Home Sweet…My other Home

My two year old neighbor Miringo comes over to visit by himself to help me shell beans.

The day after I flew into Panama City, I hopped onto a bus westwards as quickly as I could to get away from the city and back to my house. My return back to my community got off to a good start because the car driver decided to go off his regular route just to drop me off at my front door. My dog Ñono came bounding out of nowhere to give me a big hug. Up until current day, I have barely cooked for myself because my neighbors keep sending me over bowls of food. January is the official start of summer (dry season) and also the start of the bean harvest. Beans are first harvested green, and later harvested dry in order to save for seeds. Thus due to the dramatic protein increase in everyone’s diets, and the omnipresent sun after months of rain, people seem happier.

However, not so idyllic was my return to the work projects. After I had settled in, I started poking around, asking about the aqueduct and latrine preparation. Everything seemed exactly as it had when I left 3 weeks earlier, because nothing had been done. Granted, I was absent during the holidays so not much would have happened anyways, but it still would have been nice to hear that someone had tried to call a meeting or a work day. As my remaining months are counting down here, I am pushing to see things get done without me poking and prodding and asking annoying questions every step along the way. We’re not there yet, but there’s still time.

Home Sweet Home

Eating the remains of Christmas with Nora and Maggie

I went home for 10 days to the warmest January weather in Massachusetts I have ever experienced. It was definitely nice to see family and friends again. I think I had forgotten how comfortable it is to be in a modern home as opposed to a hotel – in Panama I have enjoyed the occasional hot shower and real bed in a hotel, but spreading my clothes all over the room, not having to pack up and leave the next day, and having a kitchen and a family is so much better.

I also went to New York City for the weekend to visit my brother Eric and see friends. Before seeing his Manhattan apartment for the first time, he warned me, “Our living situations and jobs couldn’t be more opposite.” He was right. There was a doorman whose job was to push the revolving door to enter the lobby, and when I tried to avoid him and go for the regular door, he opened that too. That was his whole job. Opening doors for us.

Before leaving my community for the U.S., a popular question among the women was if I was going to bring my nagua dresses with me to wear at home. I told them, No. First of all, because it would be too cold. Cold like Cerro Punta [coldest mountainous area in Panama] but mucho mas frio! Secondly, I explained, I was really looking forward to not being the voluntaria or gringa, but just a face in the crowd. Perhaps New Yorkers could tell that all of my clothing is 2 years out of fashion, but I really enjoyed the anonymity of walking around the city.

Other highlights:

· Seeing all 3 of my grandparents and family doing well

· Opening Christmas stocking

· Driving a car again

· Eating…everything

· Ice skating at the Rockefeller Center

· Turning 24

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Doing the Tourist Thing

For 7 glorious days, I was a tourist in Medellin. I say glorious because although I have done touristy things in Panama, it never fully feels like vacation because trips to civilization are usually combined with doctor appointments, practical item shopping, and email catch-up.

My friends and I were blessed to see Medellin through the eyes of a local, Omar’s cousin Carlos. Every day he would accompany us on an adventure in the city, adding his personal insight on politics, history, and architecture.

Medellin back story: The city is located in a valley in the Andes, and once the valley filled neighborhoods grew up the hillsides. In the 1970s through 90s the city was notoriously dangerous due to gang warfare, mostly caused by Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel. In the past 10 years the city has managed to not only clean itself up but grow into a Colombian tourist destination, nicknamed “City of Eternal Spring” due to its perfect weather.

My 2 favorite things about Medellin:

1. Street food. On just about every corner in the city there is a street vendor selling something cheap, fresh, and delicious. Imagine a pack of starving wolves roaming the city: that would be me and my friends. Most of us rarely eat meat in Panama (see previous post Peeling a Pig) and have fast enough metabolism with our active lifestyles that we can eat around the clock. This was the daily routine. Most street food ranges in price between 50 cents and $2 USD.

a. 9 am: Breakfast in the house

b. 11 am: Freshly squeezed orange juice and fresh sliced mango on the street

c. 12 pm: Arepa con queso (thick white corn tortilla with cheese)

d. 2 pm: Tinto (little plastic cup of espresso coffee)

e. 1 pm: Empanada (corn turnover with meat, cheese, and potatoes inside)

f. 3 pm: Freshly cut and deep fried potato chips and plantain chips

g. 6 pm: Dinner at the house

h. 11 pm: Street meat – grilled pork, beef, or chicken with an arepa

2. Metro cables: The city is equipped with a modern metro to travel around the city center, with transfers to gondola metro cables to reach the communities up on the hillsides. This is one of the few cities in the world that has a gondola as part of public transportation instead of just for a tourist attraction or ski lift– a ride anywhere using the metro costs approximately 70 cents.

The metro cable also connects to a large nature park which provides an easy escape for city dwellers. The city built its newest large public library up in one of the poor hillside communities, Santo Domingo, which can be accessed by metro cable. Medellin is investing in the poor by improving access to the city center as well as improving educational resources available right in the poor neighborhoods.

Christmas in Medellin

Lights along the River Medellin

The flight from Panama City to Medellin, Colombia, was only an hour long. That’s how long the flight is between Baltimore and Providence - just a seven hour drive. However, there is no road connecting Panama and Colombia, so I flew and the rest of my friends took a sailboat down the coast.

Before I had even landed in Medellin, the girl sitting next to me on the plane offered to accompany me on the bus into the city so that I wouldn’t have to front an expensive cab fare to arrive at my friend Omar’s house. She even explained the value of the different bills to me in U.S. dollars ($1000 peso = ~ $7 USD) after I had exchanged some money.

I arrived to Omar’s house a day and a half before Omar and the rest of my friends, because they missed their flight due to sailing delays. I hung out with Omar’s cousins for the day, going grocery shopping and to the meat shop in preparation for the big Christmas eve meal, and later going clothes shopping with his aunt.Hanging out with the family: aunt and grandmother

Catholics in Colombia and probably in most Latin American countries celebrate novena, which is the 9 nights before Jesus was born. Each of the 9 nights, the family gathers around the manger scene and sings and reads passages from the Bible. I was present for the 23^rd and the 24^th, the last two nights. On Christmas eve I also went to Mass. It was definitely the most exciting church service I have ever attended, with a Nativity reenactment with live baby, and a youth dance troupe that danced to poppy hymns with candles and long banners.

Nativity scene in the house

My friends caught a flight to arrive in time for Christmas eve, which is the main Christmas celebration. The family set up a tent on the street outside and grilled meat on a grill. After the novena, everyone went around and hugged and kissed everyone else in the room, and then a few presents were exchanged among family members but it was not a big thing. Then the party continued until the early morning.

I was very pleased with my Colombian Christmas. I was able to share it with some of my closest Peace Corps friends as well as a welcoming family. I witnessed that Christmas can be fully celebrated without being frantic or stressful, and I hope to replicate this in the future.

Adventure in Bocas del Toro

The red dot, but on the mainland, is where I went. I spent a day at the touristy island afterwards.

Back in mid December, I traveled to my friend Whitney’s community in Bocas del Toro province to help facilitate her women’s health seminar. It took 9 hours to get to Loma Bonita (Pretty Hill) door-to-door from my house.

When I told my community members where I was headed, they were aghast. “All you’re going to eat is boiled green bananas.” “It is so muddy there.” ‘They talk funny there.” “You’re going to have to travel on a dangerous boat to get there.” [No one seemed to believe that I could get all of the way there by bus – and you can’t to many places.]

The 2 ½ day seminar included breakfast, lunch, health talks, cooking class, yoga, and jewelry making. We gave interactive health talks including “What is HIV/AIDs”, “Premature Pregnancy Risks”, ‘How to protect yourself from HIV”, “Self Esteem and Values” and nutrition. Administering the pre-test was important to realize how many common misconceptions there were – for example, that HIV can be contracted by hugging or coughing.

Yoga!

Loma Bonita is located outside of the Comarca Ngabe Bugle reservation where I live, but it is still a 100% Ngabe population. It was interesting noting the differences among the communities and the people. In Bocas del Toro the houses are generally built on stilts to prevent water damage. The women do not wear the nagua traditional dress, and never did. However the women still do make the chakara (bag) and everyone talks using just about as much Ngaberi language. Only a few words and the accent are different. Most women do not wear shoes/sandals, which I quickly adapted to as well because it was so slippery and muddy (I was warned!).

In my community and general area, the houses are far more spread apart and are built right on the ground. Women in my area are definitely shyer, which it will make it a bit harder to do a similar seminar. I was shocked to see women in Whitney’s community flirting with one of our male friends who was helping facilitate. This is partially because many of the indigenous people in Bocas del Toro worked for the big banana companies back in the mid twentieth century so they have more of a history interacting with outsiders than my mountain people. A very common last name there is Becker.

Proud certificate holders with red AIDS awareness ribbons

Overall, I was impressed by the amount of Ngabe culture preserved considering the community is only 40 minutes away from a major town, and not part of the indigenous reservation. I enjoyed relaying my experiences back to my community, to tell them that it really wasn’t so bad.