Development at its finest

We all imagine how the things we donate to humanity change lives. And yes, they change lives, sometimes in ways we can never imagine. So my parents were so incredibly kind and brought down so many things to help my community. Thanks to Callie for the new books, small children come over to my house all the time and sit on my porch and read, some are just starting to learn. My favorite are the two little girls who no matter how hard I try to explain it, they always ask why the dogs in the book "Big Dog, Little Dog" walk on two legs and wear T shirts and drive cars and tell me that the ones here just walk on 4 legs. The concept of "an imagination world" is a little hard. Thanks to all the nurses and doctors in the Emergency room at Island Hospital, my community now has two copies of a medical book called "Where there is no doctor" to use as reference when people get sick and don't have enough money to leave the community to see a doctor. And there are now some medical supplies available. And thanks to those who donated the toothbrushes and floss. 50 kids came to a little health presentation that my mom and I gave and learned about general health care (hand washing, diarrea, fevers and toothcare). Due to increased amounts of sugar in the diet, there are a lot of little rotting teeth in the mouths of these kids here. At least that is my theory. Another wise elder in the community says that it must be the sugar and the change in diet from good foods from the farm to processed foods (sound familiar?) but is also caused by the lack of tooth care. And when they say tooth care, they mean that when you loose a tooth, you must wrap it up in a special leaf of a special tree and dig it in a little whole at the roots, so that your teeth and the tree will grow strong (for those of you who have read Life of PI, it might bring to mind some images). This of course led to me telling the story of the tooth fairy which they thought was absolutely absurd! After the presentation, each child went home with their toothbrush, toothpaste, and floss, so proud and excited. And sending these children off, I imagined all the great uses they might find for floss, like fishing, or tying sticks together, hoping that maybe some of them would try it out to the benefit of their little teeth. Two days later, I was visiting a house and a little kid came running up to me, so excited to see me, shouting my name, with the biggest grin on his face, showing all those little rotten teeth, and around his neck, he had created the most fabulous medallion from the neon green floss box. He had creatively used all the floss except the last two feet in those first two days and with the remaining piece, he created a necklace of champions, tied nicely around his neck. So we brought joy into their lives and maybe a little bit of improvement to their health. Little by little the word is. A young man just told me a nice little saying for that. Poco a poco, una vieja gacha come un coco, meaning, little by little an old woman with no teeth can eat a coconut.

Welcome to the new year

Happy Holidays to all of my friends and family. I hope that you all enjoyed the season thoroughly. I had a great holiday season filled with visits from family, new experiences with the community and just a good amount of cheer!

My parents came down and visited me for a few weeks. My dad was here to celebrate christmas and we had a fabulous time. We celebrated with the dearest family here, the family of the woman in charge of the women´s artisan group. We made delicious traditional food. All day Christmas eve, we prepared tamales and wrapped them up in banana leaves and cooked them on the fire. In Panama, you stay up until midnight on christmas eve to bring in christmas day. I was in charge of the desserts for this grand family celebration ( and when I say grand, I mean that probably a total of 40 people ate at this festivity). I made cake and pie and tiny cinnimon rolls which were a great hit. The family that we celebrated with is very fortunate in the community and had saved up all year and bought a generator for christmas, so they could have light for the celebration. So I had electricity for the night! We even got to decorate a small fake christmas tree and put some lights on it, but only here would you have to worry about scorpìons stinging you while putting up the christmas tree! Christmas day we made a big traditional soup called rondon with fish smoked over the fire and all sorts of lovely root vegetables and other wild veggies. And from there, my dad and I walked from house to house, handing out those little candy canes to all the little children. I think we may have confused the kids, seeing to that my dad has a white beard and was handing out candy canes on christmas day. But the truth is, Santa is not a tradition from here and not too many kids are aware of his presence in the world. We were very fortunate to celebrate christmas with such abundance, as there is a lack of food in the community after the storm and not every family was as lucky to get to make a special meal for the occation. But most found enough spare change to have a drink (asi es la vida).
The holidays were a time that passed quickly but really enjoyably, with all these amazing new experiences. But I missed you all, all my friends and family and the snow. It is quite hard to even comprehend snow, but yes, if I think really hard in my mind, I can maybe start to see a flake or two.

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!