Hummingbird babies

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

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


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

Island Water

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Mother's Day

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

Happy Mother's Day!!!

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

Fundraising for the Tortuga trip

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

First, what were our costs:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Soray putting the finishing touches onto her sign)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(But they began to arrive)

(This time, we rotated who called the numbers)

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

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

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

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

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

Turtle trip success!

It is with a glad heart that I write to tell you about our latest and greatest success. And thanks to the generosity of Bhoj, a fellow PCV, we can once again tell the story with pictures!!! Thanks Bhoj!

Before we comence with the happy story telling, I should also say that my trip to teach a workshop to ANAM parkrangers in Parque Nacional Coiba has been postponed (maybe until April) due to an exploding power generator that decided to end its service three days before my workshop was scheduled to start. Living without electricity is normal for me, but the workshop was put off anyway. Darn.

So, on Friday, November 14th at 3:30am we climbed into a full boat (complete with fishing nets and small dead hammerhead sharks...which are delicious) to head to a fellow PCVs community on the Eastern Coast of the gulf. We had arranged for 11 youth and 3 adults from our community to go on this environmental education trip.

When I got into the boat I thought that I would be the first person picked up...that is the schedule that we had planned on Wednesday at the final planning meeting. Well, imagine my suprise when I got into the boat and it was full...the captain picked us up on time...but last. For reasons only known to him, the captain left hours earlier and picked up all th participants earlier than planned and in a different order. Not many people were happy with the change. One of my adult chaperones told him to come back later because she was not ready (she is also one of the most prompt Panamanians ever).

When I got into the boat and found out that she was not there I was very confused. When I finally realized that she was not with us because he went to her house so early, he was headed out into the bay, not planning on going back for her. It took 3 minutes of tense conversation to get him to turn the boat and go get her...luckily she was ready and waiting on the shore.
We arrived to the small "port" about 1 1/2 hours early due to the captain´s choices. Well, rather than waiting around near the water (which also means near more biting bugs) for the bus we had hired to pick us up at 7:00, we started walking. I would expect American kids to do some whining at this point...but these kids are used to such walking and there were no complaints at all. If anything the road was nice, broad, and flat, unlike the island paths. Most of them had never been to this coast of the gulf, even though they live pretty close. They were pretty excited to be traveling in a new area. During the bus ride, the kids realy got excited/scared by the hills and the speed of the travel. It was a pretty normal car ride from my point of view...but that is the important thing...point of view is everything at times.

When we arrived at my friend and fellow PCV Cassie´s school there was a warm and excited greeting waiting for us. We were all a little overwhelmed. But we took a group photo of everyone and got down to the not-so-serious buisness of educational games.

A group of 5 PCVs from all over Panama make up the Captain Planet Team. They visit schools in PCV communities to give environmental education activities, coming complete with costumes and high energy. Since both Cassie and I have small schools, we combined the two for a day with Captian Planet.
After a full day with the Captian Planet team, we went to the beach for a while. The surf at the beach in Cassie´s community is quite dangerous due to a strong undertow current. Our students were quite happy to see the beach. Even though they live on a island the surf never gets that big in the bay and there are no stretches of beach as big as this one on the island, so they were pretty typical tourists.

We did not swim , just frolliced nearby and kept the little kids with us in a line when they wanted to get thier feet wet. Everyone who wanted to be wet managed to get wet and sandy safely...although I did get into some trouble with the other adults over just how wet and sandy they were. Oh well.
After the beach we went to play on a playground. These are a common government project in some parts of Panama, but have not yet reached the island. Yup...that is one of our kids and one of the adults on the monkey bars.

We spent the night on improvised beds in the school, and some wonderful ladies from the community volunteered to cook meals for us. The local kids stayed the whole weekend and participated in all the acitivities...even sleeping on the hard cement in the school with us.

The main goals for this trip included increasing participant knowledge about seaturtles, and fostering a new sense of interest and responsibility in the islanders for local seaturtles. Many of the families on the island make thier money fishing, and thus have the chance to impact seaturtle populations locally. Seaturtles do not currently lay eggs on the island...the beaches usually have rock just under the sand.

With this in mind, we all got up at midnight and walked the beach to look for seaturtles laying thier eggs. Even for the local kids this was a first chance to go looking for turtles...it is not something that they would normally be invited to do with the turtle volunteers. We split into two groups...one went north and one south.

The south bound group that I was with was lucky enough to encounter a large green seaturtle. When we arrived she was just starting to dig the cavity to lay her eggs in. The whole process can be quite lengthy when you include digging, laying and covering time. We got to see almost the whole process. She also took long enough that the unlucky north bound group was able to join us and see her as well.

After she finished laying and covering her eggs, she was escorted to the sea by quite an entourage. It was a great chance for them to see how big she was and to talk about how a turtle usually will not lay eggs before she is 20-30 years old. We used all the waiting and watching time to talk about how many eggs she needs to lay to be a sucessful turtle mom. Normally she will lay 90-110 eggs per nest. She will lay every 2 or 3 years, and every year that she lays she will lay 2 or 3 nests.

Thus, if we say that only 1 in 1000 eggs survive to reproduction age, she needs 25 years to be old enough to lay before she can start her 15 years of laying 300 eggs every other year to lay the 2000 eggs necessary to produce 2 adults for a stable population (one male and one female offspring per female). If she dies before age 45 the odds are greatly reduced that the turtle population will remain stable. It was cool for the kids to realize that that turtle was likely as old as I am...or thier parents are.

We then carefully dug up her eggs and transported them to a jaula, or protective fenced area where they will be protected until they hatch in 45-60 days. Below, Elvis, our nearest neighbor kid gets the honor of retreiving the eggs.

He was quite tired after leaning over and carefully digging out the 79 soft ping-pong ball sized eggs. Boy, did he smile big afterwards. Below he shows off an egg in his hand.

Anivel, another island kid, got the honnor of putting the eggs into thier new jaula nest. I had not seen him take anything that seriously before, he handled them with extreem care.

The next day we played a game about how dangerous a world it is for baby turtles. Scientists estimate that 1/2 of all baby turtles die in thier first year. It is also estimated that only 1 out of 1000 eggs laid lives long enough to be a reproductive turtle. In the game, each group got 5 pages of paper...each page depicted 120 baby turtles. For each danger that baby turtles face before adulthood they rolled dice to see if the danger impacted any of thier turtles. They rolled for dogs, birds, fish, trash, oil spills, fishermen, and many other dangers. Suddenly, the number of baby turtles that they had seemed smaller than they had thought.

After the turtle danger game we goofed off in a pool built by the local "gringo" community. That is Elvis doing a flip that he probably perfected off the side of his dad´s boat.

We ended the day on Saturday by drawing our own board game and playing a turtle facts review game. It is amazing how much kids (and the adults!) can learn when they are having fun...they did really well on all of the questions.

The next morning we were lucky enough to complete my last goal...we saw baby turtles headed from the nest to the sea. That is where I knew that we had really had some sucess: Julian, my nieghbor was one of the adults that went with us, and the moment he saw his first baby turtle his first remark was "Oh, I see how fish and crabs could eat them...they are soo tiny!" He clearly had remembered the dangers in the game the day before, but it wasn't until he saw the tiny hatchling that he really connected the dangers to the reality of why there needs to be so many turtle hatchlings.

We were lucky enough to see 27 baby turtles that morning. Above is Kenya helping with the release from the protective jaula. One of the kids had a camera on his phone...so mine were not the only photos that went home to be shared.
We couldn´t say around to watch all of the turtles get to the sea...the tide was against us. We needed to pass over the sandbars near port before low tide or we would be stuck, so we reluctantly started home.

We PCVs often don´t get to know what the long term impacts will be of the projects that we do, but I have hope that this trip will be long remembered and thought of by those that went. We taught many classes about protecting the enviroment...so maybe just maybe something will come of that. I know that I went home exausted and happy...and the parents reported the same was true of the kids. Now it is just up to the kids to remember how they can impact those baby turtles they escorted to the sea.

This trip was free of cost for all of the participants. To see how we paid for this trip check out our next blog post.