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This is the stage set up for the ceremonies of reading the declaration of independence and other historical documents and well as children reading poems and singing songs about their country.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.