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.

Estufa Lorena - the first fire

We recently made an Estufa Lorena or earthen stove with Cecilia and Eduardo. We were pretty excited about it and that made waiting the 30 days for it to dry pretty hard for those of us who are impatient at times (who? me? never!). Luckily, our many guests came along and being guides for them took our minds off of the stove...and before we knew it the time for lighting the stove was here.


Cecilia and her family did a fabulous job taking care of the stove while it was drying. They did layers of mud and later ash every two or three days as directed on the calendar that we made them to follow. That ability to follow directions is rare in any community, but spectacular here. As a result of their daily work, the stove was beautiful. It looked almost like cement and was wonderfully smooth and dry. Unknown to us, Cecilia had carved our initials into the front of it very prominently to remember us as she uses the stove. Of course, that just upped the ante on hoping the darn thing worked well.Below is a view of the inside of the firebox (admittedly not the prettiest view) which allows you to see the upward slant of the smoke tunnel as it heads to the second burner. This style of stove uses the hot air for 2 or 3 pots to get the most efficient use of the wood being burned. In the back you can see bits of the original brown clay that she did not cover.Here is the firebox with a fire in it. Getting it to burn well took some practice, Cecilia is used to really packing in the wood (because normally the fire is in an open area) but this smothered the fire a bit in the stove. You can see the pot on the burner, positioned just above the main body of the fire. Despite good pot placement we had a hard time getting the pot to boil...it formed little bubbles on the bottom but never reached a rolling boil. Not having a rolling boil is a problem, without it no woman would be happy with this stove. We decided that we needed to adjust 3 things:

1. Sand the indents where the pot sits for a better flush seal between pot and stove (and less smoke would escape too).
2. Make the burner holes bigger to allow more heat passage to the pot. This limits how small a pot she can use, but made the rolling boil possible.
3. Adjust the angle of the roof of the firebox to slope inwards so the smoke would head towards the back and the chimney...not out the mouth of the firebox.

In a true show of self motivation, Cecilia did all of these changes while we were out of town...unheard of! She did a wonderful job...even adding clay to the mouth of the stove in a test to see if that helps to limit the blowback when the wind changes direction. She is an amazing woman. The best part is, after the changes she got the ultimate reward: seeing her changes make her stove work better...she got a rolling boil and cooked her first pot of rice with it.

We were able to use the photo above to illustrate that you can use smaller diameter wood effectively with this stove. The wood on the left is the size she would normally use...a bit bigger than my wrist. The wood on the right is smaller, about the size of my thumb. Both can be used, but normally they would not bother to collect the smaller stuff which is typically blown down rather than cut down.

Below is Kevin with the stove that first burn day...note the temperary chimney. They will make a permanent chimney when they finish the new roof (hopefully before rainy season!). Having only a temporary chimney has served well to illustrate how much better the stove works with a chimney. Cecilia is excited about cooking without so much smoke and heat. This could be a good life change for her, and if anyone can take care of this stove and make it last for 20 years it is her.

So what is next? Well, tenemos ganas (we have the desire) to make a stove at the school where the mothers cry from the smoke and sweat from the heat almost every day as they cook lunch. But community development means you do what the community wants to do to better themselves. With that in mind we have a meeting at Cecilia's house on March 5th with the mothers who do the cooking at the shool. The goal is to show them the stove, explain what it is, how we made it, and what are the pros and cons of this type of stove...and then ask if they want one and will work with us to build it with them. I think that they will want one...I mean it is cheap, cooler, safer, no smoke, and less wood to burn. But vamos a ver (we will see) what they want and go from there.

Estufa Lorena - mud day

It took numerous trips to Cecilia and Eduardo's house to get everything ready, but we finally made their estufa lorena! Here are the photos and story of the preparation steps and construction day. Watch for another post on the finished product.

Preparation
The first step was collecting the materials. The ingredients list is pretty simple: barro (soil with a fairly high clay content), arena (sand), estiércol (horse or cow poo), and agua (water). We had actually collected barro and estiercol a while ago with them, and stored it in their chicken coop. The problem came when we did a soil test.

(Results from a good soil test; note the layers - at the top, orangish water that will eventually settle to clear, then a half inch layer of clay, then an orangish soil layer, then the big stuff at the bottom of the 2-liter. Color is not very important, this one just happened to be an orangish soil)

The soil we had collected at Cecilia and Eduardo's didn't show a nice clear thick layer of clay. In a 2 liter bottle test you fill it 1/4 way with soil and hope for 3/4-1 inch of clay. Without enough clay content, the "brick" that becomes the stove wouldn't hold together well. So we had to search for different soil.

We tried a couple other spots near their house, but they didn't have better layers, and Eduardo found a seam of pure clay near the shore, but that wouldn't mix with the other ingredients well, it just formed small balls and rolled off. Finally, we hiked ten minutes up into their pasture and collected small pea sized clay chunks from an ant hill; the ants dig down into the ground to make their home and dump the more clay heavy soil around their hole. The pile was probably two feet tall and three feet around, and was more than enough to augment our existing pile of low-clay soil.

The estiercol was the next problem. It is best collected in dry lumps of cow or horse manure, but it needs to be more of a dust to mix with the other ingredients. So Cecilia and Eduardo ended up putting it in their pilon and pilar-ing it to get it into a dust. (Click here to see a video of pilar-ing rice.)

The arena was simple, since they live on one of the best sandy beaches on the island. The water was not too hard either.

The last prep step was building a base for the stove. Cecilia wanted a cement table, although any really strong table like a packed earth or stone will work too. We measured the height she would want her pots to be at, then subtracted the height of the estufa, and came up with a two-cement-block-high table. Many of the stove tables in our community are too darn tall (some are too tall even for April) because the men build then without considering how tall the cook is.

(Eduardo and Kevin constructing the walls of the table; we left the front open for storage of wood or pots)

Eduardo built the tabletop while we were out of site one time, a pro-active bit of workmanship that was quite pleasant to encounter. So everything was ready and we set a date for the construction. We let other community members know the date, because we figured we would need some help, and we hoped all would go well.

Construction


The morning of construction, we had three youth from the community, including Julito, who had accompanied me to another volunteer's site nearly a year ago to build a couple of estufas, and then Maria Luisa came as well. It was a good thing we had that many helpers, because with collecting an extra sacko of clay from the ant hill, building the formuleta (wooden frame, held together by nails and bailing wire), mixing all the ingredients, and packing them in, it was a long hard day. Luckily, the construction site was under a tree, providing us nice shade. Before rainy season returns, they will reconstruct the roof over the stove.

(The first load of the mix is dumped into the formuleta and packing begins; Eduardo, Maria Luisa, Cecilia, and April ensure the corners are well packed too)

The formuleta was made from lumber cut on the island. The pieces we'd purchased originally turned out to be an inch or so too short, so we had to cobble together an extra piece to make it tall enough. It didn't impact the end result, but it did delay the start as we cut extra pieces of wood.

Normally the soil mixture is made in parts, instead of all at once because that would be just too much volume to mix with a shovel. The ratio of ingredients is important, as it needs to be damp but not wet, clumpy but not sticky, etc. Each batch is tested with a ball test...a ball the size of a baseball is made and then dropped from shoulder height. In a good mix the ball will land and flatten out to about 1/2 round and show no big cracks. If the test doesn't go well you adjust the mixture until it tests well.

Once it is dumped into the formaleta, it is packed, using a big packer in the middle and smaller ones around the edge to ensure that all parts are well compacted. It is added and packed layer by layer to ensure that it is well packed.

(Eduardo using the big packer, a chunk of wood covered in a sacko so it doesn't stick to the mix)

When the formuleta was finally filled, the last touches of packing took place.

(You can see the formuleta bulging in the front right corner, pulling out the nails, from all the pounding and packing of the soil. Bulging is common at this stage as it is hard to imagine just how much force you are applying to the wood while packing... it is hard to get people to build the box strong enough to not have bulging.)

Once the formulate was packed full, it was time for lunch, and then we began to remove the wooden frame.

(Maria Luisa and Eduardo removing nails from the formuleta)

The idea is to be able to use the same formuleta on multiple stoves. We'll have to see if our wood is still in good enough shape to use it again.

(Maria Luisa and Kevin looking at the packed mud as the final pieces of the formuleta are removed)

Once the formuleta is totally removed, it is time to carve out the firebox, the "burners", the chimney hole, and the tunnels connecting them.

(Cecilia, as the ama de casa, or woman of the house, ceremonially began the carving, cutting out the mud for the mouth of the firebox)

It helps to have a child assist at this point, since their small hands work better than big ones in carving the small tunnels with limited access. There should be twenty centimeters between the front of the stove and the first burner, and ten centimeters between all the other holes (in this case, two burners and a chimney) and the edges.

(Cecilia working on the mouth of the firebox, and her daughters Rosaria and Soray carving out the big and small burners respectively)

While the holes are mostly carved with spoons, we also trim off the edges with a machete to remove any sharp edges, both for a smoother result and to diminish the risk of uneven drying and thus cracking. You finish off by using water to smooth out the whole surface and make it pretty.

Then, you have to wait for about thirty days for the mixture to slowly dry. Early on, each day you should apply a watery clay mixture to ensure even drying; later, it becomes an ash mixture instead, to seal it.

(April with her hand in the main burner - the firebox is hidden in the darkness of the front side - a few days after construction)

The actual construction was done by mid-afternoon, a very full day's work. Late that afternoon, as we walked, exhausted, back to the house, we noted the clouds building and thought, how funny, here it is the summer dry season, and we might get rain. But it wasn't until we got home and the rain started pounding down that we thought, OH CRAP! THE STOVE WILL BE NOTHING BUT A PILE OF MUD! and tried to call Cecilia. We left messages on her phone and her daughter's, and hoped. Luckily, they thought of it as well and put a piece of zinc over the stove, saving all our hard work from immediate ruin.

Keep an eye out...a post about the first lighting of the stove is coming up soon!

First Time out of Santiago

Last week, I took our 15-year-old neighbor to another volunteer's site to work on an estufa lorena junta. It was his first time outside of Santiago (our provincial capital) and in fact, his first time to even spend the night there. It was also his first time in the mountains, even though there are others only about an hour bus ride north of Santiago.

We caught a bus out of Santiago heading east for the three-hour ride and I gave him the window seat. I could remember my first ride across Panamá, and even having watched out the window as the American Mid-West, the Red Center of Australia, central Europe, and Patagonian Chile had rolled past, it was still exciting, everything new. I can only imagine his thoughts as he watched huge fields of sugar cane zip by; the mountains slowly approach, grow large, and then recede behind us; and he saw his country, beyond the one hour small-bus trip from port to Santiago, for the first time. At one point, he hit my arm and pointed. "Look at that river!" I didn't think it huge, but it was probably twice as wide as any other he'd seen.

The other volunteer, who lives in the mountains, with a beautiful view, was working with her

community members to build six estufas in six days. While there, we stayed in her house and he got the chance to chat with other Americans and a broader view of who we are (and how well we speaking Spanish) than just April and I can provide. During the day, we worked with about ten of her community members on sifting and mixing materials (soil, sand, and estericol - horse poo), building the form, packing the mix, and then carving out the stove. Throughout the junta, he got the chance to talk with other Panamanians and learn how similar and different life is in other parts of his country.

(Julian on the point just outside Steph's house, with El Valle lost in the clouds behind the rock spire)

(Julian carving out the mouth of the stove; the first "burner" is beginning to take shape on top)

We worked on two of the estufas, then returned to Santiago for the night before catching an early bus to the port for a ride back to the island. Unable to find anyone in town to stay with, we ended up at the hotel that April and I usually stay in. I was afraid it would give him an impression that we have a lot of money (and compared to his family, we do), but I figured a "fancy" night out would be okay - hot water shower, cable TV.

Ironically, when I told him how many more channels were on this TV than the small B&W in his house, he changed the channel once, and stopped on a basketball game. From the US. With the original English commentary.

After a few minutes of talking over the game (which the channel had switched to baseball, still in English), he asked if it was dark out. I said yes, and asked if he had seen the city in the dark. He hadn't, so we went for a walk. I'm not sure it was what he expected - loud and dusty, relative to the island. We did stop in the supermarket, which he'd never visited, and saw toys, clothes, and food that was all new, and bought some apples.

I hope I didn't overwhelm him, I hope I didn't show him a life he becomes jealous of, but I hope I did show him some of what else is available out there in the world, beyond the island, beyond Santiago, and how much there is that is different, but also how wonderful, how familiar, how beautiful, it can be.

Q&A: How islanders cook

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cultural & Technical Weeks

Well, we just finished week 5 and 6 of training (out of 10) and as usual we are tired.

Week 5 focuses on Culture. All the trainees travel out to thier region of Panama to experince local culture. Kevin and I traveled to the mountains of Veraguas to visit Areshia, a volunteer who lives and works just a coulple of ridges away from Noah and Karine (who we visited previously).

The first photo is Areshia while teaching in the school. She does a weekly environmental class and we helped her to prepare for and run class that week. We did neglect to think up a rain plan....I don´t know what we were thinking of seeing how we are in PANAMA, but we recovered nicely and had a good class despite the rain.

This is our group (l-r) Cassandra, Maria our Regional leader, Arishia in the back, Teri in orange, Kevin and me.

In Areshia´s community we contunied our practice in Spanish and lived with host families. n Kevin and I asked to be with seperate families so we would get more individual spanish time...and that was good practice.


We experenced culture by talking to local artisans, one that makes Panama hats, another who makes maracas, and a lady who makes jewlery and uses many local seeds in her jewlery. We also visited a local hostel (well worth the trip to Santa Fe to sit in thier hammocks - see the photo of our group above) and a small food and crafts market. I came close to buying a Panama hat, but it was a tad to big. Darn.

This is Cassandra and Teri modeling the jewlery with local seeds. Teri (in the green) bought the one she is wearing.


We also had a good time watching "The Devil Wears Prada". Imagine 7 people crowed around a laptop in the dark and you get the picture. There is a very funny line in the movie that mentions Peace Corps...so we got a good laugh.

For Technical week we seperated and I headed out to join others in the CEC program to learn about the coastal environment and the issues we will be working on. We stayed with host families in Holly´s community on the South-western end of the Asero Penninsula.


The people there were great and the weather and it was beautiful. The sand on her beach was grey black in color and not developed. Holly works with a very motivated and organized communtiy group on Sea turtle conservation. They collect and protect eggs from people and animals until they hatch. We walked the beach looking for turtles every night, but did not see any as it is early in the year still. We
had classes on sea turtles, mangroves, eco-tourism, youth leadership development, and how to build a Lorina stove.

A very large percentage of Panamanians cook with fagones...which is really just a pot sitting on three large rocks over a fire. Even those people who have and use a gas range still use a fagone when they cook for large numbers of people or traditional foods. Well you can imagine that this takes a lot of wood for the cooking.

Loriana stoves are earthen stoves made with easy to obtain materials - clay, sand, grass, and a zinc pipe for a chimney. The benifits of a loraina stove are that they burn about 30% less wood, they divert the smoke from the cook, they contain and focus the heat onto the pot, and they can use the same flame to heat more than one pot. You can also bake in them after cooking if you are real good. A Loraina stove can last 10-20 years with proper care.

With that said they are labor intensive to build. The steps can be seem in the photos.

1. 1. You collect and sift the soil and sand. You have to check the soil content to be sure that you mix things in the right purportions. Sifting soil took FOREVER because the soil was damp...nothing dries fast here.

2. After mixing the parts together with just the perfect amount of water you put it into the mold and tamp it down hard...beat the snot out of it until you have to work to dent it with your finger.

3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until the mold is full...8 hours or mor of work.

4. Remove the mold and pray it looks good...it will but at that point you have soo much work in it you can´t help but pray a bit.

5. Carve out the openings and tunnels for the wood, fire, pots, and chimney. Use water to smooth all surfaces.

6. Let dry for 30 days. Check daily for cracks and fix them. Do a test fire on day 20 to check for major issues before it is too dry to fix.

7. Use and maintain your stove....tell all your friends and have a party to build on for someone else.