Watch Out, California

I’ve been hearing about the widening of the Panama Canal (ongoing, finish date 2014) and its benefits ever since I have been here in Panama. A wider and deeper canal means that larger freight ships will be able to pass through, creating more traffic and thus more jobs and revenue. The canal locks today only fit ships that carry 5000 containers, while now newer ships can hold up to 12,000 containers and have to seek alternate routes.

Currently, large ships from Asia that won’t fit through the Canal dock in California (Los Angeles or Long Beach) and then the containers are transferred to trains which run to the East Coast. Now these ports are threatened. The California “Beat the Canal” effort is attempting to prepare for the 2014 deadline by expediting the transfer from boat to train, to make the route more attractive for time-sensitive shipments than the longer canal route.

While Californians are rushing to mitigate the “threat posed by the canal,” Panamanians are preparing to celebrate the success of their ownership of the new and improved canal in 2014.

“The Fickle Asian Container,” The Economist. 28 January 2012.

The Thing about Bananas

Walking anywhere in my community, there are banana and plantain plants everywhere. One would think that I eat bananas all of the time – well, sort of.

Unripe green bananas can be peeled and boiled similar to a potato. They can also be fried into banana chips. People usually eat bananas green instead of waiting for them to ripen, because a green banana serves as a starchy belly-filling food while a ripe one only serves as a sweet.

Thus, in other homes I am served boiled bananas with salt or in a soup. Pretty good, but not something I would necessarily cook for myself. Occasionally a community member gives me a bunch of green bananas to take home and cook. So what do I do with it? I stow it away under my table for a few weeks until I have some beautiful, ripe yellow bananas. What then follows are 3 intense banana-eating days before the bananas will spoil.

The first time ever here in Panama that I have had bread and ripe bananas at the same time! (I always have peanut butter and honey on hand).

Break Time

You can't go to Panama without seeing the Panama Canal!

Most of you probably know that I spent a summer during high school in Okinawa, Japan as an exchange student. My host sister Yuka and I have seen each other four times since, and she came to visit me in Panama from Tokyo a few weeks ago. She thus qualifies for the Spent the Most Time on an Airplane to Get to Panama Award. Any contestants out there?

Protests were brewing again, so to ensure that I would be able to meet Yuka and then the rest of my family in Panama City and not be trapped on the other side of the country, I had to leave my site 4 days before her arrival. I spent the limbo days visiting other volunteers in communities closer to Panama City. The timing was right though because in site we had just wrapped up the latrine project and nothing much was going on except the start of school.

Checking out the city with Uncle Richard and Yuka

I’m still not terribly familiar with Panama City myself, but luckily several of my volunteer friends were in the city as well so we could show Yuka the perks of metropolitan Panama City. On a Thursday night, these included Thai food and a techno club.

The next day, we head to another volunteer’s Embera (another indigenous group) community. Travel consisted of 1 ½ hours on a converted school bus with blasting bachata music, a 30 minute pick-up truck ride and an hour long dug-out canoe ride. Goodbye, metropolitan Panama. The river was so dry that we had to get out a few times so that the strong men could push the canoe along the river bed.

In the Embera village with another PCV Sarah, and Yuka

The following day we hiked through the jungle in order to GPS survey the border of the community, and then headed back to Panama City to meet my family arriving: my great uncle Richard from Alaska and my mom, dad, and brother Myles.

The six of us spent the following 2 nights on the tiny tropical Isla Diablo on the Caribbean side in the Comarca Kuna Yala, about 4 hours northeast of Panama City. You know that Windows desktop background of a tiny island with one palm tree? We went there. The area attracts an eclectic group of tourists because each tiny island is owned by a Kuna family and provides simple sand floored huts (similar to my house!) with air mattresses for visitors. The island on which we stayed was about the site of a football field.

Isla Diablo

Next we headed to my community for 3 nights. By this point I had slept in 3 other volunteers’ houses as well as in a hotel and on the tiny island, and I was very ready to go back. Whenever I visit friends in other parts of Panama, I oftentimes find their houses nicer and their communities with more amenities, but never have I found anyone with as many awesome neighbors as I have.

The kids from all around loved my visitors- Richard teaching the harmonica, Yuka reading kids books and learning Spanish, and Myles practicing knots with the boys. I enjoyed not being the center of attention for once.

Cooking Japanese curry rice in my abode!

Most adults on the other hand were a bit shy about there being so man non-Spanish speaking gringos (and one China Japonesa – I’m still struggling to teach people that there is a difference) in one spot. Surprisingly, many adults asked me if Yuka was my sister. I said no. Next, in all seriousness, they asked if she was my cuñada (sister in law). I said, that would be nice.

Yuka learned how to make the chakara bag from my neighbor Cristina.

Before we all knew it, it was time to head back to Panama City. I was happy to have hosted my parents and Myles again, and honored that Richard came all the way from Alaska and Yuka from Japan. Kuna Yala was stunningly beautiful, and my site was, well, like it always is in the summer. Hot, dry, lots of kids, and lots of beans.