My New Home

Well I have some big news: 

Nuevo Vigia, my community for the next 2 years

After a long time waiting and wondering, I received my site announcement!  The town where I will be living and working for the next two years is Nuevo Vigia.  This is an indigenous village in the Darien province of Panama.  It's in an indian reservation called the Comarca Embara-Wounan, which is in the middle of the jungle on the eastern side of the country.  I am the first Peace Corps Volunteer in the community, which presents some unique challenges in itself.  The normal cycle for a community is to have three volunteers in succession, for a total of six years.

Last week I had a chance to visit the community to meet the people and get to know the area.  Lino, a farmer who lives there, is my working counterpart.  He came to meet me in Panama City, and we traveled out to Nuevo Vigia together.  After a six hour bus ride almost to the end of the Pan American highway, a ride in a chiva (taxi truck), and a half hour boat ride in a dugout canoe up two rivers, we arrived!

The community is about 370 people, with around 100 houses.  Houses are settled overlooking the Tuqueza River, which is a very important part of their lifestyle.  The river is used for everything: transportation, bathing, laundry, a toilet, fishing, and drinking water.  You can maybe see the problem here...  There is no electricity except for a solar panel at their school, and a few small generators that people own.  Also there is no water system, and only a handful of latrines.  Water is hauled by women carrying buckets on their heads, which is no easy task climbing up the river bank and walking to their houses.

The Rio Tuqueza, also the community hangout area

My host family house for my first 3 months in site

While the Embara people were pretty shy at first (I guess I'm pretty scary looking), they really opened up after a couple days and were very friendly.  My host family took great care of me, and I ate quite well, by rural Panamanian standards.  I found the best way to meet people is to go jump in the river.  Pretty much at any time of day there will be groups of people bathing and hanging out (still clothed), kids playing on the beaches, guys spear fishing, or women doing laundry.  People are somewhat obsessive about taking baths, at least two or three a day, and it's a very social event.

After a week I came back to the city, and now we're finishing our training.  I'm really excited to go back for good, and to continue getting to know people.  There's a lot more to say here, but I don't quite have time right now.  I definitely feel that God has been preparing the way for me, and I have a lot of peace going into this.  Things are still a little intimidating and there will be a lot of adjustments, but I think I'm as ready for it as I can be.

My host family for my first visit

Fun with Machetes and Mountain Climbing

A while back I woke up in the middle of the night and had one of those moments where I had no idea where I was.  For some reason I was so disoriented that I suddenly twisted around on my slightly-too-small bed, almost falling out onto the concrete floor.  Then I thought, "Oh right, I'm in Panama."

I suppose you could say I'm still in what they call the "honey moon stage" of living in another country.  Everything is still new and fresh, and I haven't grown accustomed to the cultural differences and just the idea of living here.  There are times when I feel perfectly comfortable, and other times I feel like I'm on another planet.  Pretty much all the time though, people are staring at this giant gringo walking around.  The other day I had to clarify to an indigenous man out in the Comarca that I actually was not the tallest man in the United States.  He was shocked.

Doing some surveying of the community water main

Last week was our Tech Week: six days of learning about water systems, latrines, construction methods, and doing a whole lot of walking.  Since walking is the cheapest form of transportation, and sometimes the only one, I guess I should get used to it.  The Environmental Health (EH) group went out to Chichica, a Ngobe community in the western part of Panama.  We were braced for the worst: eating nothing but rice and yuca for a week straight, sleeping on a dirt floor, sliding down muddy mountainsides in rain storms, awkward interactions with our host families...  But for me at least it was actually quite a pleasant experience.  Most of it was much easier than expected, and it was good to get some more hands on experience with different kinds of construction.  One of my favorite parts was trekking through the jungle gathering banana tree leaves with a machete.  There's just some strange satisfaction that comes with chopping things with a machete.

Making our way up the mountain

At the end of the week we actually had a day off, for the second time since arriving in Panama.  A group of four of us decided we hadn't had enough walking, and we climbed Pena Blanca, a pretty cool looking mountain in a nearby community.  Our Ngobe guide led us on what you could call a path, using a machete to clear the way.  He was ridiculous - he could practically run up a vertical section of rock while the rest of us struggled to keep up.  All the pain was worth it when we saw the view from the peak.  Looking to the south, we could just barely see the Pacific Ocean along with a few islands in the distance. 

At the summit

After making our way back down, we headed out to join the rest of the group at an amazing beach on the Pacific, where we were looking from the top of the mountain hours before.  After some good body surfing and relaxing in our beachfront cabana, I was completely exhausted.  Overall not a bad vacation day.

Halfway There

Time flies when you're training to be a Peace Corps Volunteer.  Our first week or so felt like an eternity, but now all of a sudden I've been here a month!  This is the end of Week 4 of training which is about the halfway point.  Yesterday we took our second language proficiency test, so I'll find out today whether or not I have enough survival Spanish skills.  My Spanish has definitely improved over the past weeks, but there's a long way to go.  The language instructors are very good, and it probably is good that most of them don't speak any English. 

Being in the training community feels a little bit sheltered.  We have basically every day scheduled out for us with 8 hours of class, trips to Panama City for training, or visiting other parts of the country.  Sometimes I don't really have time to process things before moving on to the next topic.  Mostly we've been getting into how to build capacity in a community and to train others in technical aspects of water and sanitation systems.  That would be a challenge even if we didn't have to use a different language.  Thinking about being in my site and doing all the community analysis, training sessions, meetings, and everything else is a little bit overwhelming right now.  Luckily we still have more time to train, and we'll have a lot of time in site since there probably won't be a whole lot else to do out in the campo. 

Some of the guys at our tech classroom

Just hanging out

Randolito has a lot of energy

The family has two parrots and lots of chickens that like to come into the house

Developing my Spanish has helped my relationship with my host family and the rest of the people in the community, but it is somewhat of a struggle.  When you have to ask someone to repeat everything they're saying and talk slowly it limits the conversation a little bit.  It's also frustrating to not be able to say exactly what you want to.  As a result I talk about the weather a lot with my abuela, and do a lot more listening than speaking.  I've found the little kids are very difficult to understand.  You would think since we're at similar levels in speaking ability, it would work out nicely.  But I guess they don't understand that I really don't speak Spanish much and that I can't understand when they mumble something very quickly.

Next week is our tech week, where we travel to a community in the comarca to get some hands on technical training.  We'll do some surveying, aqueduct and latrine construction, and give educational talks to community members. 

Here are some pictures from during training:

https://plus.google.com/photos/117791930515994738830/albums/5745410663019420417?authkey=CJS-wbr0reTLQg