The One with Work (aka play)

Let me catch you up on some work related stuff.

First of all let me say that I feel incredibly fortunate that I have a “job” that when I say a sentence like the one above, people will actually continue reading…

Even though my families visit was and still is the hot topic in Buena Esperanza, A LOT has been going on since they left.
Here is the run down.... hold on it´s a long one!

D Dental and Doctor Clinic

Mid March we had Dentists and Doctors from Washington State come to do a free all day clinic for my community. They were cleaning teeth, pulling teeth, treating parasites, doing some preventative education and so much more! While I know my community appreciated this part, I know that years from now what they’ll remember is what was going on when they were not being seen by the doctor.

What could have easily been a boring medical clinic with everyone dwelling over being “sick” was magically transformed into something that better resembled a carnival. This group of volunteers obviously had experience with clinics such as this because they came fully loaded: We had balloon animals, bracelet making, face painting, temporary tattoos, coloring competitions, a digital photo printing station, Frisbees, a travel size DVD player and to top it off, each kid received a brand new pair of Crocs shoes after getting his/her teeth cleaned. Not only were there enough shoes for all the kids in my community, but I was able to deliver bags full of the leftovers to three other Peace Corps volunteers in surrounding communities.

At the end of the day, the only thing missing was a farris wheel and cotton candy (which really would have defeated the purpose of the teeth cleaning, so never mind)

A BIG Thank you to this group of volunteers! Your were all a pleasure to work with The Community of Buena Esperanza (including myself) is deeply touched, and appreciative of the time you gave to better the health and lives of our people.

I look forward to working with your group again next year.

Running water????

A few weeks ago I was approached by a community member that told me about this hole of water he has in his farm and that years ago the community use to have running water. It surprised me that this was the first time I had heard about this. Or maybe they had tried to tell me before and I just didn’t understand so they patently waited until my Spanish got better and tried again. Whatever the case, we made plans to hike up and check it out. Turns out I understood correctly. We found a beautiful looking water hole with three natural springs that keep the hole full year round. This looked like a great possibility to use this hole and make a functioning aqueduct to have running water in the community! But before we formed a water committee or started looking for funding we needed to check the elevation of the terrain between this potential aqueduct and the community to make sure gravity could do its thing.

The program of “Environmental Health” with Peace Corps has a water level that we were able to get our hands on. My closest Peace Crops volunteer, Harold, and I set aside a few days to do some field work with this level.Here are some pictures of us working with the water level------

Unfortunately, about 3 hours into our first day of field work it was already apparent that it wasn’t going to work. There was a hill that we would have to go over that exceeded the elevation of our source of water, and we all know water does not flow uphill without something pushing it. So, we packed up the water level, and hiked back to the community with our tail between our legs. We were all so optimistic and excited about the possibility of having running water, so it was a bit of a disappointment.

But on the bright side, about 7 guys from my community were exposed to this new water level tool. They learned how it worked, and more importantly the importance of taking the time to do some research before we go through all the labor of building and laying tubes just to find out that it wouldn’t work. Another positive, we live in Bocas where clean water falls year round straight from the sky; we just have to catch it!!!

That being said, In the near future I may be soliciting for some funding to build more rainwater catchment systems in Buena Esperanza… keep it in mind =)

PML
Peace Corp Panama held a week long conference in mid March called PML (project management Leadership). Each volunteer form my training group was suppose to bring a member from their community that they thought would benefit from this conference, someone that shows real leadership potential. I asked my community counterpart months ago and continuously reminded her each time I saw her. However, in true Ngobe fashion she canceled on me the day before we were suppose to leave and had chosen someone to go in her place.

So, without much choice we set off on our adventure to the province of Cocle. Which is approximately 18 times further then this woman had ever been in all her 45 years. Imagine never traveling further than 3o minutes away from the place you were born!!!

It took us 2 full days of travel to get to the conference. Our first leg of the trip was a boat ride to the mainland where about half the way there the boat driver tells us he thinks we are going to run out of gas…. Turns out he was right. We ended up shamelessly having to paddle this huge fiberglass boat into the gas station. Luckily this was not a sign of what the trip was going to be like.

We stayed the first night at a hotel in David. This was her first time staying in a hotel, and being away from her family, so we were walking on fragile ground. Here we were able to meet up with a few other volunteers and their counterparts. My counterpart became BFF’s with another Ngobe woman. That afternoon they timidly approached me and asked if I would take them out in the city to go shopping. Each had brought what little money they had to buy a little souvenir along the way, but they were scared to go out alone. Of course I agreed.

EVERYTHING was new to them. They were scared walking down the streets and stayed so close to me that if I would have suddenly stopped they surly would have slammed into my back. Once we got into the shopping center, they nearly started a dominos effect when getting on the escalator, even though I coached them on it before hand. I felt like I was a mom taking some teenage girls shopping, and they even ended up buying matching shirts… it was so cute! That night we treated our counterparts to some American culture with delivery Dominos Pizza.

We traveled in style on our second leg of the trip. We managed to get the 4 most prime seats on a Double Decker bus, 2^nd floor right up front above the driver. Now, that is the way to really see your country! Generally, Ngobes don’t show much emotion so I expressed my excitement double time by continuously saying “wow isn’t this beautiful? You are so lucky to have such a beautiful country.” I learned that I really need to increase my Spanish vocabulary in regards to nature and scenery, but I think she got the point.

The conference went fairly well. I found out that my counterpart has trouble reading and writing, but I still think she got something out of it. There were people from all providences of Panama, and it was the first time I felt like my counterpart was truly proud of her culture, proud to be a Ngobe Indian, that was the best part for me to see. Here is a poicture of my counterpart (vilma) Her first time seeing the Pacific Ocean! And the other picture of the only three Ngobe women at the conference, showing their pride with the traditional dress!

Quick story:

In Panama there are two very vivid contrasting economic realities, that of the rich and that of the poor. The World Bank reports that Panama has the 2^nd highest inequitable distribution of income in the hemisphere. The Panama Canal generates over 700 mill each year, and still of the 3.2 mill inhabitants 65% of the rural population and 95% of the indigenous population live in poverty ($2 or less a day). What they make in one month, a typically family in Panama City could easily spend going out for one meal.

That being said, you know how in the Sates we will occasionally have a day or an allotted amount of time were you participate in something just to see what it would be like, or I guess to feel empathy for the people who have to do or live like that forever? For example; A day where you don’t wear shoes, wearing a blind fold and attempting to complete a task, 30 hour famine, or my personal favorite is when Men dress up like women and put on High Heals to promote women’s right. Anyway, I think you get the idea.

Apparently, this is not just an American why of promoting the needs of the world. During our travels to the seminar, the night we stayed in David, we discovered that the upper class or “privileged” Panamanians nationwide had scheduled their very own “put yourself in their shoes” day. Unfortunately, all of our community counterparts had been wearing those metaphorical shoes their entire lives.

The deal was that national, from the province of Darien to the Province of Bocas Del Toro, everyone was supposed to voluntarily shut off any item that uses electricity starting at 8:00pm.

Of course word had not spread to our already dark communities about this programmed event. We were only informed of it when we ordered a pizza and they told us we would be the last pizza in the oven before they had to turn off their oven.

Hmmmmm great, now how in the world do I explain this to my counterpart? She was so excited to be in the light and watching T.V and I had to tell her that we would be eating our Pizza by candle light, just like at home. I tried my best, but I don’t think she fully understood the concept, and I don’t blame her. We were all still very grateful to have pizza, lights or no lights.

Lion Fish:
Over the past year, the waters around Bocas region have had a new and unwelcome inhabitant. That’s right, the Lion Fish! Originally indigenous to the waters of the Pacific Ocean, it was introduced into the waters off the shore of Florida some years ago and has now made its way to Panama. This fish are bad news, and I will tell you why:

1. They can eat other fish up to almost 75% their own length.
2. Their stomach can grow to 30 times its natural volume.
3. They feed on more than 40 species of fish.
4. The reproduce at the amazing rate of every 55 days … with a single female releasing 30,000 eggs at a time.
5. The toxin from their spines can be extremely painful, they say similar to a scorpion bite--- Great, just what I need!!!
6. They have no natural predators.

Needless to say, they are a hug threat on the ecosystem! So the locals on Bocas Island are trying to encourage the local community to kill any Lion Fish they see in an attempt to maintain the population.

In Buena Esperanza, I am not exaggeration when I say everyone (man, women and child) dive and fish on a daily basis. So I figured I would get them on board with this population control.

So, I went from house handing out an informational sheet I made that explained the problem, and how to safely kill, handle and cook the Lion Fish. I explained, to the best of my ability, the threat of these fish on the environment and how if we don’t try to limit the population size now, they soon may be the only fish we see.

Across the board, house to house, person to person, I received similar responses. Their first question would be “ well you can eat them right?” I would tell them yes, and then they would say something to the extent of “ Oh Meti, that is not a problem then. We need more fish that we can eat. It really does not matter what type of fish it is as long as we can eat it. Right now, I go fishing for hours and hardly catch anything, pretty soon there will be millions of Lion Fish for us to eat, this is great news!”

I think I need to work on my approach with this one, but until I figure that out it looks like I will be spearing Lion fish solo.

Here is a link to a good article about the Lion Fish problem if you are interested in reading more about it!

http://www.thebocasbreeze.com/previous-issues/march-marzo-2010-volume-7.shtml

Escuela de Campo

Sometime in Mid march, or maybe April ( I am loosing track of time). I went over to Shark Hole, Harold’s community to participate in a ¨Escuela De Campo¨ that the other volunteer, Lee, was putting on. We taught (or I should say, Lee taught) how to do tree grafting with the Cacao trees. Lots of fun!

Here are some pictures form that.

The Rollercoaster of Teaching English

I have been teaching English for over 4 full months now. I agree that it is a very useful, sustainable and important skill for my community, but I have to admit that it is not my favorite thing to do. This is mostly because there are so many other potential projects in the community that I am anxious to get working on, and my English class has proven to be pretty time consuming. Also, the lack of resources for me as well as my students makes it an extra challenge.

So…. A few weeks ago I went into my class fully prepared to drop the news that I was going to stop teaching class for awhile. I had my explanation all written out in Spanish, to make sure they fully understood the situation. My plan was to break this news at the end of class. However, sometime during this class I changed my mind. Until this point, I think I had been blind to how much progress the students were actually making. So, at the very last minute I went from planning on saying “class is canceled” to actually saying “ we are going to start a 10 week course.” It was my fault anyways that I didn’t set a time limit when I started teaching 4 months ago. It wouldn’t have been fair to just cut them off like that, and I didn’t want to loose the momentum they had.

So, here is the deal with the course: 40 total hours, 10 weeks, 2 times a week, 2 hours each class and “tests” ever Tuesday. We are going into our third week, and I have 13 committed students and a good 20 others who just come occasionally.

I figure Peace Corps is two years for a reason, and once this course is over. I will still have a good 16 months to get involved with other projects. But for now, this is my main focus. I spend a good amount of time on my lesson plans and working one on one with the students outside of class. I try to make the classes as interesting and fun as possible. This is very different to traditional education in Panama, which largely consists of simply memorizing verbatim what they teacher tells you, repeating it back to them and then forgetting all about it; no creativity, no critical thinking and rarely any fun is associated with learning. So far in my class when have learned by playing Bingo, hangman, Simon says, and countless team commutations which can get a little rowdy sometimes. I have also started an awards system where I give out star stickers for participation and occasionally give out prizes depending on how many stars one has. It is also a requirement that in order to “graduate” from this course you have to take each test. They don’t have to pass it, but they do have to take it, but of course I didn’t tell them that. Panamanians historically love getting certificates. So I plan on presenting a certificate to each student that completes the 10 week course. Graduation date is June 12^th (not that I am counting or anything)

Books by Sea

We recently received a book donation for ou new library that passed through many hands to get here. I believe this was the sequence:

1. The books were donated and collected by the Rotary Club of Parole (Annapolis, Maryland) through the Rotary International project B.I.G. (Books for International Goodwill)
2. Next the books were passed to Ann-Wallis White who is a Yacht Charter consultant
3. Ann-Wallis then coordinated with Captain Mark Drewelow´s organization- Yacht Aid
4. The Boxes were then placed in the hands of Phil Wade, captain and owner of the beautiful sailing vessel the TIMONEER. They were given instructions to find a good home for the books during their travels.
5. Their Yacht made its way down to Bocas and the Books were left in the trusted hands of and Ex- pat Janis.
6. And Ultimately, Janis got a hold of me and at least 1 book ended up in the hands of every student at my school! Success!

Wow, that sure was a mouth full! Thanks for reading!

Here is a video I took the other day form my Bay looking back at my community to give you a better idea of where I am.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jIIzqvFeWE

Also, check out my Picasa Site for more pictures from the Health Clinic, Escuela de Campo, Water Level, and PML.

http://picasaweb.google.com/home

Life is good,

Miche