The Heavy Rains have Begun

The rainy season officially started in April, but in the last three weeks the rainfall has picked up (or down?). Just about every day, the faucet in the skies opens between noon and four, and usually keeps going until nightfall. This will continue through November.

Most people can predict the skies pretty well, and go home from the fields or town before it starts coming down hard. However, it is considered normal to seek shelter in anyone’s house along the way as well. I got stuck in a stranger’s house during rainstorm for a few hours and she kept feeding me boiled green bananas and really wanted me to spend the night. I have also hosted strangers on my porch for extended periods of time, breaking down to local customs and offering them coffee and food.

My community has been told for ten months now that the government funded aqueduct project will be starting any day now. The contractors arrived 2 weeks ago, and started driving materials up the muddy rutted road last week. So far, the majority of my community’s work has consisted of rehabilitating the washouts on the road that was constructed in January. Yesterday 3 pick axes snapped in the process of chipping away a rock blocking the road. The contractor claims he has 15 days to bring in the materials and construct the spring captation and the tank and connect 16 houses. However, we’ll see how that goes because it is already Day 5 and not all of the materials have been delivered yet.

Project construction relies on volunteer manual labor from the community. Many men are planning to leave the community soon to go harvest coffee in Costa Rica for three months. Two of my neighbors have already mentioned to me they are going to try to stay around to work on the project, although this means they will lose their work opportunity in Costa Rica. To me, this shows how important the water project is to community members, as they are willing to sacrifice their only income of the year. Let´s just hope the morale keeps up through Day 15.

Full House

What ever happend to predictability?

The milk man, the paper boy, evening T.V

You miss your old familar friends,

but waiting just around the bend.

I hosted a Peace Corps trainee from the newly arrived EH group in my house for 4 nights to give her a first glimpse at what life is like for a volunteer out in the country. I enjoyed my visitor and showing her around the community, and it also made me realize how accustomed I have really become in the last year to my living situation – ie, bugs, bats, peeing wherever, eating and drinking whatever, and wooping instead of talking at times.

I invited my 3 nearest volunteer friends and their 2 trainee visitors to come swim in the nearby waterfalls on the last day. The plan was that the following morning I would head to Panama City with the 3 trainees, as my site as easier road access than that of my other volunteer friends.
My trainee visitor asked me, “where are 7 people going to sleep?”. I said, “We’ll figure it out.” Besides my twin sized bed, I have about 7’x6’ of sleeping space, and a resident bat. My friends and their visitors hiked 4 ½, 3 hours, and 2 hours to get to my house.

We all had a great time at the waterfall and cooking dinner. I brought some leftovers and a bag of dog food to my neighbor Araceli since I would be leaving in the morning for a week. She asked me how many people were staying at my house. I answered, “Bastante (A lot).” It turns out that that very night it was her turn to go to the school to guard the solar panel, and she asked if I could cuidar la casa (watch the house) – by sleeping there with some of my friends. Her house, like most around here, does not have complete walls, so it cannot be left unattended especially at night. At dusk, Araceli left with her 4 small children to go work security. I can just imagine a solar panel robber arriving at the school and being scared away by a sleepy women and her sleeping children.

I still like to think about what the probability is of me having 6 overnight guests, and one of my neighbors having an open house available for me to use as a guest house, on the same night. I slept well instead of squeezed between 4 others on the floor. Thank you solar panel for needing night guards.

Reflections on Parenthood

I recently read Morning Song: Poems for New Parents, a poetry anthology edited by Susan Todd and my aunt, Carol Purington. I enjoyed the variety of poems from traditional to modern, and I plan on reading a few of the poems in their original Spanish form during the Mothers’ Day ceremony here on December 8th.

The poems also led me to reflect on what parenthood means where I am currently living. During training when I started studying Ngaberi, I learned that the word bren means bad, sick, and pregnant. And when I arrived here in the community, I realized that pregnancy is never discussed, even when the woman is obviously rotund in the midsection. I quickly learned not to bother with the typical American banter about boy vs. girl or choosing names or the due date.

I estimate that puppies and kittens in my community have a 80% “infant” mortality rate due to malnourishment, parasites, and diarrhea. I assume that a few decades ago, without modern medicine and hospitals, the situation for human babies was almost as devastating. The Comarca Ngabe Bugle region still has the worst infant mortality rate in Panama (27.2 out of 1000 babies died in 2007, according to Atlas de Desarrollo Humano y Objetivos de Milenio Panama 2010). Thus it makes sense that soon-to-be parents are still weary to express any attachment to a baby before it is successfully born.

When a woman is going to have her baby soon, people say “soon she is going to be free”. Once the baby is born, the behavior towards the baby seems much more familiar. The whole family welcomes the baby into the home. The only difference is that babies here prefer hammocks and woven bags to cribs.

Here are two of my favorite poems from the book.

Expect Nothing

Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
Become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.

Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.

Discover the reason why
So tiny human giant
Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.

-Alice Walker

Mother to Son

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor –
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now –
For I’se still goin’ on, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

-Langston Hughes

The world's most dangerous border becomes Even More Dangerous

Spider was successfully killed with my egg flipper.

One Year in Panama

What a year. One year without:
• Riding on an airplane or a train
• Driving a car
• Eating sushi
• Baking cookies or cupcakes (although I have glanced at Joy the Baker a few times)
• Opening the program Matlab (to my fellow BMEs)
• Going to the gym
• Touching snow
• Fall or Spring
• Cutting my hair (gone hippie!)

But it has been one year with:
• Rice
• Learning a language I had never heard of, and one I had
• Living with four host families over the course of almost six months
• Organizing and constructing a palm thatched house
• Adopting 2 dogs and a cat
• Teaching English as a second language
• Surveying and measuring a potential aqueduct
• Talking a lot with adults and children about the dangers of human excrement
• Relaxing in a way that is barely possible in the US of A
• Eating whatever is in season, all of the time (currently oranges and pifa)

It's been a good year. Hopefully the next one is even better!