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.

Why the intensity?

I just got to an internet connection finally and saw April's "vote" post. I wanted to make a quick follow-up. In talking to folks back in the states, I've heard more intensity in this race than the past two, which I thought were more divisive. The way I looked at it this go round, any change was change for the better. But I've heard folks say for the first time ever they donated to a political campaign, or they signed up for campaign emails, or they are trying to convince family and friends not to make a mistake and vote for the wrong candidate.
Admittedly, I've missed most of the ads and news, having only listened to debates 2 and 3 on our worldband shortwave radio. So please, help me out, post a comment (or send me an email) and let me know what what is the source of your interest, your intensity, and your activism this year. (I realize I'm pretty close to election day here, but it is my first internet access in over three weeks, sorry. And hopefully none of those qualities will abate dramatically on Wednesday; an informed and involved public makes for the best government.)
And like April said, Go Vote!

We voted...and you?

While we don't always get news in a timely or complete manner, we did manage to catch two of the presidential debates on the world band radio. They felt like real "Peace Corps" moments, sitting in our house by candlelight, listening to the radio on headphones with the rain pouring down outside.

I also saw the vice presidential debate on CNN Español in a private home with cable (a pretty rare thing in my experience) here in Santiago. The debate was translated into Spanish, which made it more challenging. I could hear a bit of the debate in English when the translators paused for thought...just enough to be distracting.

We voted in the US election and sent in the absentee ballots. One of my tasks for Oct 16th was to print our ballots...which were emailed to us. We then filled them in and mailed them (you could also fax them) back to Maryland for counting. I am really glad that Maryland allows them to be emailed...because we already missed one local election vote due to slow international mail.

And election day? We have reserved a hotel suite (sounds much better than the reality) to share with friends and watch election returns on November 4th. We figure that no matter who wins it will be a historic moment (first person of color or first woman elected) and we want to see and share it with fellow citizens.

So get out there and VOTE America...this is a historic election. Be sure to be part of it!

GRE anyone?

Our COS (close of service in PC lingo) date is just 9 or so months away (anyone else shocked by that?).

I mentioned COS because we (and most everyone else too) are thinking about what is next because next is coming up sooner and sooner. (Moms: Don't start hoping for answers to the "What next?" question yet, cause I don't have any. :) I think that every PCV thinks about grad school of some sort. I have come to the conclusion that I would like to do a Masters at some point after PC if I can figure out how to pay for it (or have it paid for).

That means thinking about taking the GRE. Thanks to Mom and Dad Cropper's birthday gift I have a GRE prep book to prepare with. However, I find myself worrying for the first time in my life about the vocab section of the test. I was always decent in those parts of the standardized testing, but just now I find my self worried. Why?

When I talk to Kevin the Spanish words arrive faster than the English about 50% of the time. I find myself struggling sometimes for words in English the same way I struggle in Spanish. "You know, that thingy" is not a GRE level response to a vocab question and hand pantomimes are not going to help me either they way they do when I faulta (lack) a Spanish word...did you see how that one just slipped in there? That is about the 6th spanish word to sneak its way into my thoughts while typing this.

Other PCVs have told me that taking the GRE or similar test while serving in a foreign language area is not good for your GRE scores...and I am starting to belive them. It doesn't help that when I am tired I find English words slipping into my Spanish language conversations as well. They just pop in there as if they were the right word, but I notice right away (I hope I always notice!).

I have also noticed that it is ever increasingly hard to not through in a spanish word while we are talking on the phone to family and friends. It is like trying to avoid using acronyms when your work uses them all day. It is tough.

To make matters just a tab worse, I have reached the language point where I seem to communicate just well enough that some Panamanians are now talking at normal speed with me! SLOW down please. Just because I can express myself at a decent rate doesn't mean that I can follow your thoughts at Panamanian speeds. This has been a confidence boost and blower. It is good to have them respond like normal...but being back to not understanding sometimes can blow the confidence apart.

So at the moment, we are still thinking, planning, dreaming, and worrying about how bad the GRE really could be. Hasta pronto!

Olympics sightings?

This one is dedicated to Todd in thanks for his excellent question.

Yes, the olympics have started...or so we have been told. I wouldn´t know anything about that other than Panama does have a team representing in the games (at least that is what people in the States have told us when we talked)....and that is the full sum (to date) of my Panama olympic team knowledge.

I am guessing that some of my nieghbors are watching the winter version of the summer olympics...winter because of all the snow they will see from the bad TV reception that they get out in our neck of the world. Also, the only TVs on the isla are small (9inch) black and white TVs...so the snow doesn´t help an already tough situation. However, some people can and do watch a limited amount of TV. Remember their electricity is from solar panels and if the charge for the day runs out....no lights tonight. They can and do run generators as well...but gas ain´t cheep here these days.

We can listen for news of the olympics...and read papers. We sometimes have access to TV with cable in hotels. I have faith that if any athletes from the USA do anything termendous (or termendously stupid) word will trickle to us from our community...it usually does. Since they can keep up with all the radio guys say in rapid spanish, they have more patience to listen for more news than I can.

So, if you are watching the olympics out there...please do chear for Pamana when you get the chance!!

What is a Diva Cup?

Hello,
April here. Ok, I am hoping that all of you will stick with me on this post - even you men. I am writing this post because I firmly feel that it can have positive effects on the amounts of trash each woman produces while also creating positive quality of life impacts. Remember, I am a Community Environmental Conservation (CEC) volunteer in Peace Corps and you are a part of my community - distant, but part of my community.

When we think of menstration (which we would rather not think about I know...but stick with me for a minute)...we think about PMS, cramps, chocolate and wish that it was over already. In a couple of days it is over and we forget about it again for 20 some days. But we never think of how long our week long menstral cycle really impacts our environment.

Did you know:

• In a woman's lifetime, she is likely to use 15,000 sanitary pads or tampons....this is 250-300lbs of trash.
  
• According to the National Women's Health Network, annually more than twelve billion pads and seven million tampons are used once and disposed of. (Yes, there are reusable pads.)


• Plastic parts of pads and tampons (like tampon applicators) may not biodegrade for several hundred years.


• Most of this trash dwells in our trash dumps, but not all. Plastic tampon applicators from sewage outfalls are one of the most common forms of trash on beaches. According to the Center for Marine Conservation, more than 170,000 tampon applicators were collected along U.S. coastal areas between 1998 and 1999.
  

So, I am not using pads or tampons anymore. Nope...no more.

No pads, no tampons....what are you using?

I have switched over to using a menstral cup. It is a soft silicon or natural rubber cup that is inserted into the vagina much like a tampon or diaphram. Menstral cups have been around since the 1930s and are used in many parts of the world...but they are not widely known in the USA. They do exist in the USA; for example, the female scientists of Biosphere 2 chose a menstral cup as their form of feminine hygiene while in their enclosed environment in Arizona in 1992.

I switched over to a menstral cup about a year before coming to Peace Corps. I figured at the time that tampons would be hard to find while in Peace Corps (I was right...they are much harder to find here in Panama.) I liked the idea of something reusable that I didn´t have to worry about running out of.

At the time I didn´t know anyone else who used one (I now know one other woman who uses them and feels as positive as I do). I was out and experimenting on my own without knowing if I was crazy to try this. I had to order it through the mail. Later, our local health food store started to stock them...so getting a second backup one to bring to Peace Corps was easier (thus I don´t have to worry about getting another if I drop one down a laterine). After not knowing anyone who used one I was suprised to feel that the switch to using a menstral cup was the best thing I ever did (menstrally anyway).

Even if the trash was not an important issue to my enviromentalist's heart I would still be using the Diva Cup that I own...I like it better than any other option. Beyond being reusable, I find that menstral cups have many advantages over pads or tampons including:

• Less leaking and fear of leaks
• Less need to change, fiddle with, or deal with menstral issues (cups are emptied typically 1-2 times a day)
• Less need to deal with menstral issues in public bathrooms (because the cup is emptied only 1-2 times a day I have the power to pick when and where I deal with it)
• Less odor
• Comfortable...like a tampon but without the dry feeling.
• Less risk of Toxic Shock Syndrome - there is currently no known link of TSS to menstral cups
• No trash to carry around the bathroom (or woods -important to a hiker)
  or flush (less chance of plumbing problems)
• No menstral supplies in my pocket or purse
• No tampons accidently going through the washer
• No more running out of tampons or wondering if I should carry more with me

For those of you out there who are not swayed by any of the above, here is another thought for you. Money. The average menstral cup should last years with only minimal care. Imagine 5 or more years not going down the pad isle in the supermarket (or having to talk your guy into going down it for you)!

If you spend $4.00 a month on pads/tampons now X 60 months = $240.00

If you just buy (for $35) and use a menstral cup $240.00 - $35.00 = $205.00 Savings!

As far as I can tell, there are two companies making menstral cups for the USA market: The Keeper and Diva Cup. I own one from each company and they are more or less the same (Diva cups are a little easier to find and what I would recommend). I would recommend a silicon cup over a natural rubber one though (looks and smells cleaner).

More information, including FAQs and testimonials, can be found at:

http://www.divacup.com/

http://www.lunapads.com/department.aspx?DeptId=4&

http://www.keeper.com/index.html


If you are thinking of trying one and have specific questions about them you want answered first just ask. I would be happy to answer honestly and completly. I know that menstral cups are not the answer for everyone. Like tampons, they do take a certain amount of comfort with your own body...but I think that the vast majority of us women are capable of that (if we can just stop listening to all the companies that make money by convicing us that menstration is icky).

I know that you might think that I am a bit weird for writing this post, but for me it is the environmental message that will give me the courage to click "publish post". I hope you too will find the courage to talk to your friends about this subject (even if you have to start off by telling them how far off the deep end your friend in Peace Corps has gone as the starter for the conversation). If this gets even one woman to try a menstral cup the embarassment I feel in sharing this will be worth it.


Thanks for reading.
April

Thinking of visiting?

Dear Prospective Travelers,

I know that there are some folks out there that have been batting around the idea of visiting us over the next year and a half...so this post is for you all.

Kevin and I would welcome anyone who wants to visit. I think Panama is a fabulous place. It is beautiful, uses USA currency (no money exchange fees) and you can travel in posh luxury or as cheaply as you would like. Panama is also fairly safe for visitors and offers the security of good hospitals (it is where volunteers from other Central American countries are often sent when they need advanced care).

Visiting a PCV has real advantages over visiting a country on your own...you get an opportunity to get off the normal tourist path and see how the people really live. We PCVs also know about how to travel, the cheep decent hotels, the sites, local culture, and language (I don't offer perfect Spanish...but it is functional). We are excited about our host country and ready to share that excitement with you.

Yes, unfortunately we do have to work while we are in Peace Corps...so we are not intending this to be a "we can drop everything and guide you" invitation. Rather, you are invited to visit and share a moment in our work and life here. We would look to plan work during your visit that you might enjoy seeing or participating in. Depending on when, for how long, and where you wish to go, we can probably take some vacation time to travel with you to visit other parts of Panama.

Here is what we would ask of you:

1. Visitors are welcome between May 15th, 2008 - April 30th, 2009. We set these dates based on giving our selves time to settle in and time to get ready to leave at the end of service.
   
2. Let us know at least 4 weeks in advance of when you want to come....8 weeks is better. Start talking to us about it as soon as you are fairly sure that you intend to try to make the trip.
   
3. Let us know what you are hoping to do while here.
4. Please be flexible, when possible, with your dates, we can't handle a string of three visitors back to back. We must have time to work too.
5. Don´t let the words "rainy season" scare you. 8 months of the year are rainy season. Yes, it rains. But it tends to be rainy only for part of the day and sunny for part of the day. Rain is part of Panama...you didn´t really experience Panama if you didn´t hear an agua cero on a zinc roof.
   

If there is more than a 50% chance that you will really buy a ticket and come down here...let us know. We want to start thinking about your visit and make sure that we set aside time to be with you. To discuss a possible visit: email aprilcropper at yahoo dot com or kevincropper at yahoo dot com or call us on our cell phone : 011-570-6639-1352. (If you call you may need to call more than once to get through...sometimes there is signal...sometimes not.)

Hoping to see you soon.
April and Kevin

Hurricane? What Hurricane??

Well, you may have heard about the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and wondered just what these mean for those poor Peace Corps Volunteers in Central America? Heck, even WE heard about them and we get almost no news...well we get news via radio daily in very fast Spanish but we always wonder just exactly was said.

As for the current hurricane, Felix, I don´t know anything for sure, but I am guessing that those in Honduras (217 vols), Belize (62 vols), Guatamala (179 vols) and Nicaragua (172 vols) have probably been put on alert or consoladated to a safe place until after the storm passes. I hope that they and thier communities come throught this hurricane without major difficulty.

As for Panama, we are not in the path of the major hurricane routes. We don´t tend to get hit by the hurricanes which tend to run through farther north. We may or may not get rain from the storms (I am still confused by the various answers I get in Spanish about if the rain we had a little while back was just normal or due to the last hurricane.)

Here in Panama we do occasionally get inpressive rain, and flooding is a more common problem than hurricanes. It should help our moms to relaxe to know that flooding is not a major issue on the island as there is not much distance between any point of land and the gulf so water drains quickly here. In many ways we feel very safe on our island...crime is almost unheard of, it is a small town feel, and the most sever weather threat is lightning...and we are not going to go standing on the peaks durring storms.

Take care....may you get the rain you need and not much more.

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!

Q&A: Water sources and purification

Bill asked another question as well, about water sources and purification. Yet again, a topic very close to some of our tasking, as the islanders are very interested in watershed reforestation and source protection.

Much of Panamá, including our training site, runs off an aquaducto system, which is a series of PVC pipes serving all the houses in a community, coming from a big tank somewhere higher up, which in turn is fed by a PVC pipe from a quebrada (stream), fuente de agua (water source), or ojo de agua (spring) even higher up. Here on the island, as you can imagine, there isn´t too much room for that "higher up", and as spread out as the houses are, there are numerous separate aquaducto systems and associated sources. (In our current host house, this has led to the water not quite having enough pressure to reach the house, and so we have a pluma - spigot - in the yard about 25 feet from the house, and haul water for cooking and cleaning dishes, and do bucket showers and laundry there in the yard.)

As for cleaning the water, well, supposedly you cholorinate the system regularly or give it a thorough cleaning every three months or so, but of course nobody pays for the water (generally the gov´t set up the aquaducts at some point in the past, but there is no Water Maintenance office) so there is nobody to do that sort of preventive maintenance. But, being on an island, as I said there isn´t much room for the streams to run before they are tapped, and we´ve been drinking water at our host houses and at houses as we pasear (walk around and chat) and haven´t gotten sick yet.

However, there are pastures above some of the sources, so the chance does exist. And apparently in the summer months (mid-December to April), when it is hotter and there isn´t rain, they sometimes run out (more often the houses farther from the sources or on higher ground) during the day. Both of these issues we hope to address while here with protection of watersheds and reforestation, as well as possibly talks about maintenance (preventing leaks) and conservation of water. (Yes, it is hard to believe as I listen to the past 45 minutes of heavy rain, but there are times here in Panamá that are dry and they actually run out of water. More on that in the future, when we encounter it, I´m sure. :)

Again, thanks for the questions and feel free to post more or ask for clarification.

The common questions with answers

This is April...the computer just thinks that it is Kevin since he was the one to log in.

What do we eat?

We eat a ton of rice...almost every meal. Lots of starches in the Panimanian diet. Lots of beans, lentils, some corn...but not like any you know...starchy corn. Some plantains and bananas for Kevin. HOt dogs are a favorite for some reason and there are many ways to cook them. I have eaten more hot dogs here than in the past 10 years in the States.

We eat lots of fruit including mangos, pifa, pineapple, banana, papaya, coconut, and others that I am forgetting the names to and have never had in the States. Panamanians tend to like fruit mostly as a juice or frozen treat....btu they eat it regular too. Fried food is a favorite. In short most PCV women here tend to gain a little wieght (which is not thrilling) and most PCV men tend to loose a little...how in the heck that works out I do not know.

How is your health?

Good. Very little in the way of health problems. I have had diareahh just a couple of times...usually when I have to get on a bus or boat soon which is a thrilling type of stress. But stomach issues have been very minimal. The water here is good to drink in most areas straight from the tap.

We have had some thrilling bug bites. I have had bites a couple of times now that have grown to be 7 inches wide, slightly raised, hot, and hard. The one time it felt a bit like chicken skin on the surface and lasted about two weeks. The second time was different and when way in 4 days but was fun until then.

I was stung by a small scorpion (body about an inch long without the tail) the other day when I picked up my shirt. Very suprising and not fun but not awful. It hurt good for 15 minutes and then hurt dully for 20 minutes and then that part of the finger was without much sensation for the rest of the day. They tell me that scorpion stings can also make your tounge loose feeling but I did not experience that.

Kevin joined me in the insect fun this past week on the island. He had more bites than I did for once in his life. THey were mostly no-see-ums. Looked a bit like a bad case of chicken pox. But those will go away soon.

What is the temperature or weather like?

Not as bad as I expected to be very honest. It can be very hot and humid....but that comes just before the rain storms....so you know that the humidity will end at soom point. The temps are not bad...not as high as Baltimore last summer. THe rain cools everything down. It rains almost daily, quite often as a thunderstorm, which I love. Usually in the afternoon, but sometimes in the morning or at night. I can´t complain because it is not as bad as Baltimore was with days around 100 and high humidity last year. I was prepared for that to be true here as well but so far that is not true. THey tell me that summer (Jan, Feb, March, April) will be quite different so I will update you them.