Out and About

A great and notable thing that happened in my past few months in site. I have started to go on little mini vacays, or outings with members of my community. It so nice to have friends in town. Here are a few of my moments.

Bocas Island

First, about two months ago, I spent the night in the touristy land of the island of Bocas del Toro with Lucho, Hilda (my counterpart and his wife) and Duncan and Eddi (my other favorite couple in site) and Javier (lucho's 9 year old son, my little bro, cat sitter, and house guard). We went principally to sell chocolate, guandu, and pino lio ( a roasted corn drink) to the locals as well as to scope out some future chocolate selling markets on the island. But what we also went to go do was swim at the beach! Nothing has made me laugh harder in a long time then watching the rolly polly Eddi and Hilda try (and fall) and try again (and fall) and try again to get up on their husbands shoulders in the water. They then proceeded to chicken fight, as I explained the game to them. We also had little swimming competitions and races and I proved to everyone that I would be an excellent person to go diving for fish and lobster as I could hold my breath the longest.

Another man in my community is the caretaker for a swanky gringo summer house (mansion) on a nearby island, which is where we went to sleep. It was a hoot exploring this mansion house with toilets, showers, TVs, stoves and refrigerators with my Ngobes. They could not believe what a gringo kitchen looks like. Our hostess was also explaining to us how to use the shower (tuck in the curtain and what not) and Eddi proudly pointed out that she already knew how, as she had some experience in hotels before. Everyone was pretty impressed.

We still had boiled bananas for dinner

Kusapin

Next, my dear dear friend Edi took me with her to her homelands out on a coastal peninsula in the Caribbean. We took a big dug out canoe to get there, loaded with about 10 people and sacs and sacs of produce. It was about a 7 hour voyage. Then we stayed for 3 nights in her moms house. A two room house on stilts, where 6 of us slept in the same room every night, and ate rice, name and fish every meal. I had kind of forgotten what it was like to live with a Ngobe family. It was nice to be reminded what a luxury having my own house is. Otherwise, it is absolutely gorgeous out there! The first day we walked an hour or so down a palm tree lined sandy beach, through some jungle and to a gorgeous coastal town called Kusapin, where Edi has family. Here is a photo.



I was grumpy on our hike, because Edi said we were going swimming at the beach and instead we ended up hiking barefoot for an hour through muddy rocky jungle paths and I sliced my toe open pretty bad on some glass in a cow pasture. But we crested the hill to Kusapin and it was so amazingly stupidly beautiful that I couldn’t help but sing praises to the sky above.



I hobbled back with a stick and washed my foot compulsively with alcohol for the next day. (I figure cow shit and open wounds are never a favored combination).Here is a photo of me with my great and wonderful friend Edi. You can’t really see it, but I feel it’s worth noting that I have a nice big ringworm, discreetly located in the smack dab center of my forehead. That’s life in Panama.



The Darien

Then I spent some hours and days and weeks and months in site. You probably did not hear from me at that time. And now, I am just returning from another few days away from site. First I took my counterpart to a leadership and management seminar put on by the Peace Corps and then Andy and I visited our friend Molly in the Darien, who's site is about as far from me as you can get in Panama. (She is close to Colombia, I am close to Costa Rica).

The Darien is a great place to visit (as is my friend Molly) and were I not so happy to live in the tropics of Bocas, I just might buy me a horse and move to the Darien and cut down some virgin tropical forest to make way for my new herd of cattle(the principle Darien pastime). Actually I probably wouldn't, seeing that I find cattle raising to be all damaging to the environment and your health and what not, but these Panamanian cowboys sure make it look like a good time! They ride everywhere on horseback and yip and yop and holler at each other and wear fun straw hats. And who does not love a good straw hat?

So, you might wonder, why would I want to visit the Darien Cowboys in the 'wild east' of Panama. Well, to bring them chocolate, of course. We put on a little "cacao/reforestation" presentation for the folks in Molly's community, arguing that they could keep some trees AND raise money using tree crops. Like cacao for instance. We still have to wait and see how the trees grow there, its probably a bit of stretch, but we made everyone hot chocolate and planted some cacao seeds for everyone to take home. They were all pretty excited about it (I think mostly because they got to suck on cacao seeds and drink hot chocolate).

The only thing disappointing about my trip to the Darien is that I had no camera. But just picture some beautiful rolling green hills with a distant jungle mountains in the backdrop. A dirt ( or mud) road with folks riding by on horse, colorful birds flitting about the trees, small wooden houses with grass or tin roofs and lots and lots and lots of cows. Then you can imagine myself with Molly and Andy posing in front of the scene, which is probably what my camera would have captured.

maybe now I should talk about some of the work I have actually been doing? We'll get there.