Our site announcement

On Wednesday they announced where we´ll be spending the next two years. We´re going to the indigenous reservation 1 hour from where we visited a couple of weeks ago. I´m going to be working with one of the largest artisan cooperatives in Panama. The group has around 50 members and all but a few of them are women. They even have a store where they sell their goods, which include dresses and bags. It sounds wonderful. I´m going to help them with basic accounting and marketing. Many of them can´t read or write so it will be a challenge.

Matt is going to be teaching health education, nutrition, and perhaps English, as well as digging some latrines and working on the aqueduct, which has some problems. There has only been one other volunteer in this site and that was 8 years ago, so we are essentially starting from scratch. Matt and I are now learning the indigeous language. It´s an historically oral language and ah, is proving to be a bit difficult to learn, but I´m sure it will be fine.

We will have running water during the rainy season (8 months out of the year). During the dry season we´ll have running water 2 hrs. a day. Whether or not we´ll have electricity will depend on where we live in the town. There are 1,500 people in the town, which is quite sizable, but one has to keep in mind that these people are spread throughout the mountains and not really very close to one another. We will have a half hour chiva (4 wheel truck) ride to our site from the main road. It is about a 1 1/2 hour hike if you can´t catch the chiva. I haven´t seen the road yet, but I´m positive it´s a dirt road.

There´s another volunteer who lives a 1/2 hour walk from us. Another volunteer Steve, who in our group, will live 1 hour from us, which is excellent because he is an engineer and Matt may need his expertise from time to time. There is only one other volunteer from my group going to this reservation and he will be a couple of hours from us. He´s a native speaker and a computer genius so I´m psyched to have him somewhat close to us. He´s also a New Yorker. He´s from Long Island.

Another thing that Matt is very excited about is that we are going to be in coffee country! And our site has coffee opportunities. So, all sounds good at this point. Right now I´m at the mall in Panama City on my way to a city in the middle of the country for my week long technical training. I get to stay in a hotel. Matt is ah, headed back to the reservation to build latrines all week. He will be staying with a host family. Pobrecito!

After this week, Matt and I will travel back to Brian and Amanda´s house in the reservation (see previous post) for our cultural week. We will stay with a host family for the week.

I´ll try to post a few messages this week. I´m sorry there are no photos of Matt!! He´s the photographer and I´m the blogger. I´m not quite sure how this all came to be. It should be the other way around! I have the camera with me this week, but next week I´ll be sure to take pictures of him. He´s loving life!

Peace out.

Trip to the mountains

A group of our friends hanging out after classes one day.

Amanda, Brian and Lisa on the mountain. We stayed for the weekend at their house.

This area is being farmed by Ngobe families. It is totally beautiful.

Views of the Pacific ocean from the mountaintop.

Isn´t it gorgeous here?

This house was built by a volunteer who lives near Brian and Amanda. He has spectular views from the front of his house.

Brian and Amanda´s house.

Hey, hey, hey.

I’m posting some pictures from our trip to the indigenous reservation in the western highlands. We had a great time with our hosts, volunteers Brian and Amanda. They cooked for us every day and were very generous hosts. On Saturday we all took a five hour round trip hike to the top of a mountain. We could see the Pacific on one side and more mountains on the other. We absolutely loved the people we met and hope to be placed over there.

We find out of Wednesday where we’ll spend the next two years. We’re so excited! We have an idea about where we’ll be, but we don’t want to jinx it. Oh, in other news, one of our host family’s chickens had 5 babies. They are so cute. Some are black and some are yellow.

We still have Spanish classes everyday. My class is organizing a softball tournament and I’m helping with organizing people to make food to sell, etc. We’re hoping to raise enough funds so that we can buy books for the library. Right now there are about 50 books total in the library and none of them are for children. It’s rather sad.

We’re also hoping to start a reading program at the library. We chatted with the librarian and she said that they don’t have any programs at the library. She had never heard of a program where parents take their children to the library to hear a story. I told her it was very common in the U.S.

Matt’s technical training is going very well. Yesterday his entire class spent the day building a latrine for a family with little means who lives outside of the village. He’s a bit sore today. We’re staying very fit despite the excessive carbohydrates. We have two large hills that we climb to get just about anywhere.

We’ll email on Wednesday to let everyone know where our site will be. If you haven’t noticed, we can’t mention specifics on the blog (PC regulations).

Hasta pronto…

Lisa & Matt

Volunteer Visit

Hey Everyone!!

On Friday Matt and I are going to an indigenous site 6 hours away by bus on the west side of the country. We´ll stay with a married couple for 3 nights and get a chance to see what they do. They are both in Matt´s environmental health program, and they´ve been here a year. Right now we´re in small city near our training town, and we´re about to go the grocery store and out to eat. We´ll post pictures of our trip next week. In the meantime we´re both healthy, happy and well nourished, gracias a Dios! (Lisa has a minor heat rash on both of her arms, but that´s to be expected!)

Some pictures

My Spanish class has 3 other students in it, but on this day a couple of classes got together to play bingo.

The back porch to our house and the chickens!

We have lots of eggs!

The front porch. Lisa looking very happy to go to school for the afternoon.

The view from over our house, which is built into the side of a hill.

Our house. Matt likes to sit in the hammock and watch it rain.

Our roommate!

Our room and US Army bug net.

A diablo rojo. All the buses here used to be US school buses. Most rides cost between 25 and 75 cents.

Host Family

Hey everyone. It looks like we´ll only have internet access on Fridays for the next couple of months. I´m in an internet cafe right now in the closest city to the small town where Matt and I are living. Our family is super nice and from what we can tell a bit better off than most in the community. We for instance, have a flush toilet, which is a huge deal. Anyway, we live with a Mom, Dad, and their three sons ages 10, 13, and 14. We have our own room with a door that locks, but we don´t need a lock. They´re all so sweet. Our Spanish is really coming along. We have a difficult time understanding our host father because Panamians generally speak really fast and cut off the ends of words. Our host Mom, however is so sweet.

We are eating well. Lots of rich and chicken, and ah, fried items. The family has 20 chickens and a dog named Snoopy, who lives outside. He´s got some serious fleas and howls every night (along with the rest of the dogs in the village) at 1 am. Lovely. The rooster starts his singing routine at 3 am, so we go to bed at 8 or 9 hoping to sleep until 1 or 3. But honestly, that´s my only gripe. Everything else is great. We´re getting a lot of exercise. We live at the top of two steep hills and have to walk all around the village to get to our language and technical classes.

Ah, I feel like there´s so much to share, but I don´t have enough time. I´ll try to post some photos either today (if the computer will accept my camera) or next week. There´s only 1 pay phone in the village and no internet...

Also, this comment is for Dr. Rinella...they´re all freakin´ Yankee fans down here because of Rivera!!!!! Que lastima. And, I can´t say where I am, but that certain someone has a house near where we are...but in a gated, heavily secured area (so I´m told).

Training, August 15-18

Hey everyone! Tomorrow we're moving to where we'll spend the next 3 months. We'll get to meet our host family, finally. And, Matt and I will live together (there was a possibility we wouldn't.)

Yesterday we had language interviews as well as health and program interviews. And, of all things, a swim test.

Today, we got to go on fieldtrips! We both went to towns East of the Canal. I got to see a savings and loan cooperative and Matt got to see many composting latrines and a spring-fed aquaduct system. We ate lunches with our respective groups and then headed back.

Matt took the camera with him and took some pictures.

New England and Staging

Hola todos! Directly above is the view from our room.

After a wonderful trip to New Hampshire and Maine, where we had a great time at Ace and Emily's wedding, we're at our orientation. We're at a hotel near Washington, DC and it's really nice. The program here was really well done, and we learned a lot. We studied the Peace Corps mission, safety, culture, and development strategies. We also learned some neat trivia, like Bob Villa of This Old House served in the Peace Corps in Panama. Everyone we met has been really nice, and we're sure we've made many long-term friends. There's around 45 of us from a few dozen states. We had some really good food, including Ethiopian and steamers and fried oysters. Tomorrow morning we leave for Panama! Thanks to everyone back home for helping us prepare for this huge adventure. And thanks to everyone who has emailed me and Matt.