Burning: Why and What are the Alternatives?

(Ed. Note: I originally wrote this a couple of months ago for La Vaina, the PC Panama revista (magazine) that comes out every regional meeting (now every four months). La Vaina has articles from the office about on-going work, as well as summaries of various committees and groups, and photos and stories or other submissions from volunteers, covering everything from what is the best cheese-puff in Panama, to thoughts on sustainable development, to recipes for zapallo soup (zapallo is like pumpkin; remember when we carved some with our neighbors?). In Panama, La Vaina means "the thing", as in "da me la vaina allá" - "give me the thing there". Back issues are available online at the Friends of Peace Corps Panama website. Sorry I didn't get any photos to submit with it, although one of the editors added one of some small burns on a hillside; you can find the article - minus the last two paragraphs - and his photo in the May 2009 issue.)

Burning: Why and What are the Alternatives?

As summer comes to an end, the pace picks up. Everything is as dry as it will be. Soon, the rains will green everything again, and new trees, brush, vines, and grasses will grow over the trees, brush, vines, and grasses that were cut over the past few months. In other words, better burn the dry stuff now.

Why is slash & burn the preferred method of farm management? What are the gains from this destructive option that outweigh other safer, less-damaging alternatives?

There are several reasons for slashing, and several for burning. The basic slash reason is the paucity of “good” soil here in the tropics. While many of us from the US are accustomed to feet of good, grow-able soil, here in Panama and other tropical lands, the topsoil is often less than a foot, sometimes merely inches. Once exposed from the protection of tree canopy, brush, and detritus, the winds of summer and rains of winter quickly move the soil into streams, rivers, and the ocean. Within a few years, a recently but not maintained cleared plot will not grow crops well. So it is time to move to another patch of “good” soil. (At least here in my island community, that frequently means a plot that was previously cultivated and has been let fallow for a few years, so no more “old growth” is normally lost.) Chop through with a machete, and it is ready for planting (or in the case of tirar-ing maize, plant first by tossing seeds so they reach the soil, then cut everything down so sun and rain reach the seeds). It isn’t hard to slash – a day or two’s work and everything is down.

What is the alternative to slashing? Well, for starters, you could maintain the plot you are currently using. Which means adding abono (fertilizer) organico; preventing erosion through live barriers, abonos verdes, and terracing, and drainage catchment systems; and weeding to prevent overrun of your plot by malaisas. Those efforts, which SAS and CEC learned in Pre-Service Training on a small scale, take time, especially if you are trying to apply them on a large scale. A lot more time and effort than a few days of slashing.

As for burning, once you’ve cosechar’ed (harvested) that primero coa de maize (first planting of corn) in your slashed plot, the time has come to burn down the now dried materials. Burning removes the sticks and stumps from the field, and adds ceniza (ash), with its associated nutrients. This serves at least three purposes: one, it adds (albeit limited relative to alternatives) nutrients and minerals to the soil, which will make your next crop grow better; two, it kills weeds, which decreases the amount of work necessary to maintain the plot; third, it reduces the large debris, so it is easier to move around the plot when planting, weeding, and harvesting. It isn’t hard to burn – a hour or two’s work and everything is aflame.

What is the alternative to burning? Presuming you’ve already slashed, then you could use the same plot without burning (possibly you already did this with that first coa de maize). The downed trees could be placed horizontally as dead barriers for erosion control. You could weed really well right away, while the weed counts are low; and you could plant abonos verdes, such as mani forajero or canavalia to help control weed populations. These efforts take time, a lot more time than a few hours of burning.

Another option is to mulch all the downed material. Smaller items (leaves, twigs) can be piled for compost, but branches, limbs, sticks, and trunks are too large. A chipper shredder would be required. This takes time to transport and time to use (the gallon of gas to run it we’ll call a wash with the gas to start the fire if burning). And you still haven’t really addressed the weed seed issue. A lot more time than a few hours of burning.

So, it sounds like in terms of the farmer’s short term perspective, slash and burn is the easy and positive winning option. Less work, fewer weeds, more nutrients in the soil.

The alternative, for the farmer, requires thinking well into the future, when the effort of maintaining a plot long term begins to pay off through the need for less land, and less distance travelled to that land. If the same plots could be used over and over, all your land can be in use at once; there is no need to allow a plot to revert to monte (transition level growth between grasses and true forest) so it will grow material for later burning for nutrients, etc.

So why are we against burning? Why is burning bad? By whose values? There is an image of burning as a terrible thing – dirty, polluting, resource consuming, illogical. Is that because it is a single big event? Like our fascination with plane crashes even though they are less threatening than car crashes, burning a single big burn is more noted than the small, less visual, impacts of tailpipe emissions, etc. What is dirty and polluting? Burning a hectare of monte releases CO2. Driving a car releases CO2. Which is dirty and polluting? What is resource consuming? While natural resources may be lost, we’ve already seen that more immediate resources (time, money) would be necessary to implement alternatives to burning.

So what can we, as Peace Corps Volunteers, do? We can bemoan the burning. But most folks will still do it. If we feel that it is really important enough, that our values can be understood by our community members, then we must provide alternatives that are feasible and adoptable. Maybe start with your MIDA (Ministry of Agriculture) or ANAM (Environmental Authority) office to talk about a demonstration plot of mulching, with a multi-year use plan. Maybe with a community farmer, so others understand it can be done and isn’t all due to MIDA magic or ANAM abono while they aren’t looking. Or you start with talking to community farmers about why they burn. Ask, don’t lecture. Learn, don’t teach. Start early. After a while, offer alternatives to their reasons for burning. By your second year, maybe you’ll find someone willing to implement some of the ideas. Then call in MIDA or ANAM or other PCVs to help you start, so they see there is interest and they aren’t alone.

By the time you leave, maybe one small plot less will burn. Congratulations. That’s your reward.

Kevin Cropper is a SAS PCV in Group 59. He loves the smell of a campfire, but not a forest fire. He hasn’t figured out how to determine if that one plot less burned, thanks to his efforts.

Off to Coiba!

Just a quick update....

I (April) am off to Coiba National Park today to teach a Certified Interpretive Guide course with park rangers there. In this case interpretation means interpretation of a history, resource or other story....such as guided hikes that our National Park Rangers do in the States...they help you interpret what is unique and important about what you are seeing/experiencing. The training will be an official course within the curriculum of National Association of Interpretation. (See their webpage at http://interpnet.com/ to learn more about interpretation as a profession and a skill set.)

As my parents have heard... I originally proposed this week long class last February. I wrote the proposal three times before it was accepted (English, Spanish, and official government format Spanish). The course has been postponed twice...once in November due to a broken electric generator and again last month for unknown reasons (internal agency confusion seems likely on that one :)

The funding has come from the national environmental agency ANAM and all of the students are ANAM employees. All told we hope to have representatives from 7 different Panamanian parks in attendance. I even have a wonderful co-instructor to share the work with...Eylin Martinez is a Panamanian who also holds the certification from the National Association of Interpretation. I am so lucky that she is donating her time and efforts to this workshop...she brings a great point of view, excellent Spanish and a cheery disposition. All in all she is quite likely to be the main reason I survive the week with any sanity. Thank you Eilyn!!!

So, off I go to fix up the last minute details and make the last of the copies needed. I will post later about how the class went...with photos of course. If I get lucky I may even get in some snorkeling time...I am taking my gear just in case.

Boat Repair

Do you remember the boat that was in our house when we first visited in July 2007?

It was still there when we moved in in November 2007. It stayed for December...and January....and on and on. We got used to using it as a type of bench. Then April told the owner that she was going to move it...he just needed to say where to put it.

Then the first weekend of May 2008 (less than 2 weeks after April asking where to put it), we came home to find that the boat was no longer there. Our neighbor had finally moved it into his front yard. It stayed there for about a month, before moving into the Casa Comunal (a very similar design to our house, but much bigger) across the field. Over the course of the last year, they worked on it, practically taking it apart and expanding it into something larger. The finished boat was about 1 1/2 feet wider and a couple of feet longer than the original. They put fiberglass on it, and put it in the water around January of this year.

And the fiberglass separated.

So they pulled it out in the cove near our house, cut off the fiberglass, and put on a new layer (ouch, expensive mistake, since everyone would like to fiberglass their boats to make them last longer and float lighter, thus using less gas, but it isn't cheap).

Then they pushed it back into the water.

(Check out those long legs helping to push)

After cutting some lengths of a trash tree (grows really fast, dies fairly soon, and isn't good for anything other than making O2) to serve as rollers, they recruited a bunch of neighbors and kids to move it back into the water.

(Almost there, although if it were a really high tide, it would already be in the water)

Someone gets the job of running the logs around to the front once we've rolled off the back ones, since they haven't lined the entire length to the water.

(At last, it makes it into the water; it is one of the brighter boats in our community)

This time, the fiberglass held and the boat has been put to work fishing and transporting people and stuff. It is a bit larger than most of the boats folks use around the island, but makes for a nice ride to port, with the little casita to shelter from sun and rain.

We are seeing an increasing number of boats that are either all fiberglass ($$$$) or have a fiberglass layer on the bottom ($$). For those of you who remember Allie's boat that Pedro was building, it is still sitting pretty in his front yard waiting for the plata (money) to finish it.
The art of making and using an all wooden boat is not lost in our community, but in our two years here we have seen an acceleration of the change away from natural local materials. We have also seen at least one small boat handmade from a single log...but there are not that many big logs anymore to use this way. Things will always change, the changes just feel faster sometimes when you can actually see them in progress.

Money in Panama

The money in Panama could be pretty familiar to anyone coming to visit from the United States. That is because the "Balboa" is their name for the Dollar (and is also the name of a popular beer); the balboa has been tied to the dollar since its inception in 1904 after Panama's Independance from Columbia (wikipedia info link), and currently, the paper money is all US Dollars, although stores often use the "B/." symbol instead of the "$".


But while Panama uses US coins, there are also Panamanian versions of the coins as well, and the peso (50-cent piece) is actually used with some frequency. All the coins have the same composition as their US counterparts. I have not been able to figure out yet where their coins are minted however. And they do not seem to mint every year. I have found quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies from 1996 (when the shields got smaller and other design changes were made) and 2001 for example, but nothing in between and only quarters since, with 2003, 2005, and 2008 versions, each with a different design. As they are the same size and have the same value as their US versions, you'd have no trouble spending Panamanian coins in the United States.

(From the top, clockwise: un centavo, un peso, una quara, un real, y diez centavos)

In recent years, the US Mint has begun a program of changing the obverse or reverse of US coins, making your pocket change much more interesting to look at and much more popular with coin collectors, who now try to hoard a copy of each style. Panama has been making small changes for years. Here are some of the versions I've collected in our time here.


Similar to in the states, one cent is called un centavo. But not a "penny".

(One cent pieces, with various front images; Urraca is a historical/mythological freedom fighter, who led the indigenous against the consquitadors in the 16th century)

The five cent piece in Panama is an integral part of the monetary system. Instead of a "nickel", it is called un real. And many items are commonly priced in reales. For instance, if you buy a soda for 20 cents, the shopkeeper will likely say, "cuatro reales", or "four nickels". This is true at least up to items that cost a dollar. So something that costs 75 cents would be "quince reales" or "fifteen nickels", not "setenta-cinco centavos".

(These five cent pieces sometimes have the shield, sometimes the face of Sara Sotillo, a Panamanian educator born around 1900 and instrumental in the development of teachers rights and responsibilities.)

You'll have to refer to the picture above of all the coins to judge the size, but Panamanian ten cent pieces (un decimo de balboa) are the same smallness as US dimes and are probably the most boring of Panamanian coins.

(Panamanian ten cent pieces don't have their own name, like "dime". These two reverses show two shield designs, the newer slightly smaller.)

To me, the 25-cent piece is the most dynamic. Here is the obverse (the Balboa profile) and five of the six reverse designs I have seen (I was missing the Childrens' Hospital, the newest design, that day).

(Panamanian Quarters, with from top left, the original shield design (at least 1966 to 1993), the smaller shield design without bottom fronds (1996 and 2001), the Panama Vieja tower (2003), the Puente del Rey (2005), and the Protégete Mujer (2008) with a Protect Women ribbon.)

While not as changing as the quarters, the peso, or 50-cent piece, is really neat mainly because they actually use it here in Panama. I have gotten one as change numerous times. While the coin holders that the bus drivers and ayudantes use do not have a space for them, they are not at all averse to getting or giving them, and toss them in a box to hold them.

(Half dollars, or medio balboas)

So, if you decide to visit Panama, you'll have no trouble spending your US money, and you'll have something interesting to bring back and share with the grandkids or just the clerk at the local tienda. :)

I did spend a US "gold" presidential dollar at a tienda on the island. One was willing to take it, probably more as an interest item, while another didn't want it and wanted paper. That is one coin that doesn't have a large circulation here. Of course, it doesn't up in the US either. :)

Update on Library Progress

Wow. Early on in our service, experienced volunteers warned us that the first year would be getting used to the community and the community getting used to you, and you talking about ideas and projects and ways of doing things, but not actually doing any of them. Then in the second year, things would start happening, and your community members would start implementing a few of the ideas you had talked about. Finally, in the final few months, your community would realize you were leaving soon and want to implement all of the ideas you had ever talked about, all at once (okay, maybe not all, but more than you have time to accomplish; maybe that's why they do follow-up volunteers).

Well, it isn't quite like that, but we've certainly seen an uptick in organized scheduling of activities. Last Sunday, we had a community meeting about the library, to discuss where to house it and how to use it. Attendance was limited, but with Cecilia and Maria Luisa (two of our host moms and community leaders) there, it was very productive, and they decided to talk more about it on Wednesday at a Padres de Familia meeting at the school. They assigned each person (well, everyone but us, which was a pleasant surprise) at the Sunday meeting a section of the island to alert about the Wednesday meeting. It was amazing how quickly the word got around; I left site Monday and was asked Monday afternoon about the meeting.

On Wednesday, we had 27 people at the meeting at the school, including the maestra. Cecilia led the discussion and guided them through deciding where to store the books and how to make the books accessible to the community. It was amazing, organized, and productive.

(One of the best parts about this meeting? April and I understood about 97% of the conversation, even when multiple people were talking. What a change from our first Padres meeting we attended!)

The current plan is on 21 May, they'll use a chainsaw to make planks out of a tree that is already down on the school property, which is where they intend to house the library until they can build it its own house off school property. Then on 23 May, they will have a junta (work party) to build bookshelves, which they decided on in the meeting as the best way to make the books visible and upright with spines readable.

On 5 June (April will be gone a week in the midst of that to teach a course at Isla Coiba National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site), they will transport all the books to the school, organize them. And we will discuss amongst the volunteers interested what hours it will be open. (Transporting and organizing the books will be a hefty effort. Between the books we have and the books Cecilia has from a Club de Leones - Lions Club - donation, there are probably 10 or 11 ft of books, around 300, from thin kids books like Dora the Explorer, to the first three Harry Potter's, to thick health books, like Donde No Hay Doctor - Where There is No Doctor - and Qué Se Puede Esperar Cuando Se Está Esperando - What to Expect When You're Expecting.)

Finally, on 9 June (si Dios quiere - God willing), they will have an Opening Party to open the library to the community, announce office hours, and demonstrate the check out procedure, which was the other part of the library discussion at the meeting. After much consideration and discussion on the relative merits of protecting the books by not allowing them to leave the room versus giving people the chance to read at their leisure and to their kids by allowing them to take them home, as well as how to plan for replacements of damaged books, they decided:

• Adults only may check out books;
• Two weeks is the check-out period;
• No deposit is necessary to check out a book;
• One book at a time;
• Privledges will be suspended if you destroy a book;
• Renewals are allowed, but you must bring the book back to request checking it out again

So it sounds like a lot of work in the time remaining, but it also sounds well thought-out and do-able.

But the other big topic of discussion during the meeting was the interest in making an Estufa Lorena at the school. So, overlapped with that schedule of events for the library, they intend to modify the table in the kitchen, collect materials, and build an Estufa. After two years encouraging the construction of a school estufa, it is thrilling that they are going to do it, but we really wish they would have decided this a few months ago.

So now we're talking about a lot of work in the time remaining. Maybe those experienced volunteers were right. We'll be sure to warn the newbies on what to expect.

Mail Hold - Don't Send Any More Letters or Packages

To all of you who have sent us letters and packages, we have loved getting the ones that made it.

To all of you who have sent us letters and packages, someone or some mice have loved getting the ones that didn't make it, inspite of any Jesus stickers and tons of tape.

But to those of you with great success rates and those without, it is with great sadness that I say, please stop sending those letters. With as long as letters sometimes take to arrive at the Post Office here, and as long as it may be before we can visit and ask the nice ladies behind the counter to check the General Delivery under "C" for Cropper, we think the time has come to ask you to stop sending them.

It is hard to write about leaving; we have tried in many ways to avoid it, or at least thinking about it, and the sadness it will bring. But returning to the states (if you didn't hear, April didn't get selected for the Australia dream job) will at least mean getting our mail, even if it is a bit more expensive now. :)

Panama National Election 2009

"Change" seems to be a global presidential theme. On 3 May 2009, Panama held their once-every-five-years elections, and Ricardo Martinelli (millionaire owner of the Super99 chain of supermarkets here in Panama), who started his own Cambio Democratico (Democratic Change) party, defeated Balbina Herrera, of the PRD party, a long standing party which currently holds office with Martin Torrijos. (Presidential candidates can not succeed themselves, so Torrijos did not run.)

But while the global themes of campaigns were familiar to the local campesinos (countrymen) in our area (we were often asked about Barack Obama, who did we vote for, and the similarity in themes between Obama and Martinelli), elections in Panama are much more of a local event. Be sure to watch the video at the bottom of this post.

As I said, elections are held every five years. At that time, citizens vote for Presidente, Diputado, Alcalde, and Representante. The Diputado is like a Representative in the US, serving at the national assembly level. The Alcalde is like a mayor or county executive. And the Representante is in charge of the local level issues (such as attracting the government funding to accomplish things like the solar panels all the houses have in our community, or the sidewalk constructed last year). He (or she; we had two female and two male candidates this year) is generally the first person residents ask when they need help with a project, need building supplies to improve their house, or need a new battery for their solar panel.

So over the past year, newspapers, TV, and radio were covered with ads for candidates (many analysts said that Martinelli could sink so much of his own money into the campaign that it greatly changed the dynamic and methods compared to previous campaigns). Other popular advertising methods include Tshirts, hats, and flags, as well as banners on the street lights, posts and trees. These banners often indicated who to vote for at all four levels. We even had a banner appear on the island that listed PRD candidates for Presidente, Diputado, Alcalde, and the local Representante (sorry, I didn't get a picture). When you see the ballots below, you'll understand how they can indicate who to vote for. But all organized events and paid advertising had to end by midnight on Thursday, 30 April. This was rather nice, as it provided a three day respite before the election. (The sale of alcohol was prohibited in this time period as well, so you couldn't be drunk the day of the election. Unless you made your own.)

El Dia de la Votación was Sunday, 3 May. And it is an event. Many folks are still registered to vote where they grew up, so although we have only about 150ish adults on the island, there were 265 votes cast in each race. (The influence of "outsiders" was greatly discussed, since they aren't really affected by the vote they cast for Representante, which to most of our neighbors, was the most important race.) Each of the four candidates for Representante provided a number of boat rides from port to the island in the days prior, and food the day of. Why food? Because everyone goes to the school to vote (polls opened at 7am) and then hangs out for the day, chatting with friends, etc, and awaiting the close of the polls at 4pm. At which time, the counting begins.

The voting is held in the school, with three members of the Tribunal Electoral (the election board) and one policeman to ensure the security of the process. (There is no vote by mail, or absentee voting, so those four could only vote for Presidente. An odd twist to service towards voting.) On the wall outside the voting room, they pasted instructions on how to vote and sample ballots.

(Fairly simple instructions on how to obtain your ballots - you need your ID card - then how to mark them, and finally how to cast them in their appropriate box.)

(No cameras, video cameras, or cell phones allowed inside the voting room.)

There is a separate ballot for each race. Each ballot has its own color coding to facilitate the process.

(The blue Presidential ballot, with pictures and names of candidates with party names and flags. )

There were EIGHT parties early on in the race. As time passed, alliances were formed that generally held at the lower levels as well. In a drawing of lots, the order of the parties on the ballots was established. PRD drew 1 (the red, white, and blue striped flag) and Cambio Democratico drew 5 (the green and pink "CD" flag). If you wonder why several of the photos and names look similar, that is because PRD formed alliances with Partido Popular (2, green star on blue flag) and Partido Liberal (6, red/white/red striped flag), and CD built alliances with Molirena (3, red and yellow triangles flag, with a red rooster), Partido Panamanista (4, purple/yellow/red flag), and Union Patriotica (7, red with orange stripe flag). A former president formed his own party, something like Vanguard of the Moral Front, and was spot 8 (of the 269 votes in our island, he received 2 sympathy votes from folks who apparently knew Martinelli would win and didn't want the guy to get nothing).

So if you wanted to vote for Martinelli, but were really a fan of the Molirena party instead of Cambio Democratico, you could cast your vote in spot 3, instead of spot 5. Thus your party (Molirena) was credited with bringing support to the alliance, and in the total count, Martinelli got your vote. Then (so goes the idea), when he is president, he will support your party's desires as well and reward your party bosses for the votes they brought to his election.

(The orange Diputado ballot. The pictures and names are smaller, and there are three "open" positions for anyone running as an independant. But the party flags and numbers remain the same.)

By the level of the Diputado ballot, some of the Presidential alliances had broken, and parties were running competing candidates.

(The pink Alcalde ballot. Molirena, 3, did not have an Alcalde candidate or alliance. The blue stamps indicate that this ballot has been nulled, so people can look at it outside of the voting room.)

All of the parties were allowed to have an observer in the voting room. Four of the parties did on our island, and the observers were residents of the island. Each one had a full list of the voting roster (a book with the name, picture, and ID number of each person registered to vote in that voting location). They watched from 7am until the counting ended, about 11pm, and ensured ballots were cast correctly, without coercion, and counted correctly. We did have one blind man vote (he does not live on the island, but I think grew up here; we have seen him before) and he was assisted by someone to mark his ballots, fold them (into quarters) and drop each one into the appropriate cardboard box, one for each race, with the appropriate color across the top.

(Our race for Representante. There were four candidates.)

"Chayo" ran on PRD (1), aligned with Liberal (6); he actually lives off-island, although he has a house in the south and is the brother of several residents. Popular (2) and Vanguard (8), did not have candidates or alliances at this level. Efrain Miranda (the Representante for the past 20 years, or since the new government process was instituted after Noriega's removal by the US and George Bush Sr) ran on Molirena (3), aligned with Panamanista (4). Paula (our first host mom on the island) ran on Cambio Democratico (5), aligned with Union Patriotica (7). We also had one Independant, Vielka, running alone in the pale blue 9 spot; she also lives off island but has a house in the south and family.

At 4:11pm, the workers from the Tribunal Electoral officially closed the voting and taped the boxes closed. The policeman entered the room to ensure the boxes were not messed with. The officials demonstrated all the remaining, unused, ballots to the observers, and then all seven of them walked outside and burned them (so no one could cast an extra ballot). Then they opened the box of Presidential ballots and counted them all out onto the table. 269, which is how many their records showed had voted that day (265 local, plus the three workers and policeman). Then they returned all the ballots to the box. They taped large sheets of paper on the wall, one for each party, each sheet with 20 rows of 15, to record the counting. Then one worker pulled out a ballot, determined how it had been voted, announced it to the crowd (while the party observers were in the room, interested community members crowded the windows and counted along), then demonstrated it to one window, the observers, the other window, and finally handed it to a second worker who double checked that the announced vote was correct and built piles for each party. The third worker marked one vote on the sheet of the announced party.

April made a video of this process. I highly recommend observing a part of the participatory election process that takes place in Panama every five years. Can you imagine this kind of interest in the United States? This video was during the Presidential count. You can see the boxes for the other three offices next to the reader.



After this, we walked back to the house, ate dinner, and I walked back again about 8:30 that night. They were in the midst of counting for Alcalde. After each race was finished, the workers summed the totals, the observers gave agreement, and the workers recorded on the official papers the votes per party, total votes, blank votes, null votes, and then they signed and the observers signed. Then they took the ballots and the sheets from the wall, and they all went outside and burned all the papers. No hanging chads around to count later.

The count for the Representante, the race the residents were most interested in, began about 9:30pm. It finished about 11. While Vielka (the independant) started off strong, Chayo collected a streak of votes and then never relinquished the lead. With their alliances only suppling a few votes to each candidate, their totals were: Chayo, 112; Vielka, 82; Paula, 35; and Efrain, 33. Some folks were very happy, some were frustrated, some were confused. Some thought the Representante should live on the island, but obviously even the majority of island voters didn't agree, so it wasn't a conspiracy of outside voters. I talked with Paula later, and she was happy; she may not have won, but her presidential candidate had won handily, and that was enough for her.

It was a long and tiring days for us, and we didn't even vote (we were taking Family Fotos as a fundraiser for the library project). But what an amazing chance to see such interested and enthusiastic involvment in the democratic election process.

Beautiful Bugs

Well, it has been a while since my last post showing some of Panama's wonderful insect population...but I haven't stopped taking photos. Kevin helps me with holding a flashlight for lighting while I take close ups of bugs at night, that is true love for you! So I hope that you enjoy them like we did. You can click on the photo to see it bigger...if you care to.

This bright white bug was very patient with his photo shoot and even chose our blue dish rack for a striking background.

This cockroach was truly about 3/4 the size of our cell phone before he lost his head. He was still moving a bit in the morning.


This blade of grass is COVERED in ticks...tiny and medium ticks. This photo gives me the crawly skin feeling. On this walk I once stopped to pick ticks off of my leg to see 8 more starting to crawl up my feet in the time it took me to take off 3. In the cool air of the morning and evening the ticks crawl to the top of a blade of grass, as in the picture in the hopes that someone will brush by and give them a ride and a meal. In the hottest part of the day they crawl down and hide from the heat. They can be the size of the inside of this o or smaller than this period.

The good news is that ticks in Panama are easier to kill than their relatives in the USA...you can do it with your fingernail. They also do not carry Lymes disease...so if you don't find them you just get an itch spot at the site of the bite...not a lingering illness.

A tiny spider on our water filter.



This was just a really big spider. Very pretty. I don't know if this type of spider qualifies as a tarantula or not...I usually think of trantulas as having stocky legs (we have the type in Panama too) but this is the biggest type of spider I have seen on the island.

At our house we have a live alongside the spiders policy...we don't kill them. The theory is that they are less likely to bite than their competition for food is to sting...see below.

A mother scorpion with her young on her back. Scorpions give birth to live young and them protect them for a little while by carring them around. The young are about 3/4 inch long tip to tail when first out. This photo was taken outside a friend's house when we were moving a pile of cement block. Mother and babies did not survive long after the photo shoot.

I have decided that compared to scorpions, (who's first line of defense is to sting and our closest medical center is 2 hours away, not that most stings are hospital worth...but some are) spiders who run away from me are not as scary. They seem to hunt the same foods, so the spiders live and scorpions die in our house.

These leaf hoppers sometimes visit at night attracted to the candleight. There is nothing to quite give you a scare like a large leaf hopper or grass hopper smacking into your chest as they arrive to the circle of candlelight where you are cooking or reading. Just to give you a sense of scale...here is the same leafhopper with my friend Kori's hand.

I have also had the good timing to see some of our local insects as they start to hatch. Below is a newly hatch beetle on a tomato leaf. The eggs that they hatched from are to the left.

Kevin says I should go back to school for a degree in entomology...but I am just having fun. Maybe when I retire. OH! Just wait...I saved the best bug for next week!!! This bug makes me wiggle with nerdiness, giggle like a geek....don't miss out on next week's blog about a UFO in Panama!!!