I saw my neighbor naked…

I saw my neighbor naked…

It was only a matter of time.  There is literally no privacy in the Comarca.  Giant families live all together in one tiny little room, which is generally see-through due to the bamboo walls.  I still don’t know how they changed their clothes when I lived in host families, as well as where and when they went the bathroom.   It’s all a mystery to me.  Anyway, I currently live in Markela’s backyard.  Other volunteers consider me to still be living with a host family, seeing as I live so close to them and how much food they give me.  Markela is a wonderful woman.  Although she is extremely shy and did not talk to me during my first month in site, this middle aged, illiterate woman (who, I might add, wears a floral fedora hat on occasion) has become my closest friend.  I still can’t believe how much I can talk with a woman who has barely stepped foot outside the Comarca.  I am extremely grateful for her.

Since I live right behind Markela and her family, we share the same latrine and bathing area.  I bathe in this spring right behind my house.  They jammed a cut open stick of bamboo in the spring and water runs down in and then falls off the edge…creating a somewhat natural shower.  Some days I love this.  Bathing openly in the great outdoors with birds singing while watching the sun go down, I feel like I’m in an herbal essences shampoo commercial.  Other days, it’s a cold mosquito infested creek.  It depends on my mood.  However, the bathing area is not so private.  There is a trail right above it, which looks directly down onto the spring.  So I generally bathe in my designated bathing clothes, other women tend to bathe right in their Naguas.  The other day I was on my way back home from a long day of meetings in the upper part of my community.  I decided to take the back trail, which looks right down onto the bathing area.  While passing by it, I saw Markela.  Just as I was about to wave, I saw that she was not wearing her Nagua…but instead her birthday suit.  I immediately turned away, pretending I hadn’t seen anything, hoping she did not notice either.  I got to my house, plopped into my hammock and started to read.  Minutes later, Markela passed by my house in her wet Nagua.  If she did see me pass by, I of course just expected us to not talk about it and simply pretend like it never happened, especially in this shy community where they never talk about inappropriate things and are extremely passive.  Instead of going straight to her house, she paused, looked at me, and said, “Like what you saw?” Then burst out into laughter and walked back to her house.  It was hilarious. I’m pretty sure I laughed the rest of the day.  I’m so glad I’ve finally gotten on a comfortable level here…..maybe too comfortable.

I’m also writing about Markela because this last week was Mother’s Day in Panama.  Although in absolutely no way can she compare to my real mother, she has become some sort of a temporary mother to me.  Mother’s Day is a pretty big deal in Panama.  Unfortunately, in these areas, Mother’s Day is just an excuse for men to get really drunk and at the end of the day need their wives and moms to take care of them.  It’s pretty sad, actually.  So, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it.

 A while back at a Cooperative store meeting the board mentioned they wanted to do something for this event.  I thought it was a great idea and said I would participate, although I didn’t expect much of it. 

But they went allllll out.  There were poems and songs, gifts, prizes, and raffles, candy and tons of food.  They elected a queen of the mothers, and at one point, they lined all moms up to receive kisses on the cheek from everyone else.  I, per usual, was persuaded into getting up in front of everyone and making a speech…..they like it when the white girl talks. I even got roped into singing a few songs.  My gift to all the mothers was making popcorn for them and handing them out in little bags with notes attached to it. It was great. They never saw popcorn before and it is a crazy concept to them that corn, which they know so well from growing, can do such a thing.  All in all, the day was a success.  I left with an uncomfortably full stomach and a smile on my face while watching Markela laugh the hardest I’ve seen her since I’ve been here. 

Much Love,

Kayla (meliti)

IT´S GO TIME!

Dear friends and family,

First, I want to thank you all for following and supporting me during my Peace Corps service.  The past year has been a crazy, wonderful, and at times, a difficult adventure.  I am so happy to be here and serving my country in a way I see important. So thanks again for thinking of me while I am abroad. 

After many months of evaluating the sanitation of my community, encouraging the use of latrines, organizing into groups and latrine leaders, teaching about the construction and health benefits of latrines, and creating a calendar of work, it is finally time to start building. It's go time!     

All that’s lacking now is funding. I am striving to help these 90 families in my community to build 70 latrines in the next year. In order to do so, I need to raise over $ 4,300 for this project. If I succeed in raising over half of that, an organization called Synergy will donate the rest. So, I am asking for your help in raising over $2,000 to complete this project.                                                                                                                                                                                     

The health benefits of latrines are exponential. With a proper place to use the bathroom, the water my community drinks will be uncontaminated, and the high percentage of diseases in my community will decrease. 

This will raise the standard of living for everyone in Cerro Banco and decrease the child mortality rate. My hope is to see my adorable host sister, Heligi, age 4, healthy for once in her life and her distended stomach, full of worms, healed. 

 If you are interested in donating, please check out this website.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=525-167

Thank you so much for your help and kindness.

Much love to all,

Kayla

Project, Management, Leadership Conference (PML)

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 6^th 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.

Check it out!

Here is a sweet video my good friend Will made after visiting me in my Peace Corps site.  The beginning shots are his travels from Colombia to Panama through the San Blas....then on to my community! http://willrl.com/2011/08/san-blas-y-mas-video-post-7/

Thanks again Will, Karl, and Daniella!

Health?

I believe there to be two types of Peace Corps volunteers: ones that get sick and ones that don’t.  Some volunteers are doomed with the monthly bouts of infections and are on a first name basis with all the nurses in the clinic.  Then there are others who don’t even know where the nearest hospital is or claim to be the healthiest they’ve ever been.  It might depend on the person’s immune system or more so on their living situation, but either way, some are cursed and some aren’t.  I unfortunately have had many memorable trips to the hospital.  So far my dreaded hospital trips have included giardia, skin infections, amoebas, parasites, a bacterial infection, and early signs of pneumonia.  Thankfully Peace Corps has the greatest health care ever…almost too good, and the doctors all know it.  I could walk in the clinic with just a minor headache and come out on a wheel chair carrying every type of medicine possible.  They have no hesitation in making you stay overnight, even when it’s not necessary and seems to be a waste of Peace Corps money.  I think this generally deters volunteers from going to the doctors for something that might be serious.  There is a fear of being kept overnight in a depressing hospital room, all alone, with no internet, and maybe one English TV station….which always tends to be awful Jersey Shore reruns. 

My latest trip to the doctors was probably a necessary trip.  I had been feeling unusually weak and tired in site and woke up in the middle of the night with a massive side and chest pain.  I had planned to leave the next morning anyway to pick up my friends in the city who came to visit.  I started my hike out, and by the time I finished I was in tons of pain, shortness of breath, and feeling feverish.  I got on a bus to Panama City, but after talking to the Peace Corps doctor, I abandoned the bus and stopped at a clinic in Santiago about halfway there.  By this time my fever was raging and unbearable.   When they finally checked it, my temperature was over 103 degrees.  After a miserable two hours of waiting in the emergency room lobby I was finally given medicine and tests.  An x-ray showed that I had “demasiado flema” in my chest, which was either bronchitis or pneumonia.  I was fairly positive it was impossible to get Pneumonia in the tropics…but clearly not.

I was given IV meds as well as a face mask. Thankfully I was treated very well; just held hostage for two nights. Finally I was set free with antibiotics and was able to meet up with my friends.  Although getting sick in a foreign country is terrible, I can rest easy knowing I’m well looked after.  It does make me realize as well how lucky I am to have such health care while everyone else in my community is drinking the same dirty water and have to pay out of pocket for their health care.  Thankfully the health Gira comes to my community every 2 and half months for a few days to do free checkups for children, women, and elderly.  This includes giving away medicines, vaccinations, and birth control. However, when the gira is not around, my community needs to walk far to the nearest health post and pay out of pocket.  As a peace corps volunteer, I strive to integrate and live at the level of my community.  Eat the same food and water; live in a similar dirt floor house, etc.  But there are a few things, including health care, which will always keep me from doing so.

Another blog on the way…

Love, Kayla

Unexpected Surprises...

I would say I am closest to my first host family in Cerro Banco; they kinda treat me as one of their own daughters.  I guess it doesn’t make much difference when you have 13 kids already to add in one more. Because of this they get angry with me if I don’t stop by their house every few days to visit and eat some sort of meal and a cup of sugar with a little coffee in it.

So after spending the whole day in my house, due to excessive rain, I decided to brave the storm and head over to Vicente’s house for a visit.  It started out as any normal visit would: Vicente was lying in his hammock, Adelia was cooking over the fire, Juanita was sewing a chacaras, and there were various kids and grandkids running about the house and taking turns to greet me. 

I was there for about an hour and during this time we covered all the normal conversation topics:

1.       How much does it cost to get to the United States and how many hours on a plane

2.       When I am going to marry an indigenous man so I can live in the community forever

3.       If I am currently making a Chacaras

4.       The rain

5.       If I get scared living by myself

6.       Is Bin Laden still dead

7.       How much do bananas cost in the sates

I was finishing up my bowl of boiled yucca and bananas when one of the kids told me that Maryenella wanted to see me in the other room.  Maryenela is one of my favorites. Unfortunately, she is rarely here because she lives with her husband in another community in the comarca. I finished off the food and walked into the room where I used to stay with 5 other girls when I lived there.

Maryenela was lying in bed in the dark, as in was approaching night time.  She turned over, smiled, and said “look!” She shined her flashlight next to her and there was the tiniest baby I had ever seen.   I was shocked!  I hadn’t even known she was pregnant.  “AJA LA VIDA!” I exlaimed.  “I can’t believe no one told me!”

She had the baby at 5am that morning in that very room.  It was a girl and her first child.  When I asked how she was doing, she said medio malo, but I knew she was happy because she couldn’t stop smiling.  Ngabes in general do not have strong reactions to things, but this time I could see the happiness shining right through her.  It was beautiful.

 I was pretty sure she hadn’t given her a name yet, as it is common in my community not to give names to babies until they are at least a few weeks old, but I asked anyway. She replied, I want you to give her a name.  Once again; shocked.  Me? Really?

For anyone who knows me, knows that I am an incredibly indecisive person, almost at an unhealthy level.  But the name came right to me.  Elisabeth, named after one of my oldest and dearest friends.  Maryenela said it was beautiful and unique and thanked me. 

Pregnancies and having children in the comarca is much different in the states.  It usually is not that big of a deal to have children and it is rarely talked about.  In fact, women generally like to keep in under wraps for as long as possible.  I pretty sure this is why they make their naguas so big.  Also, the word for pregnant in ngabere is the same word for sick.  So, instead of saying, "you have such a nice pregnant glow about you"......you are sick.  Even though all this is true, there is still something so magical about having a child, no matter where you are. 

A Quarter of My Way Through Service...

It has occured to me that I have been blogging about interesting or ridiculous stories that I have experienced here, but I haven't really explained who the Ngabe and Bugle people are, whom I live with, and what sort of Peace Corps projects I am working on.

Let me start out with a little history of my people. The Comarca Ngabe Bugle is the most recent formed indeginous reservation in Panama. There are approximately 12,000 Ngabe people and 4,000 Bugle. They have been fighting their physical and cultrual survival since the Spanish Invasion in 1501. Unfortunately, it is easy to see parts of the ngabe and bugle culture dying out, for instance when younger kids do not speak the language or have a lack of interest in traditional activites.

The land of the Ngabe originally extened from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea, but the conquistadores and later on lations forced the ngabe people far into the mountains. The Bugle, was once a large population as well that lived in provinces closer to Panama City, but were forced along the the ngabes as well. The Comarca, or reservation, is the result of 100 years of fighting for independence. They finally won in 1997, when over 400 men, women, and children marched 400 kilometeres to Panama City and the Panamanian nation law which made the Comarca official was signed.

Originally the Ngabe and Bugle were hunter-gatherers spread out apart form other families. Recently, since the 1970s, they have been beginnning to form communities surrounded by school and churches. However, some communities, like Cerro Banco, are still very spread out. The culture here is based around a socialist feeling and collective work. Farm work is done and shared in groups, which is generally the extended family. Some comarca communities are becoming more and more modern, especially with newly formed roads, schools, and other new additions to communities. My community is farther out into the mountians and still does not have much access or influence from the outside. With the lack of a road it does make relationships with outside agencies and developmental work difficult.

Currently I am working on organizing the community to achieve a latrine project, mini acueduct project, and I am starting to talk to the school director about starting an eco-club in the community.First, my latrine project. This is going very slowly as Cerro Banco is so spread out. I am electing leaders who I can work wiith in each sector of my community. In each sector we are developing a census of people who need latrines. Most people in the community do not have any and are using either the fields or streams to go the bathroom, which can contaminate crops and water cuasing sicknesses. This is an important need that I am stressing to the community that most understand. From here I need to stress the idea that this project is not an governmental or politicion gifted project. We, as a community, will be organizing, gaining funds, and constructing all the latrines. This is a very hard concept to get across, as most are used to projects simply coming to the community and not being achieved by themselves. I am estimating to construct about 70 latrines and teach health charlas along with it to explain the importance and use of each one. Also, in one sector of my community, where about 60 people live, they have an organized mini acueduct committee. I am working with them to teach them how an acueduct can be built and managed. The other day we measured the water flow from the spring, which will be the source of water for this system. This is done to see if there is enough water coming out of the spring to be sufficient for the number of people in the system. Next we will be measuring the distances and and altitude difference between the houses the the tubing will go to to see exactly how much PVC we would potentially need and if a reserve tank is necessary.Additionally, I want to start working on starting an eco-club in the community. There is a lot of need here with environmental education and trash management. I figure this is some way I can get the kids involved in a fun activity as well as teach sustainable living.

These are my current general projects. As the next year and a half goes by, I'm sure I'll pick up other work and peace corps activities. I also worked in another PC community the other month helping facilitate a project leadership management seminar for a week, which was very successful and tons of fun. I should be doing the same seminar in my community in the future. But since development work is slow and I work at the pace of my community, I generally pass the days by planting or harvesting food, visiting community members, creating innovative receipes with rice, and hours in the hammok. Not too shabby.

Thanks for reading. Miss you all

paz, amor, y dios,
Kayla