I Love Panama

Here's a view of the yucca trees in the field behind our house. The other day we helped the neighbors cut weeds and they gave us several huge pieces of yucca, which is excellent in soup or fried with ketchup and eggs. When you want to harvest this crop, you look for trees with a bit of broken earth at the base, indicating the root is big enough. Then you dig it up with a machete. The tree can then be stuck back in the ground to grow new yucca.

Christina, a second-grader, is seen here drawing a pumpkin during one of the English classes we held just before Halloween. All the kids learned Halloween vocabulary like candy, costume, and ghost. And everyone drew their own Jack-o-lanterns to hang up in school.

Like Christina, the kid in the middle used a cup to make a perfectly circular pumpkin. All the Jack-o-lanterns were bien pretty. Whenever we have an activity, like drawing or playing a game, teaching is a lot more fun. For second grade and up, we try to have the students take a few notes, practice speaking a bit of English, and then do a related project.

This is Paulita, a neighbor who invited us over to celebrate her birthday November 13. Before the cake, we had rice and shrimp (arroz con camarones) made by one of her daughters. It was a real treat. While we were hanging out on the porch after supper, a relative called to wish Paulita a happy birthday and find out what was going on. We heard her say, "The Gringos are here!"

Reina, Lisa, and Boli made the popular corn drink chicheme the day before Matt's birthday. It's a soupy drink made of boiled corn. Evaporated milk and sugar are added after the cooking. It's especially good served really cold after walking around in the heat. But it's also good warm with a dinner of eggs and bread. The neighbors like it with hotdogs and fried dough.

Before they made chicheme, Reina served guacho, a beef stew made with rice, yucca, tomatoes, and other vegetables. The green leaves floating in this bowl are culantro, which grows all around our house and goes into just about every dish. Even though it's hot out all the time, Panamanian soups are delicious.

On Matt's birthday, November 11, we taught birthday vocabulary and played pin the tail on the donkey. While Lisa got the blindfold ready, our friend Socrates clowned around for the camera. The game was a big hit, but the kids were almost more excited to look at the pictures Matt took.

Matt posed for this photo with his birthday mug. He picked it out himself at the dollar store. It was a really nice birthday. After school, Reina made chicken and pasta for Matt, Lisa, Matt's boss Tim, and Tim's parents, who were in Panama for a visit. In the evening, we went to a barbecue with several volunteers at our friend Laura's house. Thanks for all the cards and e-mails!

And here's Elyer. His dad and uncles work the little farm behind our house. And his little brother Edwar is one of our best English students. In this photo Elyer is wearing Lisa's glasses. He and cousins Arturito and Boli wanted to test them out. The shirt is from the presidential campaign of Ricardo Martinelli.

Arroz con Pollo

Lisita (above) and Mateito are spending most of their time outdoors, wandering around in search of bugs and worms. They also eat feed (alimentos) to get fat. They eat all day, but Lisita the hen is a lot smaller than the gallo Mateito.

Here's their plastic washing machine house. The roof is made of a hood from a Toyota pickup truck. This area is in a roofless addition next to our house. When it's raining like crazy the machine gets moved to our kitchen because everyone says these birds will get sick and die if they get too wet. The pollitos are too dumb to take shelter on their own, but we're trying to train them to go in their washing machine.

Lisa led work on our 100-square-foot vegetable garden, which includes the raised beds you see in the backround. After just a few days, the squash (zapallo) is really taking off. The garden also has yucca, corn, peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Note that Lisa now has rubber boots, a must-have in the rainy season.

Matt and Bolivar helped make the raised beds, which ensure the crops don't drown in all the rain. The beds also give plants more air and allow you to use only the best topsoil and compost. We made compost of dirt, plantain leaves, kitchen scraps, sawdust, egg shells, coffee, tea, and whatever else we had on hand. It made a nice black mezcla. The palm tree fencing behind Matt and Boli is there because we didn't have enough chicken wire to enclose the whole space. This garden's a good project because kids are helping out. Hopefully, they'll get their families to start their own gardens. Everyone here needs more veggies in their diet because the focus out on the fincas is on starches or sugarcane that gets sold to the sugar company.

This is a typical evangelical church in the countryside. This one's in Cacao, Los Santos, where we went on a field trip with our co-op to see a rice operation. The message in red letters on the rear wall of the church says, "Jesucristo es el mismo ayer, hoy, y por los siglos."

Here's Lisa out in the rice. This valley north of Tonosi is very beautiful, with miles of green rice fields surrounded by knobby mountains. Rice in this area is cut by big tractors. The grains get broken off the stalks and taken to a plant where they're husked. In smaller operations, people cut each stalk by hand. After the harvest in our town last month, individual growers put big tarps on their lawns to dry the rice. When it's dry, they remove the husks by beating the rice with mallets in wooden basins. Sometimes 2 people will work the rice at once, like 2 drummers taking turns beating the same drum.


This is Edgardo, president of our co-op's education committee. He's a cool guy who cracks a lot of jokes. We went on the field trip to see this irrigation system, which is on wheels and extends for a few hundred yards. It allows this farm to grow a lot of rice in usually dry fields. Our co-op needs something like this if it wants to dramatically increase rice production. But these irrigators are really expensive, and there's only 3 in Panama. The co-op, which makes its money with sugar, wants to grow more rice because the country is experiencing a big rice shortage right now.

Kids

The kids in our town held a parade recently to celebrate the many ethnic groups of Panama. Our friend Jaime (above) dressed up like a hunter or warrior from one of the country's many indigenous tribes. In the background you can see our neighbor's dog Teri, who likes to follow us everywhere.

Many of the girls wore the traditional dress of central Panama, the pollera. The boys in the background are wearing real Panama hats, which are round and usually worn with the front turned up.

This is our pal Catalino. He's seen here at an environmental seminar hosted by our branch of Ecoclub, the international youth group. We were very pleased he was there because he's never been to a meeting or anything else official that we've been involved in.

Here's Lisa laughing during a game, or dinamica, at the Ecoclub seminar. We held the event in the 6th grade classroom of our town's primary school. Note the nice tile floor. Several local men installed it during a recent school vacation. All the upkeep on the building and grounds is done by parents and good citizens. Behind the school, the kids have a 2-acre farm with corn, rice, onions, peppers, and tons of other stuff. They also study agriculture, and each class goes out to work on the farm (finca) once a week. On those days the kids show up wearing rubber boots and carrying machetes. Cool!

The participants gathered for a group photo outside the school. Missing from the photo are the 3 young people from another club (Luis, Luis, and Carolina) who came to lead the seminar. They brought a laptop and we used our co-op's projector for the presentation, which covered things like deforestation and dengue fever. We also had cookies (4 kinds!) and Tang because you can't have a meeting without treats. Our neighbor Reina made chicken, rice, and red beans (porotos) for Luis, Luis, and Carolina. It was pollo guisado, which is chicken stewed in a red sauce with peppers and onions. Delicious!

Speaking of chicken: Meet our new pets, Mateito and Lisita! The other day Boli from next door came by and said some guy was giving away pollitos, so we asked for 2. They arrived 15 minutes later in a cardboard box, where they lived for a few days until Matt built them a new house in the shell of an old washing machine. A student of ours gave the birds their names. The neighbors say this type of chicken doesn't lay eggs, so we'll probably eat them, even though they're really cute. Like Teri the dog, they follow us everywhere. Right after Lisa snapped this photo one of them pooped on Matt's shirt.

Here's another shot from the parade as it passed by our house. The sign says, "We respect our historic legacy." The sign announcing the parade said students would pay tribute to each ethnic group in Panama, including the gringos. We were honored!


Thanks for visiting our blog! We send our love and good wishes to Lisa's dad, who broke his leg and had to have surgery yesterday. Get well soon, Don!

Trabajando

We went to build a stove in a nearby site, up in the mountains, where these guys were working on a new rancho. They're part of a tourism cooperative, and they hope to have public events in this structure. Next door, the co-op has a restaurant, where we built the much-needed stove of mud, sand, and straw.

The stove is much-needed because the cooks are using these fogones, fires surrounded by rocks, behind the restaurant. They have to breathe in a lot of smoke, and the smoke even blows through the dining area at times. The ladies who run the operation are looking forward to using the stove after it cures in 30 days. Co-op members were very kind to us, and they fed us lunch and breakfast. Muy rico!

We posed for this photo with part of our work group. As you can see, the stove is in a new area with a zinc roof. They'll install a chimney when they find the proper metal pipe or other material. This project was a breeze because they had all the supplies ready at the start of the day, and the whole posse worked very hard. Our friend Ellen (second from left), a volunteer in the new tourism and English teaching group, is helping the co-op.

Lisa and Ashley mixed up some mud and sand to coat the outside of the stove so it will look bien pritty. When we were done, it did resemble a huge chocolate cake. We were especially pleased because the stove is in the center of town, so lots of potential stove builders will see it. Let's hope it works well!

The area where we were working is one of our favorite places in Panama. The weather's mas fresco, the mountains are beautiful, they grow coffee here, and the people are really nice like they are in the rest of our province.

This big barn is up in the Comarca Ngabe-Bugle, the indigenous area way west of us. Lisa was up there assisting with a coffee/business seminar run by our good friend Ed from Boston. Ed is the Peace Corps Panama coffee coordinator, and he works with producers to promote organic methods, better business practices, etc. Lisa will return to the Comarca for two more sessions of the seminar.

Thirty-seven people participated in the seminar, including this woman wearing the traditional Ngabe dress. She's seen here with a drawing of her finca (farm). Teams did drawings to help articulate plans for their farming activities. Lisa and Ashley also gave charlas on time management and how to hold effective meetings.

The two young ladies in the center of this photo, Viviana and Yaleyka, are members of our town's Ecoclub. While Matt was in the city working on the PC magazine, they and two other young people accompanied Lisa to a big Ecoclub seminar. Dozens of kids were on hand to form a regional alliance of clubs and discuss environmental protection projects. Participants were given vegetables to plant in their hometowns.

Mateo and Adam posed recently for this photo in our living room. We're trying to put together a big photo album for the family.

In other news, we returned home from the stove project and delivered talks and slideshows to several families on how to make these stoves. Our calendar is getting booked up again, and that's the way it ought to be. Time is flying down here, and we can't believe it's almost October. Happy Birthday, Caitlin!

We forgot to mention in previous posts that Irving Saladino won the Olympic gold medal in the long-jump. Felicidades! He's an amazing athlete, and the Panamanian people are extremely proud. Fortunately, we got to watch him win live on local TV.

And one more news item before we go: the country's largest political party, the PRD (Partido Revolucionario Democratico), had its presidential primary recently after many months of high-profile campaigning. Balbina Herrera defeated Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro and several other candidates. The election is in May.

A Year in Panama

Here´s our cooperative´s traditional dance group dancing during the co-op´s annual meeting. The girls are wearing polleras, Panama´s traditional dress.

Lisa kept the vote total during the election of officers at the annual meeting. Voting took forever, as every one of the 150 members who showed up voted for 3 candidates by stating their names out loud, in front of everyone.

Here´s the beach we got to visit after our recent business plan seminar. Turtles nest here and the townspeople make sure they´re protected.

This shot looks back at the mainland from the beach. The boats, or lanchas, in the background are built by one of the guys whose family fed us during the weekend. We had really great fried corvina, the best fish down here, not to mention excellent rice and beans and fried pork.

This bar and mountain are in El Valle de Anton. The PC Gender and Development organization had a meeting there (at a pizza restaurant, not the bar). The mist-covered mountains here are really beautiful.

This is our good friend Amilkar, who taught himself to speak English. He studies physics at the big university in Panama City, and we hope one day he´ll come to the States to get a degree at MIT or RPI.

Boli helped Lisa clear the area for their new vegetable garden (huerto). People love to cut grass and weeds with a machete, stooped over so the blade cuts almost parallel to the ground. It´s not much fun.

This is the big cage full of iguanas our friend Angelica keeps in her backyard. Her family eats one or two a month. They say it tastes like chicken, but we have yet to try some.

Boli, Adam, Lisa, and Glenny (l-r) posed for this shot in our living room. Adam´s gut is growing muy rapido. But he´s really cute!

In mid-August we marked our 1-year anniversary in Panama! To celebrate, everyone in our group has to go to the city to submit to all kinds of medical testing so the PC can see what´s been crawling around in our bellies for the last 12 months. We´ll also get a chance to catch up with the whole gang from training.

Speaking of training, Lisa spent a week near the city teaching new business volunteers about PC stuff, including how to assess your community´s needs. Matt stayed home to teach English, visit with the neighbors, and read the Milagro Beanfield War, a great book. Reina and the kids made sure he was fed. One night they made Matt fried beef with rice and salad, which everyone ate while watching the Red Sox beat the Yankees. They carry almost every Yankees game here on one of the networks everyone gets.

When Lisa got back, we hosted a new couple working in the business program for a weekend visit. We did the same thing a year ago when we were trainees, getting a chance to see how volunteers live. Our guests last week, Ben and Lisa, were really fun and they got to witness our cooperative´s annual meeting. The huge event featured lots of financial stuff, the election of new officers, and tons of food. They slaughtered a cow and grilled it and many folks, including Lisa and Lisa, helped make bollos (steamed cornmeal things shaped like sausages) the night before. Sadly, the discoteca scheduled for after the meeting was canceled because the DJ backed out at the last moment. We still had a great time, though.

In other work news, 30 teenagers from our town filled a bus to go to the health fair we helped organize in our buddy Andrew´s site an hour away. Our group, which filled a whole bus we chartered for the occassion, was really into it. They participated in all the charlas and games and had a lot of laughs. We also had a great lunch of chicken, rice, and potato salad made for the 100-person fair by a local restaurant (fonda) owner. Lisa and our friend Ashley gave lectures on HIV and AIDS and Matt and buddy Shawn talked about self esteem. Another 10 volunteers led other charlas and helped keep things running smoothly. The Red Cross and other agencies were also on hand, so the day was a big success.

A few days ago, we helped people in a nearby coastal town prepare business plans. Lisa worked with a lady named Florentina who hopes to open a restaurant, and Matt worked with a young guy named Oliver who wants to build three cabanas for tourists. Five other volunteers worked with people on similar ventures. The attendees can now go to banks or other sources with very professional business plans that include all kinds of stuff like income projections for the next five years. When we finished our work, we got to swim in the ocean and beneath a waterfall. Lisa also held little baby turtles that nest on the beach.

Later this month, we´re compiling information on our area for tourism guides and we´re going to build another lorena stove up in the mountains. Matt´s also heading to Panama City to work on the next edition of the PC Panama magazine.

Back in our site, everyone seems good. Reina´s baby Adam is getting bigger every day and the kids are working on a garden with Lisa. This week they aim to start their long-awaited compost pile to improve the soil. The land is all cleared and ready to go. Some yucca and tomatoes and pineapple are already started.

In leisure news, we got a cool cloth hammock and strung it up in our living room. When the sun´s not out, or if you`ve got a really good breeze running through the house, you can sit in it during the day. But it´s most comfortable for morning and evening reading. It is the rainy season, but it remains hot, hot, hot most days in sugar country.

But we ain´t complaining! We´re ready to be here for another year, si Dios quiere. As always, thanks for reading our blog. And Go Red Sox!

Trip Home Part III

Here are more photos from our big trip home. We were quite impressed with Minnesota. And we had a ball staying in downtown St. Paul, dining and touring with a great group of Vermonters and New Yorkers.

We visited this cool park in Minneapolis the day after Tim and Jen's wedding. Jen's dad led an awesome tour of the Twin Cities.


The tour included a stop at the totally huge Mall of America. We bought a great Frisbee here for the kids back in Panama.


Erin and Abby (above) and dad Russ were in Minneapolis to see Erin's brother, so we got to have a long visit.

Matt's has the best burgers in the world! The "Juicy Lucy" is made with cheddar cheese inside the burger. Here we also chowed down on big baskets of fries. This is a classic place and a must for any Twin Cities visitor.

Here's Scott, Lisa, and Cait during Tim and Jen's rehearsal dinner in St. Paul. We had awesome Italian food that night.


Nell, Martha, and Libby posed for a photo at the Italian place. The girls had a great time joking around with Lisa.

Matt and Tim also had a blast. Tim and Jen very generously gave Matt a bottle of really nice French booze and a great book about Colombia.

The wedding was beautiful. Needless to say, Matt was very proud to be the bestman. Cait did the Prayer of the Faithful.

John (left), Tim's dad and Matt's uncle, posed with siblings (l-r) Jean, Mim, Johanna, Margaret, Maura, Mary, Jim, and Martha. The campus where the wedding was held is really nice, and St. Paul in general is a cool place.