This is Where I Live

So I made this video a long time ago, and now finally had time to upload it. This is basically a montage of moments I've had in and around my community over the past year and a half. Obviously it doesn't show most of what I've been doing, but it gives an idea of what life looks like around here.

Video: Tour of Nuevo Vigia

The Future of Nuevo Vigía

It’s last Monday, the late afternoon sun has cooled down a little, and I’m walking from my house on the hill down to the school carrying a sack full of Frisbees and orange cones. It rained earlier and my feet are slipping and sliding on the muddy trail. I cross the creek, go past the church, and come to the two long rows of houses along the river – downtown Vigía. Then I pull out my whistle, blowing it loudly as I walk. Looking up I see heads start poking out of stilted houses above me and kids come running from all directions yelling, “Benjamín, we gonna practice today?” I say, “Yeah, I told you that yesterday. Let’s go!” A parade of boys and girls starts growing around me as we make our way to the field. Ramiro and Luis jump down from a mango tree to join us. I see Delicio and Albeiro swimming in the river and yell at them. They call back, “We’re coming!” I tell everybody to warm up, empty the bag onto the field, and watch as discs go flying in all directions. And so another Ultimate Frisbee practice begins.

 

Get excited for Ultimate Frisbee in Nuevo Vigía!

My primary job as a Peace Corps Environmental Health Volunteer is to work with my community in the areas of clean water and sanitation. However that doesn’t mean I can’t do other things with my time as well. I’m free to choose my own secondary projects, which could be anything from home gardening to youth development. Having spent a significant amount of time in the same community as a development worker, I can see how behavior change is a difficult and painfully slow process. The thing is when people are set in their habits it can be very difficult to get them to change, even if it’s for their own good. One time I gave a talk to a group of community members on how to protect our water source from contamination. Miromel, an older guy, interrupted me to ask why the river was never contaminated before now. I told him it was, just nobody ever told him until now. I don’t stand much of a chance trying to convince an old man that he should stop drinking dirty water, when he’s been drinking from that river his whole life.

On the other hand, kids and young adults are more open to new ideas and well, more impressionable. Early on in my time here I realized that I could have a real impact on youth, which make up a large part of the community (almost half of the population is under the age of 15). So I decided to get involved with the local school. Unfortunately the education system is pretty difficult to work with which is a whole different story. Early on, the way I connected with the younger generation was through what they spend most of their free time on – sports. Their favorites are football (not the American kind), baseball, and basketball. The first time I brought out my Frisbee to play with the kids they were very intrigued at how that plastic plate, as they called it, flew through the air. After some of them learned how to throw it, I would get asked several times every day when we could play next. So with help from a non-profit called Ultimate Without Borders, I decided to start my own Ultimate Frisbee youth club.

 

Ken from UWB teaching some strategy

Reach for it!

I held an introductory Ultimate clinic with a couple other Peace Corps Volunteers to teach the kids the basics of the sport. They ended up having a lot of fun with it. After a few months of gauging interest level and teaching the sport, I now have an official team! There are currently 17 players, both boys and girls, from 11 to 16 years old. We’re planning on eventually holding a tournament with other Peace Corps community teams, so they have something to work toward.

I love seeing boys and girls go from being frustrated at not knowing how to throw a Frisbee, to having a big smile as they see the disc fly through the air out of their hand. During the Ultimate clinic one of the 5^th graders, Rumildo, ran up to me and said, “Benjamín, we’re learning!” Although challenging, one of my favorite parts is getting the girls to participate (boys normally don’t play together with girls, so it’s an adjustment). The other day during one of our practices Elizabela made a diving catch in the end zone to score. The boys were quite impressed. The fact that she was wearing a paruma, the traditional Emberá skirt, didn’t slow her down.

The idea is to use the sport as a platform for a youth development program. The lessons they learn about playing Ultimate, such as teamwork and positive attitudes, also apply to their lives. I’ll be taking them through a course on how to develop their strengths to set and achieve life goals. And they think they’re just having fun playing a game. Setting goals to work toward is sort of foreign concept to them. Most kids don’t think much about what they’ll do after middle school, if they even graduate. Many of them simply follow the footsteps of their parents and work in the fields. The fortunate ones that can continue on to high school in the nearest city will have more potential and opportunities. But if they have no direction or confidence they might not get far. My goal is to help this group be more prepared for their future.

 

All smiles going for the disc

If the kids learn nothing else, what I would like to get across is that sports are more fun when you have a positive attitude and build each other up. I see it from the littlest boys and girls playing marbles to their dads playing basketball, such negative attitudes that come with competition. When somebody makes a mistake, their teammates yell at them that they don’t know how to play (“¡No sabes!”). I’m trying to teach them to encourage each other instead of tearing each other down. One time I kicked a kid out of a game for saying, “¡No sabes!” Nobody else has said it again since. I give prizes to the best “bucket fillers” after each practice for those who say encouraging words to their team during the games. For them it’s a strange idea to use positive reinforcement, but they are starting to get used to it.

 

My jovenes learning about team spirit

After every practice I’m usually exhausted from trying to keep so many kids under control at once. I’ve never considered myself a natural teacher, so leading this youth group is stretching. But I think it’s worth it when I get to spend some quality time with attention starved kids. I know that they are the future of Nuevo Vigía, and I only hope that I can have some small positive impact on their lives.

I am planning on sending two of the kids from my team to an Ultimate Frisbee youth development camp in February. It will be a great opportunity for youth from all over Panama to learn how to be leaders in their communities. If you would like to support the camp you can donate at the Peace Corps website:

Donate to Ultimate Frisbee and Leadership Camp

Unwanted Visitors

I was gone from home for about 4 days. When I came home I climbed up my ladder, which is a log with notches cut in it. Shortly after Rubén stopped by to visit. As he was climbing my ladder all of a sudden he stopped, jumped down to the ground, and started running away from the house yelling something in Emberá. Surprised and confused, I asked him what happened. He said, “There’s a hornets’ nest on your ladder! Those things really sting hard…” Sure enough, I looked and they had started a huge nest on the underside of the log where I couldn’t see. I felt bad for being so unwelcoming to visitors, seeing how people couldn’t even get into my house without getting stung by hornets. I thought maybe I could light it on fire and burn them out, but then I remembered that my roof is made of dry, very flammable leaves – not worth the risk. Rubén had the idea to use boiling water kill them. So I poured a pot of boiling water on the nest, and killed about half of the hornets. The other half were not too happy about that. Now my only exit from the house, which is 8 feet above the ground, was blocked by a raging swarm of angry hornets. Thinking maybe they would calm down and go away, I decided to get out of the house. I climbed out one of the windows away from the ladder to try and reach a floor joist that stuck out from the side of the house and swing down. As soon as I reached it and found my balance on this plank, I came face to face with a nest of large orange and yellow wasps. They had also made themselves at home, but in the roof instead.

Living in my house is a lot like living outside. Basically any living creature smaller than a Panamanian child can and will get into my house at any time: bats, rats, cockroaches, frogs, ants, lizards, scorpions, tarantulas, caterpillars, and of course mosquitoes and sand flies. While having a roof made of leaves is great for keeping the house cool, it has also developed its own ecosystem in the spaces between leaves.

When ants attack...

A few days ago I had an infestation of ants. And when I say infestation, I mean it was serious. I got out of bed early in the morning while it was still dark, and felt things crawling all over my feet. Then those things started biting. It was a terrible way to wake up. So I hopped across the floor to get my flashlight and discovered that the floor was moving. The entire house was covered in ants! They were everywhere - the floor, the walls, the shelves, the stove. So I ran out to the porch and jumped into my hammock, the only safe place. Apparently these giant swarms of ants come through and just eat everything in their path. At least they got rid of all the cockroaches and spiders and left after a few hours.

Keeping my food sealed in plastic containers and buckets only keeps the pests at bay to a point. The good news is that the old food chain works to my advantage, and some of the critters will eat the others. The bats eat the mosquitoes, the ants eat the cockroaches, the lizards eat the ants, and well nothing eats the rats. Until now…

Classic Calvin and Hobbes

The most recent addition to the house is my new pest exterminator. He is also known as a kitten. My neighbor’s cat had three of them and I was offered one. I figured it was for the best, since the cat needed a home I needed some help with the rodents. So now I share the bachelor pad with Hobbes. He is named for the stuffed tiger of my favorite comic strip. I guess our relationship not quite the same as Calvin and Hobbes, maybe not as entertaining. But I’m hoping to raise a trained killer and have a few less creatures visiting the house. 

Hobbes, my pest exterminator in training

Take it Easy

One thing that I’ve always struggled with is the idea that I need to constantly be doing, achieving, advancing. I mean I know that’s not true, that sometimes it’s good to just be still, but often it seems like it’s true. As you can imagine this has been even more of a problem living in rural Panama with a community of farmers. By now I’d say I’ve gotten used to the whole perception of time thing. As in how “after breakfast” is as specific of a time as you get. Or waiting for three or four hours at the port to hitchhike on a canoe to get home, and being okay with that. But it’s still difficult to deal with just how long it takes to get anything done.

 

Time moves at a different pace here

All my projects and seminars go
through Lilio- the village chief.

Thinking about how efficient and productive North Americans are is pretty incredible. I mean they can work eight hours a day without hardly taking a break, they meet all kinds of deadlines, and schedules are always packed. Here it’s well, a little different. Working all day takes too much energy. If projects have a deadline, it usually ends up being pushed back to a more convenient date. Honestly I think it has a lot to do with the climate (or lack of climate control). There are some days where it’s all I can do to get myself to leave the protective shade of my house. A few minutes of walking in the sun feels like running a 5k… in a sauna. Sometimes it’s so hot I can’t even think. I just lay on the floor of my porch and sweat, only moving occasionally to swat at mosquitoes. This is really great advertising for people thinking about visiting the Darien, I know. The humidity is just draining. Finding the energy to be active and accomplishing things can be a huge challenge.

I’ve already written about meetings and one of the Embera people’s favorite pastimes – talking. But that’s another example of things taking way longer than they should. Sometimes getting our entire water committee to have a meeting feels like trying to get the Muppets back together for one more show. I’ll spend an entire afternoon trying to find each person (Alberto? He’s off in the jungle somewhere, haven’t seen him in a few days) just to tell them that there is a meeting tomorrow, hoping that they’ll show up. It’s amazing how busy people become once they here about a meeting or a seminar. All of a sudden there will be an urgent trip to the farm to check on their plantains or see how tall their rice has grown. Certain tactics work better than others for convincing them to attend. Bribery with juice and cookies works most of the time.

You can spend a lot of time watching plantains grow

I don’t write these things implying that Embera are lazy people. Not at all. If lazy is filling a bucket with 40 pounds of water and carrying it up from the river, swinging a machete for hours just to mow your lawn, building all your own furniture by hand, or harvesting and hauling boatloads of plantains out of the jungle to try and make enough money to send one of your kids to high school, then yes they are very lazy. Really it’s just a different perspective on life. Being as efficient and productive as possible isn’t high on the list of priorities. I guess I could learn a thing or two from that perspective. 

Hello and Goodbye

Well, after what seemed much shorter than a couple weeks in the USA, I'm now back in Panama. It was a great time of reuniting with family and friends. So many of my dreams came true on this trip: being cold, eating sweet corn, sailing on Lake Michigan, not needing a mosquito net, and not sweating for a while to name a few. While I know it makes it a little bit harder to get back into the swing of things again in Vigía, it was totally worth it to come back and visit.

My timing worked out great as I was able to meet three new babies: Ellie - my newest niece, Maria - Tony and Angela's first addition to the family, and Charlotte - Shane and Kendra's three day old girl! It's hard to believe how much things are changing for these new families. I'm so glad I got to see them. Seeing my other nieces, Cora and Avalene, was also exciting, since they have grown up so much since I left the country.

Turns out Cora has quite the energetic personality

Baby Ellie sound asleep

Being away from my closest friends and family for over a year has made me appreciate them that much more. It was hard leaving again to spend another year here in Panama, but I know they will always be a huge support for me no matter the distance.

I love my family!

USA!

Well I’m very excited, because tomorrow I will be setting foot in a magical land called the United States of America! It’ll be the first time I’ve done that in about 14 months. I can’t wait to see my family and friends! Truly it has been too long. A lot of things have changed since I left for Panama it seems. There are two new babies to meet and possibly a third on the way; one of them is my new niece! Our family’s cottage on the big lake is gone, and a new one in its place. Friends have moved to other places, gotten new jobs, and started families. My nieces are not so little anymore. And I’ve just been hanging out in the jungle drinking from coconuts. No but really it is a strange thing to realize that life goes on while I’m here in sort of a different world.

The timing is great because I will be able to celebrate the most American of holidays, Fourth of July. Lately I’ve been dreaming of burgers on the grill, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes… Ohh I just drooled on the keyboard a little, that’s gross. Feeling cold will also be a wonderful experience, granted the temperature drops below 80 degrees.

Anyway I’ll be visiting just for a couple weeks, and then back to… normal? Something like that I suppose. So I’m hoping to see and talk with as many of you as possible during my long awaited vacation. Then maybe I can share a few stories in person.

Let’s Talk Emberá

A long time ago I told myself I was going to study really hard to learn to speak Emberá in addition to Spanish. Well I was hoping to be a little further along by now, but I’ve picked up a decent amount through casual conversation and just a lot of listening. People keep telling me, “How long are you gonna be here? Another year? Ah you’ll go back to your village as an Emberá professor!”

Emberá people really like to talk. And I mean so much so that much of their day to day communication is based on completely unnecessary interactions. For example I could be standing in the river rubbing soap on my arm. Someone walking by will ask me, “Hey Benjamin, are you bathing?” In which case my response will be, “Yeah friend, I’m bathing!” Then he’ll say, “Ok good, keep bathing friend!” Or if I’m sitting in my house eating fried plantains, someone will ask me, “Benjamin what are you doing?” And I’ll say, “I’m sitting here, eating fried plantains.” Then of course he will say, “Ah you’re eating fried plantains, that’s good friend.” At first I thought that they would just talk to me like that because my Emberá language skill was pretty limited. But I realized that they actually do talk to each other like that all the time. My favorite is when somebody comes face to face with you and asks simply, “Are you there?” Then I’ll say, “Yeah I’m here” And he says “Good, keep being there friend.”

Everyone has something to say in community meetings 

Since the community is being ever more influenced by Latino culture creeping in around them, Spanish is spoken more commonly. But just as there are certain things you can’t express in Spanish that you can in English, it’s the same for Emberá. The result is what I call Spambera, a mix of Spanish and Emberá. I’ve gotten somewhat used to it and even started using it myself. This makes it somewhat amusing when a Latino comes from outside the community and can only understand half of what we’re saying.

 

Discussions with some of the water committee 

The challenge of communication is especially apparent in community meetings. It’s one thing to sit and listen to a group of people talk in circles for a while. It’s another thing when those people constantly switch between Spanish and Emberá and talk for six hours straight. I’ve been getting better at interrupting people mid-sentence so that I can get a word in. It’s actually not offensive at all, since most of the time somebody is just talking to break any silence. Usually in community meetings when I stand up to talk, people quiet down to give me a chance. “Benjamin is gonna say something, everybody shut up!” they´ll say as I get up out of one of the tiny school desk chairs we use for seating in the meeting house. After I finish they’ll nod and smile and say “Bia bua djaba!” which means “That’s good, friend!” The purpose of the meeting is often lost in a sea of tangents about anything from where the best coconut trees are to asking if anyone has seen their horse lately. When I schedule community meetings I usually count on at least a half hour for tangents, and maybe fifteen minutes for Joel to tell some jokes.

As you can tell, Emberá are really good at talking. They’re pretty funny too, sometimes without realizing it. Over the past month or so I decided to write down some of the random things that people in Nuevo Vigía say to me.

Here’s a sampling of Vigían quotes:

 “Emberá people really like playing basketball, we just don’t know how.”

-          Lucio

“You need a woman to keep you warm at night!”

-          Everyone

“So in the United States, even little kids know how to speak English?”

-          Niño

“There’s nothing more to life except eat, sleep, and shit.”

-          Old man Francisco

“As the gringos say, there are a lot of fish in the sea.”

-          Rubén

“It scares me to walk across this bridge at night, I feel like I’m going to fall in and get eaten by a crocodile.”

-          Enilda

“Here in Panama we just vote for whoever gives us free t-shirts.”

-          Yonairo

“Benjamín, you need to shave that beard. You look like Osama Bin Laden.”

-          Joel

“See that old guy over there in the loin cloth? Don’t mess with him, he’s a wizard.”

-          Cholo

“You’ve been getting pretty fat lately. Eating lots of plantains huh?”

-          Joel

“NEIGHBOR! What are you doing neighbor?”

-          My neighbor, Merqui

“Your yard is a mess, maybe you should do something about that.”

-          My other neighbor, Gilberto

“Ben-ha-MEEN… Plash!”

-          5 year old Poroto

“I was gonna come to your house yesterday, but I got really lazy…”

-          Estela

“Wait, so you’re not cold right now?”

-          Yamisleth

“Oh no, you’re sick? It was probably that juice I gave you.”

-          Esmín

“I’ll help you work on that right now. But first I’m gonna go sleep.”

-          Felino