Two weeks in

Warning: this will be a long entry since I haven’t been able to access internet in a week and I have a lot to say.  First a brief explanation about what I will be doing, then move on to describing my training community.  Hang in there, it will hopefully be interesting at points.

Let me take some time to explain Peace Corps/Panamá.  I have just finished my first of nine weeks of training, after which I will be sent to a community where I will work as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) for the next two year.  Peace Corps is an organization that works to help people of developing nations develop the skills and capacity necessary to improve the quality of their own life.  PCVs live in a country for two years (in my case, Panamá) and work closely with a community to achieve three main goals: 1) help the people of that community improve their own lives; 2) promote a better and positive understanding of the American culture, and 3) promote a better understanding of other cultures by sharing their experience with people in the United States.   One of the best lessons I have learned in training so far is that PCVs serve more as facilitators and motivators than anything else.  Our time here will be more effective in the long run if the projects we work on are conceived, planned, built and maintained by the local community using local resources – very much bottom-up rather than top-down development.

Peace Corps/Panamá works in multiple sectors, including Environmental Health, Teaching English, Sustainable Agricultural Systems, and my sector, Community Environmental Conservation (CEC).  CEC itself can best be described as environmental education, but in reality covers a large range of potential projects, ranging from formal environmental education of teachers and students in the schools to environmental action in the community to engaging youth as environmental leaders.  Basically CEC strives to create an environmental ethic in the community.  We actually visited one site where the PCV had various projects, including an environmental youth group, teaching English, obtaining solar panels for the school, facilitating the construction of eco-stoves, and forming a group of women who baked and sold sweet breads for income.  In the end, each community is different and CEC volunteers need to look at the needs and resources of the community and go from there.

The first official day of training was Monday, and I was actually quite overwhelmed by everything that we would learn.  We had just moved in with our training host families so I was frustrated with my level of Spanish, we are going to have to learn a bunch of different theories, models and concepts, and I felt as though I wasn’t qualified to do what I am about do in the next two years.  But then after class I went to play soccer with the muchachos of the community and had a realization.  Let me first explain that I am not very good at soccer.  My experience is limited to a year of playing on the B team in middle school and improvised “jungle ball” while studying abroad in Costa Rica.  But I really love playing the game, and despite my inadequate technique I am tenacious enough that every once in a while I can get the ball to the right person.  I realized during this game that my time in Peace Corps will probably be a lot like playing a game of soccer – I may not be very good but I am persistent, know how to play on a team, and know enough of the game to make a difference.  As one of the people in my training class put it, knowing where to pass the ball is more important than making the goal.  I know this story may sound really kitchy, but it really helped me to calm down after an overwhelming 24 hours.

So far we have learned about what it means to be a PCV, agency partners we may work with (mostly Panamanian government organizations), how to conduct a community analysis, and, of course, culture and language lessons.  This weekend we will learn some gardening techniques and continue to learn how to travel around in Panama by ourselves.  It’s a lot, but we have a very large support group in the Peace Corps staff and our fellow volunteers.

The training community:

On Sunday, January 15, I and the others in CEC moved to our training community where we would live and learn for nine weeks.  We are all living with a different host family, attending Spanish classes in the morning and technical classes in the afternoon to provide us with a comprehensive education to prepare us culturally, technically and linguistically for our two years of service.

Let me just say, I love this community.  It doesn’t have very good cell phone service (there is one hill where you will find a bunch of gringos talking on their phone because that is the only place it works), we only have running (cold) water for about four hours a day, and the closest internet is an hour walk away.  But those things really don’t matter in the long run.  We are up in the hills, so the views are beautiful.  It’s sunny and hot, but the breeze is cool and constant.  The houses are simple and comfortable.  And everyone is so NICE.  There are maybe seven or eight major extended families here that have all inter-married, and they are all so excited that we are here.  The lady who hosts my Spanish class on her front porch told us to call her Mamá, gives us big hugs every time she sees us, and offers us snack at 10am every day.  The people who are hosting our training classes also bring us a merienda around 3pm.  One day they brought us fried bread and coffee they had picked and roasted themselves!  (This was a moment when I really wished I liked coffee…)

I also really like my host family.  Compared to most other host families it is small, considering my host parents only have two kids.  My host mom is the one I speak with the most since she is always home, but they are all very friendly and happy to host me.  I am the third Peace Corps Trainee (PCT) that they are hosting, and they love telling me about their previous two PCT guests.  The first day I had barely arrived before they took me to the river, a hot spot for locals in the summer time and they are already planning for other things to do in my few days off.  Their house is simple but comfortable.  When the water is running they keep a cistern full so that when the water isn’t running we can take bucket baths (which are a lot nicer than one might think) and use it to brush our teeth and wash our hands.  Instead of a flush toilet they have a latrine, which is also not so bad.  The entire house is open – we have windows that close, but there are openings in all the walls to allow air flow and a lot of free time is spent on the front porch.  At night the sound of the geckos calling to each other makes all of my bug bites feel a little bit better, knowing that something is eating the biters. 

One of the things that a lot of people here do during the summer is fish, and my host mom and brother caught several small fish (4-6 in) and are planning on frying them to a crisp and eating them whole.  I said that I would love to see how to cook them but I wasn’t interested in eating them, which made them laugh.  My little brother loves dinosaurs and reads everything he gets his hands on, so I let him look at my bird book.  Since we get Disney XD and Nickelodeon via satellite, I will watch TV shows like Dino Rey and Pucca with him.  I’m not sure what they are actually like in the states, but it’s still fun.  It reminds me of how dad always watched TV shows in Spanish when he was a kid.  We also get to watch Phineas and Ferb occasionally, movies like Carros and Monsters v. Aliens that are on every night, and we watched the Golden Globe Awards.  All in all, it’s a really enjoyable experience.

 If you have any questions about anything feel free to contact me and I will either email you back or answer them in my blog.  I’m pretty stoked to tell you everything that’s going on, so I hope you stay tuned!