I have more cultural contrasts to offer...but I need to go catch a bus home. Take care on the sidewalks out there.
The following is a bulletin board soon to be seen in the Cincinnati area:
It seems that my Uncle Steve was laid off from his job at the Aces and Eights Harley Dealer just north of Cincinnati. He is an excellent Harley mechanic, he even has a patent for a part for Harleys (a hydrolic clutch if my faulty memory serves me...but it is an iffy memory).
Well, within a couple of weeks of his being laid off the local competitor, Harley Davidson of Cincinnati, had offered him a job. They want all the local Harley riders to know that he now works with them....Uncle Steve has quite a reputation. So if you are in the Cincinnati area and see the billboard please enjoy it for me.
Kevin´s sister Meghan is also up to interesting and new things. She is using her time as a stay at home mom with a Masters in Environmental Science to launch a new business, EcoConsults. She will provide "residential and commercial clients with simple, cost-effective, personalized recommendations for a greener lifestyle", with long- and short-term cost benefit analysis. If you are near Baltimore (or even if you aren't) and would like to have someone knowledgable look over your house or business for ways to improve your environmental impact, check out her site. She was involved in the 2009 Baltimore EcoFestival this past weekend as well.
April's sister Hilary continues to make the world a more interesting place through her art. She specializes in making ¨Melting clocks¨as seen in Salvador Dali's paintings. Examples of her clocks and many other works of art can be seen at the website for her company, Pragmatic Effects, or at her blog of the same name.
Please help us encourage more moments like Dianeth, a twelve-year-old friend, reading fairy tales like the Steadfast Tin Solider or Rumplestiltskin to Nina, our four-year-old neighbor. Or moments like when Nina's dad, Julian, comes by on his last trip of the evening from his boat in the cove near our house and asks to borrow a book to read to Nina and his other kids that night.
Other fun parts to the game, besides chatting with the Ambassador and helping her throw out balls, hats, and such, included the food...
(Not the Great American Ballpark frank, but a lot cheaper ;) The hot dogs (salchichas here) were sliced in half lengthwise to cover the entire loaf of bread (bread, not bun), and the relish, well, I didn't relish it.
Here is April (miming) eating a salchicha so you can see our view of the game from the Presidential Box (okay view, but I think the stadium isn't quite finished yet, and the box was a little raw, with unpainted concrete counters, etc).
(April, a salchicha, and the Veraguas team batting against the Southern Command All Stars)
Chico, the fisherman brought over 4 good sized live lobsters. We had been advised by another islander to pay no more than $4 a pound...but when the lobsters arrived the volunteers quickly caved in to his requested $5 a pound. As I probably will not buy much more lobster in my time here I let them pay it.
They then went off and hauled all of the chairs used at the Health Fair back to the casa comunal (community house or meeting space) with the help of my neighbors and their boat. While they were hauling chairs I cooked up the lobsters...complete with the requisite guilt over the necessary murder (yes, lobsters can make a sound). By the time that they returned the lobsters were a rosy red.
Now many resturants serve lobster whole on the plate and the eater gets to wrestle the meat free. I have found that the gooey stuff inside a lobster or crab is off-putting and I like to rinse the meat and eat with clean fingers. Normal procedure in the Cropper house now is to clean the lobster and rinse away the goo and then flash heat the meat with a touch of oil and spice (usually fresh garlic) and then serve with something else...like pasta and veggies.
Stephanie, April, Lee, Jim, and Teri crowded around the sink cleaning lobsters.
So the others joined me at the sink eager for a new food experience. In my experience (I don't imagine that I will have that much experience to reference after I leave Panama) lobsters are not that hard to clean if you know what you are doing. I guided each of them through the process step by step. Each person cleaned a lobster and did a good job, but it was funny to watch. Jim's lobster had a little post-mortem revenge. I am proud to say that no one bled...Kevin has never managed (even with instructions) to clean a lobster without pricking his finger on lobster spines.
Jim with a splash of lobster guts on his shirt.We served the lobster with pan fried fish (caught that day as well) and pan seared vegetables. Yummy. No one went hungry that night. The next day we road to port with Chico and he was taking in lobsters to sell...and had one that was 4 pounds...as many pounds as all 4 of our lobsters the night before combined! This made me wonder about how fast lobsters grow and how old the lobsters were that we ate. So I did some digging online and came up with the following cool facts:
Lobsters, when not caught, can live for a long time. Living to the age of 100 is not uncommon. Of course, because lobsters are prized for their meat, many don't make it past just a couple of years old. Lobsters must be a certain length -- not age -- to be deemed legal for catching.
It takes approximately seven years (depending on the water temperature) for a lobster to grow to legal harvesting size (1-1 1/4 lb.). After that, a lobster will grow about 1 pound for every 3 years. (April Note: This would mean that the lobsters that we ate were around the age of 7-9 years old. The big 4 pounder could have been around 16 years old. )
It is interesting to note that lobsters show no real signs of aging, other than growing. They actually can reproduce and stay fertile continuously! The secret lies in their telomeres.
Telomeres are found at the end of chromosomes for all living creatures. As we age and cells divide, the telomeres shorten and eventually disappear- leading to aging and death. Lobsters telomeres take a much longer time to shorten , if at all- allowing them to 'maintain their youth' (A lot of anti-aging experiments are done with lobsters)
How big can lobsters grow? The largest lobster ever recorded weighed in at 44 lb. 6 oz. and measured 3 ft. 6 in. from the end of the tail to the tip of the largest claw. It was caught off southern Nova Scotia in 1977 and sold to a restaurant in New York City. In the Pliocene period, over a million years ago, lobsters were five to six feet long! These days a 3 or 4 pound lobster is considered a good sized feast!
Thanks to the following websites for the fun facts:
www.parl.ns.ca/lobster/faq.htm
An end of the day photo when everyone was tired but happy.
Educar es luchar (to educate is to fight) is the slogan for the fight against AIDS and HIV here in Peace Corps Panama. Panamá has one of the fastest growing infections rates of AIDS in Latin America. Peace Corps Panama received PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, a Pres. Bush II project of about $15B I think) funds to run educational programs about AIDS/HIV and uses it to award grants of up to $1000 per Peace Corps Volunteer to do programs in their local community.
Kevin and I partnered to put on a Health Fair in our community. Three Panamanian agencies came out to participate in the teaching of charlas (lessons), and the assistent at our local health post on the island gave on charla and supplied materials for two others, an inspiring measure of local support. We also put out an open call to our fellow PCVs for their help (hey this was a great chance for them to visit like they have said they wanted to do for over a year!).
We invited, via a Radio Veraguas announcement, people from all over the Gulf of Montijo. We also went visiting house to house with invitations for our community members. Three communities attended...including attendance from every part of our island community. Actual registered attendance was 118 adults and children...but we know that there were a handful of participants or "window lurkers" who did not sign in.
Laura and Emily working at the sign in table.
The event was held at the school, with the permission of MEDUCA (the national education agency). When participants arrived they signed in and received a slip of paper with their number repeated on the slip 7 times to use in the tumbolas (raffle drawings).
The table of classes offered.
Participants then went to pick a charla to attend. There were four classrooms each with a different lesson going on every hour. Each lesson was given twice so there were two opportunities to go to it. Participants could choose to attend any lesson offered at the moment. Lessons included:
The idea was to offer a variety of themes while maintaining a strong focus on issues related to sexual health. We wanted to encourage participants to focus more on their own sexual health and to be more comfortable dealing with these topics. Building personal comfort is a move towards eliminating the aura of avoidance and secracy that abounds with sexual topics and provides opportunity for the continued spread of AIDS.
The classes had hands on activities where possible. Above the participants are praciticing reading nutricion labels with the help of Stephanie. One of the most popular demonstrations and practice activities of the day was condom use...on an unripe banana.
Teri teaching women's health. She taught about breast self exams, pap smear tests, and other sexual health topics.
Jim and Robby show an example of a menstral cycle and how it relates to fertility.
Robby and Jim took on the teaching of Family Planning. Their interest and willingness to teach this subject helps women to know that men can be knowlegeable and involved in the family planning process. Family planning was a popular class, and the cooks for the day planned specifically to be available to go to this class.
April teaching how to brush your teeth with her helpers ready to demonstrate.
I taught dental health and had a couple of kids come to both sessions even though they knew it was the same class. We started by eating a cookie and then looking in a mirror to see how much cookie sticks around in your teeth. The kids were very helpful in demonstrating how to brush your teeth, and they also got to take their toothbrush home. We all also flossed two teeth and got to see models of teeth.
A kid selecting a raffle ticket for the Red Cross after their class.
At the beginning of each lesson, participants put one of their numbered slips of paper in the paper bag for that class. After the lesson, the instuctors pulled numbers from the bag and used it for a raffle for small prizes. Prizes were mostly healthy things like toothpaste, toothbrushes, floss, Panamanian flags, and seeds for the garden. People in our commuity love raffels and prizes. (And we were able to collect the bags afterward and know how many people attended each charla, and if they were men, women, young adults, or children, by comparing the numbers in the bag back to the sign-in sheet.)
One of the bigger jobs of the day was cooking for everyone. We made a deal with the Padres de la Familia president (and a good friend of ours) Cecilia, that if the Padres cooked (well, really the madres) we would "pay" for the service with much needed new plates, cups, and spoons for the school. This not only benifited the whole community, it also meant that with some washing of dishes, we were able to feed everyone and not use any disposable dishes...less trash!! The cooks also took turns going to classes...and even were so organized that while waiting for the rice to finish cooking they locked up the kitchen and all went to a class.
Seven PCVs came out to lend support and teach classes. We could not have done it smoothly without them and would have offered only 1/2 as many classes. A big THANK YOU to Stephanie, Teri, Jim, Robby, Lee, Emily and Laura for your help at the Health Fair!
