The One about Culture week.

Buenas!
Ok, you guys ready for this... I have a lot to say!!!

As most of you know, I spent the last 2 weeks doing, what I like to call “travel training.” So far I have only had time to write about culture week

Here is a Recap of what went down:

All 36 volunteers were split up according to what region of the country your site is in. There ended up being 11 out 36 trainees going to Bocas Del Torro, we by far had the largest group. Here is a picture of us. The typical trip from our training site to Bocas takes about 14 hours (not including wait time). By the end of training I will have done this trip 4 times in 7 weeks!!!! Luckily, since it is such a long trip Peace Corps gives us enough money for a hotel so we can split the trip into two days. We usually stay in David at a hotel where all volunteers stay at when they are passing through. They have hot showers, great prices and have a well established relationship with Peace Corps. One can pretty much assume that any gringo you see in this hotel is a PCV.
When we stayed in David, on our way to culture week, there was a huge motorcycle event going on (made me miss my pop). It was cool to see all the bikes! I guess because there are so many differences between my life in Panama and life in the US, I often find myself pleasantly surprised when I encounter things that are the same, this motorcycle convention being one of them.
Anyway, our entire culture week was spent on the same site I was at for my volunteer visit. It is a little island in the Caribbean, close to the capital of Bocas, Isla Colon. Most of the community members, especially the kids remembered my name. I could walk down the middle of town and hear someone way off in the distance say “hola mechell” (that is how they pronounce my name). Also, all the girls form the Girl Scout Group remembered doing yoga with me a few weeks before, and it didn’t take long before they had me leading a very loosely structured class of yoga every afternoon at the school. Here is a picture of some of the kids holding a pose.

The volunteer that was hosting all 11 of us, did a great job planning the logistics for the week. Each of us were matched with a host family in the community for the week. The volunteer knew from the last time I visited that I was a vegetarian; she assured me that this would not be a problem with the host family I was with. She said she spoke with each family many times to guarantee they understand the “special needs” of each trainee. As an example of how things can culturally be interpreted differently; the first night I was with my new host family, they gave me a huge fish for dinner…. I am talking with the Head, fins, teeth, eyes and bones sticking out all over the place. Even if I wanted to, I would not have known how to eat this thing without doing some serious damage to my face, because of course I didn’t have a fork. The family understood why I was unable to eat there fish, and seemed somewhat pleased to hear (as if for the first time) that I don’t eat meat. The meals for the rest of the week included a mixture of white rice, lentils, beans, eggs, and for breakfast these amazing fried pastries called “ohaldrines.” Boiled bananas and a vegetable called Pifa are also staples in the Ngäbe communities. Both of these are physically hard for me to take in. To be honest there were a few times that I threw my food out the window to the starving dogs when the family wasn’t looking =)
Apart from the food, I was really pleased with my host family. Historically, Ngäbe families are large. My host mom and dad had 6 kids between the ages of 9 and 31. The oldest actually went to Cuba to studying medicine, and now works in the Hospital in Panama City, she is kind of the star of the town. And she happened to be visiting her family during the week I was there. It was wonderful getting to talk to a Ngäbe Indian who has some experience, not just outside her community but out of the country as well. Even though she spoke some English, our conversations were always somewhat limited. So, most of my free time was actually spent with the youngest daughter. After the first day, I noticed that almost all the women in the community have their hair pulled back in braids. Out of curiosity, I asked one of the volunteers how to say “braid” in Spanish. Later that night, while making conversation with the youngest daughter (9), I asked if she knew how to braid. Her face lit up, and long story short, I showed up to culture class the next day with 40 plus braids in my hair. Here is a picture of me drinking a coconut showing off my new harid do!! Also, Here is a picture of the house I stayed in.

There were two rooms, I slept on the floor in a tiny room with 4 other people. Because the house was on stilts it would sway back and forth when people walked, which made it fairly difficult to fall asleep at night. There were also large cracks in between the wooden planks on the floor, some large enough to be a tripping hazard. Just in case the swaying house, wasn’t enough of a sleeping distraction, early in the morning there are roosters, which actually I have become somewhat accustom to because they are all over Santa Clara as well. However, here, every morning this one cleverly cruel rooster would go underneath the house and position itself directly under my head and “cock-a-doo-dal-doo” at the top of his lungs every 15 min from about 3:30am until I got up at 6am. I could literally lay there on the floor and see his shadow right below me through the cracks. He and I both knew that there was nothing I could do about it.
During the week we had different cultural activities planned. The artisan group did a demonstration for us on how they make their bags . The entire bag including the die comes from plants that grow in the region. Here is a picture of one of the women working on getting the fibers out of the plant. We also went on the medicinal plant walk, were we encountered a sloth!!! It is so funny how slow those things move. By looking at a sloth, one would think it is harmless, but they actually are carriers of leishmaniasis, which humans can contract from mosquitoes that get it from the sloth. Ewwww
Another one of the days we went out swimming in the ocean. All the little boys in the village have their own dugout canoes. They are tiny little boats that hardly float. I was in one by myself with one little boy about 7 years old, wearing only his underwear and paddling for me. The whole set up reminded me a little of the gondola boat ride I once took in Venice, Italy. But, this ride was a lot less romantic!! Right when I got in the canoe I thought for sure we were going to tip. Let me tell you, it was quiet an ab workout balancing that little boat until we got past the very dirty water that acts as a bathroom for the village. Once we got out a few hundred feet, the water was crystal clear, we were swimming around this coral reef that tourists would pay hundreds of dollars for a boat to take them too. There were 25 of us out there swimming and we had 1 broken mask and one flipper, that happened to fit me =) As we passed the one broken mask around and we were able to see what was below us, everyone’s reaction was one of aww. How lucky we are to have been given the opportunity to live in Bocas for the next 2 years!!
On the last day on the island, we hosted a little farewell/thank you party for out host families. There ended up being what seemed like 200 kids under the age of 10 at the party. We had a Piñata, and as tradition goes, we filled it with candy and… flour!!!! OMG I have never seen such madness. Here is a picture of the kids stacked 3 fold, covered in flour fighting for the candy. The picture hardly does it justice.

Another little highlight of culture week is this little guy. He is a quiso. I don’t think he has a name in English. The boy next door had him as a pet. The only thing I know about them is that they are nocturnal animals and have proven to be very smart and trainable. Maybe I will get one when I get to site =)

By the end of the 6 days on the island I had really grown to enjoy the company of my host family, I shared a lot of fond memories with them, either playing volleyball, doing yoga at the school, braiding hair, washing clothes on a rock, bathing (fully clothed) in the waterfall, and much more. However, there is one memory that I wasn’t able to share with anyone because there was no one else around, but I would like to share it with you. First, let me preface this short story by explaining that this island village just recently got a generator for electricity. So they have access to electricity for about 4 hours every night. During this time, around 7pm-11pm everyone in the community is either staring at their TV’s or blasting music. The norm in my host house was TV, usually cartoons. So, I would go to bed around 8 every night, I would sleep with ear plugs to try and block out the noise. On my 4th night there, I was woken up around 10:45pm by my host brother (age 25) singing loudly and in English to The Eagles, which I am sure you all know is my favorite band. He was able to sing the entire song “Hotel California,” though I cannot be sure that he knew what he was saying. Even though I was woken up, my initial reaction was comparable to when I saw the motorcycles in David, delighted to encounter not just the familure, but the best of the familure! There was something so comforting about hearing that song at that moment. I remember laying on the floor, listening to him sing along with Don Henley and thinking to myself how amazing it is that him and I lived a world apart and lead completely different lives, but we both were finding enjoyment in the same type of music. And who would have guessed, less than 2 months ago, when I was listening to that very song, that there was someone in a small village, who is part of an indigiounious community I had never even heard of, who speaks a foreign dialect, who is somewhat isolated on an island in the Caribbean listening to the same song. For some reason this incident made an impact on me. I just thought I would share it with all of you in hopes that is serves as a reminder that sometimes, even if most of the evidence points to all our differences we still are more similar then we may think.

Well, those were some of the highlights from my culture week. Here are the links to look at more pictures.
I am planning on going to the City on Saturday, so I will try to do my update about my Tech Week experience in the Commarca then.

Paz out.