One Year More

As we just passed one year since swear-in as official volunteers (trainees or aspirantes before that) and have one year more before our COS (close of service) date, we figured it was a good time to think about what we look forward to in the final year.

Things we are looking forward to:

• Eating our First Tomato from our tomato plants: April started about 30 seedlings, and we have 15 to 20 in the ground, so we are hoping for a bumper crop; keep watching for updates on what works and what doesn't
• Making our First Estufa Lorena in site: we have about two or three families interested right now and collecting materials, we just need to get everything together and actually build one
• Building an Estufa Lorena in the school: we need a working model at someone's house first so everyone knows what it really is and really entails, but we'd love to get the smoke out of the school kitchen
• Visiting the Kuna Yala comarca (autonomous zone): we are planning on going there in September for our Tenth Anniversary for lots of white sand beaches and snorkeling
• A Visit from April's folks: currently planned for the end of January / beginning of February, and possibly including Grandma Dierks
• Planting all the Trees currently in bags behind the house: we hope to get a junta (working party) of 10 to 20 people organized for sometime in early September
• Teaching in Coiba: April delivered her proposal today to ANAM, the environmental agency, to visit Coiba National Marine Park for two week stints with their park rangers to provide training on resource interpretation (how to present the unique qualities of a location to vistors)
• School Garden growth: the kids are really interested in what is planted and have learned a lot about how and why it is planted too
• Visiting Baro Colorado Island / the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, in the middle of Lake Gatun in the Panamá Canal: The Smithsonian Institute has several offices in Panamá to do research and preservation of biologically unique sites. Barro Colorado Island was formed when the Chagras River was dammed to form Lake Gatun and has been a wildlife refuge since. Visitors are sometimes allowed to accompany scientists on the boat there and can wander the paths and view amazing wildlife
• Learning to Gritar and Salomar: hard to describe, it is a very common way of communicating here while working in the fields, and sounds kind of like yodeling. You have to hear it and so we'll hopefully put up a video of either someone good or of us. (We haven't learned yet because most of them are too embarrassed to teach us when asked.)
• Watching Panamá Election 2009 here in Panamá: the next Panamanian president, respresentatives, and local offices (all levels of government) will be elected in May 2009. April is already taking pictures of campaign signs.
• Watching US Election 2008 from here in Panamá: we are glad to only get to see news every couple of weeks, as the minute nit-pickings on the candidates and their campaigns would get old quickly I think, but we are planning on coming out mid-October to get and send our Absentee Ballots and then again for November 4-5 to watch whatever coverage we can get here. (We do have CNN, bad as it is, in the motel, and the cable package in motels frequented by PCVs in other cities even has BBC and CNN International, so we'll find someplace to hear all the latest on which state went which way and how Chad is doing.)
• Thanksgiving with over 100 other PCVs from Panamá: April and I have been asked to help run the kitchen again; nothing like success (read: a full yummy tummy) to be appreciated.
• Possible other visits from friends: Linda, Tabassum, Kori, and Kristin have all expressed interest; anyone else?

So it will be a full year, just like our first one was. We are very much looking forward to it!

One Year Reunion

So we have officially been Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) for one year now.

This past weekend, we got together with others from our Group 59 at a hostel on an island in the Colón province (northern side) of Panamá to talk about how life was going; what we have accomplished; what we have yet to accomplish; who is going to quit early (just one, depending on grad school), finish two years and ya (ya is Spanish for enough, done, ready, etc; the majority were in this camp), and who is going to extend (several looking to be Regional Leaders and such); and get re-inspired for our second year. Here we are at our official lunch meeting to talk compost, environment, organic fertilizer, and other projects.

We took one formal picture too, on the dock nearby.

Getting to the island via a short 5-10 minute boat ride was nothing for us, although some other volunteers found out that boats are not their thing and they probably will not come to visit us.

The really interesting part of the trip there started on the bus from Panamá City to Colón City. We received information from the PC Office of a transportation strike (apparently not that uncommon, and they usually last just 3 to 24 hours, protesting the high cost of fuel, or food, or something) in Colón, which is already not a city for touring. When we got to the terminal, the police had arranged to bring all of us (seven had taken the train, six of us were on the bus, and about eight more were on later buses and managed to catch up with us too) to the police station for safekeeping.

We sat around their conference room, ate an inexpensive lunch from the police grill (a very tasty tipico meal of meat, lentils, rice, and even lettuce and a tomato), played Cranium, and wrote a letter of thank you, before finally being moved to a special bus they had arranged for us. The bus took us first to the supermarket and waited so we could pick up bread, cereal, PB and J, and such for the weekend, and ironically, the last of our group, coming in on later buses, caught up with us there. Then he drove us the hour-and-a-half out to the island. How wonderful, flexible, helpful and accomodating!

The island had a nice beach on one end, where April and I went snorkeling with our new gear (thank you Grandma Cropper) and shared with other volunteers. On the other end was a Gustave Eiffel-designed lighthouse, 94 steps high, with a great view over the island and the cove. Unfortunately, we didn't get pictures of all that, but hopefully other volunteers will send some to us.

It was a great chance to catch up with everyone, reminesce, and get inspiration for our next year.

We left on Sunday with a short boat ride and then a regular bus back to Colón City (we did see some amazing winds on the ride, with a roof blowing off a house as we drove by and at least one piece of the zinc spinning 200ft in the air), then a bus to Panamá City, a quick jaunt in a diablo rojo to our embassy host family to pick up some books we'd left there (and some great leftovers she pressed on me), then a bus to Santiago for the night, finally getting in about 11:30. Now we are finishing up some posts (including some stockpiling, now that Blogger lets you post-date posts to publish later, so even though we'll be on the island, you can read new adventures from Panamá), sending and checking mail, and buying groceries. We go back in to site tomorrow early.

Thus starts year two...

Spay Panama

I just had the opportunity to spend the day at a wonderful place...so of course I want to tell you all about it. I spent the day volunteering at Spay Panama. Together with a group of other volunteers, Patricia Chan (wonderful lady below) opened Spay Panama in 2001.

Spay Panama's mission is to put a stop to the misery by controlling the overpopulation of cats and dogs through an intensive sterilization program. Spay Panama is a spay and release clinic. They work mainly with street animals that are caught, spayed and then re-released into the area where they were caught.

Yes, having them adopted or sheltered would be better, but the reality is that this is not realistic for many of the animals that have grown up on the street...and people looking to adopt are not as common as one would want.

The clinic has a wonderful facility in a converted house in a central neighborhood in Panama. They have a dog bathing area, cat and dog kennels, a surgery prep room, operating room, lounge, kitchen and office space. The cat room is shown below. Everything is wonderfully clean and taken care of. This is one of the best run organizations that I have seen in my time in Panama!Volunteer help is key to Spay Panama. Volunteer veternarians and vet students do the proceedures. Regular dedicated volunteers are used to help with moving animals, weighing, tagging, holding and giving injections, shaving/sterilizing the operation area, monitoring health, sterilizing tools, providing additional health care to animals before they wake back up. Each dog and cat is not only spayed or neutered, they also have their ears cleaned, eyes checked and cleaned, and are treated for fleas and mange. They are marked as spayed with an ear tatoo for dogs and an ear clip for cats.Sometimes there are 6 operations going on at once in the operations room. This place runs like clockwork. While I was there they did 6 spays for animals brought in by their owners (a small donation is requested of animal owners who come in, but is not mandatory for those who can't pay it.). They also did 17 dogs from the streets of Arrijan...a town about 45 minutes West of Panama City. Those dogs were brought in by a concerned community member who rounded them up and brought them in. They finished up with 6 kittens...one of them also got his hernia fixed. I was amazed...but they just told me that this was a fairly slow day.

Below are dogs in recovery, they wake up an 1/2 hour - hour after the proceedure.
Below is my host in Panama city, Devon, who introduced me to Spay Panama. She volunteers weekly. Devon loves seeing and helping all the animals so much she isn't even bothered by the fleas and dirt.
What would a story about Spay Panama be without a cute and kitty photo and a plea to please support a shelter through adopting an animal or donating time or money.

If you wish to donate (tax-deductible, they are a 501(c)3) to Spay Panama you can through their webpage: http://www.spaypanama.org/ About 1/2 of their operating budget comes through donations...and more are needed.
This is Petis...I really wanted to take her home. I am still in spouse-to-spouse negotiations on this subject. Isn't she cute...and she purrs up a storm.

Remember, some animal affection is good for the heart....in more ways than one!

Working the Rice

We recently visited our first host family again, in the south of the island, to spend a night, chat and generally socialize. That evening, we taught them a popular card game we called ONE (or, as it is known to most of you, UNO). But in the afternoon, before dinner, the rice needed to be pilar-ed, or husked.

This is how Paula and Ancelmo work together to pilar arroz. You don't get to see Paula and Kevin trying it, because it just didn't work nearly as smoothly together. Kevin's claim is that the pilon (bowled-out wooden stand carved from a tree trunk in which the rice is placed to be struck to remove the husk) was too short for him. We will let you draw your own conclusions as to if it was likely equipment size issues or user issues.

The pounding of the mano de pilon or hand of the pilon (wooden pole part) into the rice breaks up the husk of the rice grains. They then scoop the rice grains and pour them from a hieght back into the pilon...and the breaze blows the husks out of the mix. There are machines that can do this...but many people do it by hand in our area due to cost and transport issues. This is the last step to process rice before cooking it.

(For more on the pilar-ing process, check back to our November 2007 post with pictures of the steps: http://ak-panama.blogspot.com/2007/11/work-of-pilaring.html)

Snakes Alive!

We recently wrote about snakes and the fact that they often end up dead after any contact with people in my nieghboorhood. (Missed it? See the blog from 6-20-08 called Snakes alive? found at http://ak-panama.blogspot.com/2008/06/snakes-alive-video.html)

Well, I am happy to report that since that blog posting I have witnessed at lease 3 snakes come into view of my nieghboors and live to slither away again. Most notably was a little boa that Julian caught....yes caught! He, without prompting from us touched it and showed it to others. I will say that this gave me a huge smile for many days...partly because of how brave he was. If you look at the photo above you can see that he was not taking any changes, he was holding it just behind the head and tightly. Just after the photos were taken he released it into the woods near our house.

At a different event the kids found a vine snake. I was shocked that no one ran to kill it, not even the kids. We were not even in our home nieghborhood were people have seen us not kill snakes, we were on the far side of the island. Well, we figured that this was not going to last for long so we caught it and let everyone look at it.

We tryed to convince them that it is not venomous or dangerous...yes it would bit if it could...but only because it is scared. I often say "I have a mouth too...and if you scare me enough I will bite just like any other animal!" We then released it far away from the people who were gathered around.

I often get a chuckle (or sometimes fusterated) when they tell me that snakes like the one above will eat chickens (one of the two common reasons to kill all snakes - venomous or kills chickens) ...he would have a hard time eating anything bigger than Kevin´s thumb. We are trying to help them see that different snakes have different body types and that this indicates what they might eat and how.

In another moment of small sucess the nighborhood kids brought us a young iguana the other day. He is small enought that he probably hatched in the past 4-5 months, most eggs are laid in January-March.

We used the opportunity to talk more about reptiles and why they are important. Iguanas have the fault that they are tasty, kinda like chicken (sometimes called pollo del arbol or chicken of the tree)...and thus endangered. The problem here is convincing people that every iguana matters, and no there are not enough iguanas in the world.

It is often hard to appreciate how interesting the world that is our personal nieghborhood is when we live there all the time. I bet the kids on the island would think that mudd puppies in Maryland are cool. Mudd puppies are a type of aquatic salemander. They can be 12" long and live to 20 years and never loose thier gills. When was the last time you thought about them?? It has been a long time right? Sometimes close proximaty makes it harder to value that which we have or believe that there could be a time when we might not have it.