Dia de La Madre and tons of Pictures

So, I finally ran out of room on my camera, so I decided to dump tons of photos on here. Hopefully you´ll get a better idea of my site, my family and what we did for mothers day.

I took this morning as I was leaving my site. Down below is the Valley where my town is. You can really see how the mist stays in town until the sun really comes out to burn it all off. This is why it gets so cold at night and continues in the morning. Sometimes I where I sweatshirt in the morning. This morning for my ride to the city I tumbla un maderina, (knocked an orange out of the tree) in my front yard. I also brought a cacao fruit, this may not have been the best idea because the shell is thick and heavy. Cacao is kinda like a pumpkin in that it has a really think outside and seeds on the inside. I like to just suck on the seeds on the inside as a snack.

This is my brother Justin next to the Cacao that is drying in the sun. In order to make chocolate you have to sun dry it, then roast it then, grind it then cook it again and add sugar milk vanilla or whatever. This isn´t even like real chocolate its just what the make hot chocolates with here.

These are my two host sisters, Juanita (left) and Josmira or Betti (right). (Betti´s father is latino so she has much longer eyelashes and curly hair.) For mothers day we cooked up spaghetti with spam, as a topping for boiled bananas. You can see pretty much all the ingredients that we used behind on the shelf/board on the wall.

This is Lucindo, he´s my one of my counterparts sons. He is wearing the traditional Ngobe bag called a chacara. These come in literally all sizes. Some are big enough to haul 100 lbs bags of cement, while others are as small a change purses and are warn like a shoulder bag. Lucindo had a chacara full of bananas because he was coming back from the finca (farm). He also had a really colorful bird on a string.

This is a big hydroelectric dam that I go over every time I cross the mountains to the big city of David. They are planning on building a dam like this on a river relatively near my site. The dam company is pumping tons of money into the community as part of their ¨social outreach¨. For example they have probably purchased the soccer teams jersey for the past 4 years, and also they bought a truck for the junta comunal (town committee). This has good intentions but from a sustainable point of view it is not the best. Who will pay when the truck breaks, who buys the gas? etc.

Juanita is cooking up the chicken that was a gift to the mothers eating in our house that day. You can see here the fogon. This is 3 rocks used to create a tripod that and wood put in between. Usually they light it with matches and a plastic bag. Its horrible for the environment and our lungs but it works great. You can also see the big white water tank that the family uses when the water goes out. The water goes out when we havn´t had rain for a few days in a row.

These are all the madres that we cooked for. From the left is a house guest who I don´t know, my mom Elvira, my sister Lucy, and my aunt Ines. We made fried rice. I got the recipe out of the PC Panama cookbook which is written by volunteers, its really helpful in utilizing the ingredients you can get out in your site.

This is my host mom and her daughter Lucy, who is also a mom. They are putting the dried cacao back in the sack to grind later. You can also see my bedroom window in the back round.

I don´t even know this little guy´s name. But he was at the mothers day celebration in a full USA soccer kit.

This is Juanita and my grandma Nena. She isn´t sure how old she is but best guesses are in mid 70´s to 80´s. She has a really bad knee that she can´t bend, and walks everywhere with a cane (stick). Walking causes her tons of pain but occasionally she walks the 15 minutes to the finca to pick coffee.

This is the official mothers day celebration for my part of town. The men built this building with the blue tarp awning, they also cooked bought presents and organized activities. You can see the girl in the pink with the traditional Panamanian hat singing a Decima song she wrote about mothers day, while the two other guys played guitar.

After each gift was announced the giver kissed the receiver. This is my neighbor Berto. I´m working with him on a side project because he wants to write a book in the Ngobe dialect on natural medicine and dyes. He believes that as the culture from away diffuses into town that the traditional knowledge will be lost. I´m helping him find a similar book in Spanish he can use as a guide.

Pinata! This is actually just a decorated box. It is tied together really well and full of candy as well as flour. It was hilarious when it exploded, everyone was covered in flour. The women are usually very reserved but when it burst open it was a free for all. It may also have been because there was dollar bills inside too.

Here are all the fathers that cooked (or allegedly cooked) food for everyone. There is chicha (juice) rice and chicken.

All the moms from my part of town that participated. I think there was a total of 3 of these parties thrown around town, and they are planning a similar event for Christmas.

Victor singing songs he wrote for the mothers. My neighbor Eberto, has two guitars and when I have free time I want to learn the traditional strumming patterns.



Ebertos son Inel giving his mom a present.