Each volunteer in my group was allowed to bring one or two people from their community to participate in this conference, located in the Coclé province of Panama. I chose two community counterparts to attend the conference with me; one of them had never travelled farther than the closest town outside Cerro Banco. They were both really excited for the seminar, and naturally, the free food, lodging, and transportation.
Our trip started off a little shaky. Once we finally reached the main highway, we were surprised to see crowds of Ngabes. Apparently, there was a protest scheduled for this day, and we had unfortunately fallen right into it. Usually San Felix is a very quiet, low-key town, located right off the InterAmericana. But today we were pushing through people and smoke only to find the highway jammed with cars, buses, and trucks trying to pass through the rock barricade and protestors. All of a sudden, there was a stampede of people running up the street. Not moving and still confused, I was grabbed by my friend Laura who pulled me up the street. Then my eyes and throat began to burn. The police, who were trying to control the situation and open the highway, had thrown tear gas bombs and the poison rapidly spread throughout the whole area. Thankfully, I was not very close to the police, but my poor counterparts were right next to the tear gas bombs. The effect for me wore off in just a few hours, but Faustino’s eyes were blood red all day. A bit later, the highway opened up and we were able to catch a bus going east.
Once we arrived at the conference, the excitement of the morning had died down. It was so nice to see all the other volunteers from my group again and meet counterparts from their community. It was kind of a bizarre feeling to be there with all my friends, wanting to speak English and be normal Kayla. However to my community, I am Meliti, speak Spanish and Ngabere, and wear Naguas. But it was a cool way to combine both parts of me in Panama and after a while it felt completely normal. The volunteers and I did our best to include our counterparts with small talk and mostly speak Spanish.
The conference started the next morning. We worked in small mixed groups with volunteers and counterparts from all over the country. This alone was great. People from different cultures, which they’ve never seen, were able to interact with each other all week. This opened our counterparts’ eyes to different customs and friendships. We even got to share special arts and talents from our area of the country during our “culture night.” My counterparts and I performed the Heggi, the traditional Ngabe dance, with a few other volunteers from the Comarca Ngabe Bugle. It was a hit.
Each day of PML consisted of sessions with topics including: how to realize and prioritize your goals and values; how to manage your resources, including time, money, and information; and how to plan a successful meeting. Although these sessions were common sense to the volunteers, being college graduates and such, these concepts were a completely new idea to our counterparts. And since my two adult counterparts only have 6th grade educations, just sitting in a classroom for a full day is exhausting. However, it was beautiful to see their eyes open wider when they fully grasped a concept and saw how it could help in their own life. The idea is for counterparts to bring everything they learned back to their own community and share these ideas with everyone else. I was happy to see each of my counterparts enjoy the conference. Since then, they have asked me if we can hold a seminar like this on a smaller scale in Cerro Banco for more people in the community. I am of course very excited to work on this in the future.
In my opinion, the PML conference is one of the best things Peace Corps Panama offers. The lessons taught at this conference are extremely important life skills and it really offers a sustainable way to improve the lives of many around the country. Additionally it gives people an opportunity to branch out of their small community, which gives them a vision of other lives around the country…and including the volunteers, around the world.
