday and I was honored to be invited to celebrate with is family.  I felt so much love in that house

Cuties getting ready for the fiesta

Happy birthday singing and cake 

- At the end of a crazy up and down day, I sometimes feel I have no one to talk to about these ups and downs that can really relate.  Even if I wanted to try to call someone from home, my schedule regarding when I can do so, and from on top of which hill, often does not work for any of you awesome people back in the states.

+ At least I have a blog where I can get some of these things off my chest, even if I have to wait weeks between when I handwrite a new entry until I can post it like this one!