Rainy day turkey day

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. I am thankful to my friends and family and all that support me. Without all of you, my life outlook would be a bit gloomier.
The last month has been a little hard due to some issues within my community, a few health problems and now the current situation. It has been raining in the province for the past two weeks. All of this rain has led to intensive flooding, landslides, crop loss and more. My community did not flood, since we are on the side of a hill, but many people lost the cacao that they were drying to sell, as well as all of their bananas and platanos fell over in the mudslides.I, just by coincidence, left the province the day before the roads closed to attend a seminar on the other side of the country. We as volunteers will be helping out with relief efforts for the upcoming week and much longer depending on the status of communities. This has been the worst flooding in 40 years in the country. Only certain communities were badly damaged, but many were left without food due the closing of the roads. Looking at all the work to be done here, I can only imagine how hard it must be in countries were hurricanes and floods hit hard every year. But we will work through this. We are looking at how we can help our communities be more prepared for the next natural disaster as well as how we can take this experience to help empower our communities to help themselves not only in times of disaster, but through all challenges.
Beyond these hard times, other things have been going well. I have been helping a new group of community members make chocolate to sell and although they have a lot more to learn, it is a fun process. In order to make the chocolate, we harvest the cacao pods and then open them and take the beans out to ferment. We then dry them in the sun ( which becomes much harder when there is no sun, only rain). We then toast the beans in a giant pot over a fire. After pealing them by hand, we grind them up with a hand grinder and add in sugar, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg. And my oh my does it smell good. I have also been teaching how to make organic fertilizers and helping teach english in the school. Every saturday I work with the women's group to sew beautiful geometric designs to create traditional dresses called naguas. I just finished my second skirt. And we are working on selling these cultural beauties.
Before the rains started, we had some beautiful evenings with the full moon. It is quite lovely to live a life where you know the cycle of the moon and the exact time the sun rises. My favorite new panamanian Ngobe story is the superstition that if you point at the moon, a gigantic blister will grow on your finger, the size of the moon (ok well, not quite). So of course I pointed at the beautiful full moon and all the children shrieked in response. In order to avoid the growth of the blister, you must tap your finger on a rock 5 times (somewhat equivalent of knocking on wood). So luckily I don't have a blister growing on my finger, but instead I do have a few worms in my tummy. Asi es la vida.
Despite the tummy, I did have a fabulous thanksgiving in which I got to celebrate with many friends to a feast of turkey, mash potatoes, cranberries! And although I miss friends and family at home, I also have a home here with friends to share these experiences. So I am thankful to all of you at home and all of my wonderful friends here too.

Cacao and coffee harvesting season has begun!

The cacao and coffee has started ripening and the season of harvest has begun. It has been a while since I have wrote, since I have been busy with little access to internet. Lots has happened in the last month and a half, too much to describe, but here is a little taste. I have been working hard carrying bag full after bag full of cacao pods up steep muddy hills, in traditional weaved bags, slung on my back with the strap across my forhead. Coffee harvest has also begun. I have been picking coffee with families and with great little kids in the farms. I have been sewing diligently with the womens group, teaching them to make earrings from beautiful seeds we have been collecting. I recently went with my women´s group to a national celebration for the day of the rural woman. We brought all of the artisan work and it was fabulous. We all dressed up in traditional naguas, brightly colored dresses with intricate hand stitched designs. I found myself in a very amusing situation, sitting in the front seat of a panamanian bus, in a nagua, holding a tree cookie covered in moss decorated with leaves covered with glitter and plastic farm animals (a fabulously creative idea that my women´s group had to make and sell) listening to acordian music ( a favorite in panama) and I had to think to myself "how did I get here?" Quite amusing.
I also just returned from a cacao seminar which we put on in another community in another province. We brought three producers from my area to this other indigenous area to teach about mantaining a cacao farm. It went incredibly well and it was really neat to see farmers sharing information with other farmers and learning so much. Also would like to give a shout out to my dear friend Alix for coming to visit me and my community earlier this month. It was wonderful to share a part of my life with such a great friend from home. And with that, want to open it up for any friends and family interested, you are always welcome to visit. Well there is much more going on here, but until next time, I hope you are all well and thanks for reading. I have some more great photos to share for next time!
Happy Halloween everyone!

A very happy birthday!

Thank you to all of you for your birthday wishes and for all your support! It is wonderful to hear from all of you special people in my life on such a special day. Thanks for all your friendship and support in all of my 24 yearsof life! I had quite a fabulous day yesterday. I baked myself a delicious cake the night before and woke up yesterday morning to eat a piece first thing. Then I did some yoga and had a nice little breakfast. When I walked through the community, all the school kids wished me a happy birthday. I then cooked a giant pot of popcorn to share with all the kids. They got a kick out of watching the popcorn jump and fly. I spent my day talking with all the people in the community, and with my favorite little old man, the founder of the community. And then I helped the school kids transpant the tomatoes we planted into the school garden. And I concluded my day with a delicious dinner that my host family cooked me, some delicious fish and yucca! Had another piece of cake and called it a day! And now I am celebrating with some friends at a seafood fair out on the island. Thank you all again for your birthday wishes. Take care, much love,

Yes, the wild things grow here.

Only here, would a business call be interupted by a group of cows attempting to lick my shirt or by a six foot long, four inch wide, black with yellow head snake slithering 10 feet away from me while I chat about important projects with my boss. And only here would I have the experiece of waking up a six oclock in the morning, climbing out of my mosquito net and in the middle of putting on a pair of pants, see that there is a mother scorpion and 25 babies that she has just layed less than a foot away from my thermorest bed. And so only here would I chop a scorpion in half with my machete in the wee hours of the morning while standing in my underwear! And here I, still living and well. Life is good, moving quickly. There is so much work to be done and so many fun things to participate it. I have just finished my first two months in my community and so I continue on! Heres a photo of one of the intense rainstorms rolling through.

Life in General

My days are so full here. Before coming to the peace corps, I expected my first three months, if not six months to move very slowly, without much work, just a lot of time getting to know the people. Instead, time is flying by and I have so much work to do! I am helping train producers in cacao pruning and grafting techniques to increase their produciton. I am teaching in the school, both english and working with their outdoor gardening and agriculture class. I am starting a program with a government agency to help families increase the variety of their diet and improve nutrition as the cost of food keeps rising. I am helping out with HIV and Aids presentations throughout the region and helping plan a girls health camp. And so much more. There is so much work to be done. Also I am looking to help my local school get solar panels and a few computers (maybe the ¨"one labtop every child" computers?), so if any of you have any connections out there and want to help out, let me know!!! So in general life is going well here. Getting started with lots of work and getting to know the community more. Participating in anyway I can. Well, I am headed to another meeting with another agency so I will write more soon!

Man, why didnt I take a wilderness first responder course!!!

These days in the tropics are good. Full of hard work, lots of sweat, lots of boiled green bananas to eat and lots of people to meet and talk to! Lots of sun, lots of rain. Here is a photo of me and two little kids in my community (host siblings of the first family that I stayed with). The cat is my little pet here in panama, who will keep me company and eat any rats that try and enter my house throughout my two years!Yesterday I visited a beautiful farm in my community which had just about every tropical fruit I could ever think of!!! I ate bananas of at least 5 different varieties that I have never tasted before!I have moved in with a new host family who is so incredibly kind. We live up on a beautiful hill overlooking the ocean, about a 40 minute hike out of the center of town. This is the kind of commuting that I like! Instead of sitting in traffic, I hike in my rubber boots each day over 4 streams and up and down hills to get to work! Pretty steller. Havent ran into a snake yet, but that might change my view on the commute! All else is well. I finished sewing my first traditional skirt and am wearing it proudlyg today. I am learning to make the beautiful traditional bags that these people make called chakras and am learning more of the local language every day. Surprisingly I am incredibly busy with work to do every day. I have started teaching english classes in the school and working with the school garden. We are working with cacao and building new stoves and all sorts of things. Even playing in volleyball tournaments. The most exciting thing that happened this past week was when I was working hard with a group of guys, swinging our machetes to cut down the weeds growing around the cacao trees. Suddenly, ran head on to my first real first aid accident in the jungles of panama! A young guy cut into the leg of another, all the way down to the bone! We had to carry him out, the hour long hike to the highway, on a hammock hanging from a stick. And when we arrived, we had to call the ambulence. After that excilerating yet worrisome experience, I have decided that I should purchase a book on wilderness response to read in my spare time. All else is well. Thank you all for all your love and support. I think about you all so often!

The people

So I have been in my community for a month now. Little by little I have been getting to know the community. I visit peoples houses and introduce myself to those that I havnt met yet. I try and remember all of the names. I have been learning so much about the community, so I think that it is time that I share a little bit with all of you back home about these people and the community (and here is a photo of the view!). I work in a community located in the Province of Bocas del Toro. In this community live approximately 500 idigenous peoples from the large indigenous group called Ngabe. This group previously live in an area south of here up a big river. About 30 to 50 years ago (maybe more, quite difficult to get dates from some of the older people in my community who have a very different sense of time and dont subscribe to keeping track of years such as how old you are or when an event happened) people started to migrate out to this region to work in the banana company as well as to work on cacao farms own by the afro antillians. They then began to stake out land, which at that point as long a it was unoccupied, it was free to move onto and plant on. And from there communities began forming. There is one very little old man here who was the founder of this community and then his family came and then friends came and so on and so on. These people traditionally speak their own language, Ngabere, which is an oral language and has only been written down in the past 20 years or so. Now, most people speak both spanish and Ngabere, although there are older community members who only speak ngabere and some children in the community who have not learned to speak their indiginous language and only speak spanish. Every family has land where they commonly have cacao, mango, banana, platano, lime, and root vegetables planted. Most families have chickens and ducks. Today, the majority of the diet here consists of rice and boiled green bananas and chicken, although in the past most of the food was that which was collected from the wild, including some delicious fruits and vegetables. People still make traditional food and it varies from family to family. The men work in the farms maintaining and harvesting fruits, vegetables, cacao and wood to sell, while the women split their time between harvesting and cooking. Both the women and men here are very strong. Women in my community tell me that in the past, the women worked harder in the farms than they do today. Women also traditionally make beautiful bags out of a natural plant while the men weave hammocks. This community is a mix of the old traditional past and the new modern world. You may walk into a house made of wood with a thatched roof, raised on stilts and see the grandmother is weaving a bag and the kids are watching rambo 4 on a small television run on a car battery! It is a mix of everything. No electricity, sometimes the water comes from the aquaduct and when it doesnt you either walk to a little stream nearby or you wait for the rain to fill your buckets!

So there is a little description of what life is like here. And now I am off to practice to play in a volleyball tournament with my community this saturday!

A great little thing that happens in my community, the people love to ask me to sing in english, so I sing my heart out, and it doesnt even matter if I remember the words because no one understands anyways! I just make them up! Quite entertaining! They really like to hear the " Jeremiah was a bullfrog" song!

A taste of what is to come

The first few weeks in my site have been wonderful. Yes there have been ups and downs, some hard times, but luckily many many good times. I have just completed the first three weeks in my community. And through that time, I have started to get to know my community by hiking up vigorous trails to visit their houses, by working side by side with them swinging my machete and pruning their cacao farms, by teaching english classes as well as how to make piñatas (lots of celebrations here), by helping a few kids start their own gardens, by sewing traditional dresses with a women´s group, by starting to learn this new indigenous language and more! I am living with a family that lives in a wooden house raised off the ground on stilts with a part thatched roof and part zinc roof. It reminds me of swiss family robinson. I live in an incredibly beautiful place where there are those times where I look around me at all tropical trees, parrot, hummingbirds, mangos falling from trees like rain, the beautiful view of the caribbean and I think ¨wow, I live here now¨. It is pretty amazing. Ups and downs though. My first real day in my community, I woke up bright and early, eager to head out with my rubber boots and machete for my first day pruning cacao. I tromped tromped down the trail behind eight other old Ngobe men ready to try and keep up with the day and pretend that I too have been weilding a machete all my life. But alas. I haven´t. And not more than one hour in, I sliced open my finger while filing my machete and made my best attempt at doing some emergency first aid and then hiding it. I threw together a peice of paper, a leaf, a stick splint and held it all together with a piece of duct tape that was previously holding my bag together. And then I proceeded, pretending like nothing happened and luckily no one saw. But a break time, it proved to be incredibly difficult to manuver on a very muddy and slick 40 degree hill while holding my machete and drinking a cup of juice while keeping my wounded hand hidden in my pocket. Quite awkward. but funny. and of course they got a kick out of it. But hey, at least I kept on working! After that experience, I have learned to carefully sharpen my machete and have started taking notes from small children who can control the machete better than I as we tromp through the jungle. One day in specific, a very happy afternoon, I found myself being guided down a trail by a group of four boys, ages 5 to 10, no shoes but so much energy. They led me everywhere, showing me what every plant was, cutting down mangos and oranges and having a grand old time. They even helped me collect seedlings to plant and now I have coffee, cacao, mango and lime trees growing! These people have amazing amounts of knowledge about this area and everyday I am learning so much. Lets see a few other notes. I have been eating lots of boiled bananas and rice, and now lots of this new amazing fruit called pifa or pixbae. Think of a fruit the size of a tomato, growing on a palm tree with spikes up the whole trunk, that tastes like a mix between butternut squash and popcorn and has the nutritional content of an egg! Also, I got bit by a giant ant called a Golofa while harvesting coffee! Man it hurt like crazy. I still can´t feel my pinky! So much has happened and so much more to come. Over all, this community is beautiful and I am excited to be here.

Real volunteers now

I am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer now. We had our swearing in ceremony this past Thursday at the ambassador's house with all the Peace Corps Panama staff, the world Peace Corps Director, Panama governmental representatives, many returning panama volunteers and our large group of 46 new volunteers. It was a wonderful ceremony followed by a great evening of food and dancing. And now, after a wonderful weekend spending time with my entire group, trying to hold on to those last moments that we can share, we each head out on our own to our sites. I am excited and very nervous. This is a big step forward in this process. A big step into the unknown, alone. But not really alone, because we all are in this together and are supporting each other as well as I know I have so much support from all my loved ones back home and around the world. So over these next few months, I would love to hear from all of you, through snail mail or even phone, since I have cell phone service at my site. So here I go, headed off into the experience of a lifetime!

A visit into my future life.

I just got back from my week long site visit which was a really good time. My site is incredible and I am excited about all the projects that I am going to be working on. Of course, there were some awkward times and some exhausting times, but overall, really good. I arrived at the bottom of the very steep hill that I walk up to reach my community, with a lot of very heavy bags and began trekking upwards to my new home. Half way up I was greeted by a party of young men chopping the weeds on the side of the gravel road, all swinging their machetes in the sweltering sun. They offered to put my bags in the wheel barrow and push it up the rest of the ways. I stayed with an incredibly kind family. The second day in, I got to work with a few community member filling bags with dirt to start a vivero (tree nursery) with trees to eventually plant in the cacao farms to develop the agroforestry system. They all chatted away in ngobere and told lots of jokes in spanish. Pretty funny. And then I spent a day sewing with the women on the traditional dresses they wear (good thing my mom taught me how to quilt when I was young!) And I am going to work with them on managing their cacao, selling chocolate, putting in some fish tanks and estufas lorenas ( earthen stoves) and teach some english classes and help out with the school garden. I am incredibly excited!

Here are just a few pictures of some of my adventures over the last little while. I will write more of the real stories soon!

The first tropical ailment

Living in the tropics presents many possible health problems, everything across the board from dengue fever, to malaria, intestinal parasites, worms that grow beneath your skin or in your stomach, to bug bites that turn into flesh eating growths that necessitate 20 days of IV injection in a hospital. In short, life in the tropics is tough.

My first ailment, which I am sure is only the first of many, began the middle of last week, starting with a few bumps and within a few days, turning into a thriving rash threatening to take hold of my entire body and turn it into an itching, red, swollen mess. I tried everything from pills to creams, soaps, eucalyptus oil, oatmeal pastes, to three medicinal plants, one of which I followed a very old man on a crazy plant hunt for this perfect cure. Nothing worked. Sleeping was tough. I had to wear long socks on my hands to keep from itching, and if I managed to fall asleep, I would awake scratching and scratching.

Then my legs began to swell. So I decided it was time to abort the attempt just to ride it out. To the clinic I went and received 3 injections and 4 pills and a cream. And it is improving greatly. And now I just look like a burn victim with the aftermath of the rash. Man, I can’t wait to see what awaits me next. I think that it will be the flesh eating bug bites.

Site announcement

What a big emotional day. Today we received our assignments for our site and project. I went into this day not knowing what the next two years of my life will consist of. And now I somewhat have an answer.
I am headed to a site in the province of Bocas del Toro to work with a group of indigenous Ngobe-Bugle farmers with the production of cacao (otherwise known as Cocoa and used to make chocolate all around the world). I will also get to working on home gardens, mud stoves, an aquaduct project, and with a women's artisan group. Incredibly enough, I will have a view of the Bocas del Toro islands and Caribbean ocean. And I will get to learn a new language too! The people in my community speak both Spanish and Ngobere, so it will be quite an experience. I am so incredibly excited and feel that somehow I have received the most wonderful project and site assignment possible for me!

Training has been a riot!

So it has been quite some time since I have had a moment to sit down and use the world wide web. And so much has happened in this first month and a half of living in Panama. To sum it up, it has been amazing, wild, adventurous, awkward, wonderful, and a riot.
I have been living in a small town about an hour and a half outside of Panama City. I live in a tiny pink cement house on top of a big hill with a wonderful host family in a great community. I look out and see mango trees and cashew trees and parakeets and parrots. I have seen bats and poison dart frogs and tarantulas. We have been taking language classes and technical agriculture classes six days a week for eight hours a day. I have been learning so much that some times I feel that my mind can't take it all in. But it is amazing. We have been traveling around the country, visiting volunteers and just attempting to learn what lies ahead for us. Some of my experiences follow. Playing dominoes late at night with the entire extended family which all live within yelling distance of my little pink house. Waking up to bumping reggaeton music every morning at 6am. Riding on public transportation called Diablos Rojos, otherwise known as Red Devils which are actually american school buses painted with outrageous murals and decked out with sequins and jems. Eating breakfast consisting of fried corn hockey pucks and fried hot dogs (not my favorite, but we are having a volunteer contest to see who consumes the most fried hot dogs over the next two years, winner might get a ride in the oscar meyer weiner truck back in the states). Winning ten dollars in bingo and twelve dollars in the local lottery. Busing over the grand canal and still feeling amazed every time. Swimming in the waterfall near by. Eating fresh mangoes as they fall to the ground like rain in the northwest. There are so many more stories and experiences, so more to come soon!

Staging: The surreal moments "is this really happening?"

I have arrived! It has been a long day of travel, but I finally made it! To Miami, that is. I am at my staging in Miami, where we train for two days and take care of logistics. I suppose that I will really feel like I am joining the Peace Corps when we finally all meet up tomorrow for our first time. Maybe by that time, we won't be in shock, but I doubt it. I think that day won't come until we are each settled at our sites in Panama, some three months from now. But until then, we will just keep trying to grasp and hold on to those few things that make us feel like we really have set out on this adventure and that no matter how hard we blink, it will still be happening. But I made it and was welcomed into Miami on a shuttle bus full of a family on a classic Griswold vacation, who each gave me hi-fives for being a volunteer. And then went out to a great Miami dinner of seafood with a live latino band with the baseball game playing behind them on a big screen while drinking a beer (presidente to be exact). Bienvenidos!!!

Here is a journal entry that I wrote earlier today on the plane. I think I was in shock.

Today is the day where it all begins, where my life begins to change as I leave for this fateful journey. When my alarm went off at 4:30 am this morning, I first thought that I should go back to sleep and was suddenly jolted out of my bed by the reminder that this is a big day. As I fly across the US, I think how immense this country is sand therefore how large our world is. I won't be in this country for a while, but I will soon be representing the US and American citizens. How can I, just a small girl from the northwest represent all of this? I will do my best though. I really have no idea what will take place in the next few years, no tangeable thoughts to give me stability and security. All I can do is sit on this plane with an open mind and heart, excited for what lies ahead. I am currently in shock though and can hardly believe this is happening. but I am excited and truly believe this is what I want to be doing right now. So I will go in with a positive outlook as I depart on these adventures of Peace Corps in Panama.

The Commitment

I have just committed to my two years of Peace Corps service in Panama, and I couldn't be more excited! I will be leaving exactly one month from today for my training and although it is coming fast, I can't wait. Now I just have to make sure that I am ready to go on April 14th 2008. I will be joining the Sustainable Agriculture Systems (SAS) program in Panama. I will work in rural Panama, anywhere from 2 to 16 hours away from Panama City. About 70% of Panama SAS volunteers work in rural communities where at least 70% of the population is under the national poverty line and the other 30% of volunteers work with a few of the nation's indigenous groups. I could be doing anything from helping local coffee and cacao farmers make their practices more sustainable in order to reduce harm to their workers and land and help them get into the fair trade and shade grown coffee market or chocolate market, to working with local womens groups raising chickens and home gardens, or helping with the native seed collection project. No matter what, I will be working by the sides of small farmers in rural Panama, wielding a machete every morning. While I am there I will most probably help to install water and sanitation systems in small communities. I will find out more throughout my training. For now I am just excited and passionate about what is to come! Please feel free to email me or even to come visit me! Panama has some beautiful beaches and it isn't that far away!