Lisa's Birthday

Lise and her pals got dressed up in Panamanian clubwear to go out dancing for her birthday (the boys wore their normal clothes). Most people don't go out to clubs until 11 pm, so the club we went to was taken over at 8 by our big group of Gringos. A lot of people were in town for a PC meeting. We know the DJ--his mom was our host mother--and he made sure we were treated nicely. But the clubs here insist on playing crappy techno music so loud that it shakes your guts and makes your ears ring for days. We must say, however, that Lise had a very nice B-Day thanks to our buddies and the many good wishes of family and friends back home. Thanks, everybody!

Still Busy

These kids were hanging out with Matt and his pals during a work trip to the Comarca Ngabe-Bugle, the indigenous area in western Panama.

Here's the latrine Matt was working on before the top floor was poured. The government funded this and a few other composting latrines in the community where our friend Dennis lives, about 2 hours into the hills from the city of David.

Here are some friends up in Santa Fe, Veraguas, where Lise was busy with an agro-business seminar with a few dozen farmers. The farmers aim to sell produce straight to supermarkets, and volunteers gave presentations on everything from marketing to contracts. Santa Fe is home to Matt's favorite coffee, Cafe Tute. Matt came up one day and toured the coffee plant.

It's campaign season here, and posters like these are hanging around every town. They like the close-up photos in their campaign art.

Here's Lisa and our buddy Andrew in Santa Catalina during a charla we did on HIV/AIDS. The event was great, but the school had no lights and it got dark too fast.

That's Andrew's house--the nicest house in Peace Corps. These purple flowers are really pretty.

Here's some waterfront real estate in Panama City. Nearly 300 towers are under construction at the moment. But the city needs lots of infrastructure, like a wastewater treatment plant, to keep up with all the growth.

Hola! Lisa's birthday is on June 19! She and Matt are going to the Volunteer Advisory Council meeting in our provincial capital that same day and then going out to eat with our friends. In other news, Matt was appointed to the editorial team of the Peace Corps/Panama magazine, La Vaina. He just spent five days in Panama City working on the 3rd quarter edition. It was just like old times: stress, long days, no pay, computer problems, etc. But it was lots of fun, and we put out a nice 32-page spread that'll be printed in color to commemorate the Peace Corps' 45th anniversary in Panama.

Next week, we're headed back to the big city because we were invited to attend the swearing-in ceremony for the new group of volunteers followed by an anniversary reception at the ambassador's house. We're very honored!

Lisa's also working on official business as the new vice president of the Peace Corps' Gender and Development group, which supports volunteers working on projects like HIV/AIDS education and life skills activities for young people. Our post down here has a volunteer HIV/AIDS coordinator, and there are a lot of resources to do things like sex education charlas, or talks, at schools. We recently joined a half-dozen buddies for a big charla in Santa Catalina, a surf town with a high rate of sexually transmitted disease. We had about 20 young women show up, and it went really well. Our friend Shawn made arrangements for free lodging with the owners of a hostal, and we had lots of learning materials from the Peace Corps. We also got to swim in the Pacific and eat some good fish.

Matt also recently built a composting latrine with some pals in the Comarca Ngabe-Bugle, the indigenous district out by Costa Rica. These latrines are built of concrete block, which is a lot of fun to work with. He loves to pretend he's a mason!

Anyway, you pour a floor, build four levels of block and pour another floor on top of that. The big box is divided in two, with a hole over each compartment. Liquid waste is sent out a little PVC pipe and the solid stuff goes into the box to decompose. Using sawdust on it ensures bugs stay away and moisture is absorbed, meaning a lot less stench. When Box 1 fills up, you switch to Box 2. The Box 1 crap can decompose safely for months and be removed and used as fertilizer many months later when Box 2 is full. This is a nice latrine since you don't need to dig new pits every few years, and there aren't any bugs to spread disease. And they don't stink, as we said. They also offer a bit of permanent sanitation infrastructure, which is a big goal of the Environmental Health program Matt works in. He aims to build some composters in our site, where the water table is really high, rendering pit latrines really nasty.

Finally, we're headed home in less than a month! We can't wait to see our little nephew Mason! We thank the Good Lord he's doing fine, as are parents Cait and Scott. Tina and Ed will also have their little one by then, and we'll be heading to Tim and Cale's weddings and seeing a bunch of family and friends. Ace and Emily: We hope we can get to Portland!

Congratulations to the Celtics! We saw them win it last night in a very lopsided game. Fun stuff nonetheless. In other sporting news, we see Omar Minaya fired Willie Randolph, and Matt wishes he could be home listening to Mike & The Maddog each afternoon. People must be mad. The Yankees are also in trouble. In times like these, we really miss sports radio! We continue following the Sox online and seeing games from time to time. We're especially pleased to see Jacoby Ellsbury, a great young player who can steal bases. Didn't you watch him in Portland, Ace? He's a cousin of one of our buddies here who's a Native American.

Anyway, Happy Birthday to Lisa! And Felicidades to David Ortiz on becoming a US citizen. Peace!

--Matt and Lisa

Making Stoves Part 2

A few weeks after working at Teri's site, we headed south to our pal Adam's town to build a stove behind an Evangelical church. This project went fast because we had lots of helpers and better luck. The pastor also had a chainsaw, so cutting boards for the form was really easy. The photo above shows the huge pots the church uses for cooking communal meals. We did have to enlarge the form because we made the mistake of building it without making sure the stove would fit the pots. Anyway, it was another good experience, working with new friends and talking about cooking. These stoves, as we've said before, use less wood, concentrate the heat where it needs to be, and help the cooks breathe cleaner air. After this stove cures for 30 days, the church will put on the chimney we made from a rolled up piece of roofing zinc. The top photo shows some of our new pals.

Here's Lisa with one of our best friends, Andrew, who also lives near us and came to work on the stove. Andrew is from California.

This is Adam. He's from Texas. The hat was a good idea because the church we worked at was an hour's walk from his house. And it was hot out!

Here's the church. Inside they just built a stage. Out back there's a rancho with a zinc roof where they do the cooking. Hopefully, the many church members will want to build a mud stove at their homes. And hopefully the Catholic residents of town will stop by to see the model stove at this church.

Here we are taking off the form after we packed in the mix of mud, sand and cow manure. At this point, the stove is ready to carve (fire box and holes for the pots and chimney).

One of the spectators. The hat he's wearing is very common in the countryside, but most men turn up the front brim. This guy looks cooler with his hat his way.

This bird also watched the proceedings. He belongs to one of the half-dozen families that live around the church. He gritars, which means he can howl at you like a Panamanian man when he greets you.

Lisa and Andrew are seen here with a neighbor sifting ingredients of the mix. It's important to have a smooth mix, without rocks, so everything sticks together perfectly. Sifting is a lot of work. But like we said, we had a bunch of helpers (who now know how to build these things) and we were able to finish the job in a day. At snack time, by the way, they brought us a classic Panama treat: ice cold Pepsi from the store and fresh baked dinner rolls. Yum!

Making Stoves

Howdy all. Sorry it's been over a month since our last post. We've been busy! Matt helped make 3 lorena stoves in the month of April (I helped make two of them)! Two of them were in our province and one was in a nearby province (more photos will follow in another post). The first stove we made was way up in the mountains, at Teri's site. Teri is a sustainable agriculture volunteer, and as it turns out she used to work at a school near us in the States. She works with a women's group in her site, so we helped build the stove for one of the women in the group. The family had a beautiful rancho kitchen (see below) with mud walls.

The night before we started the project we went to the woman's house to look at the base (always an important step). It was a table made of clay and wood. Unfortunately it was very high and she was very short. We mentioned that she was going to have to use a stool in order to cook on the stove, but she assured us that was fine. We also asked about the sturdiness of the table, but she told us it was a year old and when we pressed down on it, it seemed pretty sturdy. We were also a bit concerned about the lack of ceiling space in the rancho, which is important because one needs to be able to really pack down the dirt in the stove with a big t-shaped weight.

So we arrived that first morning ready to work, only to realize that our friend Vidal, who we built a stove with previously in nearby Ashley's site, didn't send up the formuleta, the wooden box used to make the frame of the stove. Because I'm a business volunteer and had the least amount of stove experience in our trio of volunteers, I said I'd walk down the mountain 1 hour to Ashley's site to get the boards for the form. I had heard about a short cut, so I asked some people in town about it and these two men, Jesus and Juan, agreed to take me to the crossing where I could find my way.

10 minutes into the walk (Jesus was in front of me, Juan behind me) Jesus jumped what seemed at the time 5 feet into the air. He put his arm back to stop me from walking any further and thank God because when I looked down a coral, aka deadly, snake was passing right next to my open toe Chaco sandals! If I walked 1 mm further the thing would have bitten me! The men then proceeded to kill the snake, which ran off into the bushes. I was a bit shaken up, but we continued walking. They left me at the crossing and I said I would be fine (even though I was lying and really wanted them to walk the rest of the way with me)!

So, 10 minutes later, I walked down this cleared mountain, on a dirt path, admiring the lake in the distance and the mountains surrounding me, and I was happy because it's so much cooler up there than at my site. Then to my right, about 2 yards away, I see the largest black snack I've ever seen in my life. Within seconds of seeing it, it starts slinking its way up the trail toward me! No joke, the thing started chasing me. Not having a lot of experience with poisonous snakes, I decide to do what Jesus and Juan did, which was pick up large stones and chuck them at the snake. So I picked up the first stone I saw and bam! I got the snake and it and the stone fell down the hillside. The only problem was that I too had to go down the hill! I stopped and stared down the hill for a few minutes and then just decided to run as fast as I could down the hill.

About 15 minutes later, completely and utterly freaked out, I picked up a stick and a large stone and decided I would walk the rest of the way with my weapons. I then ran into Ashley's host dad, who was like, "What the heck is this Gringa doing walking down the mountain with this rock and stick?" Yeah, I felt ridiculous, but I didn't care!

Anyway, the stove took a few days, and we had some headaches, but it turned out really cool. And it was great to be up high in coffee country. The top photo shows the Catholic church in Teri's town. The mountains are full of pine trees planted during the first Torrijos administration to stop erosion and whatnot. Now the land is protected by the state.

The completed stove, on day 3! The homeowners watch as Teri and Vidal finish coating the exterior of the stove with some wet clay.

Matt at the end of day 2! Dirty and exhausted but still smiling! It was hard not to smile because the landscape is so beautiful.

Lisa pounding down the dirt in between the rocks for base number 2! Teri, Matt, Lisa and the homeowner worked very hard to find the perfect rocks to make the base. We built the base all morning during day 2, only to realize that the formuleta (wooden box, which rests on top of the base to make the stove) was too big for the new base, so we spent the afternoon searching for and cutting new wood to make a new formuleta!

Teri's rancho. She has a gorgeous view from her house. Everyone in the country cooks outside in a rancho.

Teri and Lisa at the start of day 1! Notice it was cool enough to wear a sweatshirt first thing in the morning. What a nice change of pace after so much heat down in the lowlands. We look forward to more work in the mountains!

Cashews

The last two afternoons we've been walking to collect marañon (cashew fruit) with our friends next door. It's the strangest fruit we've ever tasted, but it's really growing on us. People in our site claim it's good for head colds because upon the first bite it makes you cough and your eyes water, but then its fresh clean taste hits you and you're sold (or you hate it and never touch it again). But our real interest is not in the fruit but rather in the 'pepita,' or nut! In the States, cashews are expensive so it's a real treat to eat a bunch of them for free in Panama!

I love cashews! We've been heading out to the cow pastures where there are a lot of trees. You have to pull the nut off of the rather stinky fruit and then bring the nuts, which are enclosed in a hard grayish shell, back to your house so that they can dry out in the sun all day. Then you have to either roast them over an open fire on a piece of zinc until they blacken, or boil them for a period of time. Once they're blackened or boiled, you take a rock and crack open the shell to get to the roasted (or boiled) nut inside. A small bag of roasted cashew nuts are sold in our provincial capital for $1 for a small bag (about 30 nuts).

During Holy Week people in our site make what they simply call a dulce. It consists of freshly dried papaya, orange, coconut, cashews, and “miel de cana” or molasses. They're all cooked together over an open fire in a very large pot. The end product has a sticky, dark, fig-like consistency and is just heavenly. We tried dulces at two different homes, and we couldn't believe how good it was.


Terry, our next door neighbors' dog. She's really sweet and full of flees, poor thing. We feed her any leftovers we have--she's pretty skinny. But she's in far better health than 99% of the dogs here. And she never barks!

Lisa standing on a hill in the cow pasture. It looks like a desert now, but in the rainy season it will be green again. Ages ago, this was a jungle. It was probably a lot cooler then, too.

Mateo standing on top of the water tank. The kids here love to climb trees, etc. and the boys next door are expert climbers and really strong. The oldest brother, Arturo, pulled Matt up onto the tank with one hand.

This is one fat pig! The next day she gave birth to 16 piglets (below), one of which died. The farmer, Miguel, tried to revive it. It was a sad scene.

The mama pig's neighbor. This one has a nice smile, but she really stinks! Even though we have pigs in our town, no one ever eats pork. Maybe it's because these pigs are so gross!

The piglets! They came right out, one by one, covered in slime, and went right for their mama's belly. We see plenty of pigs back home, of course, but we couldn't resist photographing these cute little creatures.

No es autopista: This is not a highway! Trucks from the sugar cane plant race through town, raising a lot of dust and annoying the neighbors.

Here are some of the cows near our house. They've got big humps on their backs, and they get a little spooked by The Gringos. None of them wanted their picture taken up close.

Bolivar and Arturo are great tour guides. They told us all about how the town water tank was built and how it works. It's a pretty big tank, but we can't remember the capacity. It serves 2/3 of the 200 homes in town.
The tank opens on top so you can get in there to clean it out once in a while. Matt has no idea if that's happening, but it really should be. Our town has two wells, and water's pumped into PVC pipes that run along the roads. A lot of towns rely on gravity, with a spring up on a hill, but our town's too flat for that.

Three of the nicest kids in Panama: Arturo (Arturito), Bolivar (Boli) and Glenny. They look just like their parents, Arturo and Reina, who's expecting another boy in June. By the way, all the men and boys wear undershirts like Boli's.

A House of Our Own

The view from in front of our new house. In every town in Panama, many houses (like the one here) are under construction for years.

This horse belongs to our new landlords. He´s usually cool, but when our pal from Texas tried to ride him, he went a little loco. Short ride!

This is our landlord´s house, and it´s connected to ours by the garage area at left. The family is so nice--mom and dad Reina and Arturo and kids Glenny, Arturo and Bolivar (Boli). They made us part of the family.

Our little pink house with lots of shade! This hammock is one of five in our front yard.

Mateo standing just outside of our kitchen door, in front of an addition that´s ah, still in progress.

Lisa cooking in our indoor-outdoor kitchen. Notice her lime green fake Crocs! Also notice the old washing machines outside the door. We keep it country!

Our new pit latrine. Matt helped dig the hole, which he approved of since this is the dry part of town and their latrines don´t flood in the rainy season (like others around town). The kids had Matt write welcome in front of it. We´ve now removed the wood and are about to add the raised seat to sit on. Then we have to build a house for it. We´ll probably use scrap zinc to make the house.

Our sink area. There´s a shower head back there as well, but we live on a slight hill and therefore there´s not enough water pressure for the shower. They also run the water at the crack of dawn for a few hours and then for a few hours at night. But the bucket-baths ain´t bad since it´s like 90 degrees out!

Our closet area, aka the other half of our bedroom. Plenty of space for all of our stuff. And it´s not too damp!

Here´s our new bed, as seen from the storage part of the room. In this area, the net is a must. We´re sleeping good.

Our dining area. This was taken just before a lunch of tuna sandwiches and tomatoes. Note the presidents on the wall. Just like 505!

Here´s Lisa at the table. Our new gas stove is at right. It´s way better than our old electric stove back home, actually. You buy new tanks of propane right in town for like $5.

Our living room, where we have a world map and a map of Panama. Matt loves to give geography lessons! It´s quite comfy here. And we´re lucky the house came with a couch and a table and curtains.