Hallie Has An Adventure

The days run slower here, mainly because of the heat and culture in general, and it’s been difficult adjusting to no exact-time-consuming-schedule everyday like I had during training. My relative schedule these first few months is mainly learning and adjusting to the lifestyle with various random activities in the community. And by this I mean adjusting to things like itching fits in the middle of the night from chigger bites, and forming new habits like shaking out my clothes and shoes before I put them on to avoid such man-eating creatures such as scorpions, spiders, and cockroaches. I’ve even had to hide my flip-flops on multiple occasions from the family parrot, Rey (meaning King in English). He can’t fly, but somehow always manages to sneak into my room looking to nosh on my shoes. I’ve started washing my clothes in the river, which I’ve to be a surprisingly relaxing activity. That is until my host mom starts smacking my jeans as hard as she can on a rock. This apparently helps get the all the mud out (because there is a lot of mud here). My clothes have already been through the works, with holes, permanent mud stains, and the occasional mold. And yet all the Panamanians here have perfectly clean white clothes. I don’t know how they do it!

Rey, the little rascal

We don't get along. He's tries to bite me at every opportunity.

I’ve been visiting all the houses and farms, talking about what kind of work I’d like to be involved with, and everyone seems really interested, but unmotivated to actually do anything. I’m thinking maybe they were just smiling and nodding to be nice, but don’t really care about what I’m saying or don’t fully understand what I'm talking about. So one day I decided to be more aggressive and said to my host family that today we’re going to make a compost pile because it’s a simple and cost-free thing to get started with, and they went with it. So far it looks great, and whenever anyone comes over to visit the house I take them out back and show them what we did, explain how it worked, what you can use it or etc. Now after seeing one person with compost, everyone wants one, so my plan worked, because everyone wants what someone else has. Now I’m filling my schedule up with visits to different houses make composts. In the meantime, I’m trying to track down seeds to start up some gardens with all the rich soil we’re making. Seeds are hard to come by here; even the ones they sell in the store tend to be old and crappy.

I’ve also been playing a lot of baseball with all the kids. I showed all them up with my mad skills, telling them that yes, girls can play sports too. One day I went to a community a few hours away where there was a decent baseball field (aka it was flat and free of barbed wire) and saw the Panamanian version of a baseball tournament. They was a lot of drinking going on with the men, and the tourney ended early because fighting broke out and someone got stabbed. I was far away from it all, and got the hell out of there after it happened. I’ve learned this is fairly normal. An unfortunate aspect of the culture here is that drinking is strongly encouraged and pressured on the men, and there are never good results.

On a happier note, I’ve begun to teach English classes at the school two days a week. My first few classes were mainly teaching them the alphabet. Of course the kids were timid and didn’t want to repeat the letters out loud in front of me or the other students. It’s also just the culture of the education system here. There’s no active participation from the students. They are taught that there are right answers and there are wrong answers and no more. The teacher writes something on the board and the students copy it, with no further elaboration, critical thinking or responses. This aspect made it difficult to get the kids to talk, but soon enough I started singing the alphabet song like a crazy fool, and they giggled and eventually chimed in with me. I’m trying to make class semi-interesting and fun, not just another lesson in copying what I write on the blackboard. Teaching isn’t easy; I’m learning to have more patience.

And I have doing some construction work (dad you’d be proud) at a church that is slowly but surely being built. The guys laugh and give me strange looks, wondering why I would want to do physical labor, because all the women are off to the side making lunch for them. This whole I’m-an-independent-woman-this-is-normal thing is foreign to them, but I realize I’m already pretty weird in their eyes, so what the hell, let’s go machete something! I figure I’m just breaking down some gender roles- I can play sports, I can work construction, I can do labor in the farms. And plus I’m burning off at least some of the massive amounts of rice that been clogging the interior recesses of my soul.

Speaking of eating, for a while here all I talked about with my host family was how good vegetables and salads were, because it’s something I very much miss. So one day host brother brings back cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, and cucumbers, and I couldn’t be more excited. So for dinner that night my host mom says she’ll make a salad to go with the other usual food. Come dinner time, my host mom holds the cabbage up to me with raised eyebrows and asks “what’s a salad?” So lately I’ve been teaching my host mom how to make a salad with an easy dressing and how to incorporate vegetables into the meals that they’re already cooking, like with soup and chicken. But veggies are expensive for them and only found far away in the city, which is why I’m hoping now they’ll be more interested in starting up a home garden with me.

And as I’ve been sharing the concept of vegetables with the my carnivorous friends, I’ve also been broadening the horizons of my former vegetarian self with meat, and mainly through the obligation to eat whatever is put on the plate in front of me. One night for dinner I had a lovely coconut-iguana stew served over rice. The meat was a little slimly, and the skin a little chewy, but if I closed my eyes and went to a happy place it didn’t taste half bad. Later that week though, a very nice man brought us a freshly caught baby sea turtle, so my host mom smoked it right up and we had it for dinner. Tasted like chicken. However, my body seemed to know the decadence I was ingesting was that of endangered animals, and responded its disgust in the form of violent diarrhea. But I’m ok now. I think they mentioned rabbit being next on the list of meats I should try..

It’s difficult to update this blog very regularly- so much happening and so little time. Peace Corps training has had me scampering around busy every day, while internet availability has become rarer. Training is over now, and I’ve visited my permanent site. I’m actually sitting in the Chicago airport right now writing this blog, on route to the next 2 years of my life. But I’m jumping ahead. Here are some highlights from the last month of training:

For a whole week we had something called Tech Week. This involve my class splitting up into three groups and traveling to another region in Panama for more advanced and site-specific training in agricultural areas we would likely need in our future site. Some went to an agricultural school and learned about fish and rice tanks, while others went to the province of Bocas Del Toro to learn about cocoa trees. I went to learn about coffee production and management in a touristy little city called Boquete, a place famous for its cool fresh climate, Panama’s only volcano, and of course, some very delicious coffee. The week was full of lots of trips to many coffee farms in various conditions- from the well-managed multimillion dollar resorts, to the small organic farmer focused on quality, to the farmers who plant coffee trees and don’t think about them again for years. I'll be headed to a community in the coffee negligence group, and work to improve production efficiency and agribusiness skills.

During one visit to a coffee processing plant my group saw some fancy coffee of a variety called Geisha. I’ve heard of this stuff selling in the U.S for around $80/lb, so pretty crazy high prices. We saw a particular batch of Geisha coffee sitting in storage that we heard was going to be shipped to the White House in a couple weeks; Obama’s going to be drinking this stuff! The next day we did a “coffee cupping” of four different coffees (including the Geisha), which is pretty much the equivalent of a wine tasting. We put on our best snobby faces as we sniffed the freshly ground beans, inhaled the aromas of freshly brewed coffee, and aerated the liquid across our tongues as we tasted it. Later we heard stories of other groups walking through fish tanks up to their waist in the pouring rain with dead fish on the bottom getting squeezed between their toes… and I felt good about coffee. Trees I can do.

The next week we had a “Culture Day”. Granted we’ve been living with host families for the past month, so we have already learned all about the culture (or art) of indirect language, a slower living pace, showing up at least an hour late for meetings, and the tight-knit families with five living generations in the immediate vicinity. But this day was different. We spent the whole morning making traditional Panamanian dishes like arroz con pollo (chicken with rice), sancocho (chicken soup with root veggies like otoe and yucca), and other dishes with beans and plantains and pineapple. All the girls dressed up in traditional Panamanian clothing according to the region in which their site is located. My type of dress was called a “pollera”. It’s worn for dances and special cultural events, while the other dresses from the indigenous communities are worn on an everyday basis. We learned traditional dances while our host families gathered around and giggled at us “gringos” (white people) doing weird stuff like always. But to end our day of cultural sharing we had to do the most Panamanian thing of all: climb to the top of 30ft greased pole. Earlier that day they literally cut down a tall tree, stripped it down smooth, and greased the crap out of it with butter. It was the Panamanians versus the Americans. It took the better part of an hour for the mesh of greasy feet and butts and red faces to eventually climb to the top. Naturally, the Americans proved too heavy to be able to hold so many people up the pole, but the tiny Panamanians were struggling as well. The two teams ultimately had to join forces in order to make it all the way up (A cute moral lesson worked itself out very nicely there).

But enough about culture day, everyone was getting super anxious about our sites! We wanted to know what our community would look like, what work we were going to do, what the people were like, etc. I was placed in a small community in the province of Colón (I can’t get more specific due to PC regulations on safety and security). We got to visit our communities for a few days during training to see if we were compatible with our sites and to test our commitment to living in there for 2 years. My community of course will mainly involve coffee-oriented work, but I will also do projects with things like home gardens, nutrition, organic fertilizers, etc. There are about 160 people living there, all super friendly. I mentioned to someone how much I like pineapple because it’s expensive in the states, and the next day three separate people whom I didn’t know came to the house I was staying at and brought me a pineapple. Like any true small town, the gossip is abundant and fast-spreading. Perhaps even moreso here because their is no electricity available to entertain them.

They greeted me with big grins and kisses on the cheek while others looked at me with timid eyes and zero talking. I know their exposure to white people is limited because the community is pretty remote. After several buses and off-roading in the back of a truck I have to hike for an hour to reach the community since there is no road that goes there. So I can imagine that seeing a big blonde American walk onto the scene saying crazy things about organic fertilizer and living there for 2 years can be a little intimidating.

There’s a small school there, with about 50 kids up to grade 6. I attended a PTA meeting to introduce myself and explain my work to some of the parents there, said hi to the kids in the school (of course they want me to teach English), visited the coffee farms, and went socializing at some houses. I didn’t get to visit all the houses because so many are far apart from each other, like over an hour’s hike away. I did learn that when visiting houses, people love to give you food and drink for while you’re visiting and to take home with you. Everything from pineapple juice, a bag of rice, a bundle of plantains and some eggs from their chickens, to mashed banana with hot milk poured over it. And so much coffee. They drink like 5 cups a day and somehow are able to sleep at 8pm. I’m trying to adjust, to the coffee and also the food. My training community near Panama City at least had access to vegetables, but not here. They only eat large portions of rice, pasta, bananas, plantains, and other starchy root vegetables, with the occasional piece of chicken or can of tuna. I’ve had banana in every way possible here, in both rip and unripe forms: mashed, mashed with hot milk over it, boiled, boiled in chicken soup, fried, grilled, smoked…

One of the greatest things about my community is that I feel like I’m a cowgirl living in the old west. I was lassoing cows to bring them in for fresh milk that morning, and riding horses everywhere since the community is so spread apart. One of the teachers in the community has two horses and wants to give me one to use while I’m there. It’s like I’m a little girl and my mom finally bought me that pony I’ve always wanted!

I’m going to live with a host family or two for the first 3 months at my site, so I can get to know the community better, and then I will rent a house so I can live solo. There’s only one empty house available, and it has a painting of a big tiger on the front, so I think I’ll be happy..

As many of you know, after I officially swore in as a volunteer I flew back to the states for my brother’s wedding. It was so amazing to see everyone again and attend such a beautiful event! And that brings me back to the beginning, writing this post at the airport in Chicago after a great weekend. I’ll be in Panama soon, where I finally have the chance to settle down in one place for a little bit and relax from the overly-stressful training, be on my own from the other volunteers and trainers, think only in Spanish, and really get down to my work. The enthusiasm for change and new ideas from the people in my community is evident, which makes me ever the more motivated to work together with them.

Make sure to check out my pictures below:

Officially looking Panamanian

Always chilling in the hammock

Swimming in the river and watching the boys jump from the tops of trees into it

During Tech Week. Saw the drying process post-harvest

The coffee beans are inside these shells

This guy's name is Tito. He runs a smallish organic farm in Boquete and produces some really quality stuff, including Geisha

A healthy looking coffee tree

Nice view from the farm

When we visited another coffee farm it was necessary to drive through a river and up a muddy mountain to get there

It's always something in Panama

Coffee storage facilities. It smelled great.

These are the coffee bags that are going to the White House

At another farm

This farm was huge and included a luxury resort and restaurant

The coffee cupping!

Using a spoon to whaft up the coffee aroma

At my site announcement

I had to take another picture of our chickens, look how big they have gotten! We killed and ate 22 of them for a big fiesta that we through

At Culture Day wearing our traditional dresses

My host family and I

Dresses from the indigenous areas

Some local girls

The amazing greased pole competition

At my site in Colon. The jungle surrounds me on all sides and I can hear monkeys howling in the distance.

More views from my new host family's house

The house I'm going to live in for a month or so. It's under construction right now and still pretty basic. No electricity and dirt floors is the way I roll