November is Panama Month

November is the mes de Patrìa or month of the fatherland. On the 3 they celebrate independence from Columbia day, the 4th is flag day. They have big celebrations in the schools and with marching bands in larger towns. These girls are wearing sashes that indicate that they are in the top of their class.

This is the stage set up for the ceremonies of reading the declaration of independence and other historical documents and well as children reading poems and singing songs about their country.
On the 23 Valle celebrated the founding of their county. This is a big deal because most of the county is in the mountains people no longer need to pay to get to the larger town to settle land disputes, register to vote or register births. This is all done in my town which is the center of the coriegiemento (county). On the 23 the town council had a big party with activities during the day, and a big dance at night. The party started off with Cantadera, which is similar to freestyle singing. One was from Tolè which and spoke some ngobe in his singing, which everyone loved.

They start out introducing themselves each in turn, then the sing about how they love women and past exploits. Later they merged into about how they are truly from the countryside and how they always work in their farm, this turns into complaints about the rising cost of rice, sugar, gas and the general cost of living (which is true). They then went on to get more confrontaional with the Hijo de la Comarca (Child of the reservation) going to far to make hints that they are on his land. Overall the atmosphere was very freindly and they applaud one another if they sang some poignent lines. One of them even mentioned Peace Corps a few times so he was clearly improvising.

Then tipico band started playing. They seemed like true road warriors. All of their equipment has seen some obvious use. Considering everything was brought in on a 4 wheel drive truck they sounded good. The music is very accordian based and the singer Edwin Seballo is popular with Ngobes because he has a few songs centering around Ngobe phrases. The band played till around 4 AM which many people thought was quitting to soon. After 2 cups of coffee I couldn´t stay awake past 2.

This is a random picture of how you get to my friend Mo´s Latrine. And really all the latrine is a private spot you can poop in the mangrove swamp. You need to hop from board to board!

Novemeber 2nd is the Day of the Dead. Where most of the town gets together to remember the dead. Wealthy people get raised graved above while others get the plants with red leaves. As my town is quite big there are lots of graves.
The is my sister placing flowers on the grave of her grandfather, one of the founding fathers of the town.
No minister was present so they asked me if I could give the opening prayer, I did but chickened out and gave it in English. On the other hand, I don´t regulary speak about religion so i´m not used to the vocabulary.
November is also the month to harvest cacao!! This is a pile of mallorcas which they crack open to and take out the seeds. After the that the seeds are dried, ground and sugar and milk is added to make chocolate.

FOOD!

For a period of about a week I had several guests over for various reasons. With the help of Melissa we cooked some amazing food with the little we could in the jungle.


These are my new neighbors Greg and Lisa, the are from Philly and live about and hour away. We made pizza with them. We made the dough from scratch used American singles, and cooked it in a frying pan with aluminum foil as a lid.

This is Sebastien, he was visiting interested in doing some research. He works with the Smithsonian Insititute on Bocas Island, and is researching an improved septic system for places with high water tables and clayey soil where black water filters in VERY slowly. He is also from Belgium and makes amazing crepes.

Heres our breakfast creps, including all the toppings. Scrambled eggs, bananas, peanut butter etc.

Later I went to visit a freind Mo to help survey her aqueduct. She is a vegetarian and knows how to make a mean salad. This was my first succesful experience with tofu.
Lastly, another friend Jess came from the other side of the country to do research on her masters thesis. She was measuring pH and temperature of all the 40 composting latrines in my site, then took samples from 5. The idea is to check if they are successfully killing all pathogens and to see what moisture level and dry material is the best. She made chicken parm. Without the chicken or parmesean. Instead she used crushed ritz crackers, egg and soy meat made into patties. Excellent!

We also made banana pancakes from scratch. Mashing up bananas sure makes your batter go along farther. You can also Johnny Cakes which are very popular because you can back them of a fire.

Swear in and 1 year celebration

The new group of Environmental Volunteers just swore in with a ceremony at the Panama Canal Museum. The US Ambassador spoke about the importance of Peace Corps in Panama.

Ambassador Eaton with our Country Director.

As a group we took a vacation to go to the Royal Decamoran all inclusive resort to celebrate surviving one year in country. The above picture was in the swim up bar. This was also a great chance to catch up with other volunteers that live far away and to exchange ideas. For example I learned of a business volunteer that is buying a machine that automatically takes the shells off rice. It sits in the bed of a truck, to operate you jack the wheels off the ground and use the car engine to turn the motor. This is a great example of using local resources and also the rice peeler will go where the rice is.

This is one of the main pools and the discoteca at night. It was a wild time!

Go Sox!

Friends from home ask, were you able to catch the Sox game? I did catch them beating the Indians at my house with my crank radio. My host brothers and I listened to the TV broadcast on the radio cause there is less adds and you can here crowd noise. The antenna on the radio has long been broken off and to get the best reception I had a piece of wire attached to the radio and tucked behind my ear.



Not all Peace Corp Volunteers are roughing it in the jungle. This is my friend Kelly's house. She is a volunteer and lives in a much more developed community. She has a fridge, oven, dishwasher and flush toilet!!
My Panama Verde group planted tree in the water shed of the town aqueduct to prevent erosion during large rains.
I am still working on the aqueduct tank. Here is Jose putting on the water proof mortar inside the tank.

Tuning in to the Sox broadcast.
Later in the night playing dominoes , sharing Night Train and still listening. VICTORY!!
Even Melissa is supporting the Sox. This was in Panama City for game one of the world series.

Building a 3300 gallon tank

My neighbor Brandon recently just changed sites. So I have been living there during the week to help finish his aqueduct tank. This is 3300 gallon tank made with 8 inch blocks, which is almost unheard of in Panama. These blocks were donated by the US Army and I think are actually made in the USA.

That is my friend José who is also a very experience mason, I work with him all the time. He is also the President of one of the aqueducts in my town.
Me and Brandon during construction.
Our construction inspector. A lazy bear, or sloth, just hanging out.

These blocks are really hard to split without a saw. This meant there are larger spaces between them with we filled with mortar. The tank is 8 feet tall.
Mixing mortar.
Sieving sand by hand. You can't have any rocks in the mix. We had some kids helping out with the work.
That's our make shift scaffolding we set up. The last foot of that steel will be bent over to and attached to the steel in the roof.
That bandanna may look ridiculous but it was REALLY hot working in the sun.

Fresh Pork and Certificates

A WARNING: There are some pictures of a pig being slaughtered below. Beware. I'm busy so these will have short captions.


Just finished hiking up this super steep hill for 30 minutes. You know your in for a serious hike when the Ngobe your with gets a walking stick.

I got pretty sick for a few days drinking this water. This is what it looks like when we get heavy rain, the aqueduct is creek fed so all the sediment gets washed in. Normally I filter this and its fine but that night I was staying up late to help with this pig and drank some coffee from my host family forgetting about all the rain.
My two host brothers. I don't know why Justin is wearing that santa clause hat. Right before this happened my uncle, Benito, hit the pig with the blunt end of an axe to stun it so it wouldn't squeal alot.
After it is killed you put boiling water on the skin then peal all the hair off with a knife. Then take the insides out. I didn't actually really do anything besides keep the water boiling and shine flashlights for them.

The water committee seminar came to my town and the theme was protecting your watershed. This is a guys from my town that runs this vivero or place where you keep trees before planting them. He spoke about the importance of reforestation to keep water in the ground and then talked about how you actually plant the small trees. Later in the day as a group we went and planted several small trees donated by the Bocas Fruit Company, aka Chiquita Banana.
These are the guys that I work with. There are 3 committees here. My town has two aqueducts then the one I built next door has a group too.

These are pictures at the last day of the seminar with all the participants and there diplomas.

My first entry in forever!

Hey, finally I have gotten a camera, and a chord and the free time to upload pictures. So much stuff has happened of recently. A Province wide aqueduct seminar has been started for all the communities where there is Peace Corps. Right now 9 aqueduct committees meet every other Saturday in different PC communities. We talk about accounting, working with agencies, leadership, system repairs, positions in a committee and watershed management.

I think the most important thing that the groups can take from these classes are the confidence and know how to actually collect aqueduct fees and cut off water for those that done´t pay. It has been very rewarding and much work as I am working with 3 committees; my town has two aqueducts and I am also working with the town where I just finished building the aqueduct. Each week there is homework, and this upcoming weekend Valle will host about 30 visitors for the seminar.

This is a picture from the leadership day, we played a bunch of games to emphasis leadership and communication. This is Pata Grande, or Big Foot. They loved it one of the Valle committees won the tournament.


My Panama Verde group is still working. We decided to raise our vivero (tree nursery) off the ground so bugs would eat the leaves less. We cut down a bunch of caña blanca and built this table. It poured half way through the work.


These are the guys that built it and the baby trees in the black bags. We are currently trying to sell them as the make excellent wood for host posts. I always talk to people and tell them that planting trees can be seen as an investment and how responsible fathers (or mothers for that matter) should plant trees for each child, that way when the child is ready to build there own house that they have wood. Although the jungle can be thick where I live the real thick trees are getting farther and farther away.

This is me with the Honorable Representative. He is from my town and is the head politicó for our county. He is a very friendly guy but does not always provide me with much information. I look forward to working with him because he has many potential sources of money set up for various projects. The other day the two of us went to the Ministry of Health together to talk about a possible water project. I was very valuable because I feel like it legitimized me in the eyes of the Ministry.

The hydroelectric dam company AES celebrated in a big, expensive way the inauguration of the house the completed for the first relocated family. This house was built in a manner of a wealthier family in the Provincial capital, it was also completed with very few local materials and labor. All in all I heard that is costs around $40,000 to build and do to the high cost the dam company will no longer be building houses in the same way for the dozens of families that will have there towns flooded out by the new lake. This has been a huge issue in my town. Although the dam is not directly effecting my community it has indirect effects. I believe that the company has good intentions and has conducted serious social projects but the presence of a multinational corporation in an severally impoverished area will always have side effects.

There were 3 newspapers there and a television channel. They killed two cows for food for all the guests. Many of which were trucked in from the communities directly effected. It was also weird because many of the guests worked for the dam company or their sub-contractor. They also brought in Panamanian traditional dancers and clowns. I think the clowns scared most of the people because not only are they not too familiar, but they also were scary looked girls. Seriously, there makeup, clothes and music really frightened me.
Here is my host sister, who has just learned to say my name, playing with one of the massive playground balls donated by Camp Belknap.

On the way to the Volunteer Advisory Committee (I am the representative for Bocas) meeting I visited my friend Rob. He lives deep in the Native Reservation. After a 2 hours truck ride up in the mountains we walked for another hour in the beautiful country side. This is a picture of some of my best friends here. Melissa, Rob and Kevin.