Site visit to my new home

Family and Friends-

I just got back from the most amazing time at my first site visit to the peninsula. This place is Paradise. I’m gonna be living on the top of a small loma (hill) that has a 180 degree view of the Caribbean ocean....I can’t believe I’ve got what I’ve wanted for the past two years....for the next two years...

The town is like a fisherman’s village of an indigenous group of Panamanians who talk in local dialecto and eat fish and bananas. Yes I had a huge piece of fish 3 times a day while I was there and even a whole lobster for lunch one day! This place is great. I have to take an hour and a half boat ride to my site since there are no roads that access it, water only. And not your usual American boat either, a dugout canoe with a motor on the back....its safe I swear.

I just can’t get over how pretty the place is. The town is a top rolling hills that casas (houses) on stilts sit upon, they look like tree forts. Actually the entire area reminds me of Neverland from Peter Pan...like I’m gonna walk around the corner and see a pirate skull and pirate ship off in the distance. If I were a pirate, which I kinda am, I’d live here. The beach or the playa rolls around the point with magical cays and caves and reefs to snorkel around. The jungle foliage drops into the water and then up cliffs again. I’m going to buy a wood dugout canoe when I get back out there and just paddle myself around all over the place discovering the nooks and crannies. It’s like my personal playground. Across the bay which takes an hour to row across is another village where I can park my canoe, hike for an hour over the mountain, and then I’m in the bigger town where another volunteer lives. 45 minutes down the playa is the surfer beach, and home to the 3rd girl who’s on the peninsula with me.

In my site dogs, chickens, and cows roam around freely and the people live off the land and sea as they all have farms up in the hills and the dads all fish for lobster and fish. I have a house already but I want to make it twice as big by adding a hut like structure to the side of it. We’ll see how the people feel about helping me with that....I’m gonna give it a month or two before I demand an addition, I mean ask politely.

There’s so much work to be done in the town. My first project is to survey the land with the men of the community to see if a water tank is feasible, using a water level that I’m gonna make out of bamboo, a tape measure, and some tubing. They really want a tank and think it’s the solution to their water problems, but I’m also gonna teach some charlas, or lessons, on the availability, ease, and practicality of rainwater collection. There’s so much rain here I think it’s in their best interest to use it instead of waiting for an aqueduct system that might not even work because of the elevation of the town. But we will see, I have two years to figure out the best solution. In the meantime, 8 composting latrines have already been built with the help of the previous PCV and I’m helping to build 18 more for the rest of the town. I’m also going to give a charla on the proper use and maintenance of the latrines, because right now, they don’t really know what to do with them. ...so kk gets to be a teacher.

What else did I do in my 4 day stay with the town....I took a canoe ride to a neighboring village with my new 15 year old friend Illy and meet some folks over there. I Paseared around town...aka walk up to houses and chit chat for a while with them about life. I sat in the hammock; I went swimming in and around 2 different playas with a bunch of kids, or ninos. I ate fish and lobster. I helped my counterpart clean the toma (the spot in the ground where the water pours out, aka the spring) with a bunch of other guys in the village....I think they really appreciated my hard work and interest in the work. Gotta get their respect, I think I’m on my way.

I just love the location and am so happy about the work potential. I really love this life I’m living right now. I feel like such a traveler. I speak Spanish everyday and better than the just to get by Spanish, like almost real Spanish. I get around on public transportation by myself and feel comfortable doing it. I can tell jokes in Spanish.

So to get back to some form of city life civilization I need to get up at 5am, take the 6am hour and a half boat ride off the peninsula to Chiriquí Grande, and then take a cab to the Bomba, or the bus stop. From there I wait around for about 30 min to an hour till the next bus from Almirante which is on its way to David passes by and I hop on. Now these buses are not what you’d expect in the states. They are small, uncomfortable, overcrowded, smell, and are prob not in the best mechanical condition. The ride to David is three hours over a large mountain range of winding roads and tight corners. This past ride I took was a mix of funny and gross. So I was sitting in the second to last row of the bus and in the back row, the biggest row, was pretty much a sickbed for sick Ngobes and their children heading to David for care. Now the older looking Ngobe woman sitting directly behind me, coming from an area of the world where barley anyone owns cars and the frequency of bus travel is slim to none considering the $5 cost of getting there, was straight up carsick. This woman was throwing up the entire time of the bus ride and not quietly and politely back in her seat but instead leaning over herself to the point where her barf bag was directly behind my ear …lovely. Additionally, about every 30 minutes she would wack me on the head with her hand to have me open the window to throw her throw up out. On top of that, I had that god awful seat on the bus that has the bump from the wheel….like the tire spot. So my knees are up to my chin, I’m leading forward with my head basically into the smelly armpit of the latino dude next to me to avoid projectile vomit on my right shoulder, it was then when I would have to take every bit of energy I could to open the window for this woman. It was raining like crazy the whole time so every time I’d struggle with the latch Id get drenched in the 30 seconds it would take her to throw out the bag, and then the guy next to me would just whip the window closed like it wasn’t hard at all. Add the nonstop Panamanian tipico music that blasts out on the speaker the whole ride and the constant swaying from side to side as the autobus rounds bends, and you’ve got yourself an average trip to David, arriba en los montañas……classic.

I miss you all and can’t wait to share this place with you when you come to visit. ohhhh yeah the only thing is last night I lost my necklace with my charms from friends somewhere in my site. I have a feeling my community will find it for me, cause it can only be in one of three places or in transit, but I kind of took it as a sign that everyone and everything that got me to where I am now, like all things from my past lead me to this site, this place for a reason. Like I dropped a piece of me there.

Ok well I have an address finally, ........here it is...
Kaitlin E. Green
Cuerpo de Paz – Panama
Entrega General
David, Chiriqui
Republica de Panama

So the way this works is you’re sending mail to the main post office in David and the only way I get it is by physically picking it up. So let’s avoid sending anything valuable or sentimental the first few times. But this is the address that is a lot closer to me than the Peace Corps office in Panama City. It’s also never a bad idea to put some crosses or religious symbols on the package cause people are less likely to break into it if they think it has to do with God, by any means. Also, I prob won’t check the mail unless I’m expecting something, so drop me an email too just so I know to keep an eye out when I head into David to grocery shop. I still have not got the package from mom, it takes over 4 weeks, give or take, cause it comes by boat…..so that sucks but care packages will be a life saver a few months down the road.

Send letters first so I know it works!! aka...before awesome care packages full of American goodies and trinkets of home.

Finally, I’m a size 8, I have not got on a scale, but when I left the states exactly two months ago today, I was a size 12, wooooooooooooooo!.... go bring on the fish and canoe work outs.....I’m like Malibu PCV Barbie meets Caribbean Pocahontas....no knows what to do with me.
Write me questions to answer, cause then I can give you a better feel for how I’m living when I can answer direct questions….

Tomorrow I swear in as an official Peace Corps volunteer. We have the ceremony at the house of the American Ambassador to Panama. I’m psyched to wear my cute dress and go out for a nice dinner in Panama City afterwards with the group. Ten weeks….it was long and short at the same time. It’s hard for me to believe that it is October right now; it still feels like July to me because the weather never changes here. Then this weekend were going to stay in villas on the beach for two nights to party together before we blast off to our communities next Monday…..my time is here!

LOVE YOU ALL, as soon as my hut is finished let family and friends come see this place!
Smootches, KK