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)