My Panama, My Adventure

It all started when Marina came to visit me. Sharing the country, the culture, and the Peace Corps experience with her gave me such a sense of pride in what is now My Panama. It has taken almost a year but I am finally “in like” with this country. Many of the things that irritated me in the beginning are now endearing and the rest are routine. Washing my clothes by hand is no longer a chore but a welcome upper-body workout. The weather is not hot. The weather simply is. And I am not just surviving my Peace Corps experience. I am experiencing it.

I have been in my new site for almost three months and I am really beginning to feel a sense of purpose. I provide training and consulting services to an NGO (non-governmental organization, e.g., nonprofit) that does some amazing work in helping families to overcome poverty while combating deforestation. With strategic planning in full swing and a leadership training series launched, I was a dozen different shades of excited before the unrest started to make the news.  The reasons for the clashes are complicated and frankly as a Peace Corps volunteer, none of my business. I am nonetheless affected by it.

The first alert was called for one particular region of the country, then another. Now, every volunteer in the Panama is on alert. For the most part, our orders are to be aware, to be still, and to be prepared. Hopefully, things will settled down sometime soon but if they do not, the place that I am finally “in like” with could quickly become the place where I used to live. The daily walks to the market to buy one tomato, the year-round summer wardrobe, the pink “rug” that I painted onto my dungeon – I mean kitchen – floor… it could all be a thing of the past, long before I am ready to say goodbe and there is nothing I can do about it.

In the middle of all of this uncertainty, I am sure of two things: 1) it is all worth it, and 2) for as long as there is breath in my body, my adventure will not end. Whether it is sooner or later, I will one day say farewell to My Panama. But whether in Latin America, the U.S., or some other part of the world, my adventure shall continue.

Remember Fallen Peace Corps Volunteers this Memorial Day Weekend

Fallen Peace Corps Volunteers Memorial Project

The Wake-up Knock

Every morning at 6:30, my three-year-old neighbor hops out of bed, sneaks over to my house and begins knocking on my door…

“Anita! Anita! Anita!” Pacho shouts as he desperately pounds on my front door. I try to ignore him and hope that he goes away but the pounding continues. I plead with him,“Regresa mas tarde.” (Come back later.) 

“Abre la puerta!” (Open the door!) he shouts with all of the importance a three year old can muster, “Quiero hablar contigo.” (I want to talk to you.)

“Vaya - estoy dormiendo.” (Go away - I’m sleeping.)

“Mentirosa!” (Liar!) Pacho responds accusingly.

There is a brief pause before the knocking resumes, “Anita! Anita! Anita!”

This daily interaction was a lot less charming than it sounds, especially since his was the last voice I heard before I drifted off to sleep every night. He exasperated me. I had long since given up on trying to reason with the adults in his house and was spending my days plotting and experimenting with new strategies to make him (and the other little ones who would show up throughout the day) go away.

“Pacho esta en amorado con usted,” (Pacho is in love with you) his grandmother revealed. Of course it didn’t help that she was encouraging the crush and even suggesting in his presence that I might adopt him and take him back to the United States with me. Pacho had been abandoned by his mother and was being raised by his grandparents.

Although I was never able to eliminate the daily wake-up-knocking, I did figure out how to regain some of my personal space during the day. The solution was simple. I got up, opened the door, and let him in. Each morning, I looked in his cute little face and listened while he told me what he had dreamt about the night before. And after a respectable amount of time, I could coax him to go back home to Abuela ( grandma).

The impositions were not limited to the children in the community. I was appalled and offended on a daily basis by words and actions of adults that I interpretted as rude but they saw as kind. And I would come to learn that I too had offended them in my attempts to be polite and respectful. People, whether I was acquainted with them or not, would walk into my house without even a knock. But when I kept my door closed to head off the unwelcome visits, I was thought to be rude and standoffish. My reputation was further damaged because whenever I went out to pasear (take a walk), I would greet people who were outside or standing in their doorway but I never walked in an open door or looked inside someone’s house and loudly commented on what they were doing. I was trying to respect the privacy of people who had no need for privacy.

But over time we learned to overlook each other’s offenses and see each other’s value. They stopped focusing on who I was not and began embracing who I am. I stopped expecting things like privacy and personal space and gave in to the local rhythm. So instead of getting upset when my sleep was disrupted, I got up, opened the door, and received my first hug of the day which was always followed by Pacho’s confession of undying love for me, “Yo te quiero mucho Anita!”


But as my relationships in the community began to take a turn for the better, my health began to take a turn for the worse. When my asthma symptoms escalated and I was unable to get proper care locally, the Peace Corps doctor and I decided that a site change was necessary.

My new assignment is very different from the last and a departure for the Peace Corps Panama norm. Instead of living as a member of a rural community, I will make my home in a very nice provincial capital, as I provide consulting services to an NGO (nonprofit) committed to helping poor, rural families to do organic farming and reforestation. The director is a very learned man with a passion for the protecting the environment and for serving underserved people. My job will be to support him in his efforts to strengthen the structure of the organization in a way that will attract funding and ensure the organization’s long-term viability.
As I look through the photos of what is now my former community, I have a better appreciation for the people and their ways – which better positions me in my new role to influence the system in a way that will influence their lives for the better. I also have a better understanding of Anita and her ways – which better positions me to roll with the punches. I am more industrious, more flexible, much more tranquila (calm).

The goodbyes were filled with tears of desperation as those I had come to know and love led me into a space that was foreign to me. A space of certain finality. They knew that traveling, even in a country as small as Panama, is difficult and costly. They knew that though I had the ability to send messages through my computer, they had no way of receiving them. They knew that it was highly unlikely that we will see each other again. And as painful as it was to say goodbye to both me and my predecessor, they knew that they had to open their hearts for more. “¿Mandan otro de Cuerpo de Paz?” (Will they send us another volunteer?)

Love is worthwhile. It is worth eating the same bland meal three times a day. It is worth beating your clothes against a rock. It is worth intermittent electricity. It is worth a 6:30am wake up knock.

“Anita, yo tengo que saber,” the tearful voice of Pacho’s seven year old cousin Sara came through my cell phone just two days after my departure, “¿Tu no me quieres?” (Don’t you love me?)

“Sara, yo te quiero mucho,” (I love you so much) I assured her, “Y te estraño.” (And I miss you.)

“¿Entonces, porque saliste? (Then why did you leave?) pouted the little girl whose mother had died some three years prior and whose father had left her with the grandmother while he started a new family.

“Porque a veces, los adultos tienen que hacer lo que no quieren hacer.” (Adults sometimes have to do things that they don’t want to do.) “Pero nunca olvides que tu eres especial – a mi y a Dios. (Never forget that you are special – to me and to God.) Has tenido una vida mas dura que otras pero tendras un futuro mas bueno. (Your life has been harder than most but your future will be better than most.)

Sara has suffered beyond her years and she understood with an understanding equally beyond her seven years. She told me that Jesus gives her a big hug every night before I go to sleep and advised me that when I feel like I want to cry because I miss her, I should just let Jesus give me a big hug.

Grace and Peace,

Anita

P.S.
If you are wondering what became of Jersey the dog, he is living the sweet life, spending his days running freely through the banana plantation with his new girlfriend, Candi, under the watchful eye of his new owner, Abelardo, the young man who had appointed himself as my loyal and hardworking personal secretary.

Anita's Water

To say that water is taken for granted in the United States is an understatement. All day long we flush toilets, water plants, fill humidifiers, and wash everything from hands to dishes to dogs. And when we are feeling a little parched, we bypass the faucet in favor of a bottle of store-bought H2O. Some of us prefer one brand over another while others invest in fancy gadgets and filtration systems.

What I wouldn't do for a gulp of good old American tap water from the garden spigot right now!

There is the rich Panama and the poor Panama with a miniscule number of what we might call middle-class. Rich Panama is very small in number but very rich. Water is drinkable and free-flowing in Rich Panama. And although Poor Panama is quite sizable in number and in kilometers, it is immense in its poverty, its isolation, its obstacles, and its despair. Water is something that is never taken for granted in Poor Panama.

Like most volunteers, my first six to eight weeks in the field were spent battling water-related stomach ailments. I boiled, filtered, and treated but to no avail. The water issues are many:

• Water is often unavailable. You open the faucet nothing comes out, sometimes for eight to ten straight hours. (I will let your mind wander as you think about the things one cannot do without water.)


• Water is often unclean. The locals take offense at this statement because they remember their pre-aqueduct days when they bathed in streams and hauled buckets of parasite- and rust-filled water to their homes. The aqueduct is a tremendous improvement and I certainly appreciate that I do not have to bathe in public and haul water in buckets but I do know that water is not supposed to be brown.


• When water is available and is not-so-unclean, it is ridiculously over-treated. The chlorine burns when I bathe and areas where skin tends to be most sensitive (again, use your imagination) continue to sting twenty minutes after every drop of water has been dried from my body.

I became much healthier when I moved into my own house, partly because I had more control over cleanliness issues and partly because my body had become acostumbrado (accustomed). But water continues to be an issue. I started catching rainwater in a bucket and running it through a filter for drinking. It worked great. I stopped getting sick and I saved myself the $20 per month (this a lot of money when you live off of $300 per month) I was spending on bottled water. But I still never had enough water for cooking and cleaning and flushing the toilet (for the one-third of my life when the faucet runs dry). It was time to get serious.

Around the same time that I became able to think about living here for more than the next twenty-four hours, I decided to invest in a more formal rainwater catchment system. My friend, Catherine B is a environment health volunteer in my region. She had already set up her own system and was more than happy to help me get started. It started with a 55-gallon tanque (drum) in which Catherine bore a hole close to the bottom and sawed the entire top off. This was not a small task! Catherine then schlepped the 55-gallon tanque to Changuinola where I was waiting to adopt it. The tanque and I then took the 45-minute bus ride back to my community.

I then went shopping for a pluma (tap/faucet), tuerca (plastic nut), tela (fabric), red (netting), and alambre (wire). I screwed the pluma into the hole that Catherine had made and awkwardly crawled into the drum. For some reason, I couldn't get the tuerca to cooperate. Oh, yeah! She told me to trim the burrs from the interior of the drum before I installed the pluma. So I unscrewed the tight pluma with my now sore palms and began looking for something sharp enough to cut through plastic. Knife-in-hand, I crawled back into the drum (less fun than it sounds )and eventually it was burr-free (or burr-reduced enough) that the tuerca actually fit to screw onto the underside of the pluma. Oh, wait a minute. I was supposed to do something with that tape she gave me. Where did I put it? I found it, along with the tube of silicone caulking and carefully written instructions that I should have started with. So I gave myself an attitude adjustment, unscrewed the pluma – again – followed the instructions, ending with a sloppy layer of caulking around the tuerca. I washed the fabric by hand (Is there any other way?) and hung it to dry while the caulking set overnight.

The next day, I mixed a small amount of precious rainwater from my little bucket with some dish detergent and carefully cleaned yesterday's sweat and exasperation from inside the drum. I topped it with the remnant of fabric and two layers of netting. I then borrowed a file (Who needs wire-cutters?) from my neighbor, measured off a length of wire, and sat on my back porch, filing away until the wire snapped. I wrapped the wire around the top lip of the drum and proudly twisted it to secure the layers that would reject debris and accept rainwater.

I then placed the drum on a platform just outside my back door where rain will slide off the rippled roof, through a tube, and into the tanque. And justice would not be poetic if in this region of Panama, where it rains every single day of the year, the skies are suddenly clear and my tanque remains bone dry.

What did I learn from all this? Life in the developing world is hard. Something as basic to human survival as water cannot be assumed, nor can any of the tasks associated with it. Sure, my neighbors have electricity and cell phones. A few of them even have laptop computers. But for every single one of them, washing fruit, relieving one's self, and doing laundry are not rote activities. They are impediments that stand between them and access to that which is assumed by the Other Panama.

Peace Corps tells us that we are to become members of the community. But I never forget that I am not one of them. Sure, I suffer the same discomforts but in a different way because I was reared amid the comforts. I know both worlds and for the moment, I choose to live in this one. The differences between me and my neighbors are huge and I only frustrate myself and confuse them when I try to explain them. Not only do I know both Panamas, but I know the life of the average and not-so-average American (except for maybe the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor). They only know Poor Panama. They only know water that is either brown, over-treated, or nonexistent. They have never driven through a carwash, programmed a thermostat, timed automatic sprinklers to water their lawn, run a dishwasher, or for that matter, taken a hot shower.

This is the gap in which I live. I cannot open their souls and insert a chip giving them the wisdom gained from two hundred years of struggle and progress. Nor can I draw them a map that will get them to the Other Panama. But what I can do is live alongside them and earn their trust that they might allow me to equip them in a way that enables them to draw their own map so they can have the dignity of finding their own way.

Anyone know a good rain dance?

Dia de Salud / Health Day

On January 10, 2010, 45 volunteer doctors, dentists, and veterinarians from the U.S., Costa Rica, and Panama descended upon my community. Classrooms were transformed into examination rooms, surgical centers (for spaying and neutering), and a pharmacy. Some of the vets made “house calls” to tend to horses, pigs, and cows on some of the larger farms.

Mi Casa es Su Casa

Jersey and I are ready to receive guests!

My Latin Lover

I have always wanted a little white dog with a black eye like Petey from the Little Rascals. So when Lily's speckled dog had pups, I was eager to check out the litter. My first reaction was to look away from clumsy quints. I had been compiling a long list of reasons why I should not have a dog and I was afraid that the power of their cuteness would overtake my logic.


I retreated to my home and spent the next few days dealing with what I like to call The Peace Corps PILL: Pessimism, Isolation, Loneliness, and Listlessness. Variations on the following themes haunt me day and night:

• I am surrounded by people but meaningful conversations are hard to come by.


• Children yell out my name in the streets as if I were a rock star, yet no one really knows me.


• I am here to help people to help themselves but the people are not really looking for that type of help.


• I live at the same level poverty as those around me yet at least once a day I can expect to hear the words prestame (lend me) or regalame (gift me).

The Peace Corps is everything I thought it would be but daily I question whether or not I am capable of being the volunteer I had hoped to be. In the midst of it all, surfaces the same old longing for relational intimacy and in its wake, a gentleman who wants to be more than friends. He is attentive and kind but, in many ways, he doesn't fit the mold I thought necessary for the man in my life. Is there something to this relationship or is my vulnerability playing with my head?

Although I have not yet decided what to do about my Latin Admirer, I have decided to adopt a dog. So on my next visit to Lily's house, I went straight to the pups and picked up the little white one with the black eye. He was exactly what I thought I wanted but he was not comfortable in my hands. I talked to him and cuddled with him but he just wasn't that into me. When I gave him his way and released him from my clutches, his brother caught my eye. He didn't have the look that I thought I wanted but he was very cute. And when I picked him up, he curled himself up in my hands and drifted off to sleep. It wasn't love at first site but it was love nonetheless.

My new Latin Lover is ready for commitment and so am I. He promises to listen attentively to everything I say in whichever language I say it. He has agreed to treat me like a rock star and he will love me even when I'm not being very lovable. And although I do not have a good track record when it comes to selecting a man, for now I feel pretty good about the decision to share my home and my life with Jersey, the dog.

Grace and Peace,

Anita