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.