A Curbed Addiction

I can’t stop thinking about the TV show The Wire. It started innocently when one of my volunteer friends offered me to look at her collection of TV shows and movies on her computer. I can rarely stay awake through an entire movie alone so I chose to copy the 1^st season of HBO’s The Wire, figuring I could watch an episode now and again when I have battery life on my computer. The next week in site, I watched one episode on my computer every night until my computer ran out of battery (4 nights). The next time I went to town, I recharged my computer and continued with this pattern until I finished Season 1, and then copied the rest of the seasons onto my computer. I have made Self Rules that I can only watch one episode per night and that I can’t watch it when I should be being social. I have cheated (myself) a couple of times on both counts.

I watched a few scattered episodes of The Wire during college, but because the series has a complex plot I never became hooked because I hadn’t started at the beginning. The show covers the complex relations between drug trafficking and Baltimore city police. Two of my favorite characters have already died, and yes, I did shed a few tears in the privacy of my very dark home theater (my bed). It’s probably for the best that I did not watch the show during my Baltimore days, because I would probably have felt less safe.

Some volunteers without electricity have car batteries or solar panels in their homes so that they can always recharge their electronics. However, I am content with my situation because it keeps my current addiction under control.

Gravity Rocks

In the States I never thought much about where my water came from – pumped from a well at my house, or part of a huge city wide treated system in Baltimore or Worcester or Boston. In training last fall, we learned about the basics of gravity fed water flow. Many NGOs and good-hearted engineers around the world have had a habit of including fancy electric/gas/solar-powered pumps in water systems in developing countries, and the problem is that pumps are complicated and break easily.

Luckily, in the mountains and hills of Panama pumps can be easily avoided thanks to gravity. I have been working with a community-elected Water Committee to bring water to the majority of the houses in the community –nothing fancy, just a tap stand outside of each house.

I’m going to give a run-down of my experiences during the past month with the construction of a gravity fed water system (the only power source is gravity) for those of you who are interested.

1. Fix the road that is necessary to get materials in on a truck. Use several pick axes to chip away at a rock that is blocking a road.
2. Spring Water Catchment Box: Locate a spring source (where the water leaves the earth to start a stream) which is usually in the hills above the community. Carry the sand and rocks and cement up there in sacks on shoulder or head or horse. Build a box around the spring source out of cinder block, rebar, and concrete mixture. This box has an opening at the top so that if there is too much water to fit in the tube, it will exit.
3. Tube: The tube size is based on the flow rate of the spring source. The problem in Panama is that the flow rate fluctuates usually 5x between the dry season and the wet season. Community members pried large rocks and dug an 18’’ ditch to bury the 1 ½’’tubes.
4. Storage Tank: A tank is designed to be large enough to provide 30 Gallons per person per day in the community, plus allowing for population growth in the next 20 years. The tank needs to be located close to the community, but above all of the houses. The 4,000 Gallon tank is made of cinder block with a reinforced concrete floor and top. Ideally the spring catchment is built first so that water is readily available to make the cement mix, but in my case the Latinos paid a guy to haul water from the river in buckets.
5. Lay down the mother line tube down the major path through the community. Then make cuts in this big tube and put in a T, connecting it to a ½’’ tube that goes from the main path to near the house. At the house there will be a tap stand with a little cement pad.

I was more useful for theoretical knowledge such as water catchment and tank location, since my construction background is minimal. I wished I knew more about construction so I could have been more critical with quality control on the contractor’s rushed work. I did quite a bit of manual labor such as digging ditches and hauling sand and rocks on a bag hanging off my head.

This is the stage we are at now. Work remains – encouraging community members to organize and finish burying the main tube, and get the water group to start charging users 50 cents per month per family for use. We are also soliciting funds from the local government representative to use part ($,3000) of his annual “Community Fund” to buy enough tubing to reach the 9 houses that are left.

Thanks to gravity, my neighbors and I don't have to haul dirty laundry down to the river or drinking water up from the river anymore...at least, until the dry season.

The Water has Arrived

It has rained straight for the past three days. Today, the contractors finished up their work and the wáter arrived in 9 houses, including mine. Each house has its own spigot in the yard. There are 15 more houses in the community without water, but the government funded budget of $9200 ran out before tubing could reach all of the houses. As a combination of it being the rainiest month of the year, the small number of houses connected to the system, and my house’s location near the bottom of the system, I currently have bountiful amounts of wáter to my availability.

I was sitting in my hammock watching the rain. I Heard the Chhhhh noise of air rushing through the tubes, and then Spfltttt, the dirty wáter started rushing out of my faucet! Although I have become very desanimada (discouraged) with this project, it was a special moment to to see water arriving to the houses. The first thing I did once the wáter cleared up was to fill up every bucket and gallon jug I have to my name. It will take me awhile to get used to having water nearby. I still feel the urge to fill my one gallon jug every time it starts to get empty, just in case the wáter stops.

I still leave some of my buckets under the eave of my house to collect rain water to wash dishes and bathe. Before this aqueduct, during the rainy season I would use filtered rain water to drink, and unfiltered rain water to cook, bathe, and wash dishes. During the dry season I would walk 4 minutes down a steep hill to fill up jugs of water, and 6 minutes down to the river to bathe and wash clothes. Most families in my area have a similar water situation except that they don't collect rain water due to lack of buckets and jugs. Nowhere in mountainous Panama is a drinking water source hours away, but nevertheless hauling water is a continuous chore that usually is the women and children's responsibility.

The amazing results I have witnessed so far:

• Teaching a little girl how to turn on and off the faucet
• Washing my feet all of time on the concrete platform
• Watching people wash their hands
• Thinking about the 88 year old grandmother who doesn’t have to hike down a slippery hill to bathe and fill wáter jugs anymore
• Showering there in the night time and hoping nobody will walk by

In the Trenches

I met Jose for the first time in January when he returned home to my community after working in Costa Rica coffee harvesting, and he immediately brought a new surge of energy into my community work. He noticed that my house construction project was lagging and started organizing new work days. He made me a hammock out of my leftover string and built benches out of my leftover wood. The next month he was elected as VP of our newly formed Water Committee. Jose came to almost every Sunday soccer game fundraiser, and always donated something from his store to sell. Jose was the one most readily available for surveying days or community meetings, and he actually showed up on time. He was one of the two men I brought to the Leadership Seminar back in July.

Now in Week 2 of aqueduct work, tensions have slowly risen among the community members, which is understandable as they are working every day without pay. That is, except for Jose. For the first few days of construction I was away from my community, and the Latino construction workers noticed how hard-working Jose was and asked him to be their “helper”. This means that Jose was helping haul water from the river to make the cement mix for the water tank, while the rest of the community members were building a trench to bury the tubes in the woods. When I returned back to my community, some of my neighbors let me know that Jose was paid $10 per day for two days for being the helper. Keep in mind that in these parts, a normal 8 am to 4 pm manual labor day wage is $6per day.

This situation made me uncomfortable, as the unwritten law for community projects is that beneficiaries donate all labor. The rest of the community was clearly disgruntled that one of them had been singled out to be paid an exorbitant day wage. Through rumors I heard that the Latino boss found out that Jose was a project beneficiary and therefore would no longer be paid for his work.

A week later, I observed Jose once again working as the helper to the Latino construction workers, and then being invited to eat lunch with them. I built up my nerves and point blank asked Jose if he was being paid for his work today, and he gave me a wishy-washy no answer. I was relieved and returned to my lunch. However, later I questioned the friendly Latino boss whether he was paying Jose. He said yes, and was surprised when I explained that the rest of the community was unhappy about the situation. He claimed he did not know anything about the project beneficiary no-pay rule. The Latino boss did not want to cause any community unrest and said we should all talk.

I thought highly enough of Jose to expect that once the Latino boss and I confronted him with the situation, he would quickly agree to leave the current day’s pay behind him in order to stay on good terms with the community. I was wrong. He claimed that he was not doing anything wrong because he is a harder worker than any of the other community members (more or less true). Later that day he called a meeting to announce he was withdrawing as VP of the Water Committee, pulling his family out of the aqueduct project, and demanding a refund for all of the donations his store has made in the past year to the Water Committee.

I was pretty upset when I returned back to my house before the afternoon rains. I considered calling one of my Peace Corps volunteer friends to vent about it, but instead walked over to my neighbor’s house and told my host mom and 2 host sisters* everything that had happened. They were alarmed, and did a good job comforting me and telling me that Jose has a temper like that, and I did nothing wrong by speaking up. Although ultimately my host mom did say, “I wish I had been there to tell you that you shouldn’t have said anything, we should have waited to say something until after the project was all over”.

Speaking up in the way I did rarely happens here which, I assume, is partially why corruption is rampant all over Panama. Although most of the community is behind me, my words caused more trouble than they were worth. I was speaking up to represent the dignity of the President of the Water Group as well as all of the other community members laboring in the trenches every day without pay. At the same time, who am I to say that a bunch of bad mouthing is worse than $30 earned in an immoral way?

*My host family is a matriarchy consisting of a mom (age 52), her two daughters (31 and 23) and their families, and her daughter-in-law (29) and her family. Four strong spunky women with husbands who make an appearance only every once in a while.

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