The end of the (paved) road

In a few hours, our group will officially be ‘sworn in’ as volunteers, and yes, I fully realize how cultish that sounds. After what will undoubtedly be an overdramatic ceremony, we are going to spend the weekend at the beach celebrating. Come Monday, real life finally begins.
This last Monday was our last day in Santa Clara and that night we threw a big party for all our host families We did a big taco bar and I think the night was fairly successful. The next morning we left, and I’m not sure why, but I didn’t feel sad. Am I dead inside? I’m starting to think that what I’ve been calling ‘ability to adjust’ all these years is really an inability to connect. I don’t get homesick; I don’t cry at goodbyes. Maybe it’s because I have reasoned myself out of believing any relationship is truly special or unique. If I would have applied for the Peace Corps six months earlier or later, I would be in Chile or the Dominican Republic, probably feeling a lot of the same things, but the people and circumstances would be different. Some people in those hypothetical groups would be my friends, some would be acquaintances, some would bother me, etc. So it’s all a matter of coincidence it seems. Not that that is a bad thing, but I think it keeps me from feeling in the way I think I should.
That’s quite enough of that.
We’re staying, for these few days, in Ciudad de Saber (City of Knowledge) in Panama City, which is where we spent our first week waaaay back when we started training. It is truly shocking how my perception of this place has changed since August. The food was blah, the air conditioning broke, the hot water took forever, and every floor was cold hard tile. Now, the food is DELICIOUS and there’s AIR CONDITIONING and TILE FLOORS! Luxury.
Now the real Peace Corps experience begins, and this blog, in its current state, ends. I’ll still update it, but I’ll probably only be able to get to the internet every couple of weeks, and hearing about my work with the cooperative or teaching English will be even more boring than previous entries. I think this works out rather well however. Readership and interest is waning, and with good reason, just as I am running out of interesting things to say. Thanks to everyone who has been reading, and even more thanks to those who have been commenting. I’ll write more in a few weeks.

Where to start?

I'm sweaty, I'm muddy, I stink, and I need to cut my fingernails. I left my future home, Cerro Iglesias, this morning after a week's visit, and the title of this entry applies in more ways than one. Where do I start?
A month ago, when we recieved our sites, everyone told me how great my site is and how much work there is to be done. Well, there definitely is a lot of work that needs doing. And maybe my site is great; after hearing about how some of the other site visits went, I certainly don't have anything to complain about. For those of you consulting Panamanian maps, Cerro Iglesias is in the middle of the Comarca Ngabe-Bugle, a semi-autonomous indigenous province, kinda like our 'Indian Reservations.' No casinos though. Or fireworks.
Quick history lesson: The whole Comarca region is mostly, if not entirely, farming country made up of families and communities who grow just enough to survive. Cerro Iglesias is a hub of the surrounding area, with a large school, a coffee cooperative, and lots of foreign and NGO money coming in from outside. So the town is growing, and even though it doesn't have electricity or managable roads, the last volunteer just completed their aquaduct and this summer might be the first that the people don't have to go down to the creek to get water.
So where does our intrepid, terrified narrator fit into all this? Well, he really has no idea. Seriously. Because Cerro Iglesias is somewhat of a sexy place to throw humanitarian money, many projects have been undertaken. The Japanese version of Peace Corps helped build a coffee processing plant three years ago. It sits empty, having never processed a bean. Through a grant from the Panamanian government, the cooperative built a chicken farm. People live there. Through other outside funds, the cooperative recieved a computer to help manage the money they are continuously hemmoraging. No one really knows how to use it. So the potential is there. The resources are there, and the people, especially my counterpart Florentino, are motivated. Compared to a lot of sites, they are way ahead of the game, and I will certainly never run out of things to do, but I felt overly anxious this week. On top of that, occasionally I feel uncomfortable about trying to change some of their centuries-old egalitarian ways. For example, the cooperative lends money to people for crops or tiendas, and they are deep in the red basically because someone asking to borrow money, or anything else, isn't really a question that can be answered no. For a western practice like money-lending to work, some western mindsets have to be employed, but I feel a little guilty teaching people the benefits of saying no to their friends in need. Despite all that, I'm excited.
The family I'll be staying with for the first month or so while I'm building my house is great. The fabled Ngabe stoicism is practically non-existent; the people are used to seeing new people and even gringos enough that everyone seems openly friendly. My family has given me a Ngabe name, Iyi (ee-gee). And they speak Spanish, even amongst themselves. This last picture is of the road out of Cerro Iglesias as it sits in a cloud.

Sorry

Because it has been so long between entries, I was going to post twice today, but only after hours of trying was I able to upload even half the pictures I wanted to put up. So there you go.

Tomorrow (Monday) we head off for a two day conference where we will meet our counterpart (Panamanian with whom we'll work closest at our site). After two days of awkward conversation, we head to our sites for the rest of the week. There, we're supposed to figure out which family we'll be living with for our first few months and what we'll be doing initially. Everyone, myself included, is predictably nervous.

And that's the strange thing. When we all left home for DC, I bet most of us were ready to face the solitary challenge that is Peace Corps because we had been mentally preparing for it for so long. But ten weeks of intense, summer-camp-esque training, and the idea of being completely alone is somewhat terrifying. Yes, we've learned a lot blah blah blah, but maybe part of that Thoreaian (?) edge has been coddled away.

I still feel somewhat ready, but I guess I'll have a much better idea of how ready I was after the fact. I'll write then, when I get back. And hopefully I'll have pictures.

Meet the peeps

Last week was Technical Week, which was every bit as tedious as it sounds. So I’m not going to waste too much precious blog space talking about it. A quick recap: we spent a lot of our time preparing and facilitating a meeting at the local coffee cooperative. The volunteer who lives there permanently has worked with the cooperative to develop vision and mission statements, and to formulate a business plan. It all seemed terrifically boring; hopefully I won’t end up doing the same sort of thing. The best thing about this week was getting to see again all the people we were separated from during Cultural Week the week before. It was strange to realize that after only a few weeks, I could miss these people. On that corny note, here a few of my best friends so far.

Fred AKA ‘Pájero Loco’

Fred might be the most well-known gringo in town, and that is due almost entirely to his infamous pájero loco (crazy bird) call. It’s impossible to replicate here, something like ah-AHH!!, but Fred’s expression while making this call gives you a pretty good idea. Here in the photo he is doing just that, as him and I had just climbed a tree. Every kid in town has their own, usually frighteningly bad, version of the pájero loco that greets Fred wherever he goes. Our personalities are damn near opposite, especially in terms of the introvert/extrovert scale, but we’ve become close friends. Like all friendships to some extent I guess, ours is one partly of coincidence. Fred lives just a few minutes down the hill from me, we’re in the same section, and we had all our language classes together.

Mo

Mo, seen here swinging wildly inaccurately at a piñata, is probably my best friend here. Like Fred, she ended up living relatively close by and was in our small language class. Now we’re the only two learning Ngabe, so I think we’re officially sick of each other. Since we will both be living in Ngabe sites, we were the only two that lived with Ngabe families in Las Nubes, and even though her situation wasn’t as extreme as mine, it was nice to have someone with whom to commiserate. Mo grew up on the Virgin Islands, so even though she is just as white as they come, she can quickly turn into ‘Island Mo,’ replete with neck-rolling attitude and a slanted form of English called ‘patwa.’

Elizabeth AKA ‘Hones’

Elizabeth, on the left in the picture, is my Northwest homie, originally from Portland. Her family pronounces her last name, Jones, ‘Hones,’ which is where her nickname comes from. She’s a Frisbee badass, and a badass in general. She lives just down the hill and is definitely one of the nicest people I know.

Dave AKA ‘Jersey Dave’

Dave, seen here about to die from putting too many marshmallows in his mouth at the same time, lost that particular game of ‘chubby bunny.’ Dave, despite his insistence that he doesn’t care if no one likes him, is the heart of our group. He refers to himself in the third person as ‘dudes,’ which is really obnoxious, but Dave is nothing if not obnoxious. And he can do Gob’s chicken dance amazingly well.

Stacey AKA ‘Rube’

In Spanish, ‘rubia’ means blonde, and even though Stacey dyed and cut her long, blonde, Southern California locks before Peace Corps, she can’t escape her rubianess, so she’s the Rube. She does and says so pretty dumb stuff, and, as per the requirement of living close to LA, cares about some really dumb stuff, but at heart she’s a nice person. This picture was taken at Las Lajas, where we spent our free day after Technical Week. The water was dirty, but it was beautiful.

Colin AKA ‘Modern Savage’

Colin is the only person from the other section (environment) with whom I am pretty close. I like most everybody in other group, in fact my closest volunteer in Cerro Iglesias is going to be a girl from that group, but we rarely get a chance to see them unfortunately. Colin’s nickname fits him to a t, as he is probably the most rugged volunteer in our group. Him and I see eye to eye on a lot of things, like reasons for being vegetarian and who would win in a battle between an elephant, a bear and a tiger (a tiger of course).