Leadership Seminar

Photo 1- Hitting the beach with my community counterparts, Eliecer ansd Juan.

Photo 2- Culture night. Dancing the Heggi which is the Ngabe traditional dance.

Last week I took two of my community counterparts to a Peace Corps seminar called “Project Management Leadership” (PML) in Cocle province which is about 5 hours away from my community. Or, it would have been 5 hours if we hadn’t run into burning tires and protests on the highway. Everyone in my Environmental Health training group brought one or two people to participate in the seminar. In the seminar, we learned about personal values, money management, self introductions, writing solicitude letters, and visiting agencies.

We stayed at a government conference center located near the Pacific coast, where we were given three meals and two snacks a day between training sessions. For breakfast there were eggs along with corn fritters (tortilla), and for lunch and dinner we had rice and chicken AND beans. We snacked on grilled ham and cheese sandwiches and pound cake or cookies between meals. Calorie explosion! I do not physically need this amount of food, but in the presence of my community counterparts I felt culturally obligated to eat everything available.

In Panama I live in two separate spheres. The majority of the time my name is Bechi, I live in my community, nagua wearing and river bathing and early-to-bed, early-to-rise. Then every few weeks I leave site and meet up with volunteer friends in the city or at the beach, tell boisterous stories, wear shorts and tank tops, use luxury items such as a toilet and a shower, and stay up later than 9 pm.

This PML event was the juxtaposition of my two worlds. I was excited to catch up with all of my volunteer friends from the other side of the country, but it seemed rude to talk in English in front of my counterparts. At the same time, people talk in front of me in Ngaberi all of the time in site. I walked to the beach twice with my community members, but I did not go swimming because I knew it would make them uncomfortable to see me in a bathing suit. My counterparts enjoyed seeing the ocean, but would not enter it (the mountain people are generally afraid of the ocean) and found it humorous to watch me wade in the water in my skirt and get soaking wet by the waves.

As it turns out, my counterparts, both males, cared less if I spent time hanging out with my volunteer friends instead of them. They were more interested in taking advantage of the vast food opportunities available, and also made friends with some of the other counterparts. We were presented with the amount of protein daily that is available in a week’s worth of food in my site.

The 4 day seminar was a great experience for my counterparts and me. I have facilitated this same seminar in two fellow volunteer’s communities in the Comarca in the past few months, and I plan to run a similar seminar in my site in the future too with the help of my counterparts. Back in the community, I will work together with the two men I brought to share the information with the rest of the community leaders. It was not nearly as awkward as I had feared to squash Bechi and Carolyn into one person.