On Taking a Shower

I don’t know what it is with me and taking showers. I’ve never really enjoyed taking a bath. I like being clean, but taking a bath is just one of those annoying chores that you do every day. I think it’s because I’m a big picture person, and all those daily things that you have to do to function (like taking a shower and eating) are just constant nuisances that cloud my thinking space. Do you know what I could be doing with all those hours I’ve spent showering? (Probably just sleeping or listening to pop music, but, ya know. . .the principle. . .)

Once you take a shower for the day, you can’t just check it off of your things to do like you can finishing a paper for work or going by the bank. Nope. If you take a shower, you’re still gonna be dirty again in the next 24 hours. (Or, if you live in Panama, less than 24.) So there’s that. You gotta do it every day, it takes up time, and it’s not even fun to do. In order to take a bath, you have to take off all your clothes, bathe with soap and all of that, and then dry off and put on MORE clothes that are just going to get dirty again. There are other toiletries involved. Deoderant, lotion, shampoo, whatever. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I bathe regularly because I enjoy being clean, but I don’t like bathing!

So where did this observation come from? After a sweaty morning pasearing around Santa Fe with my host mom, I came home, took a nap, and then realized I was too dirty to continue living my life until I had bathed. I never liked bathing, but my reluctance is compounded by the fact that bathing now involves dumping a bowl of cold water over my head/shoulders. Every day. If it’s a school day, that means at 5:30 or 6 in the morning, the first thing I do is experience this, my Panamanian bucket shower. I actually hop around a little bit every time the cold water hits me for the first time. I don’t know why, it’s a knee jerk reaction. It’s not gonna make the water any warmer.

The good news is that, if this is the hardest part of my life right now, I’m in pretty good shape, right? Hey, I have Wi-Fi, remember? That’s all that matters. What more could you want?

I'm a grown-up. I take showers, I swear.

I'm allergic to Panama!

I wrote this post a few days ago. I’m just getting around to posting it. J

Before I start talking about how my face rebelled against me this week, let me talk about more successful things in my life, like translating for the US Army.

Monday through Wednesday of this week, I decided to participate in a medical event that the US Army was having in Platanilla, a town that’s a 2-hour trip from my site. I found out from my regional leader that a group of army medical officers (reserves) would be staying in my town and traveling to Platanilla every day to provide medical care for the community and dispense medicine. A lot of them don’t speak Spanish, so they are always happy to have some extra interpreters there to help things run a little bit more smoothly. Since this week is exam week at my school (aka not ideal for observations/doing my job), I decided to go help out the army.

It was really fun. I love translating because it makes me feel super useful. I was impressed by how some of the army officers got along really well with their Panamanian counterparts without spoken language. There were some Kodak moments. While there, I interpreted for optometry for a day and then for pharmacy for the next two days.

While interpreting for pharmacy, I met this amazing Pharm Tech who works in the Medical Center in Platanilla. He has been working there for 18 years and he knows EVERYONE in town. Watching him work with the people in the community was pretty inspirational. He would joke around with people when they came to pick up prescriptions, but he would also dish out some tough love sometimes. (He straight up called this one old man a liar for not being honest about his medical history.) I could write a whole paper about how awesome this guy is (he wrote a song to thank the Army for coming out and then sang it for everybody), but to sum it up, I told my pharmacist-to-be sister about him, and we’re going to go visit him when she comes to Darien.

It was pretty interested hanging out with the Army people for a couple of days. I was very impressed by the positive attitudes that some of them had about being in a new place, and on the other hand, there were times where some the officers would say some things that would make me think, “you just don’t get it.” I’ve only been in Panama for 3 months, but even though I’m not Panamanian, I think I’ve started to think of Panama as that friend or family member that you rag on all the time, but if anybody else says anything about your family or your friend, you’re ready to fight them. Ok, I wasn’t gonna fight anybody, but I’m just saying. I talk smack about Panama all the time to other Peace Corps Volunteers, but even when I complain about how Panama’s out to get me again, it’s all good-natured. I’m going to be living here for the next two years, and I love Panama. When the Army officers talk about Panama, though, something inside me goes NO, YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO DO THAT! Yea, you’re not going to have an easy time finding hot water anywhere, but so? Yea, there are stray dogs that wander into school classrooms, so? Yea, that bridge we have to drive over is pretty sketchy, so?* I know that I’m still American and I’m not Panamanian, so I can’t really give myself a license to say whatever I want about Panama either, but I couldn’t help but cringe on the inside at some of the conversations I had with the officers when they ask about my life here. I’m not sure if some of them understand development work, but then again I know nothing about the military, so that goes both ways.

In other news, I am allergic to Panama. I’ve never had a food allergy in my life, which makes me happy, because that means I can eat all the food I want to. I am fearful that my care-free gorging days are over, because I’m pretty sure I ate something that I’m allergic to. A few days ago my lips blew up, and then hives broke out over the bottom half of my face. It itched and burned and I had never had anything like this happen to me before, so I called the Peace Corps medical office. They said I probably ate something that I reacted to, and to take some Benadryl and drink a lot of water. I followed the doctor’s orders, and the burning/itching has mostly stopped and my face is slowly returning to normal. The meds have been making me drowsy, but I think I’m done taking them, so I can return back to my regular life.

This turn of events is pretty sad, because I’m suspicious that the papaya I ate caused the reaction. L That papaya was DELICIOUS, what do you mean I can’t eat anymore? I’m going to play it safe and stay away from mangoes because I’m afraid of breaking out again. Let me tell you why that is tragic: it’s mango season. There are mangoes EVERYWHERE. ALL OF THE TREES IN MY TOWN ARE MANGO TREES AND THE MANGOES LOOK DELICIOUS. It’s like giving a shopaholic a credit card with no limit. It’s like I’m an alcoholic living a bar. What kind of world IS this? Either way, I’m not COMPLETELY sure it was the mango that made me break out, I’m just suspicious. I’m just going to carry Benadryl in my bag from now on in case I accidentally consume the allergen again. . .since I’m not really sure what I’m allergic to. I don’t really want to have an allergy, because that means I’m not invincible anymore. L I haven’t had allergies since I was little.

Thus wraps a week of exhaustion. Between traveling to Platanilla to interpret and taking meds that make me drowsy, I am BEAT! I’m teaching the little kids tomorrow and then I’ll probably spend the day running errands and pasearing. I’ll be going over the university for the first time on Saturday (yay!). Other than that, next week is the break between trimesters, so there is no school. I have zero plans for that week, so we’ll see what I come up with to make my week interesting before we begin the new trimester.

I want to give another shout out to my Dad for keeping up with my life. I talked to my sister on the phone today (I needed to update her on my facial situation) and she mentioned that my dad has been consistently reading my blog. Kudos to you! I’ll try and keep updated pretty consistently.

Much love to everyone at home in the Carolinas! I miss you guys!

*Side note/anecdote: When I crossed that bridge on the bus the other day, the bus got stuck. We all had to get out of the bus, push it across, and get back on. I’m glad that happened on a bus with Panamanians and not with the army people. The Panamanians were griping about how the politicians need to do more for Darien and how this situation was a perfect illustration of that point, but they’re allowed to do that. This is their country and they can talk junk about their politicians all they want.

I stay on your radio station cuz I’m based in heavy rotations

My last blog post was only on Monday, but when you’ve just moved to site in Peace Corps, a week seems like forever. New things happen all the time.

What happened this week? A lot of things. Things that I want to share on this blog:

DISCLAIMER: I'm warning you right now, this blog post is REALLY SCATTERBRAINED. I'm not going to apologize for who I am, but I do apologize if you actually try to sit down and read this post and find that it's a frustrating experience.

First, pasearing success is beginning to happen. On Tuesday I randomly met a woman (Maribel) that works at the radio station here in town, Voz sin Frontera, which is by FAR the most popular station in Darien. It’s a Catholic radio station, and the community uses it in a different way that we use radio in Charlotte, where I’m from. Members of the community can pay to put announcements over the radio for different events that are happening in various places in the Darien. Peace Corps uses the radio if they need to track down volunteers in remote places because EVERYBODY listens to Voz sin Frontera. They also do things like have prayers over the radio in addition to doing things that every radio station does, like play music (mostly típico).

            Anybody that knows me knows that I think radio is mad cool. I grew up listening to Power 98 in Charlotte ever since I was in elementary school. Every morning from elementary school all the way through high school, I was listening to Power 98 while I was getting dressed in the morning, and once I started driving, I was listening to it in the car on the way to school. I always thought it would be REALLY COOL to be a Radio DJ for a day (I tell people that all the time). Naturally, when I found out that the woman I had just met was a radio announcer at the radio station, I told her how much I loved my radio station growing up. She invited me to come visit her at work, so I did that.

            A few days later I showed up to visit her at work, and I met some of the other people that work at the station. They all seem to be really nice people, and I had some good laughs chilling with them for a little while. One of them (Corina) speaks English—she studied environmental studies in Oregon for two years. I hear through the grapevine that she’s worked with an agriculture Peace Corps Vounteer before. She invited me to come to her house to practice speaking English. I will be taking her up on that. Yay for making friends!

            Anyway, before I left, Maribel invited me to come over on Sunday morning to be interviewed on the radio. Needless to say, I was pumped. When I came back on Sunday morning (this morning), there was a lady cleaning up and she talked to me about Ghandi and Jainism and how she tries not to kill the bugs when she cleans up because Ghandi says you shouldn’t kill bugs. Then she asked me a little bit about myself and asked how she could continue to improve her English level beyond the basic proficiency she has now. Random! It’s always nice to randomly meet people. Being a Peace Corps Volunteer does that; I have to remember not to be on autopilot or to put the blinders on when I’m trying to get something done, otherwise I miss out on cool conversations like that one.

            Anywaaaaaay, I went into the booth with Maribel to wait for a good moment for the interview. I watched her read off a bunch of announcements for the community and play some Samy y Sandra, and then it was time for the interview!

            She put me in the next room with a microphone, and then we kind of just started to converse on-air about what Peace Corps is, what my job is, and how I’m adjusting to life in Darien. Maribel is awesome, so it made the interview super easy. For anybody out there that loves the sound of their own voice, I highly recommend being interviewed on the radio. It’s the best. Afterward, was SUPER excited to have done the interview. You know how when you’re excited or angry or frustrated, your second language won’t really come out anymore? I literally had to stop and mentally translate how to tell Maribel that I had a BLAST at the radio station. She told me to come back any time. J Voz sin Frontera gets so many cool points for opening their doors to me. I’m thinking I want to make friends with everybody at the station; it’s a pretty cool place to be.

            When I left the station after the interview, the guy that works selling things at the stand on the corner was like “North Carolina? You’re a foreigner?” He had heard me on the radio talking about my hometown. He had seen me several times and I always wave and say hi, but he never knew that I wasn’t from here. I just thought that was a hilarious interaction. He then welcomed me to Darien, so that was nice. I have plenty of funny stories accumulating about how people don’t realize that I’m not from Panama until I tell them. If you want to hear some, hit me up.

            Other than that, things I’ve done include teaching English to tiny people (kids between the ages of 3-5). We sang “If You’re Happy and you Know It,” with a sing-along video and I’ve been creating some visual aids to bring along next week, as well as planning for other activities.

            I spent some time hanging out with my regional leader the other day. She’s really cool, so it’s sad that she’s getting replaced in a month, when she finishes up her service and heads back home. We talked a lot about future volunteer sites, about Peace Corps life, and about Peace Corps Panama in general. She also taught me a little bit of Darien geography, so that’s helpful to get my bearings on everything.

            I went to church this morning and my host mom introduced me to everyone at the end of service during announcements. That was nice of her. I don’t really know how to do the ‘church talk’ thing in Spanish (my church people, you know what I mean), so I probably sounded a little too formal when I addressed everyone, but hey, they meant well and they clapped for me.  There were unformed officers in church, by the way. . .I was not expecting that. I guess the po-po need Jesus, too.

            The US Army is in Darien! They’re here doing a medical mission. They do this from time to time, providing pediatric care and gynecology and internal medical attention and various things like that. I’m planning on helping out with their project, basically just serving as an interpreter. Over the next couple of weeks they’ll be in various communities, so I think it’ll be fun to tag along and be bilingual in ways that help people.

             Other important events? I bought an auxiliary cord so now I can pump music through the radio my host sister won at BINGO. It's improving my quality of life.

            Other than that, I’ll be continuing to pasear. It’s Sunday afternoon right now, so I’m about to get out there. I’ve got two houses on my list to go visit, so from there I’m sure I’ll find some more. Woo-hoo meeting people!!!

Ebony’s Coming/Noticias

I started to write a blog post today (by which I mean I typed up a page worth of stuff), but I decided it sounded too negative, so I let it sit for a few hours to decide if that’s what I really wanted to post. A few hours later, here I am writing up something completely different.

First thing’s first EBONY’S COMING! She booked her plane ticket. For those of you reading who may not know who Ebony is, she’s my pharmaceutical sister who has a month of vacation from her pharmacy rotations in August, so she’s coming to beat up my block ova hurr in the Darien, woop, woop! August 2^nd. Panama and fellow Peace Corps Volunteers better get ready, she’s in the building/pais!

So yea, that’s exciting. I’ve been telling my host families that my sister’s going to visit, so they’ll be excited to meet her.

Other than that, I have decided to place a new focus on pasearing. Seriously. I have been doing a subpar job. In the situation in which I find myself now, pasearing is not easy (I don’t have a whole lot of ‘in’s to give me justification to walk up to people’s houses), but I’m going to start using any excuse I can get. Today I paseared at a house I had been to once before (one of the teachers at my school lives there). I tried to visit one of the English teachers, but she was out of town. Tomorrow I’m going to buy some avocado or something and bring it by the house next to the one I’ll be renting when I move out of my host family. The family that lives there has hosted Peace Corps Volunteers before, so I’m going to try to use that as an excuse to sit on their porch and talk to them. Being outside and talking to people make me happy, and I haven’t done enough of that in the past two weeks.

I spent awhile at the teacher’s house pasearing today. I also talked to a friend I made a few weeks ago, a Japanese girl that’s in the Japanese version of Peace Corps. She’ll be leaving in a few months (she’s almost completed her two years), but it’s still nice to make a friend. I need to make some Panamanian ones, now!

Other than that, nothing new has happened. I enjoyed my energy-crisis induced vacation days, but I’m just looking forward to actually working. I’m already new here and trying to figure out my work schedule, so it didn’t exactly help that I came in toward the end of a trimester, and then on top of that classes get cancelled for three days and subsequently the exam schedule had been changed when I arrived at school today. I’m just trying to roll with it all and constantly find the most productive thing that I could be doing. That didn’t happen this morning when I went to school. I kind of just sat around, reviewed my booklets of instructional activities and wondered what I could possibly be doing right now that could be of any use to anybody, and hung out in the teachers’ lounge with the other teachers. Now that I more or less have my head wrapped around what’s supposed to be happening at school for the next few weeks, though, I feel a little bit more prepared to go in tomorrow with a game plan to start making baby steps toward moving some ground on my primary project.

In Panamanian news, the Cambio Democratico party had presidential primary elections yesterday. Afterward, people with CD flags drove down my street in giant trucks, honking.

Critics are saying that the newly elected candidate for the CD party, Jose Domingo Arias, may just prove to be a puppet of the sitting president, Ricardo Martinelli, who founded the party a few years ago and is still very much the leader of the party. If that is the view most people hold, it may not prove favorable for garnering votes for Jose Domingo, since the vibe that I get from a lot of Panamanians is that Martinelli’s not a popular guy. (I’ve only been in this country for three months, so I’m not going to form an opinion. I’ll let the Panamanians tell it.) From the looks of the news, post-election celebration madness just looked like a giant fire-code violation. Too many people crammed in small spaces with a noticeable lack of presence of security. Lots of cameras and microphones trying to catch audio of politicians yelling buzzwords and phrases about the election.

In other news, the province of Chiriqui won the Panamanian world series for baseball. They partied all night in David (the provincial capital) last night. I kind of wanted Bocas del Toro to win, only because I saw their fans on television, and they are OFF THE CHAIN. Picture Sean Paul’s “Like Glue” video. Now take those people out of the Jamaican club and put them in the stands in Changuinola with a Bocas jersey on. Those are the Bocas fans. They hold it down for their team. Only from the about 15 minutes of actual baseball that I watched, it looks like their first and second string pitchers need Jesus. (Do they say ‘strings’ in baseball?) They threw so many balls that Chiriqui scored a few runs. . .just from walks. It was uncomfortable to watch.

Finally, if the price of meat keeps going up the way they report on the news, I will not think twice about going vegetarian. I’m already generally too lazy to take time out and actually cook meat to include as a part of my diet, but then it’s $3.50/lb, too? Yea, I’ll leave that alone. Because of the energy crisis and the fact that it takes a lot of power to run a meat packing plant, the meat industry people on the news say that the price for them to process and package meat has gone up so that this increase in price is passed on to the consumer. Bummer. I do like pork. By the time I move on my own it’ll be well into rainy season, so hopefully those prices will come back down? I’m not sure how elastic those prices will be, though. I saw the sickly looking livestock in the Azuero on the news, so. . .not sure if the supply is down like for real for real or if the prices will come back down as soon as the rain comes and cuts the variable cost of processing the meat. We’ll see. #energycrisis

Can you tell I wrote this right after watching TV? It was still on my mind. I don’t know, I thought maybe some of you might be interested to know what’s going on in Panama. J

As always, thanks for reading the blog!

Small Disclaimer

I've noticed I've been updating my blog pretty often, recently. Please don't get used to this.

La Palma

Today I went to the provincial capital of La Palma. Last night one of my older host sisters came home, since she now has the super long weekend due to the Panamanian drought/electricity thing. She’s studying to be a dentist, just like one of my sisters in the States. She’s 24, so she’s really close to my age, only she has a husband and a baby. (Shout out to 20-something year old grown-ups! I’m not one of you.)

She seems pretty cool, so I was happy to go gallivanting about Darien with her and the baby. (Pudgy babies!!!) We took a chiva up a crappy road to get to Puerto Kimba (Quimba? I’ve seen it spelled different ways) and then from there took a 20-25 minute boat ride to La Palma. The boat ride was exciting and I thought it was a beautiful view. It’s in those moments that I wish I could bring over my family members via portkey so that they could appreciate the awesomeness that is THE WORLD. I’m not crazy for leaving the Carolinas, y’all! There are some cool places out here.

As we pulled into the port at La Palma, you could see all the colorful houses on stilts by the water. It was pretty cool, it reminded me of Oporto, Portugal (is that weird?). We walked around La Palma just a little and then met up with my host sister’s husband and met my host abuelos. They have a dog that is just. . .spoiled. He only drinks cold water and he throws his food bowl for attention. He also growls aggressively at visitors. I don’t think he’d attack me, though. All the Panamanian dogs just look for an excuse to growl at somebody, and then when they actually get a chance to back it up (i.e.: they get let out of the gate or off the leash), you find out they’re all talk. Think of middle schoolers who only want to fight when their friends are holding them back. Panamanian dogs are just like them. They only growl when you’re walking/running AWAY from them. (This is the reason I can’t run here, I’m not down with dogs chasing me. I bought a jump rope. Maybe I won’t be a couch potato.)

We’ll see how I spend the rest of my long weekend. J Shout out to Danny, visiting your site is a strong possibility for this weekend if other things to do don’t magically fall into my lap.

A Couple of Things

1) This http://www.prensa.com/uhora/locales/ahorrar-energia-gobierno-clases-escuelas-universidades/175818

Cliffs Notes: The Ministry of Education straight up cancelled classes in the entire country for today, tomorrow and Friday for everybody from primary to university. They also said hangout spots should be shut down for the next few days. This is because there is a drought in the Azuero/Veraguas/Panama Oeste area and we want to conserve hydroelectric power. (We're just finishing dry season over here, rainy season is beginning to kick up.) Because of this, I magically have three more free days than I planned for. It comes at a price. a) I don't have any friends yet, so I might be a little bit more bored than I would like (waaahhh I just got here) and b) these days are going to come out of the week long break I WAS going to have between trimesters. On the bright side, I did just have music time with my host brother today, and I got my host sister to read an entire paragraph.

2) The rat. I underestimated the dexterity of rats. Clearly I'm a rookie in the game, and I don't have a whole lot of experience with this. It's not a problem for them to climb the scaffolding in my room, as awkward as it is to do. I did not realize that this ability was in the rat skill set. I opened my bedroom door and turned on the light today, and the thing was pretty much chillin in the middle of my ceiling awaiting my arrival. Then he scurried back over the wall, waiting for the opportune moment to reoccupy his corner. I'm just going to have to live with him, because the evidence suggests that efforts to remove him will prove futile. He has his ways of getting back in, any time he feels like it. I'm going to give him a name. As long as he doesn't poop on me or climb in my bed, we'll be okay.

He's at large

I just saw the rat crawl up my wall and exit stage right. He's no longer in the corner. He's at large. Even if he's in the bathroom when I bucket shower in the morning, I'd rather him be there than at the foot of my bed, watching me while I sleep. Now I just have to plug up his hole so he can't come back in.

First Week Done

I’m going to warn you right now, this is not the most interesting blog post.

Quick Update. Finished the first week of school. I’m coming in at the end of a trimester and on the cusp of some events coming up (Black Culture Festival, Spelling Bee, English Week), so the schedule is pretty hectic. Other than that, everything seems to be going fine so far, I just have to realize that it’s going to be awhile before my primary project actually starts HAPPENING. Other than that, I do have secondary project that may be budding, so knock on wood for that.

In regular life, for the past week I have admittedly been spending WAY too much time inside my room, reason being that for some strange reason, I have been all kinds of EXHAUSTED for the past week. It may be a combination of adjusting to a new place (which always makes me tired) and the HOT (when it’s this hot outside, the word hot becomes a noun). Now that I’ve been here for a week, I have vowed to myself to get outside more during the next week. I did walk around some this past week, but not nearly enough. Pasear is the name of the game, I need to meet some people!

I did meet some of the Peace Corps Volunteers in the Darien during the past week, which was cool. A group of them came through my city and hung out at a restaurant down the way, so that was a great opportunity to meet some of my Peace Corps colleagues in the area. I need to meet some Panamanians, though, fa real.

If anybody’s wondering how my pest situation is progressing—it’s getting worse. I couldn’t tell you how many giant flying cockroaches I have killed in the past two days. (Are they cicadas? I’m unsure. I just know they need to die.) My garbage is filled with them. ALSO the giant rat I saw? I’m pretty sure there are AT LEAST two of them. I saw another slightly smaller one with a long tail crawling above my wall last night. And then I heard noises coming from the corner again. Falling asleep last night was a little more difficult, because I kept replaying horror stories I’ve heard of Volunteers waking up with mice in their bed. Not tryna let that be me. It’s a 1984 type situation. I haven’t decided if I think this is a big enough problem to warrant me getting some mice traps from the tienda and actually DEALING with the situation, or if I’d rather just let it ride and live symbiotically with my new roommates. Maybe I’ll give them names?

Side note, though: mosquito nets are a gift from the gods. Continuing on. . .

Welp, I got plenty of sleep this weekend, so if I get a little bit of laundry done today, I should be all ready to go for school tomorrow! Wish me luck!

El Ratón

Last night I heard impossibly loud noises coming from behind a box in the corner of my room. This morning I saw a giant rat crawl up my wall. Shrug: Whaddya gonna do?