PACA Pickled Peppers

Here in Peace Corps we have these Participatory Analysis for Community Action (PACA) tools. Basically it is a way to have the community figure out how they could better their own community. You use tools such as having different demographics make community maps to see what areas the men and women like and where they spend the majority of their time, have them make daily schedules to see how their time is spent (if someone has to spend 2 hours a day going to get water, maybe we could make an aqueduct to fix that problem), and make annual calendars to see when would be good times for project work days. I decided to do these tools by having a community meeting where we could get together, break into groups, and do these on large pieces of paper.

We were to have our meeting on Saturday, October 11th and the people I had talked to seemed to be cool with the idea, so I had a guy announce it Friday night that the next day at 3 p.m. we would have our meeting. To announce it he is basically the town crier, he just walks around town and loudly announces what you want. It is pretty awesome to have. Anywho, I woke up the next day and was mentally preparing for the meeting during breakfast when my host mom says "Hey, so the town representante (representative) wants to be there and can't today so your meeting should be tomorrow. Also it was announced that it is tomorrow." This obviously caused some concern since now I don't know what was actually announced for my meeting. I eventually found the town crier guy, Jesu, and talked with him to find out what actually happened (my host mom seemed iffy on the validity of her tale). Jesu said that he started announcing that it would be today at 3 but then after talking to the representante, Carlito, he wasn't sure what I would want so he stopped announcing to wait a decision. I told him this was fine (I have a REALLY flexible schedule nowadays) and that we could push it to Sunday at 3. He told me he would announce this (I never heard him do it....don't think it happened). Even still I had a decent number show up to the meeting.

Sunday at 3 I went down to the community meeting center, a white building with a big pavilion thing that has a couple small rooms off it we were to meet under the pavilion half, and started setting up chairs and such. You may be thinking "Austin why would you set up at three if your meeting was to start at three?" well that is simple enough, this is Latin America our meeting really started at 4. This one hour delay is pretty normal and not too bad all things considered. I just will schedule things an hour earlier than I intend to start them...as long as I don't carry that habit back to the states. By 4 o'clock I had 20 people in attendance, including Matt visiting to help out and observe, so we kicked things off. I took down a list of things they thought could be fixed in town to be used in a later meeting and then we broke into groups to make a map, a daily schedule, and an annual calendar. It ran about an hour and a half and went quite well. Everyone participated for the most part and seemed to have fun. I hope to have another meeting here in November to go over what we did and continue our discussion of priorities for the town. I wanted to have the second half of this meeting October 19th but I could not for reasons explained in a later blog! I am happy with how the meeting went (by the end we had about 30 adults in attendance) and I look forward to continuing the work with Taimati and eventually getting some projects rolling!

Status update

So, it has been a while since I have made an appearance around here I realize. First, I would of course like to apologize for those of you that have been checking here without seeing any updates, hang in there stuff is coming soon! The good news is that I have finally met the computer sciences teacher at the school in my town and he gave me the password for the schools wifi, so I can access it when I desire. Now for the bad news, it is a spotty signal and doesn’t seem to be that great so I’m not sure whether I will be able to upload photos or videos on it, but hey something is better than nothing!

In related news I am looking into getting data on my cell phone as well so if you have a smart phone, enjoy talking with me, and well…I guess that is about all the requirements…..then download Whatsapp. It is free, and uses the internet to send text messages, photos, and videos so if I have data then we can be best buddies even from separate countries!

This past month in site has been pretty wonderful. I am definitely starting to feel more at home now and really embracing Taimati as my community. The work is still slow, mostly just going around to chat with people and get to know them, but the first few months of Peace Corps service really have an emphasis on integrating to your community to become a part of it. In all honesty some days it is a little boring/hard to find the motivation to go around to chat with people but that is a part of life and I try to push through as best as I can. There has been a lot that has happened in the past few weeks though and I hope to get to share that in some blogs. I have had my first community meeting, I found/decided on which house I will be renting in to live solo starting in December, and I had my first incident  of calling the duty phone (the number you call when security things are amiss). I am in the city right now because I start a week of language training tomorrow so I hope to get a few blogs scheduled to go out and maybe a few photos uploaded. We will see what I can accomplish, but for now I am just livin' the life out here in Panama and everything is going well.

P.S. A huge thank you to the people that have sent me some care packages recently, I love them and everything I have received.

P.P.S. My friend Matt runs a blog over at  http://mattspanamapeacecorpsblog.blogspot.com/ you should read it and check out the stuff he posts. He is in Cemaco, a community of the indigenous Wounaan people and only lives 25 minutes away by hiking so we make guest appearances in each others lives pretty frequently!

Photos and Stories

The intent of this post is to give a small collection of photos, hopefully with a short story on each one to give some background to my life in Taimati (note: SMALL collection of photos, the internet has been slow so it has been plenty difficult to get these few pictures out here). So let's get started!

 First off we have the day I went to clean the mountain paths with my host mom and another kid. This is a picture of one of the paths and the dog. We spend most of the time spraying pesticide, chopping plants with a machete, and waging war against the jungle which chose a full frontal assault of humongous mosquitoes and spiders.

Next up is a collection of photos from a day of harvesting a shellfish known as piangua. I was eating breakfast this day when I heard Matt yell "Austin! Come out and play!" so I promptly went out to see what was up. He and a collection of ladies/girls from his village were going to get these shellfish, so of course I joined for the adventure. We walked far far far, to the ends of the earth...or at least the end of the beach...and then delved into a mangrove swamp. The harvest involved getting on all fours and drudging through the mud and the muck to put your hand down coin-sized holes and pull out ping-pong ball sized shells. The day was filled with fun, laughter, and plenty of mud!

 Entering the mangroves in the beginning

 Matt with our harvest of piangua in a bag

 Like I said, a plenty of mud!

 

 Our harvest (the two large shells are called Kuka Leka and were from a different day of harvesting on some mud flats)

You may recognize this next photo. A helicopter! It was quite the spectacle landing in Taimati. There is a project going on here to give people gardening equipment and chickens in an attempt to provide sustainable food. On this day they distributed all the equipment and had a little speech shindig with some politicians from the nearby regional capital of Las Palmas.

Last but certainly not least is a photo of the sunset. Most evenings are pretty cloudy on the horizon so you don't get much of a sunset, but every once in a while you get something really photo-worthy.

 

Psalm 27:4 - One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and seek Him in His temple.

Taimati Life

So I am a few weeks into my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer and I will say that it is definitely an adventure. My first day here was difficult. I started off the morning great, but after I made it through my list of things to do that day I hit a wave of homesickness that was affiliated with being a bit tired as well as the realization of not having a set schedule or a given list of things to do. Since then I have adapted to Peace Corps life seemingly well. I wake up each day with a vague idea of what I plan on doing in the spaces of my day and then see where the day takes me. More often than not someone suggests doing something that ends up being an adventure. So far I have visited Cemaco (the site of Mateo, my closest volunteer) with my host mom as she basically sold lottery numbers, I also accompanied her to clean jungle paths in the mountains to her farm (HUGE mosquitoes and spiders), and I have gone twice to search for shellfish on the coast with Mateo and some people from his village (once for piangua and once for kuka leka, both fun to search for and pronounce). Basically I have no idea what I am doing tomorrow, ever. I live very much so in the present, and I have learned to be OK wit that. Of course I still have my meetings and such as hard calendar dates to attend to, but Peace Corps for me so far seems to be all about relaxing, enjoying the ride, and learning what I can while I go.

Taimati Arrival

At the writing of my last post I was waiting in Meteti to finally be able to catch a boat to my site of Taimati. Well, the day finally arrived when I would be able to show up at my new home. The boat was to arrive at 10:00 am so I got to Puerto Quimba at 8:45 am.  10 o' clock came and went without a boat, so I made friends with the local Senafront guys (Senafront is basically Panamanian boarder/drug control). My boat finally showed up at 12:15 and we grabbed some food then left by 12:45. We stopped in Las Palmas and docked there for a bit waiting for the tide to rise, although it was obviously going down demonstrated by the water line being distanced from where we layed our anchor on the shore. We waited until 2 when we went to Punta Alegre. Here the tide was noticably too low to enter Taimati anymore so we waited for the tide to go all the way out and start coming back in. This did not happen until about 7:30 pm. We finally got out of there with a rising tide... but I said rising, not high. The tide served us well until about one mile out from Taimati where we hit bottom. We sat in our boat, chatted, I played a little music from my iPod, and we waited. Our motor was up but every 15-20 minutes or so we had enough tide to push our boat an extra couple hundred feet. This led to the four of us all standing outside the boat and pulling it ashore as we could. Once we got within a stone's throw of the shore some awaiting people came out to help us pull it in. I had arrived, finally around 10:00 pm, I had arrived to my new home of Taimati.

Party Time Pickle!

So we all went to a fancy pants reception and swearing in party, but what should your first actions as a Peace Corps Volunteer be? Well, party of course! After the reception we went out on the town, got some food, and hung out in the area of Casco Viejo in Panama City for the night. It was a lot of fun filled with some good food, dancing, and even an hour of rollerblading down a bike/run/rollerblade path. The next morning, way too early in the morning, we packed up our things and left the dorms at the office and headed to our last hoorah, a night at a beach called Playa Malibu near Gorgona, or something like that. Basically all 50 of us (or very near it, I think 2 or 3 didn't join) went and stayed at a hostel on the beach and hung out for the day and night. It was a blast and unfortunately too fun/short for me to get a lot of photos. It was hanging out with people as much as I could and no time to step back and snap some photos so for that I almost apologize. Only almost because I regret not having the photos to share, but I do not regret spending all my time with my friends. The morning after the beach day we slowly said goodbye to our friends as they loaded up in taxis to start their journeys to their sites. I will go ahead and admit that this was a pretty sad morning. Best case scenario we will see each other again at the beginning of December, worst case scenario we see each other again middle of January. This doesn't seem like too long, but when your friendships were forged through being in a tight-knit community together all the time for 10 weeks straight it is quite a long time without seeing each other. Well now that the party is all over I find myself waiting in anticipation of arriving at my site. We only have a couple days a week that the boat runs in and out of Taimati, and I have to wait until Thursday in Meteti for the boat to arrive. Here I wait in eager anticipation of the journey that lies ahead of me. I know that there will be lots of ups and downs, but it will be an experience that helps shape my life and I am happy to have the chance to go through it. So here we go I suppose!

The Edge

Well ladies and gentlemen, I write to you now my first post as a true blue American Peace Corps Volunteer. These past weeks since my site visit have gone by faster than the plane which brought us to this beautiful place. It is just now that I am able to sit and reflect on the events that have passed and be amazed by both their velocity and significance. As you are well aware I went to my site visit a few weeks ago and now I am on my return journey there, walking off the edge of my largest leap so far in this grand experience.

To be honest, the majority of the past few weeks has been mundane, just review of training and preparation for our final departure. We did leave our training communities this past Monday and it was sad to say goodbye to Mama Rita. We had a nice going away party though with all the trainees and their families that doubled as a cultural exchange event, so of course we presented them with a show of our different states and gifted them such great tunes as the cha-cha slide and electric slide...they probably think American music is super wierd now to be honest.

After we left Santa Rita we spent the next couple days in the Peace Corps office and dorms there. This was a fun time since we were able to hang out with the trainees from the Sustainable Ag. Systems sector. Filled with mostly last minute administrative duties and review of what we had learned before, these days passed quickly which lead us to THE DAY that we had been waiting for...swear-in.

I am sorry to say that I do not have that many photos from Swear-In Day, but it was held at the ambassadors house and did not feel quite right to be snapping up photos during such a fancy pants event. I do have a few though which I took myself and a few that I can take from other people. There is a word here used fairly often, ye-ye, it means the Panamanian equivalent of "hoity toity" or something like that. Suffice it to say however, that the ambassador's house was quite ye-ye. A large house with  staff and bathrooms significantly larger than my future Peace Corps home, it expressed more of a feel of some official building than a place I would want to be my house. The ambassador himself was quite the opposite though, a nice guy with a down to earth sense about him. The swear-in ceremony started promptly at 2:00 and went until approximately 2:45. We heard short speeches from the ambassador, some leaders of Panamanian organizations and a representative we chose from the EH and SAS sectors of our training group. We also sang the Panamanian national anthem (it went horribly, the music played quietly and much faster than we had practiced...the ambassador even made a joke about how it is fortunate that we did not come here as a choir) and the US national anthem (which proceeded substantially better). After the singing we all recited our swearing-in oath and then adjourned for a lot of hors-d'oeuvres. Finally, 4:00 on the dot we left the ambassadors house, took some pictures, and went on to our post swear-in celebrations!

 G-75 EH Group Photo

G-75 "Samboozers" (a.k.a the guys going to live in the Sambu region)