The Not-So-Proud Owner of Crocs

Fashion Alert: I have purchased fake crocs. I vowed 3 or 4 years ago that I would never ever own crocs, but 1) my flip flops broke and 2) they are $3 and perfect for walking through the mud.

In a previous post, I wrote my mailing address but actually that address is only for letters and envelopes. For packages, my address is below. If a package is sent to the San Felix address it shouldn’t be a problem, but it just increases the chance of the package getting lost.

Carolyn Purington, Cuerpo de Paz
Entrega General David - 0426
Provincia de Chiriqui
Republica de Panama

In the upcoming months, I will greatly appreciate snail mail because I will only be checking email about once a month. I will also have plenty of time to write letters.

The staff warned us that training would go by really fast, and it definitely did. I left my host family in the training community yesterday, and it was sad because I don’t know when I will be able to come back and visit. I will rarely be travelling back east to Panama City except for possible vacations or medical appointments. The funny thing is that my host mom gave me cornflakes and sugary milk for breakfast (with a side of fried yucca) on my last morning for the first time. Maybe she somehow knew that I have been craving cereal for a long time.

My training group has our swear-in ceremony tomorrow! It will be at the U.S. Ambassador’s house and Panamanian President Martinelli will be in attendance, which is pretty exciting. It will be interesting to see how high security the event is.

On Friday I am going to a beach on the Pacific coast in Panama province for two nights with most of my group, and then on Sunday I will head to my community. I do have a makeshift Halloween costume for the beach. We aren’t allowed to take vacation days until February, but luckily my group received approval to attend an all-volunteer Thanksgiving celebration in Boquete (near the Costa Rican border)!

I am definitely nervous about moving to my community but I also think it will be fine. During the first three months in the community, we are only supposed to work on gaining trust and getting to know the people in the community. This is actually as broad and unstructured as it sounds, especially after 10 weeks of having an hour-by-hour schedule. Especially for Environmental Health, the tough part will be explaining repetitively why we can’t start on the water system or latrine project right away.

One of my bosses said jokingly today, “You signed a form even before you got to Panama that your life is ours for the next two years.” Even though we are on our own most of the time, there is definitely a lot to get done. We also have regional meetings, self-run community seminars, inter-service training, and all-volunteer conference. And if nothing else, there are always people out there who want to learn English!

The next time I post will probably be after Thanksgiving. Happy Halloween and Happy Thankgiving! My top 2 favorite holidays!

Visiting Sabanita

Top picture- my training community host family.

Here is my new mailing address! It´s supposedly quite reliable.

Carolyn Purington, Cuerpo de Paz

Entrega General

San Felix, Chiriqui 0444

Republica de Panama

I came back yesterday from five full days in my community, Sabanita, in the Comarca Ngabe-Bugle! I had a good experience there but I was happy to come back to my host family in my training community. It’s a relief to be able to speak Spanish without worrying about Ngaberi.

According to my paperwork I only had a 15 minute hike to my community, but it turns out that this is only true during the dry season (summer, December-March). During the rest of the year, the access road is too muddy for the pick-up truck “bus”. Instead, I arrived at my community through the next access road to the west, which still has a pick-up truck running during the rainy season. Basically, as many as 22 people cram into the bed of a pick-up truck with a grated roof, and this is the public transportation. My community guide and I took this pick-up truck for 25 minutes north to the end of the road, and then hiked for an hour to arrive in Sabanita. We walked on a series of muddy footpaths up and over a few ridges. It was really pretty but I had too many books in my bag to enjoy the views.

Sabanita is spread out over neighboring hills. My host family lives down a steep hill from the main path right above a large stream. The family moved to this site from the older family site to be closer to clean water. The family pipes water from a groundwater spring about 500 m up the hill, and bathes and washes clothes in the stream. I was unsure about the bathing technique, but it turns out you jump into the water with all your clothes on, wash yourself under your clothes, and then wash your clothes on your body. It is optional to wash these clothes another time once they are off the body. For me, the problem with the whole system was that it rained every day so it took days for my clothes to dry.

Picture- The family´s river and my new nagua!

My new host family is a middle-aged father and mother, a 12 year old girl, and a 15 year old boy who is studying in high school “afuera” (anywhere outside the Comarca) but comes home on weekends. There are also 4 other kids who are grown up. One of the older daughters who lives in Panama City was visiting home for a month with her toddler son. The father is a teacher in a primary school an hour’s walk north from Sabanita. The mother is active in the Evangelical church and in the house. I have learned that it is a full-time job to keep the chickens out of the house when the house has no walls or doors.

What did I do for 5 days? I drank a lot of coffee. My main job was to visit every house in the community (about 30), and it is custom to present a guest with drink and/or food. I also listened to a lot of Ngaberi and realized that I need to learn it quickly. Most people under the age of 50 can speak decent Spanish, but they like speaking their own language and the only way I will know what is going on is if I can learn it.

When I visited all of the houses, I told the people there would be a community meeting at 8 am on Saturday to talk about my role in Sabanita. My host family warned me about “Comarca Time,” so I didn’t show up to the meeting until 8:10 am. My host mother came at 8:40. The first community members started arriving at 9 am. We started the meeting at 9:15, but a bunch more people arrived at 9:45. The overall turnout was good though (20 families represented). Similar to some McHugh and Purington family gatherings, the best solution is to tell people the meeting starts an hour before it actually should start.

Learning Ngabe in Spanish

This week I have been studying the language Ngabere (nao-berry). My language teacher grew up in the Comarca about 30 minutes from where I will be. Up until about 10 years ago, the language Ngabere had no written works except for the Bible, and it is still mostly a spoken language. My teacher was the first person to standardize the written language and to create a Ngabere/Spanish dictionary as well as grammatical guide to the language. Ngabere is a really strange language - it has more structural similarities to Japanese than to Spanish or English. For example, to say “I have 2 brothers” in Ngabere, I would say “I brother have 2” or “Ti ngwae tara nibu.” Also, there is a different counting system for different objects, so the number 2 is different for persons or animals or fruits or grains.
The Comarca Ngabe-Bugle was formed in 1997 and land was taken from 3 existing provinces after about 100 years of political controversy. Currently, the Ngabe population is 120,000 and the Bugle population is 4,000. Most people are Christian of some type.

Next Monday I will be meeting my counterpart (a community leader) at a conference and we will be traveling back together to the community. I will stay there with a host family for five days and then travel back here for the end of training (presentations, projects, blah blah). I am excited to meet and see my community, but the five days will probably be pretty long and overwhelming. I wrote a short introduction speech using my one week’s knowledge of Ngabere, but luckily most people speak some Spanish too. Actually, to someone like me, their Spanish sounds nice and slow. To a native Spanish speaker it is filled with mistakes but I doubt I will notice.

I joined Peace Corps and came to Panama with a personal goal to become fluent in Spanish. At first I didn’t want to be placed in an indigenous site for this reason, but after I visited in September I realized what a unique cultural opportunity it is. Also, 85% of my group of 21 was placed in indigenous sites so it wasn’t much of a choice. Another interesting factor is that in the past within my PC Panama EH sector, females have had much more difficulty working with Latino water and sanitations committees (traditionally a man’s role) than with indigenous committees (still a man’s role but slightly more open). One possible reason is that because few people in the Comarcas (reservations) have any education beyond 6th grad, anyone with a degree is highly respected. I will still be using Spanish quite a bit, but no one will be correcting my mistakes since it is their 2nd language too, so improving will require some self motivation. I think I should have the time to make it happen though.

About life in Panama in general (thanks Aunt Carol!): My training town is middle class by Panamanian standards. Most families have a car and a flush toilet. The town has a school and 3 family-owned stores that sell basic grocery items. Fresh fruits and vegetables are readily available in La Chorrera (nearest city) for cheap. La Chorrera is famous for its pineapples and the small ones are 3 for $1. However, in general people only like the starchy vegetables like yucca (kind of like potato). Mosquitos are present in this part, especially at dusk, but I sleep with a mosquito net over my bed so it’s not a big issue. Mosquitoes are worse in other parts of the country though.
Panama has two seasons. The wet season, called winter, runs from April through November. The dry season, called summer, is December through March. It has definitely gradually become cooler and rainier here in October. From what I’ve heard, the month of November is a lot wetter. Then I will have 3 months of dry, beautiful weather, but no water (or very little). It will be interesting to see what my host community currently does for water during the dry season.

I know where I'm going to live for the next 2 years!

Signs that I am getting used to Panama:

· It takes more than a few roosters to wake me up at 4 am.

· I like sugar in my coffee now.

· I have no trouble eating mountains of rice.

· I did feel cold when it was less than 70 F last night.

· I eat everything with just a spoon.

Signs that I am still American:

· I drink a lot of water, all the time. My host parents only drink coffee.

· Mosquitoes really like biting me.

· My skin gets burnt really easily.

· I miss peanut butter.

My training group traveled to the Darien (province east of the Panama Canal, closest to Colombia) for 10 days of technical training. We worked and stayed in a small village 4.5 hours from Panama City. The village was about 30 Wounan-Embera (indigenous group in Panama/Colombia) families, most of whom had moved to Panama from Colombia in the last 50 years to escape terrorist groups and to have better access to schools and healthcare.

My host family had four kids, age 15, 10, 7, and 2. I hung out a lot with the kids and they taught me some new card games. Most of the women make baskets for side family income, and my host mom taught me how to sew a basket. All the women wear wrap miniskirts with colorful prints like I'm wearing in the picture.

Every day, we spent half the day constructing latrines, and half the day working on water systems. Each group of 10 built a pit latrine and a composting latrine. We also made repairs on the PVC water system and hiked into the jungle to see where the source of the water was. It was really neat because the spring box was at the top of waterfall (see above).

On the last day there, the community had a huge farewell party for us. The previous night we had our bodies painted in preparation for the fiesta. At the party, they gave each of us gifts (I got earrings and 3 necklaces), and then we all danced the traditional dances. Afterwards there was a piñata for the kids which was definitely not like my piñata experiences in the US- imagine a blindfolded kid with a 5 foot 2x4 and 50 kids diving onto the concrete floor for candy. My host mom gave me the basket I had been working on (which she completed for me because I was really slow).

The next morning we left really early to go to the beach. It was wide white sand and very beautiful.

Upon returning to the training community near Panama City this past Monday, we have been really impatiently waiting for today to find out where each of us will be placed. This is the place where I will be living for the next 2 years.

Our staff made the site announcement very dramatic. At the front of the room was a large map of Panama, with dots on it to indicate the villages to which my group is assigned. Starting at the eastern side of the country, my boss announced the future resident of each spot. I will be living in a hillside village, population 150, in the Comarca Ngobe Bugle. It is very close to the village where I visited the volunteer Meredith a month ago! The closest town is San Felix on the Interamericana Highway. Once I get to San Felix, I am only about 1 hour from a beautiful beach.

Before choosing new communities, my boss and current volunteers have at least 3 meetings with community leaders to ensure commitment. The community leaders also have to commit to providing me with 3 host families for the first 3 months. After that, my community will help me build a house. Who would have thought that I would own my own house at 23?

From my info packet written by my boss: “The people farm the hillsides for the classic Ngabe crops of rice, corn, beans, plantain, yucca, and coffee. Poverty level is high here but the community is warm and inviting….The water system only provides water to a few houses and will need a new source. You will be able to explore the area for potential sources and identify the sites that will work for a gravity flow water system.”

I will meet one my community leaders in Panama City in a few weeks, and then we will travel back to the community for a few days’ visit.

Thanks to everyone who sent me mail!! Today I received a stack of mail, with US postmark dates ranging from mid August to late to mid September. Surprisingly, packages seem to make it here faster. Also, if you send me something in the next few weeks, we have been advised to have our names (ie Attn: Carolyn) at the bottom of the address, so that all the Peace Corps mail is grouped together instead of by names. I will post my new mailing address in a few weeks but I can receive mail at this address until the end of October.

Until next time!