Carving the first Jack-o'-Lantern

Yes, Halloween was well past, and Thanksgiving had come and gone. Christmas might have been fast approaching even. But that did not dampen the enthusiasm of our neighbors for carving their first ever jack-o'-lantern, perhaps because the idea is very similar to their burning of a New Year's muñeca (life-sized doll). (We'll post more about that when we come back out of site after New Year's, or you can check out our post from last year's holidays at http://ak-panama.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-we-celebrated-holidays-2007.html.)

It was while April was off-island, and I was solito y llorando (alone and crying), as our neighbors love to joke, so when I stopped by to chat and asked if they were interested in carving a jack-o'-lantern, faces lit up like there was a candle inside. They were familiar with the look from watching the movie Halloween over the years (I can't imagine being 10 or 12 and watching Halloween on a 13" black&white TV without lights and then going to bed in the pitch black) but had never seen a carving done.

The first step was to draw "scary faces". I brought up paper and markers, with a little encouragement to change the white page to something scary, they started trying out designs, and pretty soon we had several good sets of flaming eyes and gnashing teeth.

(Milagros, Leidys, and Eneida - Milagros' mom -, drawing "scary faces" for consideration for carving)

Since we didn't have a pumpkin, we used a zapallo, which is a pumpkin-like squash with slightly tougher meat and a more ridged skin, but very similar - and roastable - seeds. Once the kids (and adults) had finished drawing, the top was cut off the zapallo, and volunteers were recruited to clear out the guts (which come out much easier than a pumpkin, it seems).

(Leidys, Noritza, and Dianeth cleaning out the inside of the zapallo. The first reaction: "wow that's cold!")

Next they picked what they wanted to carve and we drew it on the zapallo. They selected our neighbor mom Eneida to wield the knife, and she did a rapid and detailed job of carving the face.

(Panamanians like Eneida are adept at knife work, perhaps from gutting fish and chickens for meals on a regular basis)

Then it was time to light the candle. Even though it was still light outside, everyone was excited to watch.

(Ceremonial first lighting of the jack-o'-lantern)

Here is the carved result, with Elvis and Eneida for comparison purposes. We'll put up some pictures taken in the dark, after April returned, when we come out next.

(For the first time ever carving a jack-o'-lantern, it was a pretty scary result!)

Working together can make anything fun

I thought that you might like this video. It is a clear example of one of the wonderful things about being a Peace Corps volunteer...how much fun we can have together and still get things done.

Let me first set the stage...this was taken on Thanksgiving day after dinner. These three wonderful volunteers are cleaning ALL of the dishes from a Thanksgiving meal for 70 people, and yet they manage to have a ball. When the video starts they do not know that I am taking a video...I tell them at the end (you can tell when they realize from the laughter).

We don't get to work together all that often, but when we do there is amazing energy and willingness to chip in and get the work done. I think that this is the type of comradery and team feeling that I hope to have in all my jobs. How many people do you know that could be this cheerful faced with that many dishes?

Where is the baseline?

Peace Corps seems to inspire introspection about oneself and work. We seem to have in common a desire to change ourselves and the world. But how do we know if we are really changing anything? What should we be using as a baseline for the comparisons that we make?

Over the past year I have had several people remark to me “you have really grown / changed in the past year” or “Peace Corps has changed you”. I found myself a little baffled by this as I feel like the same person. It finally clicked for me when a PC staffer made a similar comment and then asked me how Peace Corps has impacted me…the way the question was phrased implied that the changes/growth are a result of Peace Corps. That is when I realized: I wish he had come to my living room and met me 6 months before I came to Panama. He would have met pretty much the woman that he knows now: confident, caring, strong, goal oriented (sometimes to a fault) with a strong sense of self knowledge.

The only baseline that staffer (and all those who know me here in Panama) have to compare me to is the “me” that was in training or soon after. Then I was a woman that had been stripped of all control of personal space, diet, personal and work schedule, normal methods of relaxation, and access to her normal support networks. In short, she was more stressed and with less tools to deal with the stress than at any other point in her life. Is that the baseline that we should use for comparison to who I am now?

For my part, I feel that it is only fair to compare me to the baseline or “normal” of who I was before coming to Peace Corps. Any change from that baseline could be reasonably linked to the Peace Corps experience. But if the baseline we start from doesn’t include the whole picture, neither will our understanding of the information.

There are also examples in my work: where you start looking from has an impact on what you see. In my neighborhood there is a clear uptick in the number of kitchen gardens planted by my neighbors. The uptick started clearly just after my demonstration garden was planted. So clearly, I am responsible for starting them on kitchen gardens, right?

No, not so fast. Further conversations with community members reveal that kitchen gardens are not a new idea, we are just responsible for the current uptick in interest. However, those conversations do show that the idea of planting tomatoes under your house eves (out of the rain) is a new idea…they saw it of the first time in our garden. Because it had never been seen before in our site, the baseline starts with our garden. In other words, efforts linked to the innovation od planting under the eves can be linked to our demonstration of a new idea.

As I mover ever closer to close of service (known as COS - it is approaching at an alarming rate these days), I find myself soul searching on the impacts of these two years…on myself and my community. Yes, I have changed personally – but which baseline are you seeing me from? I think that looking at our work here in Panama with an accurate baseline, and being honest about all of the variables involved, is one of the most challenging parts of Peace Corps, and yet one of the most important.

A Parading Nation

(¡Lo siento! I wrote this post a while ago on November 28th, but computer gliches saved it wrong. Today is the first chance I have had to correct it, so please don´t be confused about why there was a parade today...it was Nov 28th. )

Panamanians love a parade! November is a big month of celebration in Panama. In addition to all of the national holidays:

November 3. Separation Day (from Colombia).
November 4. Flag Day
November 5. Colon Day
November 10. "Primer Grito de Independencia de la Villa de los Santos" The uprise in the Villa de los Santos against Spain.
November 28. Independence Day (from Spain)

There are local holidays as well. Every holiday gets a desfile, or parade. Large or small, November is full of parades. I was in Santiago one day and literally saw 6 parades of one float each (paying homige to the Virgin Mary) over the course of the day. Live music, marchers, some fireworks and a float and off they go to parade the streets. It happens with incredable frequency. Panamanians love to be in a parade!

Today they celebrated Independance from Spain...the official celebration are bumped to Mondays when their date falls on a Friday to make a two day weekend as many buisnesses work 6 days a week. I was lucky enough to be in town at the time and it was my first BIG parade. I had seen small one float parades...but never the full deal. This was cool. The parade was a celebration of Teachers day...and every float represented a school zone. The riena, or queen that graced the floats were teachers especially given the honor of being riena. Below are photos of some of the floats from today's parade.

Front of the float. What you can't see from this photo is that the young guys in the middle are scanily clad and painted with glitter paint so that thier skin shines an irridecent green.

Back of the same float. I really wanted the riena to turn around and put her arms around the big guys neck, but sadly that photo was not to be.

This float stopped and the band started up and all of the float followers did conga lines around the whole float for 5 minutes.

Dreaming of being a riena starts young...this girl can't be much older than 11.

I loved this one...it was the only one drawn by animals. Wonderful. They didn't even flinch at the fireworks popping off. The urn at the girls right side is full of candy for her to fling. They stopped right in front of me and she did the very picturesque job of ripping open the plasitc bag of candy and pouring it into the urn.

This ladies green fethers were something magnigicent to behold. She also gave me a great smile for the camera, but the young girl was quite sour faced.

This was a very traditional float and the dress featured is the traditional festival dress of Panama called a pollera. THey can be quite expensive...a really good one can cost more than $1000. I stand corrected, a friend of mine just told me that a good one made by hand can run $10,000.They are typically worn with enough beaded hair ornaments that you can't see much of the girls hair...it is just a mass of white beaded ornaments.

This lady had on a nagua, or the traditional dress of the Embra Indians. Hers is not as volunimous as most...most have yards and yards of material in them.

Girls in the pollera style typical for young girls. I guess it takes a while to accumulate all of those hair ornaments. Those flowers can cost $6.00 a set (they are made of intricate beads). A set includes one for each side of the head. My best guess is that the girl in the center has on three sets. Her head will be almost covered by the time she is 18 if she keeps collecting.

Cute girls riding in a car behind a float. I don´t know if the rest of thier outfit was cute or not...the windows were tinted and you couldn´t see a thing. I couldn´t help but wonder what the point was of this car being in the parade at all, but thier heads were cute.

An example of a small float. These are typical of the smaller parades as well. Not to ignore you gents out there: the man in this float is sporting the tradional 4 pocket dress shirt that is common in some central American courties, including Panama. He also has the traditional sombrero (hat) of Panama on. I really should do a post on what is a Panama hat because what most of you reading call a Panama hat is not the real deal.

Here is a nice heafty headress...when she wasn't waving she was holding it on and she was smiling the whole time.

A closeup so you can enjoy her outfit and smile.

This is my favorite of all the headdresses....look close to see the 8inch mirror ball that is part of the headdress. She was smiling for the camera, but not all the rest of the time...it was hot out there!

Hummingbird babies

Recently I had a true "Panamá" moment, my neighbor boys showed me a humming bird nest. I always thought that hummingbirds would make thier nest in private distant places. I never thought that I would see one. But here is the proof that that is not always the case. I think that if you click on the photos you can see them larger.
You can see a foot at the lower right hand corner of the above photo. That food is standing on the main path through our community. It is not a highway by any stretch of the imagination...but it does get regular traffic and this nest was really close to it.

While we were looking at them one startled us and took off and flew about 15 feet and landed on the ground. Elvis retrieved it and put it back into the nest, but I felt lucky to have seen them at all...it was clear that they were about ready to leave the nest.


The boys now have clear directions to show me any nests that they know of. Somedays I feel very lucky to be here in Panamá. Photos copyrighted to April Cropper.

Island Water

About a year ago, Bill Andrews asked about our water on the island. I’ve finally gotten some pictures of the system that provides water to our house to go with the description of why we generally have plentiful clean water.

As in most housing decisions, location, location, location. When we were living with host families over a year ago and trying to select a house to move into on our own, one of our biggest considerations was water: both having a year-round supply from the aqueduct and not having water in the house due to leaks or overflowing creeks (a problem we saw in one or two possibilities). The island has several communities served by five or six main systems and a couple of small ones, all gravity fed. Last summer, along with the new sidewalk, money from the canal paid for improvements to three of the aqueduct systems.

The house we picked is located just below the tank for the northern half of our community.

(From our yard up the hill to the tank, the white thing on the hill toward the right)

Our tank is on a hill about a four minute climb from our house, probably 75 to 100 feet in elevation.

(From the top of the tank looking down toward our house, on the right of the field)

A two-inch diameter PVC line runs out of the tank, down the hill, through a chlorine filter (still without chlorine, since the Ministry of Health (SALUD) has not yet come to give a charla on how to use the filter), and then parallels the path (now sidewalk) toward the school. Originally we thought it went all the way to the school (and had to climb the hill to the school, hence the school, and the houses nearby, was occasionally without water), but recently someone told me that with the changes last summer, it now only serves eight occupied houses. (Between that eighth house and the next one towards the school there is a five minute uninhabited stretch, and there is another tank above that next house, which feeds from there to the school.)

All the houses “T” off of the mainline. There is a On/Off on the mainline coming out of the tank, but none beyond that; if anyone wants to do work on their line or add a new one, everyone has to lose water (when we put in our system, we included a switch by the house so we could at least turn off the water if we wanted to work on any of our faucets).

The tank is a cinderblock box with a two-inch diameter PVC pipe input line dropping water in from high on one side, the outflow line feeding out the bottom, and an overflow pipe for when the users are not taking water faster than the input.

(The tank, with ladder, a nice addition from the older version, and the overflow pipe showing that we are getting more than enough water into the tank, right now at least)

The tank is filled by the input line coming down through the woods and fields of our neighbor from a caja de agua (water box) about ten minutes hike from the tank. The caja is merely a small dam across the small creek that eventually goes behind our house. The caja was also cleaned out with last year’s improvements, as sediment had filled in the old “lake”.

(The input line typically runs underground, but it does go over one creek, propped and tied with an old extension cord)

(The view of the front of the dam for the caja)

There is a box on the upstream side of the dam that admits water through a screen (I think) at the bottom sides of the box, which then filters through small rocks and out the feeder pipe to the tank. The sides of the box were raised above the level of the dam with last year’s improvements, to decrease the amount of debris getting into the box when heavy rains caused the creek to rise.

(Water enters the box through two screens on the sides then filters through small rocks into the feeder pipe to the tank)

Sometime soon, there should be a junta (work group) to clean the tank: scrubbing the walls on the inside and rinsing it. It will be just the second or third cleaning I know of since we got here. Supposedly they will be starting an aqueduct committee soon to collect a monthly user fee of probably 25cents or so to pay for occasional maintenance and repairs. But mostly the system runs on gravity, without moving parts, and as long as the pressure is sufficient, everyone has water; we’re at the lowest point on the line, and just below the tank, so we’ve only been low once or twice, which is luckier than many of our neighbors and it sounds like many of our fellow PCVs.

So that is how simple our water system is; I can hike from my house to the source in about fifteen minutes. (A couple of months ago, I went all the way up the creeks to see if there was a need for reforestation near the stream – there wasn’t – but those pictures were with the camera when it was stolen.)

PS: There are also pretty little brilliant blue crawdads in the small pond above the dam.

Happy Mother's Day

In Panama, Mother's Day is celebrated on December 8th. So I would like to wish all those mothers out there a

Happy Mother's Day!!!

In Panama Mother's Day is a big deal... bigger than Father's Day (at least in our small community. Sorry Dad.) Normally there is a party with music, food, and small gifts. Christmas gets almost no attention in our communtiy, but for Mother's Day they do all that they can on a very limited budget. So enjoy Moms....today is your day too.

Fundraising for the Tortuga trip

April is creating a post about our trip with students and members of our community to the community of another PCV, Cassie, to see and learn about sea turtles and the environment. This post is all about how we got there.

First, what were our costs:

• Through several meetings with the Padres de Familia (PTA) of our school, we settled on how much gas (15 gallons) was needed to take us by boat to a port near Cassie's community. (We couldn't go directly to her community because the parents all agreed that the sea was too dangerous to try to come in with their boats. )

• Through talking with Cassie, we found a bus driver who was willing to drive us from the port to her community on his day off. That ran to $90.

• We also needed to buy some food to augment what Cassie's school had offered to donate. We budgeted about $30 for that.

Total: $165.00 Now, how to go about pulling together that kind of money.
One of the first places we turned was the Peace Corps Panama Volunteer Advisory Committee (VAC), which supplies Super Small Project Assistance Grants (SSPAs) with the funds raised by designing, printing, and selling the Peace Corps Panama Calendar (see our other posts about our involvement in that or visit http://www.panamapcv.net/calendar/calendar_2009/calendar2009.html to order one and support PCVs with small projects like ours). We won a $60 grant from the VAC in September and were on our way.

Our next steps were to involve the community in the efforts. Traditional fundraisers here often include selling food or snowcones at an event. In early October was our patronales, or patron saint day, on the island. Working with the students and the parents, we planned to sell raspado, or snow cones. April ended up being the one to go in to town to buy the supplies, which included blocks of ice, coloring, flavoring, sugar, cream, and paper cones and straws. But at the actual day, it was the students and parents who did most of the hard work.

(Yoel, pronounced similar to "Joel", and one of our favorite students, scraping ice to sell snowcones)

(José, aka Bebo, one of our students putting flavoring on a snowcone; resuse is common here - a 2-liter bottle holds the flavoring/coloring mix)

(Yoel adding the condensed milk - which has been put into a ketchup bottle for easier application - to a snowcone; as far as the Panamanians are concerned, it isn't a snowcone without condensed milk on top.)

(April working with both hands to put coloring and cream on cones, with the assistance of community members.)

After the Mass, community members milled about and in the end bought, at 35cents each, enough snowcones to use all the ice (about 40 pounds). In an interesting aspect of Panamanian fundraisers, the extra condensed milk was wasn't an unrecoverable cost; instead, community members were more than willing to buy the unused cans at cost. That is a hard lesson for us to remember: you don't really need to worry about overbuying supplies for an event, as someone will likely buy the extras.

(Some adults helped scrap ice too; Ovidio's daughter didn't even go on the trip)

(Some community members were willing to work to scrap their own cone)

The raspado event was popular and successful, but only garnered about $35 and thus left us short of the total we needed. So we planned for a BINGO day, where players could buy cards for 5cents a game and there would also be food for sale. Again, April bought the food, and we supplied the game, along with some "donated" prizes. But the students made the signs to put around the island at all the tiendas, and parents volunteered to cook (salchichas-hotdogs , patacones-fried plantains, and holajdras-fried dough kinda like a funnel cake).

(Kenia, Soray, and Angelica copying wording from one BINGO announcement onto another)

(Soray putting the finishing touches onto her sign)

(Dianeth, aka Beijing, Yoel, Maycol, Amarylis, and Milagros working on a sign)

(Three of the signs before going around the island; Angelica, Soray, Amarylis, and Kenia)

The actual event was held in the Casa Comunal near our house, but the Representante did not bring the key for the storage room, so there were no seats. Additionally, we had planned to cook on our stove, but our gas tank ran out as soon as they started cooking. Everyone adapted as usual, and sat on the floor and cooked over leña (firewood), which worked out better since they were nearer the fun.

(The cooks made a small fire in the corner of the Casa Comunal and served up yummy fried food.)

(April called the numbers with the help of several of the younger students)

(Older students enjoyed playing as well; our table was brought over to play on.)

(Maria Luisa, one of our original host moms, played the most cards at once, trying to win an environmental volunteer Tshirt that had been donated as a prize.)

In fact, BINGO was so popular that even the cooks were asking us when the next one would be as soon as the first one wrapped up. At the next Padres de Familia meeting to discuss the Turtle Trip, they asked again about playing another time. So they set another date, and with a few small changes, we eventually played again, under a roof near the school.

(At the announced start time, not too many folks showed up, and again there weren't chairs)

(But they began to arrive)

(This time, we rotated who called the numbers)

(Cecilia, our second host mom, cooked; fried chicken parts and hojaldras)

(In the end, we had some great numbers, and the benches from the chapel, all packed under the roof once the rains started.)

We raised about $24 on the first bingo, and about $24 on the second one too.

The other part of our costs was the gas for the boat; April asked ANAM, the Panamanian environmental agency, for assistance with that, and they donated 15 gallons. (Actually getting that to the island wasn't as easy as you'd hope; the gas station in port was out of gas the day we were going back, so April had to stay out an extra day until it was delivered from Santiago.)

So that is how we patched together the bus, the boat, and the food for our trip to see Sea Turtles. In Peace Corps, sometimes the adventure is in the preperation, as much as in getting there and being there.