One Year More

As we just passed one year since swear-in as official volunteers (trainees or aspirantes before that) and have one year more before our COS (close of service) date, we figured it was a good time to think about what we look forward to in the final year.

Things we are looking forward to:

• Eating our First Tomato from our tomato plants: April started about 30 seedlings, and we have 15 to 20 in the ground, so we are hoping for a bumper crop; keep watching for updates on what works and what doesn't
• Making our First Estufa Lorena in site: we have about two or three families interested right now and collecting materials, we just need to get everything together and actually build one
• Building an Estufa Lorena in the school: we need a working model at someone's house first so everyone knows what it really is and really entails, but we'd love to get the smoke out of the school kitchen
• Visiting the Kuna Yala comarca (autonomous zone): we are planning on going there in September for our Tenth Anniversary for lots of white sand beaches and snorkeling
• A Visit from April's folks: currently planned for the end of January / beginning of February, and possibly including Grandma Dierks
• Planting all the Trees currently in bags behind the house: we hope to get a junta (working party) of 10 to 20 people organized for sometime in early September
• Teaching in Coiba: April delivered her proposal today to ANAM, the environmental agency, to visit Coiba National Marine Park for two week stints with their park rangers to provide training on resource interpretation (how to present the unique qualities of a location to vistors)
• School Garden growth: the kids are really interested in what is planted and have learned a lot about how and why it is planted too
• Visiting Baro Colorado Island / the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, in the middle of Lake Gatun in the Panamá Canal: The Smithsonian Institute has several offices in Panamá to do research and preservation of biologically unique sites. Barro Colorado Island was formed when the Chagras River was dammed to form Lake Gatun and has been a wildlife refuge since. Visitors are sometimes allowed to accompany scientists on the boat there and can wander the paths and view amazing wildlife
• Learning to Gritar and Salomar: hard to describe, it is a very common way of communicating here while working in the fields, and sounds kind of like yodeling. You have to hear it and so we'll hopefully put up a video of either someone good or of us. (We haven't learned yet because most of them are too embarrassed to teach us when asked.)
• Watching Panamá Election 2009 here in Panamá: the next Panamanian president, respresentatives, and local offices (all levels of government) will be elected in May 2009. April is already taking pictures of campaign signs.
• Watching US Election 2008 from here in Panamá: we are glad to only get to see news every couple of weeks, as the minute nit-pickings on the candidates and their campaigns would get old quickly I think, but we are planning on coming out mid-October to get and send our Absentee Ballots and then again for November 4-5 to watch whatever coverage we can get here. (We do have CNN, bad as it is, in the motel, and the cable package in motels frequented by PCVs in other cities even has BBC and CNN International, so we'll find someplace to hear all the latest on which state went which way and how Chad is doing.)
• Thanksgiving with over 100 other PCVs from Panamá: April and I have been asked to help run the kitchen again; nothing like success (read: a full yummy tummy) to be appreciated.
• Possible other visits from friends: Linda, Tabassum, Kori, and Kristin have all expressed interest; anyone else?

So it will be a full year, just like our first one was. We are very much looking forward to it!

One Year Reunion

So we have officially been Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) for one year now.

This past weekend, we got together with others from our Group 59 at a hostel on an island in the Colón province (northern side) of Panamá to talk about how life was going; what we have accomplished; what we have yet to accomplish; who is going to quit early (just one, depending on grad school), finish two years and ya (ya is Spanish for enough, done, ready, etc; the majority were in this camp), and who is going to extend (several looking to be Regional Leaders and such); and get re-inspired for our second year. Here we are at our official lunch meeting to talk compost, environment, organic fertilizer, and other projects.

We took one formal picture too, on the dock nearby.

Getting to the island via a short 5-10 minute boat ride was nothing for us, although some other volunteers found out that boats are not their thing and they probably will not come to visit us.

The really interesting part of the trip there started on the bus from Panamá City to Colón City. We received information from the PC Office of a transportation strike (apparently not that uncommon, and they usually last just 3 to 24 hours, protesting the high cost of fuel, or food, or something) in Colón, which is already not a city for touring. When we got to the terminal, the police had arranged to bring all of us (seven had taken the train, six of us were on the bus, and about eight more were on later buses and managed to catch up with us too) to the police station for safekeeping.

We sat around their conference room, ate an inexpensive lunch from the police grill (a very tasty tipico meal of meat, lentils, rice, and even lettuce and a tomato), played Cranium, and wrote a letter of thank you, before finally being moved to a special bus they had arranged for us. The bus took us first to the supermarket and waited so we could pick up bread, cereal, PB and J, and such for the weekend, and ironically, the last of our group, coming in on later buses, caught up with us there. Then he drove us the hour-and-a-half out to the island. How wonderful, flexible, helpful and accomodating!

The island had a nice beach on one end, where April and I went snorkeling with our new gear (thank you Grandma Cropper) and shared with other volunteers. On the other end was a Gustave Eiffel-designed lighthouse, 94 steps high, with a great view over the island and the cove. Unfortunately, we didn't get pictures of all that, but hopefully other volunteers will send some to us.

It was a great chance to catch up with everyone, reminesce, and get inspiration for our next year.

We left on Sunday with a short boat ride and then a regular bus back to Colón City (we did see some amazing winds on the ride, with a roof blowing off a house as we drove by and at least one piece of the zinc spinning 200ft in the air), then a bus to Panamá City, a quick jaunt in a diablo rojo to our embassy host family to pick up some books we'd left there (and some great leftovers she pressed on me), then a bus to Santiago for the night, finally getting in about 11:30. Now we are finishing up some posts (including some stockpiling, now that Blogger lets you post-date posts to publish later, so even though we'll be on the island, you can read new adventures from Panamá), sending and checking mail, and buying groceries. We go back in to site tomorrow early.

Thus starts year two...

Spay Panama

I just had the opportunity to spend the day at a wonderful place...so of course I want to tell you all about it. I spent the day volunteering at Spay Panama. Together with a group of other volunteers, Patricia Chan (wonderful lady below) opened Spay Panama in 2001.

Spay Panama's mission is to put a stop to the misery by controlling the overpopulation of cats and dogs through an intensive sterilization program. Spay Panama is a spay and release clinic. They work mainly with street animals that are caught, spayed and then re-released into the area where they were caught.

Yes, having them adopted or sheltered would be better, but the reality is that this is not realistic for many of the animals that have grown up on the street...and people looking to adopt are not as common as one would want.

The clinic has a wonderful facility in a converted house in a central neighborhood in Panama. They have a dog bathing area, cat and dog kennels, a surgery prep room, operating room, lounge, kitchen and office space. The cat room is shown below. Everything is wonderfully clean and taken care of. This is one of the best run organizations that I have seen in my time in Panama!Volunteer help is key to Spay Panama. Volunteer veternarians and vet students do the proceedures. Regular dedicated volunteers are used to help with moving animals, weighing, tagging, holding and giving injections, shaving/sterilizing the operation area, monitoring health, sterilizing tools, providing additional health care to animals before they wake back up. Each dog and cat is not only spayed or neutered, they also have their ears cleaned, eyes checked and cleaned, and are treated for fleas and mange. They are marked as spayed with an ear tatoo for dogs and an ear clip for cats.Sometimes there are 6 operations going on at once in the operations room. This place runs like clockwork. While I was there they did 6 spays for animals brought in by their owners (a small donation is requested of animal owners who come in, but is not mandatory for those who can't pay it.). They also did 17 dogs from the streets of Arrijan...a town about 45 minutes West of Panama City. Those dogs were brought in by a concerned community member who rounded them up and brought them in. They finished up with 6 kittens...one of them also got his hernia fixed. I was amazed...but they just told me that this was a fairly slow day.

Below are dogs in recovery, they wake up an 1/2 hour - hour after the proceedure.
Below is my host in Panama city, Devon, who introduced me to Spay Panama. She volunteers weekly. Devon loves seeing and helping all the animals so much she isn't even bothered by the fleas and dirt.
What would a story about Spay Panama be without a cute and kitty photo and a plea to please support a shelter through adopting an animal or donating time or money.

If you wish to donate (tax-deductible, they are a 501(c)3) to Spay Panama you can through their webpage: http://www.spaypanama.org/ About 1/2 of their operating budget comes through donations...and more are needed.
This is Petis...I really wanted to take her home. I am still in spouse-to-spouse negotiations on this subject. Isn't she cute...and she purrs up a storm.

Remember, some animal affection is good for the heart....in more ways than one!

Working the Rice

We recently visited our first host family again, in the south of the island, to spend a night, chat and generally socialize. That evening, we taught them a popular card game we called ONE (or, as it is known to most of you, UNO). But in the afternoon, before dinner, the rice needed to be pilar-ed, or husked.

This is how Paula and Ancelmo work together to pilar arroz. You don't get to see Paula and Kevin trying it, because it just didn't work nearly as smoothly together. Kevin's claim is that the pilon (bowled-out wooden stand carved from a tree trunk in which the rice is placed to be struck to remove the husk) was too short for him. We will let you draw your own conclusions as to if it was likely equipment size issues or user issues.

The pounding of the mano de pilon or hand of the pilon (wooden pole part) into the rice breaks up the husk of the rice grains. They then scoop the rice grains and pour them from a hieght back into the pilon...and the breaze blows the husks out of the mix. There are machines that can do this...but many people do it by hand in our area due to cost and transport issues. This is the last step to process rice before cooking it.

(For more on the pilar-ing process, check back to our November 2007 post with pictures of the steps: http://ak-panama.blogspot.com/2007/11/work-of-pilaring.html)

Snakes Alive!

We recently wrote about snakes and the fact that they often end up dead after any contact with people in my nieghboorhood. (Missed it? See the blog from 6-20-08 called Snakes alive? found at http://ak-panama.blogspot.com/2008/06/snakes-alive-video.html)

Well, I am happy to report that since that blog posting I have witnessed at lease 3 snakes come into view of my nieghboors and live to slither away again. Most notably was a little boa that Julian caught....yes caught! He, without prompting from us touched it and showed it to others. I will say that this gave me a huge smile for many days...partly because of how brave he was. If you look at the photo above you can see that he was not taking any changes, he was holding it just behind the head and tightly. Just after the photos were taken he released it into the woods near our house.

At a different event the kids found a vine snake. I was shocked that no one ran to kill it, not even the kids. We were not even in our home nieghborhood were people have seen us not kill snakes, we were on the far side of the island. Well, we figured that this was not going to last for long so we caught it and let everyone look at it.

We tryed to convince them that it is not venomous or dangerous...yes it would bit if it could...but only because it is scared. I often say "I have a mouth too...and if you scare me enough I will bite just like any other animal!" We then released it far away from the people who were gathered around.

I often get a chuckle (or sometimes fusterated) when they tell me that snakes like the one above will eat chickens (one of the two common reasons to kill all snakes - venomous or kills chickens) ...he would have a hard time eating anything bigger than Kevin´s thumb. We are trying to help them see that different snakes have different body types and that this indicates what they might eat and how.

In another moment of small sucess the nighborhood kids brought us a young iguana the other day. He is small enought that he probably hatched in the past 4-5 months, most eggs are laid in January-March.

We used the opportunity to talk more about reptiles and why they are important. Iguanas have the fault that they are tasty, kinda like chicken (sometimes called pollo del arbol or chicken of the tree)...and thus endangered. The problem here is convincing people that every iguana matters, and no there are not enough iguanas in the world.

It is often hard to appreciate how interesting the world that is our personal nieghborhood is when we live there all the time. I bet the kids on the island would think that mudd puppies in Maryland are cool. Mudd puppies are a type of aquatic salemander. They can be 12" long and live to 20 years and never loose thier gills. When was the last time you thought about them?? It has been a long time right? Sometimes close proximaty makes it harder to value that which we have or believe that there could be a time when we might not have it.

More small wildlife photos

It has been a while since I did a bug blog...and Kevin will atest that I do love to photograph the fun and facinating bugs that we find around here. Here are some of the most recent. Yes, a photo is worth more than all the words that I could try, however I did add some words to help you see the signifigance where needed.


Kevin made us a Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches one day and was a little over generous with the jelly...and it dripped on the floor...out near the hammocks. A little while later each of the three (yes three!!) dripps had it´s own cleaning crew of leaf cutter ants working away. In the morming they were gone. Each ant is just over 1/4 inch long.

This little guy was cute and cool white and yellow coloring. You can tell how small he is in comparison to the weave of the fabric on my camera case. I had a hard time getting a serious shot of him because he kept reaching for and clinbing onto the lens.
This is a praying mantis that had cool leaf camaphage..camaphaouge?..or however that silly word is spelled. Note the finger for scale.
This is a grub that Kevin encountered when planing in our yard. For scale note that he is on the tip of our machete...which is at least 3" wide at the tip. If this were Austrailia the kids would have been telling us to eat it...first time I have been glad to not be in Austrailia.
This guy was just cool...he is the type of beetle that I was hoping to see by being in the tropics....one with a strange nose. This one is in here in honor of Kerrie Kovaleski at the Zoo cause he reminds me of a rhino. (someone please show her this photo).
This is just a butterfly that for some reason visited at night. I just wanted you to know that we have non-scary bugs too.

This one doesn´t need much help....other than to say that he is not the biggest that I have seen. These have pretty red and orange wings. They also tend to scare the sh*t out of me when they decide to be attracted to the candles at night and fly up while I am cooking.

This guy is only about a 1/2 big, but I really liked his orange and green colors...especially on my blue laundry soap bar. Some would say..."You have bugs on your soap!!!" and I just say "cool colors!! Get the camera!" Kevin is starting to promote the idea of a degree in entomology for grad school as a way of changing this interest into something useful rather than just strange.
This is not a great photo, but it is here beause one week these little orange beetles with long snouts showed up and they were everywhere...not in huge numbers...but enough to say to yourself "this is strange". Then, three weeks later, they were gone.
I see lots of cool beetles...this one is only 1/4 inch long.
Saved the best for last. This spider (who is about 2 1/2 inches long if you measure only the body...no legs) wandered across our floor one night. Tho ball under her is an eggcase. Very cool. But having her babies all in my house would not have been soo cool....so after her photo session she was escorted out.

Take care out there...and please don´t just kill bugs for no reason. No, being ugly is not a good reason.

The morning "carpool"

Part 2 in the "What is your commute like?" series...adventures in transportation with Peace Corps volunteers in Panama.



This morning (July 3) I carpooled...well boatpooled really... with 14 other people to get to port.
Kevin and I have a meeting at 9:00am on Friday the 4th of July in Santiago- our closest big town. It is a normal regularly scheduled meeting...quarterly. Normal work kind of meeting. Here is how we got there:

First we asked around to all of our neighbors and community members: "Do you know anyone who is traveling to port on Thursday or Friday?" Typically I will ask this question of 10-20 people before figuring out how I am getting off the island...or how I am not getting off the island because no one is going close to when we need to go. People are helpful with finding a ride when they can be...they know that they will be in the same situation soon.

This time I got lucky and one of my good friends knew of 2 possible rides for Thursday...one of the first people I asked! Score! I got even luckier when one of the guys going came to her house while we were there and we got to ask him directly...double score!!! Then he offered us a boat ride home...saving us a 2 hour wait for the ocean tide to go down so that we could walk the 50 minutes home...put all of those together and it is the equivalent of winning the isla lottery.

The next step after finding the ride is getting ready to go. Here are some of the steps that we go through when we leave our house empty for more than a day:

• Put all the kitchen stuff into the back room (food, pots, dishes, soap...everything)


• Hang all the landry I didn´t get to wash yet from the rafters to protect from mold


• Bring in the hammocks


• Clean and fill the hummingbird feeders


• Close the toilet down with a fresh layer of sawdust, empty the pee container, and properly dispose of TP


• Give away any veggies that will go bad while we are gone


• Pack clothes and stuff


• Go over the "to do" lists and make sure we have everything we need...no turning around for forgotten items


• Write a note for each of the two closest neighbors saying when we are leaving, returning and our phone number so they don´t worry about us (unless we don´t appear on time...then they will call PC and ask about us)
  

Our ride out this time was a madrugada ride. Madrugada means early morning...usually before 5am. This ride was scheduled to leave at 3am. Yup, 3am sounds painful, but some of the best rides are this early...cooler, no sun, less chance of rain (most island boats do not have roofs) and you get a full day in town to get stuff done. Of course, this also means that I am ready for my nap at 9am (cutting into that time to "get stuff done"). In light of the departure time, we completed the "leaving checklist" before going to bed at 9pm last night.

At 2:30 this morning the alarm went off...it was painful. To make it just a bit more fun we could hear rain on the roof of the house - so much for less chance of rain. We got up and got dressed and put together the last of our things. As I got ready, I thought to myself "I bet he arrives at 3:38". Guessing when the ride will really get there is a regular game with us as they don´t often depart on time.

We were ready at 3:00...ready enough that we got a hammock back out to wait in. At 3:15 we had a snack to settle the tummy rumbles. Several times we thought we heard the motor of the boat in the distance...but it was either a different crazy madrugada boat or dillusions. Later when we really did hear the boat coming up we grabbed our stuff and headed down the 70 yard long trail to the shore...I checked my watch and what do you know? Spot on at 3:38.

We were the closest neighbors of the guy who was going to port...so we were the first passengers picked up. Today most people were going to a meeting with the local govenment, we were just lucky enough to tag along. After we got in, the boat headed south (port is north) to go around the island picking up everyone else. Usually we are among the last people picked up as we live on the side closest to port; but today we got the pleasure of waiting in the boat (in the rain and dark) for everyone else to come out of their houses. At 5:42am the last of the other 13 passengers loaded the boat.

The ride was not all bad. Yes, I was tired, wet, chilly and cranky and my rear end hurt from the hard bench...but I have to say that the water around the boat this morning was full of bio-luminescence. When the boat was moving the water wake of the boat shone blue, it looked like there was a light shining in the water under us, like a lit up pool. As we sat and waited for others the raindrops hitting the water caused spots of bio-luminescence to appear and disappear....it looked like the water was a field of teal fireflies, or kind of like all the flashbulbs in a stadium at a major event. When I trailed my fingers in the water they set off sparks of bio-luminescence, like mini fireworks trailing my fingers.

(Photo from Flicker user: The Gentle)

After we picked up the last passenger, the actual ride to port was about an hour long (raining all the way) and we all sat bumping each other as we huddled down behind our various umbrellas and plastic sheets, wishing the whole way that we could just fall asleep. We arrived at about 7:00am. At three and a half hours from when we got into the boat, the ride was a bit longer than normal because of the round the isla detour to pick up everyone.

The boat ride can cost from $0-$25. Zero if you go with a friend and they don´t want your gas money, $2-3 with a friend who will take the gas money, and $25 if you have to pay the taxiboat guy to come and get you. We tend to average at the $2-3 ride price, but we have gotten free and $25 rides too.

After arriving at port, we got on a bus...the easy part of the commute. The bus costs $1.10, but sometimes the guy will give you an even $1 change rather than $.90. The busses leave frequently and often feature loud music with accordians and torturous DJs talking/singing over the music. More about busses in a different post.

My clothes are now dry and I am tired. Time to seek out a nap if Kevin is ready to get off the computers. I am just glad that I don´t have to travel off island for all my work. I will have to share photos of my on-island commute another time.

Be careful out there on your commute! Wear your life jacket!