Traveling

For the first three months of service, volunteers are not allowed to leave their site, the purpose being for them to really invest in their community and fully integrate.  My three months ended in June, and for the fourth of July I went to the beach with a bunch of other volunteers to celebrate.  It was a really good time – there was swimming time, ultimate Frisbee time, relaxing time, and for dinner there were chili dogs and sparklers.  The beach was on the Pacific side and was long and straight.  At night the tide was low and the moon was full, leaving a wide stretch of wet beach that looked like glass in the moonlight.

            Since the July fourth celebration was kind of far from my site and it was only a little farther to the mountains of Chiriquí, I decided to go see some friends and hike up Volcán Barú, the highest point in Panama.  A fellow volunteer who lives near the volcano found me and my friends a guide to take us up the mountain from her community, and he brought along three youth from the community as well – a 16-year-old girl who was going up for the first time, and two brothers (14 and 16) who had already gone up four times before.  Our guide was training the 14-year-old to be a guide as well, but they were all going up for fun.  As with all traumatic events, my memory has blocked out the near-death experiences and I look back on the trip fondly.  In a few more months I may even be able to convince myself to go again.

            It started out so promising, beginning the hike at 6am, with good spirits and carrying as little as possible.  We were told to prepare for a cold night at the top, with some warm clothes and food, so when I first put on my backpack I hardly noticed the weight.  The first three hours we were walking on a narrow trail through a beautiful cloud forest in the mountain.  We refilled our water bottles with cold and delicious spring water our guide showed us along the hike.  We rested periodically and ate peanuts and looked at the bamboo and tall trees, listening to birds.  We were starting to get tired when we burst forth into our first picturesque view of the surrounding tree-covered mountains, with the town where we started cradled below us in a valley.  At this point, we thought the hike was challenging, but not too difficult.  Then, after four hours, we left the montaña and entered the part of the hike that was the actual volcano, which was a combination of steep uphill hiking and rock climbing.

One thing that we learned was the difference in how Panamanians view time, and how Americans view time.   For the next four hours, whenever we asked our guides how much further they said ¨poco, just around that wall way up there and then a little further.¨  Unfortunately, one of my friends got sick (what with altitude, questionable hotdogs the night before, and lack of sleep), and I spent a lot of the next four hours coaxing him up the mountain.  The guides were extremely patient and kind.  They refused to leave us (though I´m pretty sure I heard the brothers say to each other that if we were Europeans we would have already arrived), gave encouraging words, and one even pulled my friend along with strap of his backpack.  Of course, my friend was not the only one suffering – I used his frequent breaks to cover for my own slow pace and to recover from my lack of breath (there´s not a lot of oxygen on top of a volcano), light-headedness, and the constant feeling of lactic acid in my legs.  Then, as I was sitting with my friend, trying to get a little more energy to go ten steps farther and contemplating how terrible it would be if I dropped my water bottle (or myself) down the mountain, we heard a shout and watched as the backpack of my other friend (who was much farther ahead of us) began tumbling down. And down. And down.  We did, I am glad to report, make it up the mountain in one (albeit exhausted) piece with all of our belongings – the 14-year-old trotted down the mountain to retrieve the fallen backpack and caught up to us before we trudged all the way to the top.

            That night we stayed in the bunker at the base of some radio towers.  We all went to sleep immediately (2pm) and renewed our metabolism with Ramen Noodle Soup (good old Ramen, helps out every time).  There was perfect signal for the TV in the bunker, so I got to watch my telenovela (score!).  But the best part was the next day, when we hiked to the tip top to watch the sunrise.

WOW.

They put a cross at the highest point (very common here), and there were a bunch of other people who had come to witness the event as well.  A lot of people actually leave around midnight to hike to the top and then come right back after sunrise without sleeping (how????).  It was on the way down, of course, that we discovered there was a dirt road that went all the way to the top.  Our guide said that he preferred the other, more difficult path, because there are rocks and plants and handholds to help pull you up the volcano, rather than a steady and relentless incline you can only walk up.  Since I had already started to forget how much pain I was in the day before, I agreed with him.  Also, since the worst part was over, walking downhill felt like a piece of cake.

fruits

I know that this may seem silly to some, but I still love how exotic fruits are different here.  When I think of exotic fruits, I think of pineapples, mangos, papaya, passionfruit and starfruit.  But here, they think of apples, pears and grapes.  I was at school when the first and second grade teacher was having her students color pictures of common fruits.  What would I have done in first or second grade?  Yellow banana, red apple, yellow pear, purple grapes, oranges, or red strawberries.  Here, those things (except for the bananas) are a delicacy.  Instead, they colored in papaya, pineapple, marañón (cashew fruit) and mangos.  It blows my mind still!  Here, perfectly good mangos rot on the ground where they fall because there aren´t enough people to eat them all.  What they love are apples and pears, which I get sick of in mid December because they are the only economical fruit available in the States.

Four months (July 17)!

            I have a house!  A really nice one, actually, and sometimes it makes me feel guilty.  Peace Corps volunteers are supposed to live in one room wooden houses with an outhouse and no electricity, not a three bedroom concrete house with flush toilet, four hammocks and a fridge.  But I have decided not to complain, because this was literally the safest and most economical house in my community to rent.  And I have already made friends with my neighbor´s dogs, so they come and hang out every once in a while.  I also have a calf in my front yard that moos at 5:30 every morning (it belongs to my neighbor) and there are plenty of chickens running around making a racket every morning (also my neighbor´s).  What I don´t have (much to my frustration) is my cat.  This will be necessary soon, because when I am by myself at night, having a cat for company alleviates silly fears and loneliness.

            I have been here four months now, and in the past month I had my community analysis meeting.  For the first three months I got to know practically everyone, asked a bazillion questions about the environment and the community, and have been working on a community analysis document to send into my boss.  At the end of those three month, every volunteer in my sector has a meeting with the community to present to them what they learned (we played a very competitive and loud game of jeopardy) and discuss what projects and activities I, as their volunteer, would do with them for the next two years.  A good showing to these sorts of meetings is typically 20 to 30 people, but I am very proud to say that 50 plus people attended!  It was, in fact, a very successful meeting, and I felt very loved by the people who came (let´s be honest, who wants to walk 30 minutes with a chance of rain to a meeting after a long day of work?)  The meeting was also really good because I now have a direction to head in.

            I have been working a lot at the school, primarily in the subject of agriculture.  We planted green beans, cucumber and sweet pepper, and although the sweet pepper has yet to make a showing, the green beans and cucumber are coming along pretty well.  Of course, we are now facing our first pest: leaf-cutter ants.  These ants cut up leaves and carry them back to their nest where they cultivate a fungus, which they then eat.  In an objective sense, they can be seen as farmers, just like my community members, but in reality they are responsible for massive amounts of defoliation in the tropics, including our precious, green bean seedlings.  Today I went to check on the garden and all that was left of one of the plants was the tiny stem.  So we are in search of effective and environmentally-friendly means of completely destroying the ants´ nest.

            Also, a soccer update: the muchachos have started passing the ball to me!  I think I impressed them when I dribbled the ball for the first time, instead of just kicking it frantically to the nearest teammate.  Slowly but surely I am eking my way into their hearts.