Thanks for all your love and support

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Peace Corps: How far will you go.....for a good meal?



Regional meetings happen every 4 months in Peace Corps Panama. This is when the Country Director and Peace Corps staff come out to every region in Panama and meet with all the volunteers from that area, mine being the Comarca Ngabe Bugle.  We go over office news, volunteer council, gender and development updates, upcoming events, and share and encourage each other on our work.  I generally look forward to these meetings. It’s nice to stay on the same page as the office and see all the volunteers from my region.  Plus after the meeting all the volunteers go to the beach for some good ol’ R&R.  Great thing about Peace Corps Panama, you are never too far away from a beach. 
A few weeks ago it was our regional leader, Erin Kelley’s, last meeting. Erin is a 3rd-year extension volunteer, and to call her a legend around these parts would be an understatement. We wanted to make her last regional meeting unforgettable.  And as my friend Jack said, “We decided to go big, and go pig.”

1.The Pig: A volunteer from the Comarca, Jason, was bringing one down from his site, which is a strenuous 2-hour hike through the mountains. If that wasn’t enough of a challenge, this 70-pound “Babe” made multiple escape attempts, forcing Jason to slosh through the muddy jungle of the Comarca at 3am on a wild pig hunt.  Thaaaaanks Jason….

2. The Fire: After much research done by Erin, we discovered the best and most time efficient way to have this pig roast was the method which follows:  Dig a ditch about 3 feet down, build up a fire in the ditch to get at least a foot of hot embers, throw the butchered and wrapped up pig in, bury it and put a bonfire on top.  After about 10 hours we could dig it up and eat.  This sounded pretty sketchy to me.  Eating something that was buried under the ground for 10 hours? I thought I was only supposed to do that with vegetables and I’m pretty sure vegetables can’t give me salmonella or trichinosis.  But I was assured by Kevin and Josh, our pig killing and roasting specialists, that this was proper pig roast form in the states.
With about 20 of us helping, the hole was dug in no time.  That was the easy part. Next came the fire. We’re all resourceful, girl/boy scout peace corps volunteers. We figured it would be easy-peasy. But starting a fire in a ditch with water-logged firewood was harder than expected. And once more rain came we had to put up a tarp over the area to keep it going. It took us hours of taking turns crawling into the smoke filled ditch and ventilating it with a cutting board to finally get a continuous flame. As my friend gasped for breath and crawled out of the hole, he said, “well, now I know how awful it is to be inside a burning building.”
By this time it was about 3am, and we had a meeting the next morning. And we really only had a few inches of embers. So we took fire shifts switching out people to watch the fire and keep feeding it more wood.  By the next morning we all reeked of smoke and had red eyes with bags under them from little sleep and smoke damage. Needless to say, we made an excellent impression on the Peace Corps Staff.

3. The massacre: Once morning rolled around. It was time for the Pig to killed. Unfortunately I do not have as many details about that because I chose to stay far away from that. However, while looking for my ipod, I accidentally turned the corner and stumbled upon the scene of the crime as they were gutting it out and the pig was still spasming. Somehow or another, the pig was cut open, cleaned, stuffed with carrots, onions, and spices, wrapped up in banana leaves and foil, and started roasting in that pit. 

4. The Resurrection: After waiting 11 hours, going to and from our meeting and getting in some quality beach time, we dug up the pig, and with that unleashing the mouthwatering aroma of roasted pig. Sadly, the pig still ended up being 10 degrees under the temperature it should have been. So instead of being responsible for giving food poisoning to about 30-something peace corps volunteers, we pulled all the meat off that pig and fried it up with some oil in a big pot over a bonfire.
Finally, it was time to eat. Now, I know it was like 10pm and I hadn’t eaten much that day, waiting for the delicious roast, but that was absolutely the best roasted-pig meals I have ever had in my entire life. A big thank you to all the Peace Corps Volunteers who made this pig roast a success!  



"Sizzling like bacon" in the hole

The hole with a foot of embers and a rock covering


                 The Pooooooooor Pigggy                                                         Buena Gente


Tuesday, May 8, 2012

It’s official. The latrine project is finally finished. After 3 separate Inauguration celebrations, complete with monstrous meals of rice and chicken, I can finally throw away my cement crusted, holey, work jeans. I should have no use for them now, besides my community was starting to call me “cochino” for wearing them (literally meaning swine, but mostly used for calling something dirty, filthy, gross). After we finished throwing the 56 cement platforms that were included in the project, it was each family’s responsibility to use the zinc, given to them from the project, for the roofs and whatever they wanted for the walls.  I was so proud to see people putting in such extraordinary effort while making the housing structures with unusual detail.  Since they have built all the latrines themselves, they have more respect for them and a desire to keep them nice and clean.

My favorite latrine made was at the school in my community. The old one we had here was built 15 years ago, was full, and well…cochino. All the men from the school PTA (yes, we have a PTA) got together and built the latrine basically without any help from me. They even painted some old zinc to use for the walls to make it look brand new. 

The project really felt finished after the inauguration meetings took place. There were basically just big warm and fuzzy meetings where everyone thanked everyone else for all their hard work and successes. I can’t remember a moment where I felt more respected by some many people before. It was a nice way to end a long planned out project.

Now that I’ve been in Panama for 21 months, I find myself thinking about home more and more, despite the endless plans my community has been scheming to keep me here for another year.  What will I miss? What won’t I miss?  I might not miss going into the bushes to find a place to pee while walking through my community….and finding a giant Equis snake 3 feet away from me. Butttt…I may miss lying on my hammock, in front of my house, watching the sunset fall below the banana trees as my neighbor brings me over some freshly cooked squirrel she caught earlier that day. (Both of these experiences happened yesterday)

Either way, I have about 5 months left to enjoy the things I’ll miss, and bear the things that I won’t.  Even though my main projects are over I have a few smaller projects to work on to keep my busy until I leave. Very soon I will be helping at another youth camp, planning some HIV/AIDS awareness seminars for adults in my community, and continuing to work with the water groups. More posts to come about all those things.

Thanks again for reading!
Lots of love,
Kayla (Meliti)





Monday, March 12, 2012

The Latrine Dream

I’m sure by now you’ve thought I’ve either  fallen off a large cliff, been bitten by a snake, caught in some machete fight, or maybe just that I’ve given up on blogging.  Well good news! I am alive and well and back to blogging.  Since Christmas, I have been insanely busy with various projects and protest situations throughout Panama so I have had limited free computer time.  But I would love to share with you what has kept me from writing earlier on.
As much as I would like to go on in detail about the mining and hydroelectric situation that is currently taking over the Panamanian politics, Peace Corps Panama does not allow us to express our opinions on this subject for safety reasons.  We must stay neutral.  Because of this I will not explain the confrontations between the government of Panama and the indigenous, as it would be impossible for me to do so without conveying my opinion.  Google it if you are interested.
Besides the protests, my last few months can be summed up with latrine work. After months of organizing people, planning the project, looking for funding (thanks to you all), we have finally started.  First I visited all the houses in the project to check if they hauled all their 9, 5-gallon buckets of gravel from the river and to see if their holes were dug to the appropriate width and length, 1 meter wide and about 3 meters deep.  Some went above and beyond and dug 4 or 4 and a half meters, leaving me baffled at how a man in his 60s could do such a thing by himself.
After these checks, 56 families were left in the project, willing and able to work. The first day of hauling materials consisted of:  A 100 pound bag of cement, a few pounds of nails, 2 extremely long rebar sticks, some wire, and a ridiculously heavy latrine seat made out of cement for each family.  My hike is about an hour and a half without heavy cargo, so you can imagine how long this would take.  However, the strength of the Ngabes never ceases to amaze me.  Older woman were there to pick up these materials and were taking turns hauling it in on their backs.  Once all these materials were brought in, including some shovels, floats, hacksaws, etc. We were able to start making the cement platforms. I did 5 example latrine platforms in each of the 5 sectors, where every participant was required to come and learn the process.  After these 5 days were completed we formed work groups and were able to complete about 4 latrine platforms a day; on my best/most exhausting day, we made 7.  It has been amazing to see how fast some of the community members have learned how to make them and have taken ownership of the whole project.  At the beginning almost no one had seen cement be mixed before or knew how to assemble the latrine platform. But just after a few practices I no longer had to explain or ask people to do things. I am becoming more and more useless every day …which is exactly what I wanted.
Currently we have 46 cement platforms made with 10 more to go. Yesterday we hauled in our shipment of zinc for the roofs so we could start making the houses for the latrines.  Like I said, I have been extremely happy with how things are going.  Because the people are actually building the latrines themselves, instead of some outside construction company, they are invested in the project and proud of their work. This ensures that they will be more likely to take care of the latrine in the future so it will last for many years.
Once again, I would love to thank everyone for supporting me here and in this project. I couldn’t have done it without you all and your generosity.  Check out the pictures on Facebook.

Much love
Kayla

Oh, and if you missed out on donating to my project and would like the opportunity to make a tax deductible donation to another worthy peace corps project in Panama, check out this link below.  By donating to this project you will be helping provide running water to 26 families in a rural campesino village in Panama. Thanks
 https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=525-172