The One About March

I often get the question “what is a typical day like for you?” This question is nearly impossible to answer (and a bit annoying). The truth is no two days are ever the same, and I think and hope that these short videos give you a better idea of what my life is like.…. March was a busy month, below is a little explanation of some things you will see in the video. Enjoy! And please don’t ever ask me what a typical day like is for me… =)


• Rasmussen’s - At the beginning of the month, I had the pleasure of sharing my Panama life with two of my favorite people, my Uncle Gene and Aunt Ann. They were troopers in the jungle!

• More water catchments!- Harold (Oti) came over and we built a separate catchment system for a cluster of homes that are located in the mangroves and have thatched roofs. Gene and Ann were also there to lend a hand…. It was a fun 2 days, the most entertaining part was seeing how Harold scares all the little ones by simply looking at them.

• Harvesting: Over the past 14 months, I have watched Osias (pictured below) grow alongside these trees we planted together. And the time had come to literally harvest the fruits of our labor. I am confident that Osias’s machete skills far exceed mine so I let him have the honors and I stuck to what I do best and took pictures.

This was a pretty symbolic moment for me because these Plantains were the first thing I had ever planted and harvested myself. It is a great feeling when you reduce the disconnect between your food sources. I only kept two of the plantains, and gave the rest away... I was always taught it was good to share.



• Chocolate tour- My Aunt was a guinea pig for a new chocolate tour that fellow PCV started with his community member. There chocolate is called Oreba (which means chocolate in Ngobe) You can check them out and “like” the tour on Facebook. Or you can read this article about them that just came out in the local newspaper. They are doing good things.

• Boat haul - You can read more about this, and see the full video below.

• Carnivales-I decided not to go to the main mardi gra celebration, in Las Tablas. Instead i got a little taste of the way Bocas celebrates carnival...... Basically, they dress up like the devil and whip each other as hard as humanly possible, and when their prey runs away, they chase them. Hmmm....happy mardi gra?

• My Birthday: I celebrated my second birthday in Panama on the pacific side at one of my favorite spots. It was relaxing, peaceful and just the way I wanted to celebrate my birthday! Thank you to all of you who sent me birthday wishes, or to those of you had a green beer (or two) in my honor.

• Comarca visit- Finally got a chance to go back to the Comarca (Indian reservation). I went with 5 other volunteers to experience the Balsaria. This is a traditional Ngobe celebration and game including throwing a piece of Basal wood and drinking lots of homemade alcohol…. This was definitely an experience and may be worthy of its own blog post.

• Breaking into my house: I lost my key, which I am actually really surprised it took me this long to do so. It was mixed in with bag of stuff I gave to one of my community members. He brought it to me 10 minutes after we had just spent an hour breaking in... I now use a combination lock.

• New Stoves- Contextual Solutions is an Ex-pat run NGO here in Panama. They designed appropriate technology for our region. They came out to Buena Esperanza in March to bring the mold for their smokeless wood burning stove “the Bliss Burner.” We made two for the school. The woman trade off cooking each day so it is a great introduction to the stoves, and possibly we can start making residential ones in the future.

• Other- Beautiful flora fauna, cute children and sheep

Peace from Panama!
~Meti