Challenges and Successes

My December Home

Little Cutie

Hauling Panka

Well it has been an exciting first three weeks in site.

Swear in was an amazing experience and President Martinelli actually gave a very genuine speech on the spot.  The days after were spent on the beach trying to soak up my peers´ presence before separation, and perhaps led to my immune system taking a beating (more on that soon).  For some reason I decided to punish myself upon entering my site and rather than getting a boat ride directly to my site I decided to get dropped off at La Ensenada because I knew that I would be using that comunidad to leave my peninsula and thought I should learn the trail.  Bad idea!  With three large bags containing groceries and my possessions I ventured through an extremely muddy path laden with a few boards to tight rope walk in an effort to not have mud up to your thigh.  My tight rope walking skills were not nearly developed enough to not find myself constantly stuck in the mud trying to get my chacos up an out of the mud without dropping the three bags.  But soon I heard the ocean and found myself half way there before having to cross another similar stretch.  By the time I got to my new home I was covered in mud, tired and not feeling too hot.  I entered the home to find a visitor from another community there aggressively flirting with me as I slumped against the wall, halfway lying on the floor, not wanting to do anything other than sleep.  This feeling remained for next two weeks as I was hit with an intense cold as it rained consecutively for a week straight.  Three days into site I developed an ear infection that is still giving me trouble and resulted in me having to leave site two weeks in to go to David (a six hour one way travel endeavor) for better medicine than my centro de salud could offer.  Being so remote makes it difficult to want to leave but it was a good lesson that I need to be a little less stubborn and take better care of my health.  

But throughout these three weeks I´ve been able to have some truly incredible experiences and earned some people´s initial respect by doing manual labor and pasearing (visiting houses).  Whether it is carrying panka as the ocean pounds against me and trys to take me away, working in the finca, or carrying firewood through what feels like unbearable distances at the time, I´ve come to learn the incredible strength of my community.  Each time after hauling panka or firewood, I would be exhausted, so grateful to be done with the treacherous trip, only to find out that we were going to do it again.  But this is all apart of proyecto amistad, earning the people´s confianza.  One of my better moments was pasearing at a community members home name Isaac.  He is a 4´10´´ man, buff, and fierce.  Supposedly with a voice of a howler monkey when it come to salomaring (a type of call used in the campo-spelling probably is not correct, especially since in spanglish).  But after I interviewed him about who he was related to, the education of his family, the health of his family, politics, and the like, I asked him if he had any hopes or desires for me and the kind of work I would do over the next two years.  He told me that he has a tendency to get angry but that he is a man of god and must hold his temper.  But that I have brought nothing but contentment and happiness to his life since I have come into the community.  That seeing me work beside them, visiting house to house, and trying to gain his community’s trust will result in him helping me every step of the way throughout my time there.  Whether building my house or trying to work with the community on water or sanitation.  I can’t even begin to explain how rewarding it was to hear a man of this caliber express his gratitude towards me and the method of Peace Corps.  

There have other hard moments.  Like me bringing food to contribute to the family for the month and watching it get consumed in two days.  I was then continually asked for money to buy rice and other simple cooking supplies everyday until I finally said I could no longer do that.  The difficulty is the poverty is so real, all they want to buy is rice, but I also must draw a line between what I can provide financially to try and destroy the myth that Peace Corps comes with tons of money, that every gringo is rich.  I have a huge money sign on my forehead and yet continually I try to explain that I am not wealthy and that inequality exists in my country as much as it does in their own.  But then there is some degree to which no matter which way you spin it I am so much more economically privileged than they are.  I mean there are 13 living in my home right now not including myself, one night getting up to 18 with more children and grandchildren visiting.  That is a lot of mouths to feed.  So we eat mostly boiled name (a tuber) and buchu (young small bananas) with a little bit of salt and sometimes coconut, and believe me it is not that glamorous.  But then sometimes they catch delicious fish or kill a duck or chicken.  But when there isn´t meat of any kind everybody in town answers the question Ma ba no (how are you) with: there is no meat, so not too good. 

Language is a whole other problem.  I know so rarely what is going on and groups rarely translate things into Spanish for me.  But I´m teaching English class on Sundays with the idea of them trying to help me with ngabere.  To be honest there is so much to say but I think I will stop it there for fear of this blog becoming too long.  

If anyone is interested in writing I would love to correspond.  My new address is

Charles Walker

David, Chiriqui

Entrega General

0426

Panama, Rep de Panama

Much love.  Thank you so much for the support.  It’s nice to know that you all are out there sending me love. 
  Until next time.

Site Visit

Last week I met my community counterpart for the first time.  It was an exciting moment that could potentially shape the next two years of my life.  One which I will certainly always remember, and one which I came away with feeling like luck was on my side. 

Peace Corps Panama had asked all communities who were to receive a volunteer to send a representative to a town called Farallon where they would meet their volunteer (us) and get a small workshop explaining the work of Environmental Health (EH) and Peace Corps.  Having community members leave their home and venture to a town they have likely never heard of to pick up their volunteer is honestly a tall order.  For this reason 5 of my EH friends were without volunteers the first day.  One community all together decided that they didn't want a volunteer, one volunteer's community guide showed up a day late, and the other three were taken into the Comarca Ngabe-Bugle to visit their communities and make sure they were still interested (which they all were).  In most situations their has been some breakdown in communication, bad weather, or more often than not, they were just scared. 

One important distinction to make is the difference between the community guide and counterpart.  Whoever showed up to pick up their community´s volunteer is the ¨community guide,¨ but this person could or could not be or become your ¨counterpart.¨  Your counterpart is someone who the volunteer recognizes as a leader in the community.  Someone who can help me organize the community, put on workshops, and ultimately assist me in bring water and sanitation to the community.  I am lucky to say that I recognized my community guide as my counterpart.

His name is Opidio.  He is a humble and honest man.  When I asked him what he did for a living he told me that he built boats but that it rarely provided enough income to feed his family.  I asked him how much he sold his boats for and he told me that he tries to sell the large ones for hunting turtles (more on this soon) for $50 dollars but that he must understand that his people are humble like himself and often will only be allowed to pay him payments of $15 over the course of sometimes years.  When we watched baseball on a large screen in the complex at Farallon that the Peace Corps was renting for us for the night he told me that he had never seen baseball on tv before.  When he saw the book I was reading (One hundred years of solitude) and I asked him if he liked to read novels he told me he had never seen a book like that before.  This was one of the few times he had left his province.  He admitted that he was scared to come find me and over my five day visit we often joked about how he had tried to call his mother during his trip, how she never got the message, and she told me that she stayed up all night worried about him.  Now mother´s worrying even when their son is 45 isn´t really that uncommon even in the states (at least in my family).  But I guess I bring all this up because it is a reflection of the size of my community´s world.  Its a small world.  One where most of the family lives within a two hour hike.  There is very little there.  The education is minimal and mostly ineffective.  For god´s sake, I´m there to help them have clean water and a place to use the bathroom.  If that isn´t a reflection of their circumstance I don´t know what is.

The place is beautiful though and the people are kind, hilarious, and hard working (well at least for a beach community).  They are excited to have me there.  Everybody greets me with huge smiles and tries to converse with me in Ngabere.  I can say simple phrases like how are you, what is your name, answer those questions, and I even gave a short presentation about my self in ngabere.  For the most part though I just listen to a language from another world, hear the word gringo every now and again followed by laughter and I smile and laugh with them.  After my introduction there was also a 15 minute comical debate about what to name me.  Although Opidio´s grandfather had named me Choda after a founder of the comunity, when my EH volunteer friends heard this name they laughed because of its similarity to an english slang word.  And for some reason the community also felt like I had been named without btheir consent, so I am now Sili Cruomü, still named after a founder and my last name is the name of the town in Ngabere.  Opidio is still sad that I{m not named after his relative.  The elderly and women speak little Spanish and nobody converses in Spanish if not talking to me.  Í feel lucky to know as much Spanish as I do, but its obvious to me that part of earning my community´s trust and respect will be accomplished by me learning their language.

Respect and trust are the words I will be seeking for the next three months, to ensure the success of the next two years.  As my APCD likes to call it we are beginning ¨Proyecto Amistad¨ (project friendship).  In changing people´s behavior in relation to very personal acts such as using the bathroom, it absolutely behooves me to become as much apart of the community as I can.  That is why I will  be living with three different families over the course of the next three months, going house to house, and trying to understand the needs, desires, and abilities of my community.  The next three months will also be an opportunity for me to put on interactive workshops where the community collectively maps out their village, writes out their average day, and makes a seasonal calendar.  And eventually I will trying to get my community to do a needs assessment that hopefully concludes with their desire to undertake water and sanitation projects but also teaches the tool of how to recognize the desires of a community and puts them into action. 

Already I have witnessed the promise of my community.  Opidio building me my own latrine because of his embarrassment that they poop in the creek is a reflection of their awareness that pooping in the creek isn´t a very good thing and that they desire to do otherwise.  As John F. Kennedy wrote out in the Peace Corps three missions, technical support is only one aspect of the Peace Corps, the other two are simply cultural exchange in hopes of creating lasting international peace.  We´ve discussed religion, the causes of poverty worldwide, and debated their hunting of sea turtles.  A difficult topic when they have been doing it for centuries without any declining populations and use it for subsistence, while the plight of sea turtles have really been largely caused by large fishing boat´s nets not having TEDs (turtle exclusion devices).  But I am excited about all the work I have before me, the beauty that I will be surrounded by over the next two years, and the openness and enthusiasm of my counterpart and community.

I´m very isolated and communicating with friends and family will certainly be missed.  Every three weeks I will leave to buy groceries and communicate with work, family and friends.  I recently bought a cell phone so please email me if you are interested in having that number.  Until then I wish everyone a wonderful few weeks.  I will be officially sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer this Thursday and will be meeting the President of Panama, Ricardo Martinelli, so lets hope I don´t trip or something.

Training and Site Placement

Bienvenidos a todos!

I´m trying this blog world out while working here in Panama with the Peace Corps.  I´m hoping to use this blog for more of the development work and cultural exchange side of my work here and reserve personal emails for more personal conversations.

For the last six weeks I have been living with a host family in the town of Rio Congo near Chorrera (about an hour and a half west of Panama City).  Twenty other volunteers and I make up group 66 of Peace Corps Panama.  We are currently Peace Corps Trainees on our 10 week route to become Peace Corps Volunteers.  Our mission, if we choice to accept it, is to educate rural and indigenous communities about water and sanitation while also assisting them to provide small scale infrastructural improvements to their communities.  In the last six weeks I have learned to build composting and pit latrines, repair aqueducts, the basics if gravity fed water systems, and how to educate adults effectively about improving their health in relation to water and sanitation. 

I have been very pleased with the Peace Corps´ promotion and conceptualization of sustainable development.  I find it funny that many of the critiques aimed at the Peace Corps and I myself was guilty of consisted of a fear that they came into communities without cultural sensitivity and ¨pushed¨ US ways of doing things onto others.  Some form of cultural imperialism.  Unable to realize the brillance and resourcefulness of the campesinos themselves.  Or that we came into communities with an agenda and didn´t really address the desires of the people.  This my friends is everything Peace Corps tries to avoid.  We have had countless classes on how to access the needs of a community.  Our first three months are dedicated to our community analysis or ¨proyecto amistdad¨ (friendship project) as my APCD (Associate Peace Corps Director: aka my boss) likes to call it.  This time is spent getting to know the entire community, learning their way of life, their skills, their talents, and addressing those areas where they could use some help.  Our number one desire is to destroy paternalism and build upon passionate community leaders skills to help communities help themselves. 

In my time here I have traveled to the Comarca Ngabe-Bugle (Comarca´s are similar to U.S. Indian Reservations-land dedicated to indigenous communities to repay lands lost during colonization) for a volunteer visit of five days where I witnessed devastating poverty that consisted of babies with blown out bellies from worms and dirt floored homes for six to eight the size of my bedroom for one back in the States.  This poverty was accompanied by extremely hard working, generous, and kind people.  The Ngabe (or Ngobe depending on the publication) originally inhabited the Pacific Coastal lands but were slowly pushed up into the mountains and over to the Caribbean Sea by the Spanish and Mestizos.  Older generations speak Ngabere but the children have lost contact with the language due to their schools only teaching English and Spanish.  Two years ago one of our language professors published the first written account of the Ngabere language and this year marked a pilot project to bring Ngabere into some Comarca classrooms.  The success of this will most likely be dependent on Ngabe people actually teaching this subject, which is difficult given that many Ngabe communities have trouble paying for their children´s transport to school.  During my site visit a very bright boy that was my volunteer´s counterpart´s son had just finished middle school but given the distance to high school he was left at home to help his father with the farm.  Effectively, many Ngabes don´t make it beyond a sixth grade education. 

A week ago I returned from the Darien (the jungle area between Panama and Columbia: impassable) where my group and I spent 10 days building two composting latrines, two pit latrines, two new tap stands, fixing pipes, understanding gravity fed water systems in the field, and engaging in cultural exchange by living with a host family.  The community was called Pueblo Nuevo and was an Embera-Wounaan community.  Although two large Comarcas were created for these people recently, many have lived in their communities for over 30 years and weren´t about to leave the easy access of the Panamerican Highway to enter the jungle and have rights to their land.  Consquently the government allows Embera-Wounaan people living in the so called ¨collective lands¨ no private property rights and live with only a titled lease to their community and the inability to access loans by using their property as collateral.  My family was a Wounaan family are were generous and kind beyond belief.  My saddest moment however was learning late at night that the three children in my family went to bed hungry after my fellow volunteer and I had already eaten.  The projects we did in Pueblo Nuevo are the antithesis of Peace Corps promotion of sustainable development as I´m sure all your critical minds have noticed, but their was a volunteer in the community who worked to provide the infrastructure to those most in need and who will spend her remaining two years educating the community about their proper use and maintenance.  However, this does not make it entirely sustainable and acts much more as a training exercise for us to bring the skills we will need to our respective communities. 

That said, onto today´s news: my site placement.  If you go to google maps and type in Bocas del toro panama you back up a bit you will see a bunch of islands in the south and to the east and then a peninsula jetting out from the east.  At the top of the peninsula is Kusapin, a two hour hike from there will bring you to my community of Playa Balsa going down the peninsula on the Caribbean side.  My main access point will be Chiriqui Grande.  I´ll take a two hour boat ride from there.  I´m officially in the Comarca Ngabe-Bugle but my region is much more similar to Bocas del Toro.  My spot is reported to be gorgeous. White sandy beaches, turquoise waters, spearfishing under water, and good surf.  My community has never worked with an agency so they were extremely excited when the Peace Corps showed up for their multiple site development visits when they said they would, and are supposedly very eager to start on composting latrines and improve their aqueduct system and potentially start collecting rain to drink.  I have no available cell phone access and Internet is a two hour boat ride away in Chiriqui grande so although this email is extremely long, there will be relatively few. 

I hope everyone´s life is going well and thank you for being my teachers, friends, and inspiration.

I´m stoked!