Bocas Ball

It is official - I am a Peace Corps volunteer! We were sworn in last Friday at the lovely home of the American Ambassador, at an event attended by the Panamanian Vice-President and First Lady. As you might can tell, we are kind of a big deal around here. (a video of our swearing-in even made it onto CNN!)

Prior to swearing in, I spent five days in the community - "Valle de Las Perlas" (translation: Valley of the Pearls) - where I will be serving for the next two years. My first day there ended with me getting slammed in the face by a volleyball sent flying by a squat little indigenous lady. In addition to my face, the community also managed to smash most of the preconceptions I had about life in an indigenous Ngabe community. Valle Las Perlas is located right on the main highway that runs through the region of Bocas Del Toro, as such, my community is not a very traditional indigenous community.

When I first climbed the hill from the main road and caught the first glimpse of my town, I almost wanted to cry. It was a valley of unfettered paradise, coconut trees, red hibiscus flowers everywhere, yellow butterflies flitting about, a perfectly clouded blue sky, the air shimmered magic and children skipped up to hold my hand and lovingly repeat my name over and over. Laughing, sparkly eyed men carried my bags and told perfectly ridiculous jokes. God was smiling and life seemed simple and perfect. (See photo evidence to right for perfection evidence.)

Granted, it took about five minutes for reality to start actually setting in. My first task of the afternoon was to help a neighbor fix the remote control to his television. remote indigenous community say what?! Apparently while I don't have electricity in my community, a number of people have smelly loud generators to watch TV on, which is why I spent my first three evenings watching Winnie the Pooh cartoons and telenovelas. It is so nice to get away from it all. ha.

My second main task of the day was to join the community in a game of volleyball. How excited I was! Volleyball is my favorite casual sport to play! When we arrived to the volleyball field, I couldn't help but smile at the dumpy little 5 ft tall indigenous women in their shin length skirts and baggy shirts. How delightfully cute, I thought, that they like to pass a volleyball around. Then, BAM, holy shit! Volleyballs flying at least 50mph at me. pow-pow-pow! These ladies knew how to play and were absolutely power smashing the ball back and forth. I kept up for a bit, but was most severely humbled. We played from about 4pm until the sun went down well after 7 or 8 and I was exhausted! They finally took pity and let me stop playing after I feebly attempted to dodge a ball that just hit me in the face. Turns out the entire town plays volleyball for about 3 hours EVERY SINGLE DAY! I have a lot of practicing to do... Here is a photo of the field to the left, as you can see, we are right next to the road.

I spent the rest of the week wacking down plants with my machete on the cacao farms (quite possibly my favorite past time), eating assortments of fried, boiled and mashed bananas and plantains, visiting all the local community members and unsuccessfully trying to remember everyone's names (ie: ixhilthiat, maleykeena, xenia, etc.), visiting the local school and of course...playing volleyball.
My community counterpart and guide is a most delightful man named Lucho Baker and I was lucky enough to stay with his family for the week, here are a few members of the family to the right.

There are some things that I really love about living with Ngabes.
1. they rarely use utensils - i love eating with my hands.
2. very few people have chairs, every just kind of sits and lies and cuddles rolly polly style on the floor at night.
3. the response to any number question (ie: how many siblings/wives/children do you have? how much rice did you cook? etc) is always "bastante" which means "enough" but it is also used kind of loosely as "a lot". Its nice to think you have enough.

My host family also took me to visit their family in a neighboring community, on Sunday, the day of rest. I laundered my clothing in a river for the first time as they laughed at my wimpy attempts to slap my t-shirts against the washing rocks. Below are some photos of the beautiful life there.







Thats it for now!