Often I feel like I´m not doing enough. I get restless and want to see change happening before my eyes. One of the better quotes of my APCD (boss) who just left us was¨"Development is a slow process, sustainable development is even slower." But looking back on my pictures I feel like I´ve been hard at work.
In early July fellow Peace Corps volunteers and I helped facilitate part 1 of our water seminar (pictures shown here) and part 2 was between August 10-12. Here we brought together community members who are on the water committee (or involved in designing a water system as is the case of my community participants) and taught them about how gravity fed water systems work, how to manage them, and how to organize the community to continually have funds and motivation to maintain the system. Molding tube, utilizing a model aqueduct to understand flow principles, and water treatment methods are just but a few of the workshop sessions.
It´s a great seminar developed by years of former volunteers. Community members are often just excited to get an opportunity to travel on the Peace Corps dime and eat meat, but I feel confident saying that they all leave with a better understanding of water systems and their management. Plus, it´s a great opportunity for volunteers to share their specialties and learn from each other. Not to mention some good English speaking time and catching up.
Meanwhile, back at site I recently had another Peace Corps volunteer from the Community Environmental Conversation program come and teach myself and community members how to make two new firewood cooking stove models.
Pictured here is the traditional "fagon" design, utilizing two large logs and a rock to cook the large pots of food these large families scarf down. In many places around Panama this large of firewood logs are no longer possible of finding due to deforestation, but my site is just beginning to experience this difficulty. However, there are also other concerns around women´s health due to smoke intake, the amount of time that is lost gathering firewood, and of course the desire to decrease global emissions.
To address these concerns many organizations around the Latin America have been promoting the estufa lorena. The problem with the estufa lorena is that most data indicates that the stove doesn´t cut down on fuel use. So a local NGO has developed the "bliss burner" which data shows does reduce the amount of fuel wood needed, smoke, and cooks food faster. This is a sleek design (pictured first) and most community members like it best from first site, however, if the plastic mold breaks there is no way to replace it. So the volunteer who visited me (Chris Brown) built a new mold that utilizes wood 2x4s and screws to make bricks that can be stacked and built into a nice little "tower" stove. Both designs use cement, clay, hay, sand, and water. So its been a fun little project. We just built one of each in the community center so women can check them out and see if they want to use them. There is certainly so barriers to change, such as women liking the smell of smoke, smoking fish and turtle, cutting the firewood differently, and having to learn how to build a new fire. But I´m hoping to get a few women convinced so that they can then promote the benefits to the rest of the community.
Otherwise I´ve been gathering more data about the water system we´re hoping to design. Mostly I´m trying to find leaders. I just got back from a leadership workshop and am hoping that the water committee president will start stepping it up and organizing community members to continue forward with the study we have before us. Most people continue to feel like I should just do everything and I continue to emphasize the sustainability necessity of their involvement so we don´t end up in another situation where they have an aqueduct that last 1 year and then sits broken for 12 years. It´s funny but I continue to experience many of the same challenges that I´ve dealt with all along. People asking when the tubes will arrive without any involvement in the project at all, telling me I´m rich, and largely still not understanding what Peace Corps is. But I remain hopeful that patience and repetition will solve all these misconceptions.
I also stay busy teaching English one day a week to the 7th, 8th, and 9th grade teachers in Cayo Paloma, and teaching English and playing games with the children on Saturdays. There is also always children at my house playing cards, playing frisbee, or teaching me cool tricks like making propellers that blow in the wind .
