Saturday, September 23, 2006

Pictures from Nutivi






















All of these pcitures are from the Ngobe village of Nutivi where a group of EH (environmental health) trainees had our culture week. The week consisted of Ngobe (pronounced No bae) language clases in the morning and classes about culture in the afternoon. We also built a rainwater collection system for the school and taught a charla, I did handwashing to 2nd grade.

It was a little hard dealing with their culture. They do not talk much unless they are talked to so comunication is a little bit taxing. Everyone speaks spanish and are very freindly besides that. To get there we needed to take a 4 hour boat ride across the bay and up a river. The river was a little bit hairy at times and we needed to get out and walk a bit. It kinda reminded me of the Saco but more rocky, and fast and with indengionous people living on it.

A quick rundown of the pictures. There first pic in the upper left is of volley ball game. They have nightly games and are really good despite the fact that I am taller than the vast majority of people. The gringos lost but put up a good fight. The next is a huge bamboo tree, it was just so big it deserved a picture. Bamboo good for tons of things from building pull up bars to houses. The next pic is just one more from when I was painted, its old. Lastly there was a beutiful river we all got to go swimming in. We jumped out of a tree into the river and also used scuba masks to search for shrimp. In the backround you can see the mountains and a vilage up on the hillside.

Es todo, next week is tech week where I learn to build composting latrines bien pretty.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

My site assignment.

Less than an hour ago I found out that I am going to Valle in Bocas del Toro. Bocas is the province in the north west of Panama that borders on Costa Rica. My site description includes: you will be living in a tropical paradise surrounded by lush forests. The site has about 1000 Indindgenous Ngobe people. The town is accesible by a Chiva which is essentially a truck that drives about an hour from the main road. A previous Peace Corps volunteer has designed a water system for this town so I have plenty of work to do upon arrival.
Bocas is also a upcoming tourist region. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bocas_del_Toro_Province
(you know I love that wikipedia!)

Thats all for now, we are going out to celebrate now!

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Pics from my site visit.

This is Alan with the worm box we made. It may not look like alot but it will really make your garden grow. That is also the area where we lit the fire to smoke the bats out.
This is when I was getting painted up by Alan´s Abuela. You can´t really see the paint because it goes on semi clear and needs to dry in order to darken.
This is us in the dug out canoe. I was in the middle and with out a peace of bamboo so i mostly bailed water because the boat was a bit leaky.
This is after we caought all the fish. You can really see how painted I am with this. More pictures to come but the blog is kinda a pain in the butt.

PICTURES!

This is a group of us in a Peace Corps Land Cruiser coming back from vaccinations.


This is my sister Emmy and one of the two twins (I can´t tell them apart!) this is also a nice view out of the back of my house. I spend alot of time out here because the house doesn´t get many breezes. You can see right above the chair my shower with the blue tarp as a curtain. For a while there was a birds nest with little birds in it. They must have learned to fly because they are no longer there.

This is my aunt, Naidja, preparing some ojaldre. Ojaldre is basicly fried dough, it is ussually served for breakfast some times with cheese but never with powerderd sugar. This is also the extent of our kitchen. There is no running water but the gas stove is behind her. Much of the high powered cooking (boiling water for rice or making soup) is done by my father outside using wood. I think my family is different than most because my dad enjoys cooking ( he used to be a chef). Other typical dishes include bullo which is crushed corn in a tube, white rice with a small amount of vegetables and some chicken. There in general is alot of fried food, fried hot dogs, frid chicken and more I can´t think of right now. I love it but know its not too healthy.

Here is a current volunteer that meet us at the airport. He visitied the same Embera site that I did but got a different design than mine.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Horse back riding, spear fishing and bat killing

This weekend I visited Alan at an Embera site. WHAT A WEEKEND!
This indigneous group was relocated when a major hydroelectric dam was built about 20 years ago and flooded out there community. The government cleared a bunch of land and told them that this was to be there new town. These people did not used to live in communities but rather as large family groups in the jungle. Anyways now to the exciting part.

I showed up friday afternoon and pretty much hung out. Saturday after breakfast we had a matanza de mursialagos (bat killing) Alan just moved into a really nice house that is up about a meter off the ground with a roof made of palm fronds (pencha) His problem is that bats also live in his pencha. Now we checked and they are not vampire bats but its still very unerving to wake up and have bat shit on top of your mosquito net. His roof covers his porch and part of the porch is not finished. So we built a small fire under the unfinished part to smoke the bats out. We got up in his rafters with broom handels. There were also a a handful of kids around with small clublike sticks. We started shaking the rafters and bats just start flying out. It was just like hitting a whiffle ball, they fly pretty straight but curve a bit. All in all I smacked about 7 bats out of the air.

Later that day Alans house mom painted me up with jugua, which is a fruit that stains your skin kinda like iodine. Right now i have a design covering nearly my whole body, and once again i have several pictures but no way to get them off my camera. The jagua is used in Embera festivals, and holidays. The paint goes right up to my upper lip and all the way down to my toes. I thought I stuck out as a gringo before, but now i really feel like it. I´m in the bus terminal/massive mall and people literally are stopping in place to see the blue gringo.
Saturday Alan and I also built a worm box for his new house. A worm box is alot like a composte pile except you add california redworms and a small amount horse shit. This makes aparentlly the illest fertilizer ever. Alan was going to use it for his aloe plant.

Sunday we woke up early because we were going spear fishing. We had procurred some horses which were allegedly the nicest horses in town. On a whole animals and pets are treated horrible here, and often are in a constant state of starvation or sickness. The main reason is because none of them are neutored or castrated, so yea i´ve seen my of dogs going at it.
So i got on the horse for my first time, not having any idea how to make it go or stear it. (not actually that hard) As soon as we left town i was glad i had it because we were riding through mud that was a bout knee deep and full of roots. We rode for about an hour, crossing 3 rivers.

Thisreminded me of that scene from Sleeping Beauty were then knight is being chased through the thorn forest by the dragon. Now there was no dragon, but anyone that has ever cleared land using a machete knows that when you cut a branch you cut it at and angle. This means that they are like spears or vietnamese punji stakes. Besides the pointy things i was constantly having to push away huge palm fronds or platano leaves. Lastly I was rolling with a machete in my own saddle so If I wanted to be a badass i could have unsheathed my sword.

I had 2 close calls. At one point we had just crossed a river and were about to go up the steep acent back to the other side. The other two horses did this without much problem. My horse started up and then decided to leep forward. I wasn´t ready at all and almost fell off the back.
When had finally got back my horse got a little riled up by another male horse and started bucking a bit. Luckily i got the guy under control a little bit.

The story is that when the lake was created, the missionary name Padre Pablo through about 15 Tilapia (some asian white fish) into the pond, and now they are everywhere. They can grow easily over a foot and are tasty.

We had finally arived a a marshland (the beginings of the flooded out river valley) and we got off the horses and into a dug out canoe that i can´t believe floated. We road in the canoe for about 45 minutes and finally found a spot. Using a chuso ,which is a long straight peace of metal about an eight of and inch thick. At one end there is a sharp point the other has a really think rubber band. You hold it just like a pool stick and put you thumb through a loop in the rubber band. This allows you to hold it like a pencil and just let go with one hand. The actual spear fishing is an art I don´t have a knack for. You need to exhale your breath underwater so you sink to the bottom then push yourself around on the bottom looking for a tilapia house. There are tons of plants everywhere and the water was dirty from the recent rain so visibility was way down. The native guy we were with speared about 5, and we ended up catching more with the help of someone elses gill net. We ended up riding back with about 10 Tilapia and gave all but 2 away to the neighbors.

Friday, September 01, 2006

Off to visit a volunteer


Que Pasa?
Today I´m going to visit a volunteer in a town in the west of Panama (closer to Columbia) called Piariati. I´m kinda nervous because it is my first time using the bus system by myself. There are 2 types of buses here. There are your traditional greyhound type busses that go from major city to major city. These buses somtimes have movies dubbed over and spanish are always freezing cold. The other type is called a Diablo Roja (Red Devil) . These are old school busses from the United States that failed the safety inspections. They are all decorated with bright murals and huge chrome tailpipes. I hear some in the city even have neon lights outside and velvet and black lights on the inside. Usually they are blasting music, and are quite cheap.

This week was much like last week. In the technical sessions we did more stuff with aquaducts and met with more current volunteers. On monday we built a rain collection system for the family that lives near our class. We cut a line in PVC and bent it around the lip of the family´s metal roof . The pipe then drains into a 55 gallon drum. This is a major improvement for the family because they used to have to walk down a steep hill to get water that was obviously dirty. In spanish class we have been discussing about alot of culture and learning slang words. One of the more loco things is ¨chicha fuerte¨Chicha is a any fruit drink, most of the time is is just powder but other times is is real juice(I drink this a pretty much every meal except breakfast which is coffee). Chicha fuerte is essecially grain alcohol mixed with a little juice. Sometimes in the campo (rural areas) they put battery acid in it!! I´m trying to stay away from that.

In other news my parents have succefully moved into Cambridge and are in the process of unpacking. They also sold my Cadillac.