Canal Expansion

Despite all the crazy news in the world about Korea the big news in Panama is a about the Canal Vote. The Vote is to decide if the a new set of locks should be built to accommodate ¨post panamax ships¨ these are boats that are too wide for the canal right now. There is a definite need for this as some of these boats go around soutAmericaca, our just ship there goods across the country. Some boats also wait days to get through to Canal because it is operating at close to full capacity. The government and the Canal authority ( the company that took control of the canal after the US gave to Panama) hava lotot of money invested into the ÿes¨campaign. In trainingaing village many t-shirts and stickers were given out. The ¨no¨campaign is a much more grass roots anti-establishment organization. From what I can see the two sides have the following arguments. YES There is a definite need for a larger canal due to global trade. The canal has long been tied to Panama´s history and a vote no would be turning your back on your history. It will bring money to the country and all the money to build it is going to be collected through raised tolls on boats. I heard that the financing of the canextremelyxtremly hard because you are essentially predicting what global trade will be in years to come. Lastly they say that the construction will provide tons of direct and indirect jobs.
NO
The no basicallybasicly assert that the government is corrupt (corruption is a major problem in Panama) and that all the money will stay with the wealthy people. They also say that there is not environmental study and the impacts could be huge. They say there are also some scenarios where Panama would end up footing the bill too.

On to the pictures.

This is the house will I will be living after I stay with my host family for 3 months. My host family is a mother with a few of her kids ranging from the oldest daughter that has kids of her own to a young child. They live right across the way. The house has 2 rooms in the back: a kitchen and a bedroom and a large porch. Right now a school teacher is living there but she will be moving out.
We had a so called ¨Tom Selleck Challenge¨ you can judge the winncrewis crewis all of the guys (there are only 2 girls) from my training group that are living in the Bocas province. They are all really fun guys and I can´t wait to hang out with them even more. Clockwise from myself is Ryu and Brandon who are Masters International students. This means they are getting their engineering masters by doing Peace Corps, they have taken caqueducts aquaducts and other related things so they are a great resource. They also have known each other from freshman year of college and by shear chance ended up in Panama together and in Bocas. Jack is next, he is fluent in Spanish and also was a former volunteer from Bangledesh. Unfortunatly all the volunteers there were evacuated because of violence. Colin and Kevin are next and they are just straight up chill dudes.

These are all pictures in Vicente´s house. The pic above you can see him in the hammock with his youngest son. As a whole all the kids were very quiet. Above that picture is Roy he is always smiling and is also deaf. There is not much programs for deaf kids here so I´m not sure what is going to happen with him.

I think they are about in the middle of the range of wealth in the community. They could afford to buy rice and sardines occasionally but still do not have any excess of spending money. Vicente is 35 and in the shape of a high school wrestler, he walked way faster than me and still carried a Chacara (traditional bag, you can see small ones hanging) full of banana´s. I´d say it weighed easily 60 pounds.