Confessions of a Ngobe Barbie

Doli is building a bridge!

2010-12-17T20:14:00.003-05:00

Hey family and friends, I have some stories to share but for now Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all!.

Fans of my blog, I urge you to look into my best friend Audrey Blocker's Peace Corps Partnership Project to build a bridge. This structure will connect the two sides of her community that is right now divided by a mangrove swamp. It will also allow access from one side of town to the other, epically for the children who will be using it to walk to school!

Tis the season for giving!

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=525-146

Stay tuned for stories from my last days in Panama.

busy bee, edi g

2010-05-31T20:53:00.001-04:00

Hello friends and family and fans of Confessions, I hope this fine afternoon is treating you well.

It’s been a few weeks now since my adventure up Volcan Baru, and a busy work filled month it’s been.

At the moment my main goal is funding my rainwater project which I’m anxious to get off the ground and running before the close of my service in October. Having said that, can you believe it? The two years in Panama mark will be hit in August this year, and my service is technically closing in October. What a run it’s been.

Throughout the past month in working to fund my RW project, work on my research project, as well as balancing health, friendship, and the burden on managing the unbearably low allowance of $340 a month, I have been reflecting on my Peace Corps service and defining what I need to accomplish before I leave this country.

With a lot of thought in mind and the slowing process of my tasks at hand, I am seriously considering staying in Panama until February 2011. Between now and October I will be able to fund the rainwater project and see through the installation of the tanks. Then with this extra time I would be able to fulfill every field aspect of my research for University of South Florida, coordinate a sexual health workshop for the women of my community and oversee the use and maintenance of the RW tanks including leading a conservation seminar. Time well spent to adhere to the finishing touches of my Peace Corps Panama resume. Even though I am getting anxious to get home, at this point in the game, a few more months to tie up loose ends will be worth the wait.

Now I know the majority of you have been quizzical to my home arrival date and in favor of my company in Boston. I am honestly flattered, and very conscious of the incredibly important people in my life who miss me and want me around. However, if I do not finish these projects and research before October, coming home then would feel unfulfilling to me. It would be tragic to have invested 27 months of my life into my work here to come up short. Therefore, I have been working diligently and thoughtfully to get this project off the ground. You can imagine though how difficult it is to solicit institutions and organizations to donate to a project, when I only have internet twice a month, my main form of communication. But know that Boston is in my heart, and your thoughts are on my mind too.

Now for those of you in the running to get KK home quick, I could use your help. If you know of any type of organization who is interested in potable water development work, PLEASE, help me to get into contact with them. At the moment I prefer to solicit organizations that work with development, water purification, developing world engineering, volunteerism, and the such, rather than asking individuals to donate $20 here or $50 there. If you are so inclined to make a tax deductible donation, the link to my projects website is here:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=525-135

However, if you know of such an organization that might be interested please pass along the link as well as sending me (Kaitlin.Green@gmail.com) their contact information so that I can personally invite the organization to consider investing into this project. I’m sure you can understand that larger sums from accredited NGOs promote this type of development work and networking. But I’m not unrealistic, every dollar counts.

Well that’s the update for now. I have more UDel friends visiting in June to experience Peace Corps life, am pluggin away at this funding endeavor, and then coming home in July to be a bridesmaid for Ali Boyles & Justin Martini’s wedding. I cannot wait to get in the states again to celebrate, see friends and family and be in Boston in the summertime.

Cheers to you all, hugs and kisses, abrazos y besos!

18 hours on Volcan Baru

2010-04-19T17:00:00.010-04:00

A group of 15 Peace Crops Panama Volunteers take off to climb Panama’s one and only Volcano, Volcan Baru in Chiriqui, Panama. This is my take on the journey.

The crew and I left David on a school bus to drive an hour north to Boquete, the base of Volcan Baru, at 9pm. We then took a taxi up to the entrance and started hiking at 11pm. The climb is estimated at 6 hours, straight up for 15km…which is about 10 miles. That is, hiking ten miles up a Volcano between the house of 11pm and 5am in the morning, in the dark and in the cold. We’re kind of nuts, but definitely a brave crew.

The trend is to leave at night is so that you can avoid the rain on the trial during the day. Hiking all night puts you at the summit for sunrise where both oceans can be seen. YEAH! We’re totally doing it! Being one of the 3 girls in the group of 18, I made sure I wore my hot pink spandex and other layers including a baby yellow running tank and bright blue microfiber layer, cause everything is more fun in a bright outfit.

The first hour was pretty bad, I thought I was gonna be in bad shape for the whole hike. I was dead last…and huffin and puffin. I was actually really nervous as to how I would perform, as we did no such training and the last time I hiked was on the Franconia Ride with Bryn, July 2008 before Peace Corps. But up I went.

Luckily, in the second and third hour I found my groove. Unable to talk to the guys since I was concentrating on my breathing, I opted for my IPod and soon found myself far ahead of the pact and moving at a brisk pace. Around the half way mark, Green was set for the bronze, following closely behind Jon and Brian, who were leading the way. As we got higher however, I could feel my body slowing and some of the other guys catching up.

Around 3am a group of 5 of us has established ourselves as the lead pact, as this naturally does on long hikes. Brian, Jon, Austin, Dan and I made our way step by step up the Volcano. It also got significantly colder and I had to pull on my black hoodie. This decreased my level of joy since I was no longer clad in a rainbow of Caribbean colored athletic gear, but we were on the side of a volcano, and sacrifices had to be made.

I brought up the rear, but would catch up every half hour or so when we refueled and hydrated. After about an hour with the group though, I started feeling real sick.

Now I must note that before I joined Peace Corps I bought myself a brand spankin new CamelBack, which for those of you who don’t know is a bladder of water designed to put in a backpack with a hose to sip on, so while hiking you don’t have to stop to take out your water bottle, unscrew it, the works. I’ve never used my CamelBack in the 21 months I’ve lived in Latin America. I did however take it off its hook from my house to pack it in my “bag of things to take up Volcan Baru” to find not a few, but a nest of cockroaches living inside the sleeve. I dropped the thing on the floor and watched Nacho chase the lil buggers around my house. Now the cockroaches were in the sleeve, not in the bladder where the water goes, so I presumed things would be fine. I packed away the CamelBack, not washing the never used pouch after one and half years. Gross KK.

Up on the trail I was drinking out of my CamelBack regularly, trying to ignore the musty and gross taste in my mouth that reminded me of the smell of cucarachas. Somehow I think there was debris in the pouch, and this contaminated water, after 3 hours was starting to get to me. Call it the altitude, call it the gross cucaracha water, upon meeting the four guys at our next rest stop I wanders over to the brush, staggering due to nausea and lack of oxygen and threw up like ten times. The boys were horrified, and then laughed. I turned and yelled at them for making fun of me. This violent episode lasted about 5 minutes, and after leaving my mark on the trail I was renewed. Like a burst of energy I emerged from my sick funk and was ready to conquer the volcano. This was a good thing since we were only a little bit past half way, cold from stopping, and desperate to make it to the top before sunrise. “Don’t worry Kaitlin, even though we saw you puke your brains out, we still think you’re sexy,” remarked one of the dudes as we continued the accent.

Onward and upward. The next chapter of the hike was slow moving, and slower the higher we climbed. Half of me was proud of myself for keeping up with the group’s leaders. The other half of me was mad at myself for how much my legs and lungs hurt, a clear sign I need to be working out more often than my twice a week beach jog. My lower back shot with pain from wearing a pack and hunching over while climbing. Somebody needs to strengthen her core muscles!
It got kinda of ridiculous at times. We would start as a group. Jon and Brian would immediately pull ahead followed by Dan and I. Austin was behind but after about 10 minutes of Volcan Stairmaster 2010, I would literally fall to the ground, lay on my back and just breathe deeply in and out for a minute or so, swearing, and twisting my legs to stretch out my back. Austin would pass and I would mutter “keep going! I’m fine I swear! Ahhhh shit!” Then I’d pull myself together, get up and sluggishly scale the trail to meet the boys at the next rest stop. Then the cycle would continue after we departed from getting too cold, a break less usually than five minutes, if you can call that a break at all.

When the top was in sight, it got real steep. My favorite move of this part of the journey was the hands on my knees once every five seconds lunge forward. Lower back breaking off, feet swelling, lungs collapsing, I would climb about 100 ft or so up, and then keel over to rest, and up again, and up again, and up again. Even though we were hiking in a group, we’d spread out so much that it was a very personal, alone experience. I would tear up a little in pain, and then in happiness that I actually could do this, as hard as it was. I would yell obstinacies and grunt loudly for motivation and to voice the pain I was feeling throughout my body. The guys later told me they’d hear weird noises from down the mountain and would stop to curiously look around. it was just me, bitchin. When it got really bad I thought of my sister Maddie and my friend Blair. I was like “Maddie ran the Boston Marathon and Blair hiked the entire Appalachian trial! If they can do THAT, then I can get to the top of this juvenile Volcano!” And up I went.

Finally, cell phone antennas in sight, I emerge at the base of the peak where towers are built. Its pitch black dark out and about 5am. The 4 boys are about 15 minutes ahead of me and I see the trail of their 4 headlamps climbing the rock face to get to the very top. I follow, and looking up at the sky, I cried a little. Down on my left was the city of David, the mountain towns, and the Pacific ocean. Lights illuminated the populated areas. Stars completely filled the cloudless dark sky, and looking straight ahead toward Costa Rica, lighting flashed where the water and land met. To my right I could make out the lights of Bocas town, Changuinola, and Almirante, on my side, the Bocas/Caribbean side of the country. Scary and beautiful! I trekked up the last 200 feet of the climb, meeting the boys at the second to last point on the trail. We followed the rocks up, actually having to rock climb at this point to the platform and highest part of the volcano. At 5:30am April 17th, Jon, Dan and I arrived at the top.

And then it was cold. For 45 minutes we sat at the peak huddling to keep warm under a giant trash bag I had packed in case of rain. The boys, as silly as they are did not bring layers, but luckily I had brought like 3 sets of outerwear which I gladly dispersed. Good thing you brought a woman along guys, as we munched on the banana chips and cookies I also carried to the top.

The morning glow began and we could see down to the tower as the other members of our party arrived at the base. The sun came up over the Caribbean side as the lighting died down at our backs. The sky was insane. We were shivering but as the sun got higher it warmed up immensely. The other group arrived at the top after dawn and slowly but surely all members of our party made it up! I was so proud of everyone. We ran round the peak, took pics, ate snacks, and just talked about the beauty of the area.

How amazing it was to see two oceans from the same vantage point!! I could even see my peninsula, and where my community lies. We could see all of the Bocas islands as well as Costa Rica. Up at the top we were a little over 11,000 feet. When I skydived in Australia it was at 14,000 feet. Now that’s a pretty impressive comparison.

After playing around for a while we finally decided to track down the mountain at 8am. What was supposed to be a four hour journey took 6. We thought it would be a breeze, but the steep incline was hell on our knees. My legs were jello, knees aching, and toes pounding into my sneakers. I lost it a few times. It took every ounce of effort in my body to fight the pain and keep moving, making switch backs down the mountain. The last two hours it started to rain and we had all reached our breaking point. But finally, as all things do, the trial came to the end, and with some phone calls and huddling under the ranger station we go a cab to take us back into town. I had been in the first group to make it to the top and then in the last group to make it down. My mother always told me I did things in extremes.

So to sum up: We were on the Volcano for over 18 hours on our feet with no sleep or real meals, saw the sunrise over the Caribbean at 6am after hiking all night. We ascended 11,400 feet above sea level. 15km up and then down again, which is roughly 20 miles of hiking. We laughed, we cried, we sweat, we shivered, we were hungry, we threw up, we were in pain and experienced runner’s highs. We made it to the top and down again in one piece. We saw two oceans and the width of Panama from the top. Not only was it one of my favorite challenges of Peace Corps; but one of the best experiences of my life.

A Tale of Two Intruders

2010-03-02T15:10:00.005-05:00

My bed is lofted.

I wanted it up high to fulfill my lifelong childhood dreams of being a twin who got the upper bunk. That can’t be helped, but Camp Hayward and my loft in Punta Sirain are slowly healing my aching heart, but letting me sleep up high in a tree fort sort of way. The part of the wall surrounding my bed is lined with a plastic tarp – this is so rain doesn’t get come in between the wall slats and soak me to the bone at night. Genius. I know.

Well, a rat (or mouse or whatever) moved into the space in between the plastic tarp and the wood wall. Fabulous.

We’ll call him Rick. Rick the Rat. Rick makes a horrifying screeching noise at night that makes me feel like I’m witnessing a homicide. I’ve waken up, heart beating, sweating, and out of a dream to this terror of a noise more times than I’d like to remember.

Something must be done….but what?

If I buy rat poison, Nacho (my cat) will eat it and die. If I shove the poison down into the tarp where Rick lives, he dies IN the tarp and stinks up the joint. If I take the tarp down, then Rick might jump out and touch me. No.

So I leave Rick be. Until I come back from Carnival to see that the corner of my bedroom smells like pee…from Rick.

Oh this will not do.

Here is my brilliant idea. Boil water, add bleach, and pour it down the wall in between the plastic and the wood. Not only will it poison and burn Rick, but will disinfect the area and get rid of the smell of mouse pee. Told you it was brilliant.

So up I go into the loft, push the bed aside, cut a hole in the tarp, and down my Clorox-y steamy hot mixture of death goes.

Rick flees- but what flops out onto the floor – a bat! Rick is a bat?!?! No! Rick is the rat is living with a friend- a bat!

Look to the left of the propane tank, there´s the bat! Eeeew he´s so gross!

So I have a rat, and a bat, both living way to close to my sleeping mat, good thing I wear hats, if it wasn’t for my mosquito net at night they might give me a tap, it’s a job for my cat, they’re both total brats.

The bat, we’ll call him Bob. So Bob the bat flops on the floor in his hot chlorinated drunkenness and moves around. I run and scream out of the house. Rick is no wear in sight. Nacho is slowly following Bob – but not attempting to kill him (worthless feline). My neighbors are laughing at me – for the millionth time – can Edi really live in the campo?

Bob half-assly flops himself like a fish out of water around my house for 15 minutes. The kids come over. More Clorox water is thrown. We take pictures. He manages to get on the railing of the porch and flies off into the evening mist. Gone for good, I hope.

But that’s not all.

As I sit on my porch writing this tragic tale to y’all the horrid smell of dying animal passes by. This is not uncommon since I basically live on a farm where dogs, cats, chickens, cows, and ducks run amok. They die sometimes, and it stinks.

So I think it’s the wind. Nope. It’s Nacho, inside, eating Rick the Rat for dinner oh-so-daintily. If you can call blood on the floor and the crunch crunch crunching of rat bones daintily. Nacho looks so polite.

Some final notes…

Prior to all of this 3 American doctors showed up in town, gave out free meds to my people, and I gave them the whole “this is what Peace Corps life is like” sphele. I toured them around the community and they took pictures.

I read 50 pages in The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff.
I perfected the art of pancake making as well as captured my cat back from the disgruntled neighbors who take care of him while I’m away, out of site. They wanted to keep him. No way José. Nacho is mine; he eats rats like Rick for dinner.

This was my Wednesday, February 24, 2010

RIP Rick the Rat & Bob the Bat

And finally, Nacho is earning his keep.

Panama LOVES Black Eyed Peas!

2010-03-02T14:29:00.005-05:00

I will not go into the gory details about how filthy and fun Carnival was. Parents and family do not want to hear about our vacation of binge drinking, being sprayed by firehouses and hip hop club dancing round the clock for 4 days straight. No no no. I clearly got over this type of fun when I graduated from the University of Delaware, almost three years ago, and moved on to more noteworthy, engineering and sophisticated like things.
But I will tell you that the country of Panama is having a steamy affair with the Black Eyed Peas.
The song “I gotta feeling” played about 10 times a night at carnival, every night, and during the day too.
Best part, after playing the real version, they’d play the Spanish version. Or, the dubbed version:

“Yo tengo feeling!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Y5LIYB0i0&feature=related

Lil book club action

2010-02-11T20:57:00.004-05:00

So if anyone had any doubt in their mind as to how much estrogen was running through my blood, I’ll quietly remind you by admitting the last 2 books I’ve read are EAT, PRAY, LOVE and a Jodi Picoult; Picture Perfect.

I LOVED THEM BOTH!!! They’re like chick flicks, but in book form.

I’d like to take this time to give a warm round of applause to Jodi. I don’t care how ridiculously girly and sappy her novels are. This being my 2nd, she touched my heart once again. And she’ll touch yours.

So if by any chance Jodi Picoult & Liz Gilbert are reading this obnoxious blog… Liz, get over yourself: ANYONE can go “find them self” on a prepaid vacation and fall in love with a rich chubby over the hill sugar daddy just to write a book. ANYONE.

Jodi- keep on rockin my world. I don’t care how chick flickly, sassy, not meaningful but wildly entertaining your books are, I love you. Keep them coming. You put Anita Shreve to shame.

(hint to those of you who still owe me a care package: Kaitlin loves Jodi Picoult! You have till October)

In my own defense, in the past 18 months here in Panama I’ve also read WATCHMEN, Phillipa Gregory, Paulo Coelho, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Robbins, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, some sci-fi, and some non-fiction…aka, not all fluff.

I also got a cat. His name is Nacho.

Nacho has been earning his keep. He stays up all night eating cockroaches. The crunching sound of his late night snacks only wake me when he tackles a really big one, like over 2 inches. Then he sneaks under the mosquito net to bed to cuddle. He loves to sit in my lap while I’m reading in my hammock. He has been staying flea-free, AMAZINGLY, but also due to the lice shampoo PC graciously gives us dirty volunteers from the Med department.

The other day he did poop on top of one of my ceiling beams. I could smell it, but not located the said poop for a good 4 hours. Finally, I climbed up to the loft to find the little devil and clean it with Clorox. Nacho was not allowed to sleep inside that night. Bad kitty.

He is the perfect color orange. I tell the women of my village that I named him Nacho because he is the color of cheese.

I have also started a group of Muchachas Guias….or in English “Leading Ladies”…aka…Girl Scouts! Since it’s summer vacation here in Panama and they have nothing to do otherwise but be a nuisance to their parents, so I let them come over every other day at 3pm for 2 hours. We color, we sing, we learn bits’o’English, and we dance. Currently, they are learning “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga, just like the video. I might need to tone the choreography down a bit since one of the moms stopped letting her daughter come over.

The rest of us think it’s cute.

things fall into place

2010-02-01T14:58:00.000-05:00

It’s pretty amazing how one small move, decision, or plan, can turn into something much greater.

Everything changes; everything has an effect on the next.

For example, at the beach with Audrey, Viviana asks me to visit her house the next day. I go; she’s not there. I go on to Casilda’s, borrow a boat and canoe to Punta Allegre to buy some powdered milk and sugar. I should have been visiting Viv.
A yacht pulled in, asked me if I was Audrey, said “no, I’m Edi, I live over there (pointing across the bay). He says, “Well I brought some veggies to make a salad cause I know it’s hard for you to get fresh vegetables out here, would you like dinner?”

“Does James Brown get down?”

So I was supposed to be hanging out at Viv’s but due to a chain of fortunate events, I ended up drinking beers and eating salad on a yacht with Audrey and the ex-pat.

Example number two: randomly Corialla and Viv came over the other day to hang out at my house. In the 9 months I’ve lived in my house on the other side of town, these women have come over two times, maybe three, maybe.

During this lovely, and random visit, them told me they were going to Bahia Azul (the bigger town next door where our new EH volunteer Luis lives), because they heard some gossip that some gringo doctors were coming with meds. Oh really? Guess I’ll go too and check it out… was planning on doing a whole lot of hammock sitting tomorrow anyways.

So off I went at 7am the next day canoeing an hour down the bay.
Yep there they were, a team on Christian doctors from Colorado were doing some volunteer work by bringing heath care right into the town for a one day clinic. Amongst them was their coordinator, a Dominican man named Juan, who happened to work with aqueduct systems too.

I explained the water situation to him, about my town, and he replies with the Spanish version of “let’s go check it out.”

So into the motor boat we go, blasting over back to my town to see the spring where my town kinda gets there water from. After the site assessment he told me he’d send out a technico to measure how large of a pump we would need to install a solar panel powered pumped aqueduct.
Wow. That was easy.

No promises. And I’m not getting my hopes up. But say it was to happen and we got this thing built, it woulda all been because Viv and Corialla just happened to stop by the afternoon before.

And things begin to fall into place.

The frustrating task of finding a boat

2010-01-18T14:26:00.001-05:00

In attempt to get out of my own head and stay sane in this next year out on the peninsula, I’ve decided I need to cruise around more often when I start feeling like the crazies are getting the best of me.

But what if there’s no boat?

Man up, switch it up, suck it up, go for a run, or just dance.

I asked Dionicio (the aqua president) to sail me over to Audrey’s, no dice.

My usual ride has gone to work in Chiriquí Grande.

Alfredo’s son already took his boat out fishing. When I asked Pedro if he had a motor his wife responded “he does at night”.

Great. I guess I’m swimming to Ensenada.

I always tell the girls....

2010-01-06T15:13:00.000-05:00

“never take it seriously. If you never take it seriously, the you’re always having fun, if you’re always having fun then you can’t get hurt, and if you every get lonely, just go to the record store and visit your friends.” ~Almost Famous.

In Panama’s case, the book shelf, skype, gchat, or la cantina.

Either way, it’s something I’m applying to life in the second year of PC. Dead are the days of getting all worked up over comments my silly lil Ngobe make about me or my work.

Today for example, while asking for a boat to go cruise around in, I got the response, “Joven, you can’t go alone, you’ll sink and drown.” Not true. Swim team since age 5 makes me safer in the water than on land, where I can trip or fall, or get lost in the woods.

Que va….

I’m not taking this warning “NO” as an insult anymore. It’s just their nature and not mine to stress bout. Don’t take the insult seriously; maybe tomorrow they’ll let me go.

(Writtin Dec 3, 2009)

Hello boat in bay, this is Edi, can you read me?

2010-01-06T13:41:00.002-05:00

The PC Panama safety and security officer issued Audrey and me marine transmitters to communicate in the case of an emergency. The walki talkis are diesel, and are submergible….perfect for the rain!

While reading the directions one fine afternoon in my hammock, I noticed channel 6 is used to “signal other vessels.”

Conveniently, a yacht from Bocas was just pulling into the bay in plain view of my porch and the nifty little receiver.

“Hello boat in bay. Hello. This is Edi! Do you read me?! Hello?”

“Rodger that Edi, but we don’t have a visual of your ship. Can you give us your coordinates?”

“Uhhhhhh…..up on a hill, in the little native town, second hut on the left after the creek, in the hammock…….so how old are you guys?”

When you live alone in NgobeLand, the need to flirt is most definitely considered an emergency.

The Mar is Bravo

2010-01-06T13:04:00.004-05:00

Written in site Dec 1st, 2009.

Senor Israel came over at 9am. We did our usual once a month’s rent exchange where I make him a cup of coffee, I pay home the $15/month for this view: and write him a receipt on an index card. We chit chat about life and he tells me what his kids are up to.

November/December brings the bad weather to Bocas. Looking out at the ocean today, Dec 1st, its calm, but dark, and the fact that you can see big waves crashing against the pirate islands means the ocean is high, and “bravo”, literally "angry ocean."

Embrace it girl, embrace it.

2009-12-15T20:19:00.001-05:00

Why the blog change? Why not?!?!

Hitting my one year mark, and my 25th birthday...It’s a new year, a new journey, a new time for me to explore more of myself, my friendships & relationships here, my work, my research…

To explore deeper into the Spanish language and culture.

To explore Panama…

Given this blog is a little of everything – community work and emotion, it’s like a confessional.

I voice stories and opinions and adventures as well as (uggg) personal growth?

… and humor (like the new title!), and, well, I was never really attached to the “tales from the isthmus” that name was a filler, this one comes with a bit more weight....I kinda love it.

"ok guys, ready to learn how to pasear?"

In September, clad in short orange hot pants, a pink tank, neon green sports bra, high pony blonde braid with pink Ngobe headband, sunglasses that can only be described as “my way of saying THANK YOU to Reggetone”, knee high mud boots and a machete, the 1st year PC trainees not-so-appropriately nicknamed me, their senior, Ngobe Barbie.

Slightly annoyed and secretly flattered, looking down at my outfit…well what can I say?… my love for bright colors was asking for it.

With the new name I’m gonna dig a little deeper, reveal a little more, and this is now a confessional after all.

With a roll of the eye towards Piper, she just looked back at me and said: “Embrace it girl, embrace it.”

Lost in the Woods

2009-10-05T14:36:00.001-04:00

I’ve decided that I never want to be lost in the woods again. When I say the word “woods”, I actually need to correct myself. Woods are in New England, Michigan too, maybe even in parts of Delaware. Fresh, clean, wooded. Area on the ground to put your feet. That is not the case in Panama. Aqui, we live in the jungle, dark and dense and unfortunately possible to get bizarrely lost in.

This is my story.

I left the large, somewhat densely populated town of Kusapin to hike to Punta Valiente. A simple, up the mountain down the mountain 2 hour trek I’ve navigated before. There was no fear in my eyes leaving Kusapin, “I know this terrain.” I got there in good time, at about 2:15, drank some water and asked for directions to Punta Allegre, the closer town to where I live and could hitch a boat ride across the bay home. The people told me “over there”, ok I thought, a normal response from Ngobes.

The school teacher lead my towards the trail mumbling something in dialect to a young, curious girl who was headed in the same direction. We made it down to the creek where some women were washing laundry. Typical. At no point in this journey had I felt questionable about the next three house that were about to depart.

The path I was looking upon was a direct staircase up the side of a mountain. I thought it was a hill. It was not. It was a large mountain. I knew this when after an hour straight uphill climbing I had not arrived at my destination of Punta Allegre, a town a bit down the coast that the people of Valiente had told me was a 30 minute walk, direct.

“No big deal, I can handle it.” The area that was supposedly the trail cleared into an area that was obviously used for house building wood. “So I’m on the right track, I just walked through a lumber yard”, this is not not normal out there on the peninsula. The trail went down, I went down, the trial went up, I crawled up.

Finally the trial diverted. Up, was an overgrown mess of a trail that looked like no human foot had touched it in a deathly amount of time. The other half of the trail severely drifted to the right towards the ocean, and down. “Well that makes perfect sense now doesn’t it”, the trail in my mind then couldn’t be going anywhere but Allegre. So down I went.

Ngobes like to swing there machetes as they walk down paths in a dreamlike sequence that clear the way of ungodly items likes vines or brush that tangle the path from their forward moving bare feet. I agree with this strategy, and moved forward with the rusty blade that still seemed to cut at least half of the underbrush that was beneath me.

It was only until about 15 minutes below the divide that I realized I was no longer cleaning a trail but cutting my own. No good. This is where I should have turned back, but believing that I was in no danger what so ever and stubborn enough that I believed the trial would reappear, I made the decision to continue down the valley towards the river cause I was parched, and had ran out of water way before.

Not even five steps down, the ground beneath my feet fell and I went down with it about 10 feet in a mini landslide in rocky, loose dirt, that was impossible to recourse. “Welllll shit!”, I attempted to climb back up to the quasi-trial I had slide down, but the dirt was so lose and the area lacked anything significant to hang on to. It was a feat far too grand to achieve with a thirsty throat and an attitude that rejected turning back. “Whatever.” I’ll go down to the creek, drink what I need to drink, and the trail will become obvious.

When I got down there it was obviously the wrong choice. With no way back up, and nothing but a creek guiding my path I stared to cut my way down the valley in attempts to make it to the ocean and stroll along the beach to Allegre. After 20 minutes I had made it through jungle so dense I may as well have walked across my kitchen floor. I started to get nervous.

Machete flying, I came across a waterfall that was a good 30 foot drop into the jungle, with a rock covered crevasse of a landing pad. “So I can’t climb down it, and it’s sheer on the right side, may as well crawl across the vine coved slope on the left”. About ten feet out on the horizontal slope, ants biting and crawling up my arm I grabbed onto a less than attached branch that snapped and sent me tumbling a good 20 feet in the muddy dirt, landing on a log that was barely hanging onto two boulders atop the creek. I held my own breath until I found root that was actually rooted, pulled myself up to safety and then blessed myself while I welled up in tears.

The waterfall was above me, I was back down to the creek, and not in a good mood. The next part of this lil adventure of mine got really viney. There were times I had to swing my machete 20 times to take one step forward; the jungle was that thick. After another 30 minutes or so, I saw up on the left side of the valley a 150 foot landslide remnant, sealing the deal on the idea that this area got wrecked last November when we were flooded and evacuated.

The next part, and only way down, was to climb up onto a fallen tree. Now, this tree was at least 75 feet tall when it was alive and standing and now in its entire 8 foot diameter glory lay across the river as a bridge. I jumped from a rock onto the tree landing on my stomach and crushing the Ski sunglasses Dad used to wear in Killington. I got really mad, and then left the busted trinket on the huge tree.

Then I walked down it about 30 feet until I could lower myself back down to the water. At this point I had thought I would have been at the ocean an hour ago, I was tired, hungry and my bare feet hurt so much that my knees were buckling every time I took a step onto the rocks of the creek. Walking in sort of a delirium kinda made it all ok. As long as I didn’t come across a snake I would be fine. And I think the whole situation would have been worse if someone was with me, besides God of course. With a friend, we would have turned back way before the first semi landslide never getting that far into the jungle to begin with. If we hadn’t, we would have been freaking each other out the whole time, and possible being in more danger.

By myself, I was moving slowly but carefully, and steadily. I wasn’t thinking about anything but following the creek and not worrying about “what ifs”. Simple fight or flight. I fought and kept moving out of the jungle towards the ocean. Even trying to remember all the events that went on in those three hours is hard to remember because my mind was in a cloud from exhaustion and nerves. It was really only three hours but felt like days.

Then I saw it, a coconut tree! I reached the beach! On more little hill to pull myself up over, shifty dirt and all, and I would be there. Wrong-O. At the top of the hill I had reached the ocean, but not a beach, a 40 foot cliff drop into the water was in my way. Soooooo off I went to the left, following the cliff line until I found another landslide area that I could scoot down, kinda like sliding down a sand dune. Finally at the ocean.

I walked for another 30 minutes in the water. There was no beach, just rocks, and my feet were killing me while the sea lice made me itch from the knees down. It was slow progress. I had to scale across a rock face around a point that was too deep to walk. I didn’t want to swim because I had my camera and other important things in my bag. Unfortunately, cause of my trip to Tobobe the day before, my camera had no batteries! So I couldn’t document this wretched journey once I realized I was in the thick of it.

I made it back to the second part of the beach walk and there was finally some soft sand for my achy feet. I hit the next rock face and realized it was impassable, too sheer and too dangerous. Then I really started to cry because I had only about an hour left of light and I realized I’d have to go back into the jungle and cut another path since I couldn’t stay on the coast. I started to walk into the forest when I heard a boat motor!

Running to the beach screaming “Ayudame!” (help me!), the boat driver, and my buddy Ronhelio, saw my waving machete and pulled a U-ie. I flopped into his boat and he crossed the bay bringing me home, and listening to my tale. I hit my beach and couldn’t be happier to be home. It was almost 6pm and I had left Kusapin at 12:30pm.

I got a lecture from my neighbors about walking alone. They were all really upset with me after I told them the story and said that there are a ton of dangerous snakes up there in the mountain. The scary part, well one of the many, is that my neighbor told me the trail I was originally on, was not a trial for the people to pass through from one town to the next, but instead it was a trial that the men used to hunt wild boar! “Great.” So the people in Valiente sent me on the wrong path. A bruha then confused me and lead me down an even wronger path. But since I was walking with God and due to the fact that “I’m guided by a force much greater than luck”, I made it out, says my trusted neighbor friend.

Apparently there was a beach trial that does only take 30 minutes, only the sent me up the mountain and into the jungle. I’m not going back to that town.

Now, I don’t want you all to be mad or scared for me after reading this. Nothing happened on purpose. I really thought that the trail was gonna end soon, and lead me right to the town. And, people from my community use these trials all the time, regularly. The commute I was making was nothing different than the normal hike to the big city for a Ngobe. It was a series of unfortunate events that lead me astray, but eventually to safety.

After this, I have no desire whatsoever to take trials without a guide. It’s not worth it. The entire time throughout my hike I was gritaring, or yelling for another person, and there was no response. A sprained ankle, twisted knee, or worse, and I would have spent the night in the woods. I honestly don’t know what would have happened if a snake had bit me. I think you have like 6 hours or something to get the antivenom, and that’s if you can walk to get to a boat to take you to a hospital. Not cool.

But it all ended well. A friend of mine who’s been in Peace Corps for 3 years says that this tale is maybe one of the top three he’s heard in his time here. It was scary, and I thank God I made it out.

I never want to do it again, but it was a hell of a journey.

So this is what i'm thinking....

2009-08-11T18:11:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow a group of 5 engineers, a TA, the program director and 3 PCVs come out to my site for the Michigan Tech International Senior Design Program. I’m thrilled to work with the students for a week assessing and talking about what can be done in Punta Sirain to improve the quality of life. I’m lucky to be a part of this project and my community feels even luckier.

The students will be sleeping with host families and eating typical Ngobe food. I think this will be somewhat of a challenge for them, as it was with my parents, but it should be a blast too.

Last Thursday I went up to Kusapin for a goodbye party Johanna hosted for her English class once it ended. It was such a good time! Johann, Jamie, and our new addition to the peninsula family Audrey and I were all there with the English students, whom in this case were Panama high school teachers in the school up there. Even almost a year in, I still love my trips up to the capital of Kusapin to hang with the other girls, in what we jokingly call the sorority house, since it is a bunch of chicks up here!

In October hopefully we’re getting another EH volunteer. I’m really excited about this, to have a person in my group out there to work with. Since my sector is a lot different from the tourism sector, the group the other 3 girls are in, it’ll be nice to have some sanitation input on our side of the bay.

The community of the new volunteer has requested a guy, but in sort of an obnoxious way. They want a guy so he can play baseball with them, go fishing, work in the finca, and physically carry out the construction process of the EH sector work. I almost want to cry since even though I am completely capable of these activities, the gender roles of Ngobes still puts men over women. The other day a good friend of mine in the community even told me she wished I had been a guy so that I could actually do something to help them. Even though I’m able to prove myself to them with these tasks, it’s like they don’t accept that I’m doing them. This is the sort of thing I’ll never change, none of us women will, and we have to deal with it. Hear them complaining and hearing even the women telling me what I can and cannot do, REGUARDLESS of what I’ve shown them I can do, is the most frustrating.

I responded to this with some harsh words explaining that men and women are equal in the states, and my women here don’t know what they’re missing. It doesn’t matter to me if we get a girl or a guy, as long as the new volunteer loves surf sand and adventure and has passion for the ocean. In one sense I hope its girl to piss them off. But we can’t be like that. We have to just be strong and take the Ngobe gender roles with a grain of salt….. They call this the developing world for a reason.

Work related, I got in touch with a local agency to build rainwater tanks in the schools without running water on the peninsula. Right now our goal is to construct the 1000 gallon tanks in three schools. Could it be that I might have something to show for myself at the end of year one??? That is, besides choreographed dance routines, a killer tan, and a superior ability to braid hair?

In all seriousness though, I think I’m on the right track. Tim Allan and I got a lot of surveying done in July, before the Caymans, and I almost have all the information I need to so some prelim pump design. As much as these people want this “said aqueduct”, and as much as I’m humoring them by going though the design legwork, I’m really hoping they see the light with rainwater collection once we get the school’s tanks up and running. Only time will tell.

As for the latrines, you guessed it, not one is in use yet, and unfortunately I see it staying that way. A combination of ignorance, cultural norms, laziness, thinking they’re dirty, what have you, they have come up with excuses why they don’t want to poop in the concrete block. I’m almost bored of asking.

Tomorrow I will have lived in Panama as a Peace Corps volunteer for a full year. Freaking scary. Time is flying but I’m having a great time. Time of my life? Those of you who know me well, know that I’m almost always smiling and having fun, so to think that these will be the best two years is an understatement….they’re all good years to me, each in their own way. Knowing that, I’m in no way ready to leave. I have a lot more to do here, and a lot more to experience here.

But I’m coming home f or Christmas so get excited.

Amanda and Niki were down in July before Caymans. A breath of fresh air. Friends are amazing. I love the people in my life but nothing compares to friends from home and college and of course family. We had a ball spending time together and parading around Panama. Their visit, and seeing my fam in the Caymans, gives me the strength to push forward, dealing with the idiosyncrasies of my community and pushing for projects and development I know I’m capable of making happen.

M.I.A. Paper Planes Panama Ngobe Version

2009-07-01T17:38:00.001-04:00

this is what we call cultural exchange

2009-07-01T17:33:00.000-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLiocjLm0YE

A joke, meds, and final notes

2009-07-01T17:12:00.002-04:00

Today in site I understood a joke in Spanish. This is huge.

Pedro, had on a printed tee. One you might find for $7.99 at old Navy . It read ….
Expert
Experience
Trust
BLUE

While hanging around the store, Manuel, Pedro’s buddy, asked me what yhe shirt said since they don’t understand English….so I translated….

Expert = Profesional (with an accent)
Experience = Experiencia
Trust = (shit, I forget the word for trust in Spanish).

Now, when you say the word “trust” outloud in English it sounds a to like the word “atras” in Spanish, which means, in English, “behind”
So then, this harmless tee from the states, to Manual and Pedro, sounded like: Professional experience behind., aka, gay joke of the week. The guys got a good laugh out of the tee shirt due to my own lack of a Spanish vocabulary. (please don’t take offense to this story)

Trust, btw, in Spanish is confianza, I had to look it up.

Now it’s time for the medical update:

Amoebas-my gut instinct was correct. I’ve been living with amoebas in my stomach for the past 5 months. Be thankful you live in a country that treats its water. Antibiotics in. Bugs out.

My legs are still gross. My daily routine involves scrubbing them with surgical and a sponge that is meant for dishes, the rough kind. I then rub them down with alcohol followed by witch hazel. Powdered sodium infused anti itch powder is next, from the knee down, and I now sleep with my to the knee ski socks to prevent the “while sleeping scratching,” the silent killer.

I’ve been getting a little worried about my sun exposure but thank you grandma I now have face cream to cover it. For now, I’ve got a wicked tan and I’m wearing my visor in the sun.

Eyes= good, use glasses most of the time
Hair= long, sun bleached, split endy
Skin= see above
Teeth= could use more flossing, but whoever wins that battle?
Tummy= at the moment without parasites.

Sad note: two volunteers from my group, another EH PCV a year a ahead of me, and a hilarious SAS dude all got kicked out this month for a too much beverage intake situation. We also lost Ray from Bocas who had to go home and Judy left our province and changed site. Moral is a bit down and were all pretty bummed people in our PC family have moved on. I’m really sad that they’re gone.

Dzagie, blue bob is still hanging in there, but he’s starting to smell.

Bachi, I hope you’re doing well recovering, I think about you all the time.

Grandma, I hope you’re leg feels better! Thank you so much for al the goodies in the care package, I think of you all the time too.

Bub, you’re 21. Oh. My. God.

Ohoh, please don’t die at Bonoroo.

Auntis, how I wish we could sit around with a lemon drop ( or 5) and talk about boys.

Uncles, Yeshhhhh, football, and redsox. I miss my fill of that.

M+D, its been over 4 weeks and my neighbors still ask me “ so your parents left huh?” no, I've been hiding them under my bed for the past month, really what do you think? They have jobs!

Cousins, holidays are not the same without you.

Commons Crew, I feel like a part of my soul is missing since I missed Preakness and Dewey. But it’s really cause I’ve missed seeing you fools. Text I received today from my friend Piper who is a Bocas Volunteer living close to me: “Having one of those days where no one will leave you alone and all you wanna do is drink the emergency box of wine…but there isn’t one!” (Note: box, not bottle, = you guys would love this chick, is sure do.)

Peace Up, A-Town, talking to Bagash today I got real nostalgic for Boston. Miss you biddies.

Suz, so it’s been a year since the infamous Celtics bar crawl. Can I get a lil tribute man?!?! Why aren’t’ more people doing this?!?! Ummmm, they have jobs.

10 months down, 17 to go. Don’t know if I’m happy, sad or scared bout that. Looks like all 3.

I’m right where I wanna be.

2009-07-01T16:59:00.002-04:00

After culture week in Kusapin I returned home for a 2 week stint in site. Haven't done that many days straight since February and it’s been a joy.

The first week was a gathering of resources, if you will, as I prepared my first project management inspired water aqueduct meeting with all the big shots in town. I had 21 people show up including 5 women! We started the meeting with an activity that compares and contrasts our 3 options to the water problems in town. These included …a new aqueduct with a solar panel pump and tank, rainwater tanks, or simply fixing up the one we got.
I prompted this activity to visually and interactively show the community the difference between rainwater and an aqueduct to hopefully get them thinking that rainwater is the best option, without me directly telling them (that it is!)

Next, I had drawn a map of the town and handed out little pieces of paper to everyone in the meeting. The people then wrote the number of ages +12 and -12 people living in their house, then came up to the map and had to find their house and stick the number on it. This allowed them to visually see their house and family clusters, how far they are from resources like our water source and the school, and allowed me to see who came to the meeting from the 5 different sections of town. At least one member from all five sections came!
We then discussed the 3 hills that could be the possible location for an aqueduct tank and (if it’s even possible I'll know after I survey) and set dates together for surveying. Finally, to get them to use their latrines, I attempted to bribe them with English classes. I will not be un-hopeful, but in general, their response: no dice.

We also agreed to finish the cement sidewalk pathway from the dock to the school and health center.

Overall mood of the meeting: joy, productivity, and fulfillment. I felt this durring and once the meeting was over. Note to readers who forget, this entire meeting was run in Spanish! In a few weeks we're having another on to discuss the results from surveying. Stay tuned.

Saturday after the meeting I took a boat ride south down the peninsula to Bucori with my neighbors to pasear, or go visit some friends. We paddled for 2 hours, straight, and thank god for my swim team past cause that chore is no joke!

Reason # 73 to join the Peace Corps= buff upper body.

I’ve now shown my face in every town out here except Tobobe.

The 2nd of the 2 straight weeks in site included digging a drainage ditch below my elevated outdoor shower, summarizing the info I gathered from my meeting and planning the next one , planning my July calendar to survey with the help of some other awesome EH volunteers/friends who live on the other side of the country, eating lobster, running on my beach, making homemade Malibu with rum and fresh coconut juice, teaching little native children dances to M.I.A. and Prince, and decorating, aka nesting, in my (still new to me even thought I’ve been in for 2 months ) house.

Whew. Life is so fun.

2009-07-01T15:51:00.005-04:00

Next, the end of May happened. In Changuinola. For Regional Meeting.

Got meds for the swine flu even thought that was so five minutes ago.

We met the new assistant country director. A former MI volunteer like me. Another red flag only good people come to Panama.

Discussed PC related issues.

That night, went out dancing.

I won a dance competition.

Prize= $19.

Next…Culture Week.

We got 7 new volunteers communing to Bocas in July. 1 married couple, 2 dudes, and 3 biddies. Audrey, new lil chica whose gonna live in the town across the bay from me, also enjoys surf, sand, sun and adventure. Aka, we’re bound to get along just swimmingly.

Among the many, get to know your local Ngobe activities in Culture Week in Kusapin, I taught the new kids an hour charla (lesson) about my group, Environmental Health. Since they’re in the other groups consisting of tourism, agriculture and conservation, the idea was to give them a kinda “what you need to know to protect yourself” heads up, related to our wet province of Bocas del Toro. I’m very happy with how it went being the first somewhat professional charla I’ve given down here, that's not in Spanish. Yeah!

What else?!?!

Oh yeah, apparently, there was a boat strike in Kusapin so we all had to leave a day early.

Seeing the new kids reminded me of what my own culture week was like, (remember Valle Risco blog where I peed my bed, lived with a very LOVING couple, and learned the ways of NgobeLand?) and how I’ve grown since then. They, as we were, were all so bright eyed and bushy tailed. I hate to think that the first 3 months of isolation is ahead of them. Its miserable; the best and the worst time all at once. Looking back, at November, December and January, its amazing how strong we turned out in the end.

Now, I have a lot more self value in my skills and capabilities, as well as a lesser degree of concern for people who don’t and shouldn’t affect my life.

I’ve thought about this before and to friends. I went out a lot in college, absolutely every weekend and a lot of week days too. A big reason for that was that staying in, either by myself or with a few friends would make me feel like I was missing out on something or that something fun and exciting was going on without me. Regardless of what my closest friends were doing, if I wasn’t in the public eye, I felt out of the loop and that that eye might forget me if I wasn’t seen.

3 months in isolation will change that. You can't stress over communication or commings and goings out here. You're gonna miss stuff. The truth is, your real friends don’t forget about you, and include you always, the other people, the scene, they crazy on goings, they don’t matter and they’re always there. It’s a weird concept that I’m sure not a lot of people fall into that self conscious trap, but I think its an indirect action of an insecurity I had and now can see looking back with a little more confidence.

On the other hand, to hell with it, home girl just liked loud music and a gin and tonic after a long full of mundane engineering classes.

Ok tangent, my point is, I have way too much time to analyze and think….but I like it that way.

MAY HAPPENINGS

2009-07-01T15:29:00.006-04:00

The week after Ecua-Land, I scrambled back to Sirain to feverishly finish my new house before some Peace Corps friends came up to visit.

Andrea from the Comarca, her friend Niki from Boston, and Brian, Jesse, and Piper from Bocas, all made it out to Sirain to see what all the fuss was about. A house warming party we had. I don’t feel bad for people who go through life without a porch to hang out on, I just can’t imagine life without one. We had a blast. As much as I enjoy (now) being alone in my site, having company and entertaining friends warms my soul. I think it always will.

Mom and Dad showed up May 15th. It was a riot. We went out with Alex, my PC pal, in Casca Viejo (the old school, historical, Faneuil hall of Panama City) and then did the whole canal thing. I don’t care what the older PCVs say, and maybe this is my dorky engineering side peeking its mathematical mind out from behind my blonde hair, BUT, the Miraflores Canal Locks are awesome. We watched 3 boats go through, Boats in, water down, locks open, boats out…..so cool. Saw the movie which was unfortunately more historical than technical but I guess they're trying to please the masses and not the select few whom understand physics. Little did they know Dad and I were in the audience. We then walked through the museum where Mom and I spotted and commented on the laborers in the 1914s picture, who, if you saw them today, you’d think they were hot too.

Parents and I then loaded up the bus & headed west to David followed by my home, Punta Sirain. We were there for 3 nights, a little rough on M&D, pooping in a latrine, bathing in a creek, and not speaking a lick of Spanish, but I’m so proud of them for doing it. We had a big Ngobe meal with my community and took a day trip to the beach at Nidori to lunch with Jamie’s family. Excellent timing I might add that her parents were in town the same week as mine. We hung out under the surfer rancho that Jamie facilitated the building of and swam in the sweet waves.

Overall, Mom kept feeding the farm animals and talking Spanish in a baby voice. Dad would say “uhhhhhhhh” and talk in English when the kids started asking him questions. Usually they were asking for money, so responding in English was as good as saying “no.”

Sentimental moment from Tales From the Isthmus… Senor Israel, my neighbor, owner of my new big house, pastor of the Methodist Church, and friend, came over our last night with his wife and 24 year old daughter to hang out with the 3 of us. The couple has got about 5 years on my parents, but I think of them as grandparents here. They watch out for me. We gave them part of our pasta dinner(American style), but before eating Senor Isreal said a prayer in Spanish that translated to something like this:

Thank you God for this food, and please give KK and her parents a safe journey tomorrow. We are all grateful to be eating here together and we welcome our new brothers (motions to Kay and Gar) from the United States, into our home in Sirain. Amen.

I cried a little bit.
Peace corps moment.
For my parents being there too.
B. E. A. utiful

Jimmy, my boat driver and good friend, picked us up the next morning and, rain & all, cruised us over to Bocas Isle, my Afro Antillean Dewey Beach of Panama. Since the beaches there can't beat Nidori, the one right across the bay from my home, Mom, Dad, and I hung out at the gringo Ex-Pat bar, ate good food, then dessert-ed at the fusion restraint for frozen Kaluah Howler Monkeys which I’m sure mom had already duplicated the recipe of chocolate sauce, banana liqueur, crème de caco, rum, and a kaluah floater, and generously poured the magical frozen concoctions to the Aunties, Bub & Ohoh, and Book Club. If only you could tastefully serve this Caribbean tundra of delight in a martini glass, we’d be seeing it at Mom’s next Oscar Party.

In a nutshell, or coconut shell, or in a void of non-Spanish speaking blankness, we had a blast.

Lil bit bout EcuLand

2009-07-01T15:26:00.000-04:00

I do not update this enough, I’ll admit that. Internet time is infrequent and precious, but here are some stories and pictures from the past two months.

Last we heard, the Green sisters were gallivanting around Quito Ecuador mid April 2009. Suspects were found flying through rainforest canopies, sneaking in and out of hostels, be-bopin in clubs and downing Pilsner Ecua-style. Usual mischief aside, the trio gossiped, advised, dressed up, played down, and caught up. For the first reunion sine GreenFest August 2008, it was a much needed week for all 3 from freshman year, the Peace Corps, and the South American Life. The sisters are looking forward to Caymans in July. Holla at yo girl.

The peninsulas of my life...

2009-05-01T12:43:00.017-04:00

So looking back on the last couple of years of my life I’ve realized how many peninsulas I’ve lived on…..WHO DOES THAT? I don’t know. But at age 24, I have a solid 4 under my belt. Impressive, no? Cape Cod, the Delmarva, the Keweenaw, and most recently, la peninsula Valiente.

We’ll start with Cape Cod. The horrors of working at upper middle class white suburbia swim and tennis club, at the age of 16, drove me to flee from Concord MA the following summer and take a new abode as a Rah-rah Camp Hayward counselor. We swam, we sang, we skinny dipped, we captured the flagg.

Most memorable moment: Sunday School.
Drink of the peninsula: plastic bottle vodka & cran, more recently a Dark’n’Stormy
Partners in crime: Chris Currie & Kim Chambers

Why would you wanna live here?: to pop your collar.

The Delmarva, home to THE University of Delaware and the never ending black hole of filth and shenanigans, Dewey Beach. My love for this part of the country is indescribable, as the most fun filled adventures blessed with amazing friends and good times occurred here. The first state knows how to party, no questions asked.

Most memorable moment: 4th of July weekend, 2005, at the Starboard. Age 20.
Drink of the peninsula: skippy
Partners in Crime: RD1, Treetops219 05, and the Commons Crew

Why would you wanna live here?: because cover bands have never sounded so good at 10am, it’s a way of life.

The Keweenaw. The majestically snow covered Finnish lumberjack abyss of yoopers and snowmobiles. Blossoming out of the forest, a solid 8 hours north of the uppermost part of the main body of Michigan, lies Houghton, Michigan Tech University, and the most delicious microbrews the Midwest has to offer. Also dangerously close to Canada and a prime local for experiencing the “lake effect”.

Most memorable moment: copper country crusin and jumping into a frozen lake, 0o out.
Drink of the peninsula: KBC Pale Ale
Partners in Crime: Meredith Ballard, Kelly McFarlin, Ellen Emberg & the MI students

Why would you wanna live here?: Where else can you snow shoe to class?

And finally, la peninsula Valiente. High atop the mountains and overlooking the Caribbean ocean sits my village of indigenous Panamanians. We fish, we sing, we dance, we don’t use electricity or latrines. This land, unknown to most in the world is full of magic and wonder, and witches. The only form of transportation is by boats, and all we eat is fish and bananas.

Most memorable moment to date: sinking a canoe in the middle of the bay. Boogie board in tow.
Drink of the peninsula: Clos, aka boxed wine
Partners in Crime: Piper Frode, Jesse Cribari, Brian Crum & the Bocas PCVs

Why would you wanna live here?: the sun, the sand, the salt. And cause showers are overrated.

from my MI March report...

2009-04-22T21:18:00.001-04:00

I have now been living in site for over 6 months, have developed a work plan for the next few months and have adjusted my living situation for the rest of my service. As a volunteer, I feel like I have become mentally stronger now that the rains have stopped. Since the rains ceased and it’s actually pleasant where I live, I’ve realized what a struggle it was to get through these first initial months. I’m a lot more comfortable now and I feel like I’m ready to face the real work challenges, not just the challenge of survival. With this, my Spanish has also improved, finally! I feel more confident with it, take the initiative to study on my own, and the community members, other volunteers and Peace Corps staff has also commented on my progress in the past 2 months. All in all, that fact alone has boosted my confidence and attitude while in site.

The other personal note is the progress of my new house which will turn a new leaf for me work wise and for my sanity. The original house of the previous volunteer is a small, 12 X 8 foot box that is really close to a large family house and very exposed to the community as a whole. In the house there is only room for a bed and stove. This was very difficult for me to live and sleep in for the time that I have been in the community. The new house however is on the other side of town, will have a large bedroom and a separate kitchen, an indoor space for bathing with rainwater, and a large patio with a solid railing for security. This new house will have more space for me to work, and is a bit more private so hopefully I’ll sleep better and be more relaxed. Also, I felt like I was living in someone else’s house. The first one never felt like home to me and that is important to me, especially for 2 years. This new house is all mine and I’m very proud of it. I think it will only be a positive addition to my mental sanity and productivity in site.

There is a problem with the community impact of my choice to move however, but I am determined to use it to my advantage. The community is divided into two family groups that live on two different hills in town and are separated geographically but also by their religious beliefs. I’m moving from the Pentecostal hill to the Methodist, and they aren’t exactly friends. My initial move I anticipated will upset the women on the Pentecostal side, however at the same time they understand that I need a bigger house for work and for a place to stay when my family and friends visit. I’m going to take this opportunity to explain to my community that Cuerpo de Paz is here for the entire community, not just one side of town. With my close relationships with both sides after the move, I think that I will be able to bring them together for meetings better than in the past because I will have more direct relationships with them from having the experience of living on both sides. I’m also going to make it very clear that no aqueduct work will be done without the contributions from both sides, equally. So, although it might flare up some competitiveness in the beginning about which family gets me on their side, I am very conscious of the situation and will use the leverage to smooth over family conflicts. After all, it is a Peace Corps goal to promote community unity.

Latrines: The latrine situation is the most frustrating thing I’ve come across in my service thus far. I have given a charla on how to use the latrine correctly, created incentives to cover and use the latrine like family photos, and I’ve told my community that we will not get any more funding for future projects as long as the first project is not complete, aka the latrines. I’ve had hours of conversation with each of the 8 individual families that received a latrine on why they do not like them and what I can do to help them. Basically they don’t like the concept of composting latrines. They tell me that they didn’t know they were getting composting latrines and wanted pit latrines. They think pit latrines are cleaner even though I have explained to them that they are not feasible due to the high water table of a coastal community and a pit latrine would fill with water and attract more disease and sickness. This will be an ongoing challenge to educate my community on the benefits of the latrines as oppose to using the rivers. My next approach includes another more serious and very visual health charla. I am also going to set up a system where I will offer English lessons when the latrines are finished. 4/8, the kids gets English lessons, 6/8 for the women, and when all 8 are complete the men can attend class. If that doesn’t work I will try something else. In any case, I’m not planning on building any more latrines in the near future due to the slow and uninterested response we received from the pilot project. A huge flaw to the project however is that the latrines were given to one family, aka the Pentecostal hill. If they were more spread out over the family units, or given to the motivated individuals, I think they would be in use by now. The one family sticks together and just does what their relatives are doing. In this case, not finishing the latrine with a casita or using it.

So because of this situation, and the dire need and want for water via an aqueduct, I feel that latrine research is out of the picture. I believe that Danny and Josephine did their research on latrine issues as well as Jessica but I want to take my work in the direction of water, as it is way more appropriate for the needs and interests of my community.

My work plans for the next following months are as follows. Right now in Panama City I am attempting to get a hold of topography maps of my community. In June, with these maps and contributions from all members of my town, we will have a meeting to discuss the initial pipe lines to all four sections of town and to discuss the location of the tank. Once the initial pipe locations are decided we will make a plan and form teams to survey with a water level over the course of the summer(July and August ideally). Within this meeting I also want to use a Peace Crops tool called PACO to let the community identify their water problem/situation. From here, I hope that they will come up with a plan themselves, with my guidance and help, about what is the best way to go about getting water to the community. Here, I hope to re-introduce the concept of rainwater collection because I think it will become apparent to the community within this meeting using a map that an aqueduct system to every individual house is not feasible based on the topography of the town.

The POCA system is one that I learned in training and then got reacquainted with during our project management seminar. It is a tool to identify community problems and possible solutions, comparing and contrasting the pros and cons for the possible solutions to the initial problem. The system is very user friendly and provides clear options to abstract problems. I’m really excited to use it at my meeting in June along with the help of Anayanci, the woman I brought to the seminar. She learned the technique there and can help prompt the community to answer my facilitator questions.

In the meantime I will be practicing my Spanish and game plan for this meeting which I think might last up to 3 hours. Hopefully, we will reach some decisions and have a short and long term plan for the summer and the next 6 months. There are some other side projects I’ve been looking into as well. I have a friend coming out to my site to meet with the artisan women in town to talk to them about tourist related Ngobe clothing to sell. I’ve been toying with the idea of starting English classes. I’m interested in holding a health charla series with other volunteers specifically in women’s health and AIDS/STD education since the community has expressed interest in learning more about both topics. I participate in community activities by cheering on my town’s baseball team at the games on the weekends and by going to the finca once in a while to help gather food. On the surfer beach on the other side of the bay I’m working with another volunteer to help build a latrine for tourists who come to enjoy the waves.

For now, that is my plan. I’m excited and nervous and hopeful. All the while I’m very happy and find joy in the day to day activities in my community. I’m lucky to be where I am and I’ve already learned so much about their lives and my own.

and any talk of healthiness, and any talk of resolve, why? why? do i try?

2009-02-26T20:59:00.004-05:00

Alright friends and family, let me tell you how I arrived at my computer this fine February eve.

I took the boat to Chiriquí Grande because I had no money, food, or gas in my stove’s tank. I had no choice. Although my room temperature CocoListo mix was holding me off from starvation for the past 4 days while I sat crying in a corner of my hut reading The Other Boylen Girl during shark week, when the townsfolk of my community asked me if I wanted to jump on the Ngobe train to CGrande I could not say no.

With $15 dollars to my name and a prayer to God that we got paid, I took the boat to the port. Low and behold to find that the one and only ATM within a 50 mile radius was out of order. Perfect.

15 dollars. You would think, that a woman of age 24 with an engineering degree and working on her master’s would be able to manage and budge the small capital of $340/month. I still have not mastered this task, and on month 4 I find myself broke as a joke and falling into sticky situations… getting out barley, financially alive. No thanks to you $8 boat ride, no thanks to you.

To David I went, to eat real food, grocery shop, and write this little tale to you all. I’m on my 4th beer. Get excited.

So to update my list of little treasures that I would oh so love to receive in the Panamanian mail that never comes, includes the following…

Dunkin Doughnuts Hazelnut Coffee….I’m still a Boston girl at heart.

CDs with awesome new music that will never make it to Panama mainstream. Thank you Alison Green for your work and dedication to this cause.

OPI nail polish. I’m above wet’n’wild. And when I don’t paint my toe nails they disintegrate into fungus. You’re helping me stay healthy, one $7 bottle at a time.

DARK CHOCOLATE. ANY KIND.

Pens, markers and mechanical pencils- we don’t have electricity and I cannot be bothered with a hand held sharpener.

Engineering paper, I want to cry when I see white lines instead of green graphs.

Underwear and sports bras are always welcome.

Rainbow nerds, cause if you haven’t noticed, I’m still 12 years old.

I could definitely use a new rain jacket. It rains everyday and the one I’ve got I’ve been wearing since my 13 year old camping trip to the White Mountains. It’s moldy, smells like gasoline from the boat rides and is only water resistant, not water proof. I live in a tropical climate and this will not do. If someone owes me a legit present out there, send over a waterproof wonder….11 years and this thing stinks!

Ok, done with asking for stuff…..for now….

So the forecasts for March and April appear to be brilliant ones. I’ve paid the man who’s gonna finish my new house for me and we should be breaking ground of finishing the bedroom of my new house within the week. This however completely depends on the cycle of the moon. Crazy? No, I’m dead serious. The bugs in the wood align their mating cycle with the moon….or something like that, so you have to cut the tree down at the exact right time, or the bugs destroy the wood, and everything goes to waste, and KK gets no lumber for her new, family sized house. Which I might add the women of my community have mentioned several times that with my new big house, I’ll have room for a husband. Oh lucky me.

Anyways, once the bugles tree is cut down into planks to finish the house I get a patio, a kitchen, 2 bedrooms and a bombass place to hang my hammock complete with view of the Caribbean, and life will be grand. My only problem at the moment is that the new house is owned by a man who does not have friendship so to speak with my counterpart in town. This age old religious feud over whose church is more devout than the other might cause some uprising when the joven gringa wants to move to the other side of town. I’ve got my game face on. There might be a battle. I want the house, they want ownership of me, and coins might be tossed. Both parties want me on their side which is hilarious cause they all know I don’t go to EITHER of their churches…..the silly gringa is Catholica, which in their minds is bad either way. No matter what I need the house. I need the space. I can’t sleep at night cause the first house is haunted……and they all know this….

Haunted you say? Ok, Kaitlin really is losing her shit out there on the peninsula. BUT no…..

I am 150% convinced that I cannot sleep at night because I, along with the town I live in, is being haunted. The grave of a man who was taken a year ago by a Bruha (a witch) sits 150 yards in front of my house (the one I live in now not the one I want to finish and move into; on the other, less gloomy side of town where everyone practices a different religion). His clothes were buried there because the body was never found. The body was taken by a Bruha, aka, lost at sea. Aka one in the same. The funeral ceremony was on my birthday, November 2nd this past year, el dia de los muertos, the day of the dead, EXACTLY 6 days after I arrived in site (6 being the devils number). The satanic canoe from which this man disappeared from marks his grave. It is the first thing I see when I open my front door in the morning. COINCIDENCE? I think not. The place is haunted, and I need to move.

So these unfortunate and weirdly coincidental series of events, along with crazy noises and intense rain and wind at night leave me sleepless in my own house. Insomniacs eventually go crazy. This is a fact. And I’m avoiding it by moving… pronto. And don’t worry I will document the entire construction process via my dig cam and post the workings of my new abode here on my bloggy mc boggster.

Please don’t think I’m totally serious, I find humor and fun in the supernatural that surrounds me on the peninsula of wonders. Although, ask any Panamanian on the mainland and they’ll respond “it’s just different out there.”

In April, after the much anticipated All Volunteer Conference, I head to Ecuador to see Bubbie in Quito. CANNOT WAIT. Well, yes I can cause hopefully in the meantime I gain a house, bring a community member to a leadership conference, and hit up the AVC with all 170 Panama Peace Corps volunteers… should be a trip.

On an unrelated note, both of my little sisters are going to Bonnaoroo this year, without me. I am a saddened soul at the joy I will be missing out in back there in the US of A…….but heyyyyyy…..Caymans this summer! I’m ecstatic to be reunited with my family for the first time since August. Mom and Dad I promise, never this long again.

So January was a jem……

Well I knew the day would come when I would sink in one of the carved wooden canoes that we get around in out there. The day came. I was getting a ride from 16 year old Mami and her 14 year old brother when the 3 of us filled a canoe with my backpack and boogie board… yet is was a canoe built for 2, not 3. About 300 yards away from shore not one but 2 waves crashed against the boat, filing it at a rate that I couldn’t bail. Shit shit shit! The boat goes down, so do the kids. I quickly swim to the boogie board and tell Mami to hang on tight. She did, thank God. 20 minutes later of bobbing in the waves and yelling obstinacies in Spanish to the kids to hold on to the boogie board, they guys got the motor boat out, rescued us, and toed us to safety. The women were pumped that I had my boogie board. The gift from Andres proved to be quite the flotation device for the youngins….I don’t know. It wasn’t funny, but it wasn’t critically dangerous either. It was not fun, but I was not scared to death. We sank a wooden canoe…there’s no way it could have gone better given the circumstances. Good thing I was wearing my Peace Corps certified life jacket that I keep with me at all times out on the open bay…..

That’s the thing about my bay. If it were bigger, it would be dangerous, but if it were smaller it would be no fun.

Sooooooo…..do you do any work in the Peace Corps?!?!....

I do have some work plans. At the moment I’m taking a census to see how many people actually live in my town. With that information and knowing how much water is coming out of the springs, a difficult thing to measure I’m finding, I should be able to calculate and size a storage take within the next two months. That will be the first step in the much needed aqueduct I will attempt to design and build in the next two years. Dios primero. Along with work on the (soon to be hopefully) new house. The tourist beaches of Nidori and Guacamayo need latrines for the surfers. Working with Jamie, the tourism volunteer on that part of the peninsula, I will be helping to construct the latrines for surfers to use when they come out to play in the waves.
In other news, the local Lobster Conservation Committee invited me to be an advisor on the board. They clearly know I experienced I am with lobsters, being from New England and all. Graciously, I accepted. We’ve yet to have a meeting but it’s going on the resume.

I’m also working on a daily basis to get my town to build casitas, or privacy houses around their latrines so they will start using them. This is a daunting task since the people really have no interest in using them, and want to continue shitting in the rivers and creeks. What to do to get these people motivated about their own health! And more importantly, the health of their children. Little by little, I think they’re starting to get the picture.

So that’s what we do about that. Life is good. It’s better than good. It’s weird and fun and scary and crazy and memorable….every day. It’s what I signed up for. I still miss home and friends and family and real life…. A LOT. But I’m fortunate enough, more than enough, to know the people I love aren’t going anywhere. And that they support this crazy endeavor that I call my life. Who does this shit? Live on a peninsula in the middle of know-where Panama, only accessible by a once a day wooden canoe motor boat to help people live better?!?!. I guess I do. I know though in my heart, whether it be the Peace Corps or the Wall Street job or the family and kids or the moonlight walks on the beach, we all do what we want when we want to be happy. I know I wouldn’t be truly happy at home right now and this place is testing me at that. Whatever, we’re all crazy. We’re all figuring it out.

From my sleepless mind and soul….knowing somebody likes me up there…. I’m beyond grateful to you all, all who make my world go ‘round.
~Kaitlin~

A Very Ngobe Navidad

2009-02-11T19:35:00.000-05:00

Christmas, or aqui en Panama, Navidad was more emotionally draining than I ever anticipated. I knew I would be homesick, but not nearly to the extent that I was. The day started by cooking jonnie cakes which is coconut bread in the Pentecostal church. That late morning, this is Christmas Eve mind you, was filed with games for the kids and a present for each of them. They pulled the gifts out of a trash bag and called the kids up one by one to get their presents, almost exactly how my family does it in Connecticut, minus the Santa costume. The morning was followed by a huge meal of spaghetti, rice, yame, boiled chicken, and coffee. After lunch everyone went home to rest and came back around 6pm for mass. There was a lot of signing, a lot of women throwing themselves onto the floor in the name of god. The kids got up and sang a Christmas song, kinda like they do at the kid’s mass at home too. I guess some things are just universal. The small similarities made me smile, but for the most part of the 4 hour mass I laid on the back pew in a very weepy state of mind. I would cry for a bit, pray for a bit, and was thinking of home the entire time. The kids were a little concerned with the crazy crying gringa, but I just wanted to let it out. At one point though my host grandmother came over to me and said, in Spanish, “Edi, pull yourself together, there’s no crying on Christmas, we all miss our moms and family who can’t be here right now, besides, you’re scaring the children.” After that I laughed a little, at myself mostly, got up and sang for the rest of mass. Home. Bed. Wake up on Christmas day. Any day. And then Christmas was over and the tropical weather continued with no snow, polish food, or Christmas trees in site.

I did receive one gift from my friend Jimmy, one of the boat drivers: a snickers bar and some red apples. At a homesick time like that, it was the perfect gift.

December Reflections

2009-02-11T19:30:00.000-05:00

December was a contemplative month. Along with many boat rides to the surrounding communities and the ever slow process of developing my ability to speak Spanish, I was able to start some new friendships and establish myself a little more in town. I ate breakfast and dinner with a new host mother, Viviana, whom is a member of a different family cluster than that of my counterpart and my original host family Brazilda. Since Viv has an abundance of 8-9 children, there was no room in her house for me to sleep and I started to sleep in my house, or…Casa de Cholita. The other women in my town would constantly ask me: “Ohhhhh you’re sleeping alone in the house? Aren’t you scared? Aren’t you afraid at night to be in there all alone? How do you ever fall asleep? After telling them that I’m fine in the house, over and over, it made me realize what kind of cultural differences we have. We think nothing of living in apartments by ourselves, working alone, and spending quite time by ourselves. They consider it sad and dangerous to be alone, which they rarely are. It made me think, why do Americans value our independence so much? Why do we think it’s so great to move away from home, from family, to work and live by ourselves? Simply cause we can afford it? Because it shows status to have some hot shot bachelor/bachelorette pad? My people here would never have done that, ever. After missing all 3 major holidays in the year of 2008 with my own family: Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas, I considered my behavior about taking off and leaving home to move to Panama, in the eyes of the family values that Ngobes embrace, I got sad, and a little disappointed in myself as a daughter, sister, friend and family member. I know this is an amazing experience and I’m in no means regretting it or thinking about coming home, but I wonder where the drive and value that we have for travel comes from, and how it does not exist in other cultures. It terrifies them.

This time is making me a tougher person, but by no means is it turning me hard to emotion. When crying about missing my family and friends to Vivian, I was comforted by nothing but compassion.

I don't mind the sun sometimes, the images it shows...

2008-12-03T19:53:00.017-05:00

One word for the month of November: WET. It rains all the time. Everything I own is wet, wet from walking in the rain. The clothes I fall asleep in are damp, my clean clothes never dry after washing them, and everything in my house gets wet when the water comes in through the slats in the wall. I’m wet all the time, it’s getting obnoxious.

Well lobster season has ended but swordfish season has definitely arrived! I’m not sure which I like more and which I deserve less??!?! Boiled bananas included, I’m not complaining about the food here…not in the least.

On the weekends here, at the school, movies are shown. One comfortably warm and humid Saturday night I decided to join my host family in watching an Arnold Schwarzenegger Sci-Fi thriller about a robot alien that could disappear into the jungle and kill people with lasers that squirted out of its eyes…..I know…it was in English, without Spanish sub titles, yet about 30 Ngobes watched. I was the only one who could understand it. It might have been the worst movie I’ve ever seen, ever ever, yet with about ten minutes of the movie left, I could not pull myself away from this brush with technology, even though Brazilda (my host mom) was bugging me to go home before the rain started. No, I said, I need to see the climax of this poorly acted, circa 1995 thriller of California’s politician’s past. Well, as you will read on in more pieces of this blog, the RAIN HERE IS NO JOKE!

When we left, ten minutes later than Brazilda wanted, the two of us plus 5 year old Chi Chi got caught in a complete down pour. It was 200 yards down to her house, in complete darkness, barefoot with mud up to my knees and holding on to Brazilda’s hand for dear life. I was scared, and soaked instantly. Good thing I caught the end of that awesomely good movie to be stuck in this mess. I think the rain has a personality of its own. It’s so strong…..it’s like an animal. Standing on my porch I’m able to see it, and hear it coming across the ocean. A minute later is hits my zinc roof and I wonder how rocks are not falling from the sky with all the noise it makes.

Once inside I changed into my pjs. And by pjs I mean the skirt I wore the day before, a lax penny, and my under armor hoodie, my most worn item of clothing thus far minus sports bras and board shorts of course. I came out of my room and within some crazy mix of fast Spanish and Ngobere language thrown in, I’m 95% sure that Brazilda said to me…”hey asshole, way to make us wait ten more minutes” (to see the end of the stupidest movie ever and get caught in the rain). “ooopppss,” I replied. “My bad.”

For the election of our remarkable new Prez, Barak Obama, I went to David to see my friends, drink a beer, play poker and watch the election coverage in the casino. After the election, I returned to Punta Sirain to a very different housing setup that when I had left. Our home, and my bedroom, was now the birthing arena for the 20 year old very pregnant cousin to Brazilda. I was so pumped, I was gonna be there to witness childbirth….not in a hospital! That night was kinda ridiculous. They kicked all the men out of the house and made them sleep somewhere else, then all the women in our large family came over to hang out. We all lay around on the floor in the dark and they talk and gossip about god knows what because they do it in Ngobere. We, and by we I mean they, talked about kids and food and being preggers and the usual female discussion, by kerosene light that went on into the night. The women also love to touch me. They touch my skin and my hair, they look at my eyes and poke the freckles I have on my arms. They wonder why there is hair on my legs. The hair on my head does not go un-braided. It’s kind of funny hanging out with them cause they are genuinely fascinated with my body cause its so different from their short, chubby, dark hair and skinned physique. Liz, Kendall, and Pritch, remember all those women’s studies classes I took sophomore year(the best year ever, mmmm whatcha said)?? Well, in this house, I was living WOMS 101, there was so much estrogen and talk about babies in these final days of baby’s mama’s gestation that I think I developed hot flashes from being in the vicinity.

Anyways, two mornings later, at 5:45 am, the little angel pooped out into the world….and I slept through it!

I am NOT a heavy sleeper. Just when I arose out of bed at 7:30 am that morning, I was quickly rushed into the room of birth, pushed down onto the floor, and handed the beautiful, clean, smiley swished face of the 1.5 hour old baby Ngobe girl. It was nuts! And I’m soooooooo mad I missed the actual event. I know I was having some crazy dream that night from my Malaria medicine, but really, too sleep through a birth in the room next door that I can see through the cracks in the walls?!?! On the other hand, they don’t scream or yell like us wimpy Americans, they just birth their kids and move on with their lives, breastfeeding them like 38457938457389 times a day. So much breastfeeding, I had no idea it took that much feeding.

On to other adventures….

The finca, aka the banana farms that the families in my community all own and eat from, are a joyous little adventure that, when I’m bored and lucky, get to go too. Clad in my spandex under armor pants, a dirty sticky banana juice stained tee shirt, rubber booties and of course the pena-less braids, my host family let me accompany them to the finca one early Saturday morn. In Punta Sirain, this is no walk in the park. We loaded up in the dugout canoe with my host dad in back, then his wife, and her sister in front, then they put me in the middle on the bottom of the canoe, without a paddle, and we sailed off….

After an hour of paddling we arrived on the opposite side of the bay and among a shore of mangroves…..following the river we headed into the jungle on the mangrove river for about 15 minutes. I barley turned my head and the mangroves resided and a dark tropical jungle covered the banks. Vines, monkeys and flowers were everywhere. As my indigenous escorts paddled me through the Indiana Jones themed river excursion all I could think about was how we, in the United States do not reenact a Disney ride (or are the Disney rides reenacting THIS) to get our food. How boring we have it. A trip to the grocery store is not nearly as fun as this 1.5 hours canoe ride to the finca. The super market is ONLY fun, only a little bit fun, when blueberries are on sale, they carry all 16 varieties of Tribe humus, and there’s enough free samples around the store so that when you leave you’re not even hungry enough to make the sandwich you set out to furnish in said building of products. Here, on the water, I experienced something that no tour guide or travel book can provide. Simply going out to the family farm, in a canoe, to feed the mouths of their children.

The finca, as usual, was a fun time. Full of green and some yellow bananas and the native root vegetable, Nyame, kinda like a potato, we harvested and filled the string chakra bags till they were about to bust. I wear my spandex under armor, a high pony tail and a bandana to the finca, with my booties. Now this might sound strange, but the spandex keeps the bugs, critters, and spiky plants off my legs as well as allows me to hike around easily. As Jackson, past volunteer of the peninsula’s past put it so eloquently, “90s rock concert or the finca, you’d never know in that outfit.” Now, I consider myself a strong woman, always have. Physically, definitely. Mentally, yes. Emotionally, well not so much but I’m working on it. But this trip to the finca kicked my ass. After hiking, digging up Nyame, climbing up the slope of the finca while balancing a 60 lb. chakra on my head, and then paddling for an hour and half back to town, I was exhausted. Once home, a refreshing glass of cool Coco Listo was ready for me (think nestle Quick, but cold). After a day’s work all I can do is eat, drink water and go to bed at 7:30 pm. But it’s cool, that’s what they do too.

This is Franklin. He’s 11. And he is my best friend. Last Monday, I got him to take his grandfather’s boat and take me fishing. For about 2 hours we talked about fish, and about his favorite food, and how his mom is one year older than me, and how he forgot where his dad lives, you know the usual stuff. He taught me to fling the line way out far to get the pescados grandes…the big fish. We didn’t catch a damn thing and as the luck would have it the weather turned sour. We paddled for Playa Raya and made camp there, pulling the boat on to the bank. The waves were up and it was raining lightly and Franklin and I happily trekked back through the forest to town, leaving the boat behind on the beach…..back…back to a bunch of pissed off Ngobe women in their mid 40s. Whoa. I was scared. They all started yelling at Franklin, then at me, then at Franklin again….apparently Franklin can’t swim…who knew??!!? So apparently in our two hour adventure, while I was fishing but really just laying in the boat tanning, I neglected to notice how far out to sea my 11-year old tour guide was taking me…..which was indeed bastante lejos….or in our native tongue….too far out……ooooopppppss, my bad.

Then I got a lecture about how Franklin is “not your kid” and I think he got a spanking of sorts. In the end, Franklin and I aren’t allowed to play together anymore. Our fishing dates have been cut off. I’m like the bad kid who got the good kid in trouble. We’re still allowed to hang out and play dominos but no fishing. Like none. It sucks, I had so much fun that morning, not catching anything but just being out on the water. It just pisses me off cause they don’t understand what a phenomenal and capable swimmer I am, even if Franklin can’t….the whole swim team concept just doesn’t translate. None of them swim for pleasure; they’re scared of the water…its weird. And then they told me next time to go with an adult. And I was like, “yo, I’ve asked to go fishing a million times and nobody would take me….except Franklin!” Besides, fishing is a man’s job remember? …ohooooohhhhh no! Can’t break that mold. I think it’s so ridiculous that they would associate me wanting to fish with the men as some sort of sexual innuendo to seduce their husbands, however fishing is their job and livelihood….but think about it…what if some cute Latino chicky from another country blasted into town and after a week asked to go to the office with your husband to “learn how he does his work” you’d be pissed too, and jealous. It’s how they provide for their families. So no fishing with the men, no fishing with Franklin and no boat of my own….yet…..so, as of right now, I can’t fish and I’m SOOOOOO FREAKIN SALTY ABOUT IT!

Everyday I try to read a little and paint a little. I try to do something physical weather that be run, swim, paddle, work on the house or…go to the finca! I’m a happier girl when I get exercise – but I’ve always been that way. When it rains and I’m trapped inside is when I get a little low and don’t feel too great. But sometimes it’s nice to just veg and practice my Spanish.

I’ve successfully read 4 books in my first month. I’m gonna share the titles of these novels cause for the sake of humor in my blogg, it’s pathetically hilarious. Before you laugh out loud at my 6th grade reading ability, please allow me to remind you that 50% of my time at THE University of Delaware was spent in the grand engineering building of DuPont Hall, calculating endless numbers of feverishly long and tedious homework problems of the calculus 3 and differential equation sorts. Lets us take a moment to remember where my skills truly lie…in math, opposite of the rest of the liberal arts world where reading it where it’s at. That is not the case for the engineering clan of dorky math kids anonymous. The other 50% of the time was clearly spent binge drinking, bar hopping, tailgating, and watching football, that being said, this is the first time in a great long while I’ve had the time to read for pleasure. My list includes, Skinny Legs and All, Cowboys are my Weakness, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, annnnnnnnnd The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants – the Second Summer. Go ahead, laugh. I think I need another month of fluff until I’m mentally ready to conquer real books. You’re invited to send ones you think I can handle.

Out there where I live, there’s two other volunteers who live on the other side of the peninsula on the Caribbean side. I had tentative dinner plan with them on November 10th. Without the conformation of a text or cell phone conversation, I politely asked my counterpart Alfredo to take me to Kusapin, the larger town where they live. The day of the 10th came, as did the rain. Around 9 am Alf came to my house and told me he wouldn’t drive me around the peninsula directly to Kusapin, but to the other side of the bay to Ensenada where I could hike…..OK sure! Why not?....so we blasted off an hour later in his motor boat to this said town of Ensenada…a 45 min ride east with not one but two dolphin sightings on this grey and misty morning.

He lead me to the edge of the path and leading his hand out over a muddy, winding corridor into the jungle and more finca, he pointed and said, “that’s the way to Kusapin, Buena suerte”, or in American….good luck. “Go down the path for a half an hour, when you reach the ocean go left..playa playa playa, then another playa playa playa, then go over the mountain and you’ll be there” …..ummmmmmm okkkkkkkkk

So I awkwardly hugged the 4’8 Ngobe man who, like his people, is un-accustomed to such wild and crazy things like hugging. Thanked him for the boat ride and directions, and set off on my adventurous journey to Kusapin. After walking for 30 minutes on the trail, I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. The playa was close, real close. The beach that emerged in front of me as I climbed up the final slope of the path stretched for about a half a mile in each direction. All of 5 Ngobe houses scattered the last few hundred yards from the jungle to the sand. Pirate islands are off on the right while a gently curving arch of palm trees melts left into the sea. I am in my own paradise, my glory beach. I sat there for about 15 minutes lookin around to the desertedness of my beach at 10:30am that morning. The classic Peace Corps thoughts flooded my mind as I sat there…

Am I really living in Panama? Is this beach really across the bay from my casa? Have I really been out of the US since August? Can I work here? No one in the world except for Alfredo knows where I am right now!!! Just doing my thing, livin my life out there. As Mathew McConaughey put once in one of my generations’ fav cult flicks, “L-I-V-I-N.”

So after I quit being all poetic and nostalgic I got up off the sand, put my backpack back on, drank some water and started walking east, towards Kusapin. The other beach did show up 20 mins later, and it was equally stunning. I found the path and kept on truckin. Parts of it was like a paved sidewalk, parts of it was a running stream that I had to walk right through the middle of, a lot of it was slippery clay mud that I would literally slide through. Nevertheless, about an hour and a half after I left Alf in Ensenada I came to a clearing and Kusapin appeared before my eyes.

It took me a little while to find Jamie and Johanna since they were teaching in the school and I was wandering around aimlessly and unannounced asking random Ngobes in my shotty Spanish where these chicks lived.

Upon enjoying an ice cold Coca Cola and coconut bread from a little store, Johanna rolled up, I, or she was found, and we spend the next few days talkin about Peace Corps life, the peninsula, and just about everything else in the world, while cooking some good food and enjoying the last few days of sunshine before the storm came in…..

This is when tales from the Isthmus gets exciting…..

On Wednesday, November 19, 2008, it started to rain in the Caribbean coastal province of Bocas Del Toro and the Ni Kro region of Comarca Ngobe-Bugle, and it decided not to stop (I told you the rain has a personality). The wind was beyond strong and the amount of rain that fell from the sky that first couple of days was like nothing I had ever witnessed before. But, remembering back to culture week when Jack and Melissa warned me of the November/December weather, I thought nothing of it besides being pissed off that I was wet all the time and that my legs were getting worse and worse each day from bug bites that were turning towards infection since they couldn’t dry out. On Friday, I was able to wrap my house in a tarp that I bought and creatively waterproofed the sides. Now, the sheets of rain would quit getting the sheets on my bed completely, and obnoxiously saturated. On Saturday, with no cell service to be found I attempted to get in touch with my other group 62 Bocas volunteers to double check that our plan for Thanksgiving to rendezvous on the island with the Ex-Pats was still on. This failed cause service was down all weekend….weird….I wonder why? Sunday it rained, but I heard word (actually read text) that turkey would be served come Thursday… so things seemed good. Monday I packed and did more house waterproofing, preparing myself accordingly by plastic wrapping my mildew filled clothing. I was mentally ready to leave town for a delicious dinner. That evening, packed and ready to go to take the 6am boat outta there, my host family, radio in hand and rain pouring in through the pinka thatch roof, said to me “ummmmmm Edi, you’re not going anywhere near the islands tomorrow, there’s bad weather out there, like really bad.”

Whatever could you mean???? Oh I’ll be fine. No really I’ll be ok. I’m gonna go talk to the schoolteachers cause I can’t understand you crazy folks. This is when I get really pissed that my Spanish communication skills….for lack of better words, suck balls.

In the rain up to the school I venture to talk to the teachers. They pull me into the office, sit me down, and close the door and asked me what’s up. And I was like, “No, what is up around here? What is going on? I have no idea what is going on in the world. I just want to go to the island for Thanksgiving, and I want to leave tomorrow, why can’t I do that?”

“Well,” they said, “let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.” And on they went explaining the series of unfortunate events that was happening in the province of Bocas which I am now about to describe….

A week before, around 1am, while asleep on the floor of Brazilda’s house I stared to sway and the house gently rumbled. I looked around in the dark and listened. Ohhhhhh I know what’s going on, I remember this from culture week, a little late night Ngobe booty shaking was going on in the next room. But then suddenly the house shook violently and unless I completely underestimated the libido of the Ngobe men, this could not be the doings of people. Sure enough, the tremors we felt were indeed not my host parents, again, but an earthquake, all the way across the isthmus on the pacific side in Chiriquí, doing its natural thing and shaking up the land all across eastern Panama and western Costa Rica. No big deal right?.. this happens all the time. But then the rain came two days later. Loose earth and heavy rains caused massive landslides all over the one road over the mountains that connects the Southern city of David to the Chiquita Banana underdeveloped land of Bocas del Toro. With the road out, gas, food, and supplies from David is out too, basically the central artery, the lifeblood of the province suffered 16 separate problem areas due to landslides. The rain didn’t stop. The rivers flooded destroying banana fincas on the west side of Bocas. There was water everywhere in the cities, so I’m told due to the poorly planned storm water drainage systems of the towns that only exist since Chiquita Banana exists. Ngobe communities including ones that other PCVs live and work in were in a state of disaster and emergency. It was a hot mess to say the least, I had no idea it was going on due to the lack of cell service where I live and my lack of Spanish comprehension. So after about 30 minutes of this conversation we concluded that I could not leave the peninsula on Tuesday for Thanksgiving. Bummer. Huge bummer. At this time I re-grouped, mentally put myself back into life amongst the Ngobes for another week or two, “Kaitlin, you’re staying put, this is Peace Corps, this is life, you can’t predict this kind of stuff and you can’t fight it. Stay another week, it’ll be fun and you can do it. Now go to bed,” says the little voices in my head.

Tuesday morning I woke up and miraculously cell service was back and I was able to get in touch with my boss who informed me the office was trying to get in touch with me for days. Kinda scary right? Kinda cool too. I was instructed to stay put and not try to leave and wait for future instructions when the severity of the situation east of me in Bocas was figured out. No prob, I was planning on that and I got over missing turkey day. So I went to the beach with Franklin, we did not get yelled at this time.

The next day, Wednesday now, at 10am I was instructed to leave…..”get out now!” The road is a disaster and there’s gonna be no food real quick. Even though my community was safe for the most part, with finca food and fish, there would be no gas, and soon….aka gas to run the boats. Timidly, I approached Alfredo asking him to take me off the peninsula. Now, this was awkward. He said to me, “well now aren’t you being difficult, first you said you were gonna leave Tuesday, then you were gonna leave this morning, now you missed the boat and now you want a special ride when the weathers bad.” Yeah it was awkward. When they finally agreed to take me to Chiriquí Grande so I could make my way up to my regional leader’s house in Changuinola, I burst into tears. I felt like such a jerk making them take me on a special trip in the bad weather. But that’s how it had to be, for my safely, I just hope they don’t all hate me now when I get back. We’ll see come Friday.

After a $40 boat ride that took 2 hours, the longest yet, in the slow dugout canoe in the biggest waves I’ve seen so far, I got a joint cab ride to Almirante, then a shot bus ride across the railroad bridge to Changuinola. Arriving at our Regional Leader’s house I kept thinking, a year ago today I was getting drunk at Scupper Jack’s with my friends from high school, a year later, today, I’m blasting out of my community to get out of this flood ridden disaster area, to the safety of the Chiriquían city of David, western Panama’s hubbub of culture and activity….kinda….at least equipped with water, food, a casino and a movie theater.

Thanksgiving Day came and the 15 of us or so were air evacuated from Changuinola to David in prop plans that held 2 pilots and 8 passengers. I think the plane was smaller than the one I went sky diving from in Australia. But over the mountains we went and it was fun. So how was your Thanksgiving? Was it nice? Who did you spend it? Ummmmm I was air- evacuated from a flood plain. We ate at TGIF’s that night. I’ve had better, but it was an exciting adventure none the less.

Now safe and sound in David, we remain in the hotel with hot water and internet until Friday, when they are busing us back to Bocas to return to our homes. We hope the road is fixed, and safe. Apparently it is, let’s pray. I’m not sure what I’m going to say to my community for leaving them such short notice for such a long periods of time. For us new volunteers this is a crucial time to be in site and be one with our people. This emergency will definitely disrupt that flow, but nothing I can’t work hard to gain back.

I certainly am lucky that my community did not suffer the damage like those close to Changuinola did. A huge shout out to Ray, Ben, and Nico who all live in communities that were devastated by the floods, and who also have done a tremendous amount of coordination and work already to assist their people with getting aid, food, and support from the disaster agencies here. I’m so impressed by my fellow volunteers whom were able to step up and be such admirable leaders in a scary situation like this. There are a lot of people without homes, without fincas and without food and water at the moment. During our time here in David we have formed some action plans on the reconstruction efforts we will be faced with upon our return. Our role as Peace Corps Volunteers will be altered after this tragedy. Instead of working on aqueducts and latrines, as planned, out efforts for at least a few months might be directed on aid distribution and home re-construction. And that’s why we’re all here right? To help in times of need. The vibe of the group is a solid and optimistic one. Not one of us is worried about returning, but excited to get back and assess damage and help. As nice as it is to sleep in a bed, instead of a wood floor in a room with 6 other people, I want to go back to my home.

So many experiences here are so unpredictable. Almost everything I imagined could or would happen has been altered or has been different in some way. Before I left, Tim told me to write down everything that I thought would be in Panama in a notebook, so that now, after adjusting, training and living in site, I could compare reality to my mathematical mind of predictions. Stupidly I did not do this. However, being air evacuated on Thanksgiving was something I could have never imagined happening within the first month of my Peace Corps service.

Crazy, crazy life I’m livin...

Chi Chi, in Polish, means boob

2008-11-04T15:26:00.001-05:00

Well, what a life I live right now. I have swore into the Peace Corps, paraded around Panama City drinking like I was in college, spent 3 glorious days vacationing in beach huts on the Pacific Coast with the rowdy and anxious other members of Peace Corps Panama Group #62, and have moved my heart and soul out to the tropical peninsula Valiente to start my two years working with the Ngobe community of Punta Sirain. The amount of thoughts and emotions that have raced through my head in the past two weeks are beyond description and endless in numbers.

As tragic as leaving my new found friends with whom in the past ten weeks have been my family here, it is time mentally to switch gears into the challenges that face me out there on the coast. I’m not sure if you call it culture shock or straight up confusion, but changing from partying with amigos to speaking Spanish and eating bananas alone, with little consciousness of what’s going on around me is no easy task. That said, I pushed forward through my first week and found beauty in every day, as small or as simple as it may be.

I’ll start with my host family. I live with a mom and a dad ages 26 and 35ish and their 5 year old son, Chi Chi (kid in pic above). Now, Chi Chi, being the little rascal that he is, running around the house making a ton of noise, yelling my name, Eddie, all the time, and entertaining himself by bowling across the living room floor with bottle caps, holds the name of what us Polish folk in Connecticut call boobs. I crack up every time his mother yells at him in Ngobe for crying or making a mess out of the place, because she screams “CHI CHI” from a mile away. I’m not sure if that’s actually his name or just nickname that they call little boys his age cause I do believe there are more than one Chi Chis in town. My host mother is pleasant for the most part but definitely is a bit more on the salty side than the other Ngobe women I hang around with. Maybe it’s because all she does is cook and yell at Chi Chi, I’m not sure. Alas, when she seems a bit pissy, which is either due to her rambunctious son or from worrying about how to pay for the next meal, I try to make her laugh by attempting jokes in Spanish (usually just tell her ridiculous stories about myself which I’m not sure if she believes or not), or sing her songs in English. Yes, just about every time I’m hanging out with people in my community the ask me to sing and dance, which I do willingly. Finally! Some people who can appreciate my stellar musical talents! My fav songs to sing them are Wagon Wheel, by Old Crow Medicine Show, anything by the Indigo Girls, the ENTIRE soundtrack to Rent, and of course, The Weight, by the Band (quite possibly the most perfect song in the entire world). After a little of that I mix it up with rapping Beastie Boys and Jay-Z, which blows their mind. These antics, along with games of fast, slam on the table dominos, occupy my nights in Punta Sirain once the sun goes down.

I have made friends with an 18 year old girl in town and her 2 year old son. She’s such a sweetheart and has a curious soul. She asks me questions about my life all the time and about the states, and I can see it in her eyes that she wants a life outside of having kids in town. I told her talking with her reminds me of talking with Ohoh, not cause of the baby thing, but because they’re both 18. Ali, she’s pumped to meet you when you come to visit. The other day I invited her over to my house with her baby boy for some tea. She showed up an hour early to tell me that the water was tranquil today and that she wanted to canoe over to the town across the bay and see her baby’s daddy….aka, her boyfriend. I responded “Girl, go see your man, don’t let my invitation to tea stop you from seeing your BF on this glorious Caribbean day! We’ll have tea another time.” She smiled, winked, and canoed off into the sunshine. This is the start of a beautiful friendship.

As mother dearest back in Boston keeps asking, in our brief yet awesome phone chitchats, I have come up with a list of American and hard to get items I will now request in care packages since I just know you all want to send me some lovin via snail mail….
…just some ideas….
1. Kava Tea (the brand is Yogi Tea and can be found in Health food stores or the health food area super markets). Actually, any yummy tea that is wrapped individually in foil, as open packages will mold in the humidity that is my home.
2. Yummy, well packaged candy.
3. Bright colored sports bras to wear in the ocean….unfortunately my home is not a bikini friendly zone.
4. A new St. Jude pendant from Bachi cause I already lost my charm necklace that I made before I left. Boo.
5. Old Rolling Stones, The New Yorker, Boston Magazine, any old mag for that matter.
6. Old novels, trashy or inspiring, just don’t bother spending money on mailing heavy books, cheapie will do fine.
7. Light sweatpants or Capri sweatpants, mom- just send some that I already own, no need to buy new ones.
8. Old size 6 or 8 pants…..I’m skinny now and nothing fits.
9. Good eye lotion….the sun is strong here and I don’t want wrinkles at age 26 when I’m done with this shindig.
10. Cloves (sisters know what this is).
11. Bath and Body Works Coconut or Nut Body Butter
12. Old Bay
13. Engineering Paper (ask Ohoh to find this in the bookstore at Northeastern, its green and dorky, and I miss it, and I want to design stuff on it, like the addition to my house and an aquaduct)

I have a rainwater catchment system set up next to my house. It collects water that runs off my roof and into the 50 gallon tank that I open for a nice, mildly cold, outdoor shower. The other day I got up into the tank and cleaned the whole thing, bleaching it with some Clorox and making myself a spectacle to those in the community who had no idea why the gringa was perched atop her casita with a scrub brush in hand and head down into the drum. After that I managed to borrow a ladder and retie the pvc pipe into place to get the water flowing more efficiently into my tank. Finally, I convinced my friend Lupita, the woman who runs ones of the stores in town to lend me a shovel, which she was very hesitant to do since it was obvious I intended to work alone without the help of a man to shovel out whatever I was planning on doing. With that shovel, I dug out a trench around the base of my shower and filled with rocks I had hauled up from the beach on several trips. Now when I shower the runoff hits the rocks and seeps into the ground instead of making a giant mud pit 2 feet deep that is sticky and smelly. I’m really proud of my handiwork. Today I bought a hammer and nails for future repairs. We’ll see what the men of my town think of that.

One final note for today, please send me emails of what all of you lovelies are up to. I want to know what’s going on in your world. Also, email, comment on my blog, or facebook message me questions you have that I can answer in my next posting….it’s fun for me to relay the info you crave.

Love to you all, KK

more info about my life (taken from my MI Quarterly report)

2008-10-21T19:23:00.003-04:00

Let me start with language. I was the third to last to make it to the required Spanish level of intermediate medium and thank god I did. It was about two weeks ago. The next guy made it too and the one who was dead last dropped out. Spanish is hard for me but I am amazed at what I am able to communicate at this point in my Peace Corps Experience. Although I got private tutoring since I was below the average of the other volunteers, I still was reminded I needed a lot of work, and often. I really did get down and out about my ability, because for the most part I felt that I was communicating at an a reasonable level, getting my point across and talking with my host family every night, and then Peace Corps would tell me that I’m at the bottom and that it should be a huge concern for me right now. Regardless, I’m at the level I need, I think I’m even above that now, and the fact that I am there has boosted my confidence tenfold.

My next challenge on the language level is to start learning Ngobe. This is the dialect language of the indigenous groups whom with I will be living with for the next two years, on the beach, in Punta Sirain. For the most part they all speak fluent Spanish as well and are a bilingual culture, but around the house, especially with the women, it’s all Ngobe. Sometimes I can tell that they are talking about me, but that’s ok for now. I just do want to be able to participate in the day to day conversations, not just professional aqueduct talk in Spanish.

Culturally, ahhhhh where to begin. I’ll start with the food. Everything here is overcooked, fried and the consumption of vegetables re few and far between. Breakfast in Santa Clara, the town of my training site which I just left yesterday, was a either a fried egg or a fried hot dog with a piece of untoasted bread and black, weak coffee. Lunch was usually a piece of fried chicken and rice, and dinner along the same lines maybe with lentils too. At first I was annoyed and worried I was gonna gain all this weight but its ten week in and I am over ten pounds less then when I showed up here so I’m content. Food at my site is quite different. Every meal I got a huge piece of boiled or fried fish and boiled bananas. There’s little rice cause they can’t afford it and even litter vegetables besides potatoes and other weird root vegetables that are locally grown all over the place. Its weird, but I LOVE fish so I’m even more pleased here. The only bummer is everything is so bland. My spice rack needs some work, I’ll need a collection to make it two years. One day I even got a lobster for lunch because right now when the seas are clam its lobster season and the Ngobe men (and soon me) free dive for lobster to make some cash money money. So all in all, I’m not worried about eating, I will get enough food, I just worry a little about nutrition but I guess that’s what my multivitamin is for.

Other cultural aspects that I’m dealing with are the gender roles that accompany my site. I think they were expecting an older male engineer but I do believe they are pleased that I am their volunteer. Typically men do all of the fishing and diving for lobster, two activities that I REALLY want to learn to do. I’ve told them already when I return in less than a week I plan on buying my own canoe to paddle around the bay in and to the surfer beach. I really want to try to live sustainable off the land and I cannot do that without knowing how to fish. Since I love the water so much learning to free dive for lobster could not be more appealing to me but the battle will be getting the men to take me with them in a non-sexual, non piss of their wives kinda of way. Some women fish, but usually just to help paddle the boat and clean the fish, they never dive. I do have some strategies for getting them to teach me however. Already I have cleaned the toma, or the spring with five other men and another woman. While doing this they were able to see my physical strength, as in that it is at the same level of the men in the town work wise. At this time I think they were able to see my genuine interest in the toma, the water flow, the water source, and the process as a whole. By getting them to respect my professionally I think I will have an easier time getting them to let me do nontraditional women things like only cleaning and cooking and laundering. Worse comes to worse I play the silly gringa card and figure it out on my own, cause lets be serious, there’s no way I’m living here two years without free diving for my food. It’s just not an option NOT to do it. It’s my fun.

On a surprising note, it’s totally the norm in my community for all of the women to get together every afternoon to play some serious volleyball at the school. This is so great cause the volunteer before me did not like to play, and never did. That means, when I do they love me for it, and I love the competitive activeness of the afternoon. So I’m on track with that part of my day.

Religion does not seem to be too important at the moment but I think after three months I’ll have a different view on that. All the kids go to school in town and the older kids row to the larger town, Kusapin to go to secondary school. There’s definitely some room for environmental education and science class which maybe in a year from now I could see myself teach, once the language has progressed some more.

I’m really ecstatic that these Bocas, coastal Ngobes are as outgoing and talkative as they are. My first experience with the Ngobe culture was that of the conservative, embarrassed, quite Comarca Ngobes who do not find fun in anything that I consider exciting. They rarely talk, especially the women and are super shy. After visiting a site like this I feared that my work would be in a community like this one and really was worried about it. Luckily my site is over the mountains where in the past the adventurous Ngobes migrated over and thus are the way they are today, fun loving happy people. I can only thank god that the Peace Corps staff recognized my personality and how it would simply not mesh with that of the Comarca Ngobes.

For now that’s about it. I swear in tomorrow, party at the beach for three nights and then am in site next Monday for good! I can’t believe it is here, my Peace Corps time in the most perfect site I could have imagined back in Delaware and all year in Houghton. I’m bright eyed and bushy tailed when I think about what the next two years has in store for me.

Site visit to my new home

2008-10-21T14:00:00.001-04:00

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

A week in Bocas...A week in the Comarca

2008-10-04T17:54:00.001-04:00

First of all, I’d like to say that I have very limited internet access and that is the reason for my shotty blogging, as this being the first time since in country…. but so it goes.
The past two weeks have been a long blurr as we were shipped up off to Bocas, the Province of my future home on the beach for a week of cultural immersion, a wacky beer filled night off, and then straight into Comarca land of the Nobes in the heart of Panama for a week of technical training in composting latrine construction and aqueduct design….which I am soooo excited about.

I’ll start with culture week. I stayed with an ADORABLE Nobe family in Valle de Riscos whom were totally excited and entertained with hosting me for a week. My 9 and 4 year old host sisters were of the most beautiful and animated kids I’ve seen so far, and just a pleasure to be around. At night we would dance together singing cute little girl songs and dances, and in the spirit of cultural exchange, yes I taught them soulja boy. My meals included rice, boiled green bananas, fried chicken, and hot dogs for breakfast….fried. And this nasty cream of wheat drink that was luke warm, chunky, and tasted like watery bland vanilla oatmeal….as a drink. Aka..not good. They’re house was an elevated Bocas house up on stilts like ones you’d see near the beach. I slept on the hardwood floor with no mattress or sleeping pad….i’m talking floor, one sheet, and me, plus my 9 year old sister right next to me. My parents and the 4 year old Judy were in the other room with the same sleeping on the floor routine…..surprisingly, I slept great. I do think the more entertaining evening was when my host parents said good night to me about 7 different ways in Spanish, retired to the other bedroom, turned the radio up way loud which felt like it was right next to me due to the complete lack of insulation…. and as I laid there in my room with my sister passed out next to me the entire stilted house swayed back and forth for about ten minutes as I witnessed the romance behind Nobe love making. ….two words: cultural exchange. (ps I’m like the millionth PVC whose been in a house when this has gone down)

The food was horrific but the people where amazing. We hiked a huge mountain to get a view of the Caribbean ocean and see the aqueduct system in action including the tank and water source catchment. We took to trips to the finca (the farm) to eat raw Cacao and plant banana trees. Cacao, as in the plant that all of the world’s chocolate come from is actually grown and harvested and is a major source of income for indigenous families like the Nobes I lived with…..Who knew?!? When in the finca, they giant pods that grow from the Cacao trees turn bright orange and red when ripe, and look like something straight from Willy Wonka. The Nobes would cut one down for us, open it, and inside are the Coco seeds that are about twice the size of an almond and completely coated in this white sticky goo that tastes like a wicked sweet, liquid granny smith apple. Out in the finca we would suck on the seeds to get the candy like substance off of them and then spit that actual cacao seed out cause it’s toxic to eat at this stage. The Nobes would then harvest the seeds, dry them, and sell them in masses to huge chocolate making companies in the states and Europe. Pretty cool huh?? Additionally, they would take some of the seeds for themselves, dry them in the sun, toast them, or should I say char them over a fire in a large pot, grind them, and then make a hot drink out of it similar to coffee. Add a little cream and sugar and its some pretty damn good hot coco…..but they don’t do that, that drink it like black coffee and its very cherished and honored up there so adding sugar had to be done in secrecy. I’m definitely gonna be playing around with a lot of Caco come my time on the Peninsula.

In the first 3 months of my service I see a lot a trips to the finca to occupy my time. After getting to know this type of Nobe family, I’m sooooo excited to be living amongst this indigenous group for two years.

Another thing about the nobe women. So there’s the thing called “pena” which is basically shyness, timidness or embarrassment. Bocas Nobes don’t have much of it, except when they’re hair is messy and not in braids. When a girl has crazy wild unstyled hair they call her a bruha or a witch cause they think the old ladies who live up in the mountains are witches who can’t afford mirrors or combs. None the less, as superstitious or silly as this sounds, my Nobe mother made sure I had beautiful braids every morning so that I would not have “pena” about by messy rubia gringa hair (aka bleach blonde white girl is not the norm here at all)

On night in my village my family took me across the street to visit with our grandmother. They asked me to sing for them so for about 45 minutes I would sing, in English, just about any song that could come to mind…..bad voice in all. I think I sang Wagon Wheel, Indigo Girls, Wyclef and even rapped a little Beastie Boys for them. After that the women were talking about my boobs and asked if they could see them. In an area of the world with little birth control and even less understanding of family planning, the fact that I was 23 with no boyfriend, husband or kids kind of blew their mind. I think they women wanted to see them because they were generally curious why I had big boobs without currently breastfeeding or barring children already, and also because they’re a different color. In this town women would breast feed all over the place and boobs were completely non-sexual, so naturally they didn’t understand why I had “pena” about showing them my boobs. I told them I was embarrassed cause there were guys around, including my 29 year old host dad, so the women were like ohhhhh ok its cool. Still, such little funny things I’m finding myself learning about different cultures. So no, the Nobes never got to see my boobs.

Moving on to tech week. I got sick for the first time in Panama. My stomach was cramping all night and I could not sleep. They pig outside my bedroom was grunting uncontrollably and mice were crawling in the slats above my bed, under my bed and I’m pretty sure through the mattress I was sleeping on too ….that def had about a million bed bugs living in it. I was up in the mountains of the Comarca in a town on top of a hill in the heart of conservative Nobe country. Just like culture week, no electricity, a smelly latrine, and pluma water that was good or bad, given the day. …..so after a sleepless night of sobbing in pain and laying there in terror of the nighttime creatures around me, the sun came up and I went to build the latrine. ….NOPE. in bed I stayed at the Co-op all day. The next day I thought I was feeling ok and went to the job site in the morning. After eating for the first time in 48 hours my sick stomach needed the latrine, and as I stupidly walked by the side of the house we were working at their attack dog scared the shit out of me and chased me out of his turf. It was not even 9 am and this monster dog left 4 giant teeth marks right on my ass when it bite me as I ran away crying. Annnnnnnnd I screamed like a little girl and then cried for about a half an hour. It sucked, but it could have been a lot worse. It doesn’t hurt anymore but the scars and bruise still decorate my booty at the moment.

By day three I was fine and was able to join my group in finishing the construction of our latrine as well as the other classes we took during tech week. I met a bunch of other MI students from Michigan who gave us lessons on aqueduct design….something I will be doing in my site.
This week we have been back in Santa Clara for more technical training about aqueducts and I’m proud to say that finally this week I made it to the Spanish level required to be a Peace Corps Volunteer….aka they’re not gonna send me home in two weeks cause I actually can communicate with the people of Panama!! Wooow woooo.

Next week I’m off to my site for the first time! I’m going to introduce myself to the community and see where I’m gonna live for the next two years! I’m very excited but super nervous at the same time. Luckily the group of volunteers, 7 of us, who are going to be in the Bocas region are all phenomenal people that I’m looking forward to working with and becoming friends within the next two years. We will be traveling together for the most part come next week.
So I hope this gives you a taste as to what is going on here in panama. Swear in is less than 3 weeks away where the 35 of us all become real volunteers. I’m so happy I’m here right now and doing this. I really am in such a good mood on a day to day basis….so please don’t worry. I miss you all and love hearing about your lives in emails too! Thanksgiving and Christmas will be heard but know that everyone in my group is in the same situation and we will be celebrating together. Till next time…..love you all, KK

isthmus? what's that you say?

2008-06-18T22:17:00.009-04:00

Definition: An isthmus is a narrow strip of land that is bordered on two sides by water and connects two larger land masses. It is the inverse of a straight (which lies between two land masses and connects two larger bodies of water).

54 days till departure...to Panama that is. The glorious isthmus separating Central and South America. I'm moving down there for a total of 27 months, if I make it that is. The Peace Corps had given me the title of Environmental Health Extensionist...whatever that means.

Before I get into some speculation on what I might be doing with my life in the next two years, let me tell you how I came to wanting to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and the 22 month long journey that got me where I am today: venturing to Panama to conduct research and eventually gain a master's degree in Environmental Engineering.

I started studying environmental engineering my freshman year at the University of Delaware for one reason only, clearly, to save the world. My childhood years of building forts in the backyard and playing in the mud, along with an uncanny expertise in calculus brought me to the small field of environmental engineering which seems to suite me perfectly. However, my internships in my college years ran me around Boston doing some mindless tasks that in my opinion did not require my degree or were really helping people.....the main things I was after within a job. For example, monitoring groundwater wells that pumped petroleum contaminated groundwater buried under cement below a shut down ExxonMobil station. Now, the EPA requires ExxonMobil to clean up their mess, which makes perfect sense, so EM would hire my company to do this. However driving 45 minutes in traffic to read a monitor from a pump that was pulling groundwater out from under a rundown gas station on Rt.9, nowhere near a source that would eventually feed into human drinking water, scribbling down a few numbers and wasting gas back to the office hardly fell into the category of saving the world. Didn't need my college degree, wasn't helping people or animals......sooooooo I was done with that....and that type of worker bee tech job, forever.

The following fall at UDel I was unimpressed by joining the rat race like my fellow engineering students and applying for jobs. Still enchanted by work overseas from my trip to Australia the previous January, I simply googled: Engineering Abroad. And aren't you surprised, that is NOT a Google Whack!!! Haha.

That search brought me to the website of Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan...aka, the Upper Peninsula or the U.P. as the locals call it. What I found up in this quirky lil engineering school in the snowy north is a joint master's degree program with the Peace Corps. This Master's program which is the only one in the country as of right now for environmental/civil engineering caught my eye. The usual engineering grad program consists of spending 2-3 years taking courses paralleled by local research in a lab and the usual TAing and grading....lame right? what can I say I'm part dorky engineer, part ...well I don't know all that yet. But I knew the traditional approach wasn't for me....being inside sucks.

Instead of all that, MTU had something I really liked....one year of graduate coursework on campus in Houghton followed by two years of environmental engineering work in some exotic country as a full fledged Peace Crops Volunteer. However being a graduate student I have the added responsibility of not only completing the projects assigned to me by the PC, but conducting my own environmental research while in country to write my thesis about after I complete the two years abroad.

Call me crazy, but that's what I did. And in a nutshell that is how I plan to live in a foreign country while doing volunteer work, research, becoming fluent in Spanish, get some real life experience under my belt, an engineering masters, and a new world of fun an excitement, all before the age of 27....or so I hope.

It's just so weird, I’m not much of a planner and as of April 2007 when I was admitted into the MTU/PC program, which is called Master's International btw, I pretty much had my life set till 2011...like I said, so weird.

My year in Houghton was nothing short of fantastic. This small, Midwestern old mining town really opened my eyes to life outside New England and the East Coast. I spent my two semesters downhill and cross country skiing, snowshoeing, shoveling, sledding, and even jumping into a hole cut into the frozen lake when it was zero degrees out. The other students in my program were pretty amazing. I lived with 2 guys and another girl in the party house for our crew. Our old Houghton house we rented even without checkin it out first, became a porch hangout, SundayFunday football viewing arena, and the host of many more fun than you'd expect grad parties. I miss it, I miss that house and my roommates and friends a lot. But the MTU chapter is over and the Peace Corps one is next. As one of my buddies in Houghton said right before we all left, "it's really crazy how groups of friends come into your life for a certain period of time, but eventually leave." It's a bittersweet idea that friendships come and go and gets me all nostalgic for my Acton crowd, my UDel biddies, Camp friends, Dewey Beach housemates, Australia travelers, and the most recent MI crew at MTech. And soon...a whole new Panama group whom I have faith will become my best friends for the next two years. Even though I'll never be in these locals again with those same people, the memories aren't going anywhere.

The year flew looking back, but when hasn't it in this part of my life. I miss that place a lot and am lucky to have had the opportunity to live there for a year. Most of all, I miss playing dominos with the happy hour crowd at the KBC - the local brewery in town after a long, hard day in the office. Butttt let's be serious, that only happened once in a blue moon - the long hard workday that is, the dominos and beers happened everyday regardless. People have GREAT attitudes up there in that wild wilderness of a town.

So here's a lil history for you. Back in the day people moved up to Houghton and the Keweenaw which is the Native American name for the peninsula in which Houghton and MTU are located, to mine Copper. The area is known as the Copper Country. Copper Country crusin' would be the name given to ridding up to the tip of the Keweenaw with friends, stopping at the local dive bars and chattin with the locals, or yoopers as they are called on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. So anyways, miners moved up to Houghton to work in the Quincy Mine and make a living for themselves. After some years of profitable mining they decided they needed a school for the engineers to ummmmm learn at I guess? Along comes the Michigan School of Mines. Well like most mines do, the Quincy mine eventually was not economically viable, and it closed. The college however was eventually was turned into Michigan Technological University with presently one of the top 20 grad programs in the country for environmental engineering....so go me for goin to school up there.

So finally in May just as I got home from my four day trek home with my friend Meredith and a new kitty "Vader" acquired one snowy night from under our porch, I made it home to open my Peace Corps Invitation to Panama.....so here I go.

I just wanted to get the details of my grad program up here cause I've told it to a million people so far, lost my breath, and they still don't get it.

So the Panama part....this is what they told me so far. I fly to Miami for staging where I get all my shots, meet my group of 35 volunteers, and sign a million papers for 3 days before we fly as a group to Panama on August 11, 2008. Once in Panama I hang out in Panama City for a week and do some touristy things before moving to our training site to train for 3 months. I will live with a host family and go through a series of language, safety and specialized engineering training with my fellow batch of Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs). I believe that we will all be living in separate host family homes, but we will all be within walking distance of each other and with a local school where training classes will take place. Where this will be with respect to Panama City?!?! no idea except they say it's about an hour away which will be cool for some weekend time off. I'm assuming that out of the 35 who will be in my group, at least 6 of us will be engineers; the rest will be business PCVs or English/education PCVs. I will have separate engineering training, what I hear from Return volunteers (RPCVs), with rest of my engineering group. This will include learning how to mix concrete, build a latrine, a clay stove, and possibly a rainwater catchment tank or biosand filters. If you don't know what these are I will explain in more detail when I'm actually building and implementing them in Panama. For now just know they are simple environmental technologies that can drastically improve the sanitation, drinking water availability, and therefore quality of life in areas of water borne disease, drought, and inadequate water supply. Luckily for me due to my year in Michigan I have experience building most of these structures as part of our lab classes.

If I make it through the three months of training, which I am very confident at this point that I will, I will be sworn into the Peace Corps in late October and move out to my site where I will live and work among an indigenous Panamanian community for the next two years....till October of 2010. Classically I would be sent to site alone however there is a good chance that in a Catholic country like Panama I might be sent with a male PCV as my counterpart. This is to help the adjustment period of an American walking into an indigenous village easier since a single, tall, blonde, unmarried 23 year old woman with no kids blasting into town and building stuff is just about the weirdest thing my future community members might see....ever. So lately aka the past 5 years or so, we have heard that some PC countries have been assigning a male and female together, to play the brother sister part so they don't think I'm some crazy un-catholic single bad girl....cause they’re gonna think I’m nuts no matter what. Once again, I won’t know where I'm going, if I have a counterpart and all that jazz until probably this September, half way through training. I’ll keep you posted.

I'm definitely somewhat scared about being so alone. Worst case scenario I can think of is being 6+ hours away from another American or PCV. Ideally, it's not too important for me to have a counterpart, but I'm hoping I'm at least within an hour's walk or bike ride to the next PCV. We'll see what I end up with. So at this point in October I'm gonna take my pack and move out to site to live with my second host family for the next three months. Hopefully by then I'll be fluent in Spanish and the transition will be easy. However like every RPCV I've talked to has warned, what you think should be easy is borderline impossible, and what seems like the hardest thing in the world is like cake. ...I'm ready for it!

The assignment guide I have recieved from the Peace Corps has listed my primary duties as follows...but who really knows if this is what it's really going to be like? Most likly not the case, but here it is:

"The two main goals of the Environmental Health Project are:
1. The rehabilitation, construction, or expansion of rural water and sanitation systems.
2. The training of rural community health committees and individuals on environmental health topics.

It's major objectives are:
1. To train aqueduct committees in the operation, maintenance, and management of water supply infrastructure.
2. To promote and increase the use of latrines and other sanitary waste disposal systems.
3. To teach and promote watershed protection to ensure sufficient quality and quantity of water. 4. To train individuals and groups on the importance of health and hygiene practices, sexual educaiton and HIV/AIDS prevention."

I hope if you have stuck with reading this so far you get an idea of what my life will be like starting in August. Until then I'm enjoying my time with friends and family in and around Boston. I'm heading- down to Dewey Beach in July for some much anticipated beaching and drinking with my college biddies, and then returning to the South Shore for family beach week.Get ready for pictures, stories and probably way too many drinking water details to follow in Panama. I'm lovin this blogg already.....don't hate.

LUV KK