Lovely Laundry

We had a request from a wonderful reader (thanks Dad Cropper) to tell a little bit about how Panamanians deal with laundry. Well, what an interesting subject it is, I have spend many hours contemplating laundry since I got here...

Lets start with a photo to grease the imagination:

This is me, washing laundry at our host family house. Yup, I am sitting on a block of wood (cushioned by my life preserver for long term rear end happiness). There is soapy water in the tub at my feet. Off to the left is the water spigot...the only water source near the house. All water for house use is hauled from this spigot about 20 feet away from the house. This spigot and cement pad is also where the family shower (note...there are no curtains or anything to block the view and it is in full view of the house and walkway....yup, I have been taking showers after dark.) Now, to be fair...if my house were as isolated as theirs, showers in the open air would be fine when I didn't have guests.

OK, back to laundry. Yes, there are laundry machines in Panama, some just like the ones in your house. However, some are smaller than the ones that we are used to in the states...about 1/3 the size and the spinner part is separate from the washing part. Many houses that have a washer do not have a drier. Most clothes are line dried with a careful eye on the sky so the clothes come down before rain. There are many women that do laundry by hand in sinks, tubs and creeks. I say women because laundry is considered women's work by men and women alike (unless the men live alone).

So, I have been in Panama for 4 months now, and have done laundry at 5 different host houses...and have received help or instructions at all of them. I think that Panamanians like having opportunities to teach me new things. At one house I even choose to do laundry for the first time on a day when the lady of the house would not be around to offer help....but the man of the house filled in for her. He offered me advice or more soap at least 4 times. So here is what I have learned:
You must use a lot of laundry soap...laundry without suds is not getting clean. Lots of suds. Even though everything will be sudsy, you should apply more soap directly to any spots or stains.

You need a scrub brush with stiff plastic bristles. Every piece of clothing should get every surface brushed vigorously with the plastic brush. You use a wooden board to support the clothes while you scrub. Some women scrub so that the suds fly 4-5 feet with every stroke.

Socks get extra attention. They usually get scrubbed and then turned inside out and scrubbed again. I think that my socks have grown at least one size from the scrubbing. Also, anything that is white could be subjected to a bleaching. (I have specifically requested that Kevin not buy any more white socks or clothing, since whether or not his socks are still white reflects on how good a wife I am around here...and I am not that good a wife when it comes to white laundry.)

So, once everything is scrubbed within an inch of it's life it is hung to dry. I am not a heavily religious person, but I have been known to offer a prayer that goes "Please God, just let the sun shine long enough to dry the cotton stuff before that grey cloud gets here!". With good strong sun our quick dry clothing drys in a couple of hours...cotton takes longer. Much of the day the sun beats straight down...no angle at all, so it does not hit the sides of the clothing only the top edge. If there is a breeze that seems better, but breeze is usually a predictor of rain, so it is a mixed blessing.

If there is not enough sun things just don't dry. Three days after a washing I have had things still a bit damp...just damp enough to start mildew/mold if folded and put away. The humidity in the air can be enough to stop the drying process completely. After more than 12-24 hours clothes get a musty smell. Sun helps to kill the smell, but you probably don't have sun or you wouldn't have the smell in the first place. People in areas with electricity will sometimes hang things behind a refrigerator and use the heat of the fridge to promote drying.

Overall, laundry takes us 2-3 hours in a day 2x a week. For most families laundry is a major task for the alma de casa (soul of the house or housewife) taking up complete mornings a couple days a week. It is serious business, because cleanliness is something that Panamanians value. Cleanliness is something that is not limited by monetary resources (yes it is easier with money but possible for everyone), just effort.

Island Life Pictures

So, you may be wondering just what it looks like here on the island. Well, the following photos are an indication. As you look and them and become convinced that we live in paradise, I ask you to remember the other photos you have seen on this blog....muddy feet from muddy trails that are the only way to get around, scorpions, no electricity. And rememer....rain is not very photogenic most of the time...so there are no photos of an agua cero (Spanish for hard as heck rain) to balence out your view.

Sunrise over the beach.

Looking East at another island.

Yup, sometimes it is a bit too pretty.

A typical fishing boat on our island.

Part of the view from our first host family house...just outside the door.

Myst

If you’ve never played the Myst problem solving computer game, I recommend it. The puzzles and mysteries are interesting, the graphics aren’t bad (of course, it is 10+ years old now) and best of all, you’ll get an idea of our work here on the island. Unlike most other popular computer games, the objective is to wander around and learn new things, and best of all, you don’t die in Myst. It is initially an empty world, full of beautiful scenery, with strange and wonderful things waiting to be discovered; over time, you receive messages that guide your explorations as you solve mysteries and eventually the game.

We don’t generally receive cryptic messages through the space-time continuum (although checking the cell phone every two to three days to see what messages have been left sometimes feels close), but the path finding, discovering new places, listening to noises, and solving mysteries is very similar.

For example, the other day, April took a path off the main trail up a steep hill to visit a house; we knew the family, but hadn’t yet visited their house, and wanted to pay a courtesy call. From their yard, she suddenly spotted another house on the next hill over, behind a stretch of trail we’d passed numerous times, thought we knew, and where we’d never seen a side path. Aha, a mystery to solve, a new path to find, and a new family to talk to. By following some side trails, and then smaller, almost hidden paths, we eventually found our way up to that house, and the oldest woman on the island (86 years old, and until about 10 years ago, hauled water up the hill from the creek every day).

When returning to the island the last time, from the boat we spotted a house overlooking the water, on a point of land behind the school where we didn’t know anybody lived, so we were curious to find the house and talk to the owner. It turned out the house was sold last year and nobody knows who the new owner is or how to contact them. But we did manage to find the path to the house, hidden in tall grass between the school fence and a rice field, after discovering several other houses on other paths nearby. And we really liked this owner-less house. It has four rooms, a porch, and a great view, and just needs doors, a shower, a latrine, and water. While we were sitting there enjoying solitude, the view and contemplating the options of living there, a neighbor walked through and told us of a back path to the house (okay, so that part was kind of Myst-like, with a sudden information presentation). So the next day we returned via that back path, and were surprised to hear music coming from the house. There were three guys clearing the yard, apparently because the owner was coming that weekend. What sweet coincidence, and another clue towards solving the mystery of the ownerless house. (Although she didn’t show up that weekend.)

There are about 130 adults on the island in about 75 houses, of which we think we’ve visited 60+. We were luckily given a list of all the registered voters from the last election (May 2004), thanks to my guide. However, the names are in order by the equivalent of Social Security Number, so we’ve been working the puzzles of geographical community on the island, spouses, parents / children, and relatives. The relationships are actually a bit easier than it would be in the US, because naming convention here is [Given Name] [Father’s Last Name] [Mother’s Last Name]. So José Abrego Madrid is the son of Hector Abrego Campos and Cecilia Madrid Apericio. But given the small number of families on the island, there are a lot of relatives.

Besides spotting hidden paths and places and solving mysteries, there is one more Myst-like aspect of the island. When you play Myst, you definitely need to turn on your computer speakers, because the background noises can provide subtle hints to where you are and what you’re doing (especially in the sequel games). One of the main sounds I recall from the game is the sounds lapping water and bird calls, and we definitely have those most places we go on the island. The mysterious sounds can lead you to points of interest; for instance, the Music House, as we called it, hidden from the main trail by a hill of thick brush, coconuts, and palm trees, but audible every time we passed. We finally found the path to it in the backyard of the neighbor’s house.

Thinking about our community “research” as solving a mystery over the course of our first several months (and possibly entire two years: we’ve heard rumors of trails that cross the center of the island and a house located in there, but we’re leaving that exploration for the dry season) makes the lengthy walks and hidden frustrations just a bit more enjoyable. What new sight may be around that next bend that we haven’t seen before, or what new answer might we find from a totally unexpected source?

Will we know everything about our own real-life Myst in just two years? Doubtful. But playing the game can be a lot quicker, so have fun.

What you can send for us....

We are sad to report that April’s Grandpa Dierks is going through chemotherapy. This is his second fight with lung cancer and at the moment the cancer has the upper hand. They are doing all they can for him and his spirits are fairly high…which will not surprise anyone who has met him.

Many of you have asked what you could do for us or send us, well here is something you can do. If you would like to send Grandpa Dierks a card in the mail it would brighten his day and make us pretty happy as well (and hey – no international postage costs!). If you are interested, his address is:
Paul “Grandpa” Dierks
12140 Rhonda Terrace
Seminole, FL 33772
In your card please explain who you are, and how you know us. Thanks to all who send cards!

Hurricane? What Hurricane??

Well, you may have heard about the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and wondered just what these mean for those poor Peace Corps Volunteers in Central America? Heck, even WE heard about them and we get almost no news...well we get news via radio daily in very fast Spanish but we always wonder just exactly was said.

As for the current hurricane, Felix, I don´t know anything for sure, but I am guessing that those in Honduras (217 vols), Belize (62 vols), Guatamala (179 vols) and Nicaragua (172 vols) have probably been put on alert or consoladated to a safe place until after the storm passes. I hope that they and thier communities come throught this hurricane without major difficulty.

As for Panama, we are not in the path of the major hurricane routes. We don´t tend to get hit by the hurricanes which tend to run through farther north. We may or may not get rain from the storms (I am still confused by the various answers I get in Spanish about if the rain we had a little while back was just normal or due to the last hurricane.)

Here in Panama we do occasionally get inpressive rain, and flooding is a more common problem than hurricanes. It should help our moms to relaxe to know that flooding is not a major issue on the island as there is not much distance between any point of land and the gulf so water drains quickly here. In many ways we feel very safe on our island...crime is almost unheard of, it is a small town feel, and the most sever weather threat is lightning...and we are not going to go standing on the peaks durring storms.

Take care....may you get the rain you need and not much more.

Comparisons Part I - Food

There are a lot of things that are very different between Panamá and the US. You´ve probably already noted some of them in our previous posts, but there are a few that have really stuck out to us in our first three and a half months here, so we´re going to start noting some of them. For today, it is differences in Food.

McDonalds: I regret to say I’ve eaten at it more since I’ve been here than in the past several years in the states (which means all of once). It is actually more expensive than in the states, and in at least one discussion, someone here referred to it as a place for rich people, or an expensive meal out. (It is true, you can get tipico, which is typical Panamanian meals, for less, but McDs is still the king of the chain restaurants.) Here in our provincial capital, we found out the other night when the power went out that the McDs has its own power source, as their sign - way up high - was one of the few lights around, and based upon the line at the lighted drive thru, they were doing a booming business.

Hot Dogs: While we haven’t had any in the island, we had bastante (more than enough) salchicas (hot dogs) during training. And they aren’t generally as “good” as the ones in the states. Not sure why, but every time we’re in the grocery, we’re amazed by the sheer numbers of salchicas on the shelf: literally five to fifteen feet of refrigerated shelf space dedicated to a variety of hotdogs. The ways to cook them are endless, but amongst the most common are boiled, sliced thin and cooked in a ketchup sauce, or sliced longways and fried. They are then served with a bollo (a boiled roll of corn mush), with rice, with spaghetti noodles, with platanos, or with yuca, for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. They are almost never served in a bun however; the use of hotdog bun type breads (at least in training) seemed to be reserved for squishing flat and ¨toasting¨ in a skillet. (We did see in one mall foodcourt a "Hannahs", which had the font and look of a "Nathans" hotdog stand, but at the time, we were hotdogged out and didn´t try it.)

Fish: In our training community, a truck would drive through with a loudspeaker loudly proclaiming it was selling something indecipherable, which turned out to be "Pek-ow", which in turn really means, "pescado", which is fish.

(Side note on names of animals and foods: in Spanish, they have different names. A chicken is a "gallina", while the drumstick and breast are from a "pollo". Ditto for "pez" in the sea turning into "pescado" on my plate. Of course, "pato" is duck whereever, and "ganado" - cattle - turn into "carne" on the menu, similar to a "cow" becoming a "steak" or "burger", and "puerco" - pig - becomes "jamon" - ham - in the supermarket aisle.)

But we didn´t eat much fish during training.

Since we´ve arrived in the island, we´ve eaten a lot of fish.

That shouldn´t be too surprising, but our first host family on the island did joke about us getting tired of it after about three days of fish and rice for lunch and dinner. (We were only slightly tired of it. :) They had a net set in the waters just off their house, and would check it daily. One day, they brought in 20 different fish, of 15 different types, the vast majority of which I couldn´t identify in English. They are typically 2-3 lbs each. She cleaned them right away (unless they happened to have some ice brought in from the port), feeding the gills, innards, and brains to the chickens, dogs, and cat (who ever was fastest). I even saw one of the fish with a whole sardine, 8 inches long, inside its stomach!

So if you don´t eat it right away, and don´t have ice, how do you preserve that many fish? First they are salted - heavily. Often they are then hung over the fogon (see a post below about cooking) to smoke. Amazingly enough, she would later fry this salted and smoked fish, and we´d have it for dinner, with the salted-smoked-fried leftovers cold for breakfast.

Knowing fish is good for me, and how often we´ve eaten fish, I figure I am pretty healthy right now.

Coconuts: Bastante! There are a lot of coconuts in the island, many of which seem to fall indiscriminately with a loud, dangerous, sounding thunk while we aren’t too far away. Many of them are put to good use, split with a machete or ax so the chickens or ducks can feed on them. (The chickens and ducks both run free in the yards, generally fed on corn from the fields and coconuts. We laugh with our host families about eating coconut-fed chickens.) Yet we really haven´t eaten any coconut meals; no coconut rice, nothing cooked with coconut. In fact, the closest we´ve come to seeing anyone use the coconuts for human consumption has been drinking the pipa or coconut water inside unripe coconuts. (Oh, and as I write the next paragraph, as duros.)

Grapes, cheese, ice cream, yogurt: You may be thinking, "Wow, how do they get all of that on an island without electricity??" And you´d be right. Although one of the tiendas (stores) on the island has invested in a propane-chilled fridge so they can sell sodas, juices, and duros (frozen slices of heaven on a hot day, as long as they are a good flavor; typically they are a blend of water, some local fruit or fruit juice, sugar, and maybe vanilla. Piña (pineapple), coco (coconut), guanabana (no idea), maracoya (no idea), and tamarindo (no idea) are all good; nance is a disgusting fruit and seems to divide Panamaians the way mincemeat pie divides my family at Thanksgiving, so I don´t feel bad about being in the 50% who do not like it.), none of the items in the title are available on the island. So when we are in Santiago for a few days to check the internet or have a meeting, we hit one of the supermarkets (two of which are now open 24-hours!) for a dose of grapes, cheese, and yogurt, and hopefully some ice cream for dessert. Yes, we ate all of these in the states, but it is much more of a feast and famine sort of thing now, with one or two meals typically made of them during our couple of days out of site.

That is it for now in the comparison of foods between Panamá and the US; once we start our own garden and are cooking on our own, I´m sure there will be more, comparing what manages to grow where (tomatos seem to be pretty rare / expensive here!), prices, and other aisles of the supermarkets.

Q&A: How islanders cook

Bill Andrews posted a comment asking how folks cook on the island, and we couldn’t have paid him for such a great leading question, as this is one of our first projects we are working on as part of our Peace Corps service! (BTW Bill, please send us more info on your solar stove; we´d be interested in trying one here.)

In Panamá, while most families have a 25-lb. propane tank and a gas stove, the traditional cooking method is a fogon (FUH-goun, rhymes with scone), which is really just three rocks (soccer ball sized) with the fire in their midst.

(Here is April proudly showing off brownies she cooked on a fogon using an ingenious nested pot system to serve as an oven. Wow that was yummy!)

Ollas (pots) of many sizes can be balanced on the stones for cooking; rice, soups, beans and lentils, boiling corn, and other long-cooking items are all cooked this way to save gas. (Frying plantanos, fish, or eggs and other foods that don’t need to cook as long, is done on the gas stove, although I haven’t really discerned a real plan for how long things cook; I’ve seen spaghetti noodles at a rapid boil for over 20 minutes, and a big pot of rice reheated for just a minute. I think things cook until you remember them sometimes.)

Ironically, this combination of cooking methods was just as true in our training community, about an hour outside Panamá City, as it is here in the island. Our host mom there had a fogon out in a gazebo type structure there as well, and actually used it almost daily. But here on the island, most folks have the fogon much closer to their kitchen.

And this brings us to why April and I are working on the cooking methods. As you can imagine, the fogon design is not overly efficient and can be rather smoky. Sometimes the kitchen, sometimes the entire house, will be filled with smoke, and often our clothes, hanging on the line near the fogon area, would come down clean but smelling of smoke (sometimes better than the slightly moldy smell they’d take on after three grey, damp, days on the line ;). The mother of the house, who will often spend a large portion of her day either cooking on the fogon, tending the fogon, or working near the fogon, will breathe in a lot of smoke while tending an open fire. Some older women have been told by doctors that when they start coughing a lot, they shouldn’t use the fogon for several days. In addition, firewood must be collected and split almost daily, and even on an island as large as ours, there is a limit to how much wood you can cut.

Which brings us to the estufa lorena, which I think originated in Africa. (Here is a picture of April working on a split-open model of an estufa for a talk we gave on its designs and benefits.)

Constructed of clay, sand, and grasses, it functions a bit like a masonry heater or a brick oven. With only one opening in the front for tending the fire (compared with the easy 360° access of a fogon), it contains the heat much better. With two openings on the top, it can cook two ollas at once, instead of just one, increasing the efficiency of cooking and wood use. Lastly, with a chimney in the back, it draws the smoke out of the cooking area and releases it above the roof line, benefiting the health of the cook and her family.

In talking about the estufa lorena with some of the folks on the island, we already have requests for about four or five. If we make just that many, it will be a pretty impressive change, and something we hope the folks here will be able to continue teaching and building with each other.

One of the main kitchens we hope to change is in the school. Everyday, two moms of kids in the school come in and cook a cream-of-wheat type vitamin drink for mid-morning snack, and then a lunch of rice and beans. The school kitchen is a one room building with black roof and walls due to the smoke, and often the cooks have to step outside to avoid the smoke. If the Madres and Padres de Familia (the equivalent of the PTA) are interested, we hope to build a large estufa there, which not only will make a huge difference to the cooks each day, but will also provide a great place to demonstrate the estufa to a wide audience of island cooks.

As for us, right now we are planning on a gas stove and probably an estufa as well, so we can boil big pots of water to occasionally wash clothes in hot water, and because it can serve as an oven after warming up - and we´d love more brownies (even without cold milk) and maybe to make a pizza!

Thanks for the question Bill, and everyone, feel free to ask more! We´ll do our best to answer them as soon as we can!

Q&A: Water sources and purification

Bill asked another question as well, about water sources and purification. Yet again, a topic very close to some of our tasking, as the islanders are very interested in watershed reforestation and source protection.

Much of Panamá, including our training site, runs off an aquaducto system, which is a series of PVC pipes serving all the houses in a community, coming from a big tank somewhere higher up, which in turn is fed by a PVC pipe from a quebrada (stream), fuente de agua (water source), or ojo de agua (spring) even higher up. Here on the island, as you can imagine, there isn´t too much room for that "higher up", and as spread out as the houses are, there are numerous separate aquaducto systems and associated sources. (In our current host house, this has led to the water not quite having enough pressure to reach the house, and so we have a pluma - spigot - in the yard about 25 feet from the house, and haul water for cooking and cleaning dishes, and do bucket showers and laundry there in the yard.)

As for cleaning the water, well, supposedly you cholorinate the system regularly or give it a thorough cleaning every three months or so, but of course nobody pays for the water (generally the gov´t set up the aquaducts at some point in the past, but there is no Water Maintenance office) so there is nobody to do that sort of preventive maintenance. But, being on an island, as I said there isn´t much room for the streams to run before they are tapped, and we´ve been drinking water at our host houses and at houses as we pasear (walk around and chat) and haven´t gotten sick yet.

However, there are pastures above some of the sources, so the chance does exist. And apparently in the summer months (mid-December to April), when it is hotter and there isn´t rain, they sometimes run out (more often the houses farther from the sources or on higher ground) during the day. Both of these issues we hope to address while here with protection of watersheds and reforestation, as well as possibly talks about maintenance (preventing leaks) and conservation of water. (Yes, it is hard to believe as I listen to the past 45 minutes of heavy rain, but there are times here in Panamá that are dry and they actually run out of water. More on that in the future, when we encounter it, I´m sure. :)

Again, thanks for the questions and feel free to post more or ask for clarification.

What the corn told me

We recently stayed with a wonderful family that produces the majority of their own food through farming and fishing. They live in a beautiful spot that overlooks the water to the south of the island. They occasionally get beautiful sunsets to the west. They are also shorter than us, so all of their clotheslines are low enough to be a walking hazard.

While we lived with them we tried to pitch in regularly with their daily work – both to be a part of the family and to learn more. One night we shucked a saco (a large sack a little bigger than the size of a large bag of dog food) of maiz (field corn) and then sat around companionably talking as we removed the corn kernels from the cobs. Removing the kernels can either be easy or hard to do depending on how dry the ear of maiz is. We sat and worked together, 4 of us, for about an hour all told in order to fill a 5 gallon bucket with corn kernels.
Chickens huddling under the eaves to stay dry while it rains.

They go through this process every couple of days to provide enough food for their flock of chickens and ducks. That moment, after completing the work to feed the poultry for 2 days, is when it struck me the amount of work that goes into meat production here. They use about 2-2.5 gallons of corn kernels (in addition to 3-7 coconuts) a day to feed the chickens and ducks in order to have meat available when they want it.

Feeding the chickens and ducks (should also say that the dogs howl when the chickens get fed which is very amusing.)
I have known for a long time that being a meat eater means that it takes more resources to feed me than it would if I were a vegetarian. I know the simple facts that animals eat plants and it takes a lot more plants to produce meat than it takes to fill my tummy with veggies. But I had never directly experienced the magnitude of work involved in these facts.

Suddenly I had a very real example to put those ideas into a new light. I could clearly imagine the work that they did to plant the maiz, and the work to tend it. I know the work involved to harvest it and haul it to the house and remove the kernels. The amount of labor, time, and their resources involved to produce meat is staggering. And they don’t eat poultry every day…at most once a week.

My experiences here have made it easier to understand the idea that, for some people, eating meat is a luxury. Some simply can’t afford the time that goes into producing or money that goes into buying meat. That doesn’t mean that they don’t eat meat; instead, because eating meat is a part of the culture, a large amount of their resources goes into obtaining meat even though it might be more efficient or healthier to use those resources differently.

I know that, back home in the States, much of the work involved in commercial production of meat is done with machines. The feed is not produced by hand, but the resources (land, water, plants, energy, etc) involved in meat production are still much higher than those needed to produce the same quantity of plant-based food products.

Cecilia using a pilon (pronounced peeloan) to prepare maize for food. This process breaks up the corn to remove the casing from the kernals and facilitates faster cooking. She is MUCH better at using a pilon than I will ever be.

No, I am not going vegetarian, but I am thinking more about what I am eating and the labor that it took to produce it…it is easier to think that way when you know the people who did the labor. With this in mind, I will be eating a bit less meat here in Panama, and probably when I return as well. 2+ gallons of corn a day could more than feed me.

The Island – a better description

So what is this tropical paradise that we are living in really like? Please believe me that not every moment is spent sitting in a hammock with a great view...but those moments do happen occasionally. :)
The island is big… and hilly. We have hills reaching ~100m in height, and some parts of them are very steep. You can see the mainland and other islands all around the island. This makes for some great views and interesting weather watching. The water in the gulf is most often a pretty greenish gray color, not clear, but not murky either. After a hard rain the water will turn brown for a day or so until the sediment settles out again. We have been told that the water gets clearer in the summer season (Jan-April) when there is much less rain to cause the sediment.

Almost all of the people who live on the island live on the coast…within 100-150m of the water. There are about 77 households spread over 18+ miles of coastline (which makes visiting an all day proposition). Many houses can not see the nearest neighbor’s house. Most of the land is still owned by Panamanians….which is not true for all of the land nearby. Only one house that we know of is owned by a foreigner. There are lots of trees along the perimeter of the island around the houses.

The center of the island is mostly farm and pastures, and fairly deforested. There are tracts of forest still, but they tend to be in areas where the land is not suitable for farming or the land is not actively being farmed. In their farms, people grow yucca, rice, maize, banana, plantain, coconuts, and limited pineapple, and ñame. These crops are grown for use on the island, not for selling as they may or may not be able to raise enough food for their family.

The island pastures are used for horses and cattle. The horses are used for working the cows and transportation around the island. The cattle represent a major income source for the families who raise them…one cow can be sold for $200-$400+. Even though the cattle are raised for meat, there is very little consumption of beef on the island, it is to valuable as a product to sell to be eaten at home. (Below is a baby calf that my host family had to help with eating. When I took a good look at him I realized that he seems to be mostly or all blind...thus he was having trouble finding his mothers teats...and them being swollen huge with milk because he wasn´t able to dring regularly wasn´t helping matters at all.)

In addition to farming, fishing is a major source of food and income on the island. Many people fish for fish, shark, shrimp, lobster, and various types of shellfish. Some seafood is more commonly sold than eaten as it brings a higher price. Fried is the most common method of preparation for seafood, but it is also used in soups and smoked.

There are no cars or bicycles on the island, all of the paths are footpaths/trails. The paths can get quite muddy or feo (ugly- see photo above for post walking muddy feet). Going from place to place is like hiking, although not all trails are hilly. The beach is also used as a road, before you imagine us just strolling along the sand, many parts of the beach are quite rocky. In fact, we intend to take pictures and post about the different beach surfaces because it is quite interesting geology. The beach is a good route (sometimes longer, but always flat) unless it is high tide. You have to think about the tides when planning which way to go each day. High tide can completely cover the beach. Other types of transportation common around the island include horses and boats.

Electricity is only available on the island through solar power. Most houses (but not ours) have a 100W solar panel that was provided thought a NGO/government program. This is enough to charge a battery that can run several florescent lights or a small TV for several hours. It is not enough to power electric appliances such as refrigerators or blenders. So most houses have lights at night unless their battery has gone bad over time and they can not afford the $120 to replace it. We calculate that over the life of the battery light costs $2 a month.

Most houses have water running to them from an aqueduct system. There are 5 major aqueducts on the island…each serving a different community. The water is not filtered or chlorinated. There are some problems with water supply in the summer months when there is dramatically less rain. Some households have to haul water from the closest flowing creek during the summer.

Other notable island sites include:
· A small Catholic chapel that is visited by a priest (once in Feb and once in August so far this year).
· A primary school with grades 1-6 that serves almost 30 students. Two teachers live at the school Mon-Friday and go home for the weekend.
· A Puesto de Salud or health clinic that is staffed by a nurse. She is in the clinic 3 days a week and does home visits 2 days a week. A doctor comes to the clinic every couple of months. More serious or pressing health issues have to be taken off island.

Hope that helps to round out your imgained view of where we are living.

Photos to enjoy

The following are some photos that I wanted to share. Some of them are of things that were mentioned in previous posts...but we didn´t have the camera cord. Enjoy.

Photos of and from Panama Viejo....the ruins of the original part of Panama City.

The scorpion that we found in our bedroom wall. First photo showes his hiding place -note the hook of my toiletry bag just below him. The second shot is post mortem and showes his size.

There is some goofing off. Kevin demonstrates that making a house of cards is much, much easier with ery old cards. Note the missing card on the lower right side, yup that is a gap without a card that you see behind the 9 of hearts.

The following are photos of the process of loading cows onto a boat so they can be sold. You can probably imagine how happy the cows are with this whole process. It took a couple of hours to load the 8 cows that day. Needless to say, it is a bit dangerous for the cows, people, horses and dogs involved.