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.