Little Poem

The clouds hover over the ocean
Signaling the rain to come.
Gusts of wind give the final warning.
I find refuge within my hammock
Pen and Paper in hand.
I watch as lives move before me
Walking incessantly upon the white sand highway
Many find cover under my roof
The rain gives a perfect excuse to come
Look at my photos for the 10th maybe 20th time.
Pictures of Ghanaian chiefs and the salt plains of Bolivia,
Thermal waters of blue skies and red bacteria in Yellowstone
Always draw fascination.
Photos of community members and myself in the finca bring laughter.
Questions of the world always ensue.
“What country is at the edge of the Earth?”
“Where were you when the twin towers fell?”
I love these questions
I get out my map and try to explain that the Earth is round
I give lessons on world history and U.S. involvement in the Middle East
These are indeed my favorite moments.
The rain calms and with on visitor gone, another arrives
A new round of coffee or tea
A new story
The same questions.

Side Projects

I wanted to take some time and write about some side projects I´ve been working on aside from Playa Balsa´s aqueduct.


Sex Ed:
The nearest volunteer to me lives only 20 minutes away in Cayo Paloma where all the kids from 3 communities (including my own) go to school for preschool to 9th grade. Then it´s off to Kusapin, a two hour walk each way, for those seeking to graduate.
Throughout my year here it has been quite obvious that kids become sexually active early and simply rely on the pullout method. While birth rates alone show that this “family planning method” is not working, babies are popping out left and right, often against the mother´s desire, the newest threat is AIDS brought over from Bocas del Toro. About six months ago a girl died of AIDS in a nearby community and it was decided by the locals that it was because she ate pork. Thus, the need for sex ed was very apparent.

Mary Beth (the nearby volunteer) and I decided to go after the youngest possible age we thought we could get away with and thus chose 7th grade. We did 5 classes in total beginning with self-esteem and decision making lectures. One of my favorite activities was taken from Ashland Oregon´s Fresh Start program that I had participated and facilitated in High School. We split into small groups and each wrote a complement on a card for each member for the group, read them aloud, and then bundled them together with string. We then moved on to STIs, HIV/AIDS, and finally family planning, culminating with a condom demonstration on small bananas called buchu. I was extremely impressed by the kids maturity throughout the couse and was surprised but delighted by their excitement each day we arrived for class. Sadly, birth control including condoms are rarely accessible out here (the health center has been without any form of medicine, including birth control and condoms for 7 months now. So my hope remains in the decision making skills of these youngens. While with the previous generation many women got pregnant as early as 14, the average age seems to be more like 17 or 18 these days. Though girls still remain behind boys slightly in education level, they are catching up, leaving room for hope for the current generation.

Aside from that every Saturday I have been giving English lessons and playing games with the youngest kids in the community (4 to 11). The English is a bit of a joke given that many are just learning to read and write, but I quickly moved into more dynamic lesson plans which helps immensely. More than anything however, the kids come for the games. Duck duck goose, capture the flag, playa mar, tiger-hombre-rifle, etc. I began this tradition to justify kicking the loads of kids off my porch now and again so I wouldn´t feel so bad, but I´ve grown extremely fond of this weekly activity and the kids remain a vital element to my mental health. They always have so much energy and enthusiasm for life. They remain positive even in the most dire moments of poverty, and are all around an inspiration. Having said that, I tire quickly and certainly leave the two hour class beat.

Finally, I have been working with two other volunteers to finish a project financially supported by an Eco Tourism resort near Bocas. Much of the project has been simply damage control from some volunteers before my time. While the composting latrine built for tourists was done perfectly (although the community wouldn´t be caught dead using it) the source capture was built on top of gravel and the water quickly eroded under it. So Audrey, Luis, and I started by fixing the source capture, hooked up a 500 gallon tank and surveyed the 11 houses that could possibly benefit from the system. I then designed the aqueduct system (which will sadly only benefit 10 of the 11 houses given the height of one of the homes), sent the list of materials to the Eco Tourism Resort, and will soon be moving into construction phase of that project. Meanwhile, with Audrey´s replacement volunteer, Eric, I hope to push watershed and system management and maintenance education. I hope that Eric and I can finish the project up so it passes through no more PCVs hands and gets water to the community as soon as possible. Plus, it appears to be the perfect time filler until my PCPP funds come in to begin Playa Balsa´s system.

Oh yeah, and teaching English to the 7th, 8th, and 9th grade teachers in Cayo Paloma once a week.

Work Hard Play Hard

Perhaps it´s a good sign when a great deal of time has elapsed since my last post. Shows that I´ve been doing something. Or perhaps it is simply indicative of the isolation of my site and the lack of computer time that such a site provides me. I think both reasons are applicable here.

Sustainable development has many shades of grey. How does one decide when to hold the hand of your community members and when to let go and push them to take initiative? How do you know what will truly leave lasting change? When community members will learn best by doing and when they can learn by seeing? I have struggled endlessly with questions like these, wondering just what the right recipe for sustainable development is for my particular community, community leaders, and improving potable water. A dash of inspiration here, a pinch of guilt trip there, and a cup of motivational speech “I´m onlypushing you because I believe in you” to top it off.

The difficulties of small scale development are numerous. In a community of 200 or 7 billion, you have to seek out the best leaders possible, and not one of them will be perfect. But when elections consisted of members like the treasurer of your water committee being chosen while sleeping through the meeting and has no mathematical aptitude, things become a bit more interesting. Talking to fellow Peace Corps Volunteers, some just get those near perfect leaders. Whatever it is they are driven, passionate, and community minded individuals. The gems. And it´s in those communities where positive change for the community almost comes about naturally. It only takes one, and that one can make all the difference. And there are other communities where you have a handful of potential leaders, but not one of them really has that fire, that motivation, that drive to better the lives within their community. They want change, they can envision improved living conditions and a better life, but they aren´t entirely willing to go the extra mile to get there. That is my community. A number of potential leaders that I love and respect, but who simply don´t quite have what it takes to be that change shaking force in the community. But I believe that is communities that struggle in this sense who need a Peace Corps Volunteer even more. It means more motivation from me, me trying even harder to instill motivation in their hearts, and constantly finding that balance between pushing them and holding their hand. Volunteers always say that emotions in Peace Corps are like a rollercoaster, it´s rare for them to last longer than a few minutes. But honestly, my emotions have been nothing but pride for the last three weeks.

My community and I have finalized a grant proposal to build a series of small aqueducts and improve one current system, to bring potable water to the entire community of 200. I´m so proud of my community. Throughout the last 9 months they have worked hard to organize themselves and work with me to better understand what is potable water, address the community´s needs, and design a system that will better serve those needs. They´ve helped me measure flow, survey multiple potential sources, and ultimately make the tough decisions necessitated by the unique geographical and water characteristics of their community.

We have recently submitted a $15,000 grant proposal. $5,000 of which will come from the community through their labor, sand, wood, and vegetables and fish (for work parties), and $10,000 of which we are seeking to buy tubes, cement, tools, rebar, transportations costs, and gravel. Environmental Health Panama is lucky because we have a great relationship with an international organization called Water Lines (that is actually out of Santa Fe New Mexico) which will contribute half of the funds to the project. Leaving me with finding the other half ($5,000).

While I have always been very honest of the struggles involved for small scale grass roots development workers, and have certainly not over glorified my own experience, I do adamantly believe that the work I am doing is incredibly important and credible. I look at the way Panama´s Ministry of Health and UN projects for potable water are executed and the way Peace Corps executes our work, and we do such a better job. The project is better designed and built, but more importantly we spend the time to make sure that community members are truly involved along every step of the way. And that is simply because we give two years to these communities to educate and design a project alongside them, and other organizations are in and out and just need to get the job done. They have limited resources and have decided to utilize a more macro scale to achieve their projects. But that often leaves the community without the ownership necessary to properly maintain their water system.

The grant proposal should be online and able to be donated to if you have any desire to do so within the next month. I´ll put the link to the tax deductible donation link as soon as it goes through the bureaucratic steps necessary to get it there. I certainly do not want anybody to feel obligated to donate. I´m going to go after larger organizations first like Rotary and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Orgs and then if I´m still struggling for funds I might be sending out personal emails to friends and family.

On a personal note I recently had my best buddies from high school visit me for an amazing time together. So good to see those fellows! I´m just returning from a rafting trip at another volunteer´s site and an all-inclusive resort called the Decameron where we celebrated our one years mark in site (one to go). I will be back in Portland Oregon to see my beautiful family, my new niece Ivie, and friends for Thanksgiving. I can´t stop thinking about the food! And then for Christmas and News Years I will sail through the San Blas Islands to Columbia on a 40 foot sailboat, to visit another volunteer´s family there with 8 other volunteers. I´m already feeling quite spoiled just thinking about it.

I hope all is well in everybody´s lives. Miss you all. Thanks for reading.

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 .

The composting latrine/water catchment

I just really wanted to post a picture of the awesome 67 gallon ferro cement tank that my buddy Tolichi (Luis Gram) and I built to collect water for my house. I've got it piped to my house for a wonderful outdoor shower and a sink faucet.

To the left of the tank is where I compost my poop from a bucket I use. Its pretty exciting stuff I know. I'm trying to promote the bucket latrine for elderly and disabled people in my community and have gone as fare and sticking my nose right up to the bucket vent and taking a big wiff to prove it doesn't smell (which it didn't). Ahh the work of an Environmental Health volunteer.

Some images of me working with the newly formed water committee.

So my family has left me and yet I still remain in Panama City. After many years of a popping/cracking shoulder blade that has only worsened throughout my time proving myself in my community via manual labor and of course building my house, I am undergoing a bit of physical therapy. I feel a bit guilty being away from my community for so long, but I also want to take care of this problem before it progresses worse. So, I'm trying to embrace this unexpected time in the city as an opportunity to connect with friends and family online and plan out my upcoming projects, without visitors constantly at my door.

Getting time alone in my site is surprisingly hard to do. You would think otherwise. For god's sake, I live in the middle of nowhere. But what continues to become very clear is that the Ngäbes in my community have an EXTREMELY social culture. During the four days in my site with my lovely parents and sister Nina, we couldn't remember one moment at my house without 10 adults and children sitting on the front porch wanting to interact with us. We were consistently saying goodbye to one group of guests explaining that we were tired or needed some time alone only to hear SILIIII! screamed from vocal chords of the next arriving guest who wanted to come meet the family. It was bit exhausting for all of us. But it was wonderful to share the experience of my everyday life with my family, so they can better understand what I'm going through down here.

It's not to say that I'm undergoing this unimaginably difficult service, but I consistently find it difficult to articulate the challenges that I do have in my community, and like my mother said, you have to experience them first hand. Ultimately one of the most difficult parts of the whole thing is that the people are so generous and excited to interact with you, that its almost impossible to tell the 10 people hanging out on your porch for the last 2 hours that you need some alone time. "Alone time?" This culture has no idea what that even means. As my good friend and fellow volunteer said, "you'll never even see one of our community members in a hammock alone, there is always at least two people in there." And yet, I appreciate my alone time. I need it. I've always been someone who needs to read and write, and do at least a little recharging in silence. So I'll be there, hanging out on my porch or in my house writing a report or doing some reading, and someone from the community comes up to my porch, radio in hand, and most of the time its not even on. But I guess they've come to serenade me. Because they always turn that sucker right on as soon as they arrive onto the porch. In the moment I can get so frustrated, upset that my personal space was just invaded, but as I write this, I do so with a huge smile, chuckling away about the habits of the people I live with and the way our lives have become intertwined. I'm still learning to find that balance between remaining sane and truly giving myself to the community as I came down here to do.

So back to the beginning. My family's stay was such a great experience. We ended up seeing four bright fluorescent turquoise Quetzals in Boquete and went on this amazing coffee tour with 7' tall man named Hans from Holland. We got pretty perfect weather at my site and really throughout the entire trip. At sight we went on a 4-5 roundtrip hike deep into the jungle to a pineapple planation of this medicine man who I love. I was so impressed with my family's willingness and abilities to hike through the depths of the jungle. We played in the water on one of the beaches near me, bought some gorgeous hand woven bags from the women in a nearby community, and as mentioned before, did a lot of visiting. One of my favorite memories is when we got picked up at 5:30 in the morning in this dugout canoe to boat to another community to catch a boat off the peninsula. My mom looked at the boat, slightly frightened and said "no lifejackets?" and my dad and I just looked at her and said "sorry grace no life jackets this time." What a trooper. She just jumped right on and we were off. And while I thought it might make her worry more to know what it takes to get out to my site, she was actually comforted knowing that she had done it and lived to tell the story.

I feel so blessed to have had the love of my life, my parents, and my sister Nina come visit me. And I am so excited that a group of my best buddies from high school and college are coming down in september as well as my sister Laura in February. And I can't wait to come home for christmas to see my baby niece who is yet to enter this world, and of course the rest of my family (especially the mother and father, Nicole and Trav) who sadly and yet so wonderfully will not be able to visit.

Peace Corps still lives and breathes by the three goals set forth by JFK. 1) Providing technical assistance 2)Helping countries outside the United States understand US culture 3)Helping US citizens understand peoples of other countries

I thank you all for helping to promote these goals simply by reading.

Water Committees, Latrines, and Visitors

You must forgive me for taking so long since my last post. Entering civilization for just a few days after a month in site continually leaves me racing and a bit overwhelmed to communicate with all those I wish to communicate with. Trying to write emails, type up work reports, making and receiving calls back home, and connecting with other Peace Corps volunteers here in Panama left me with no time for a blog last time. I love receiving feedback about my blog though and really appreciate all those who are reading it.

Since my last blog I enjoyed the always wonderful and energizing company of my first visitor Helen Jones. We got to explore beautiful Taboga Island, Bocas and Bastimentos Island, ride on a giant dug out boat with a full grown cow as one of many passengers back to my site, move into my cabin, and then experience the debauchery of carnival. The community loved her visit and have made it very difficult to try and put her out of my mind given that they ask we constantly about her, or point out that the flowers she planted are winning in the growing race to my banana trees. The women were stoked to take her sardine-ing, show her how to make coconut oil, and demonstrate how they make cras (woven bags made from a natural or synthetic fiber). Needless to say, I was a sad little puppy when returning to my site and spending my first nights alone in my cabin.

Remaining busy appears to be the best remedy to missing loved ones so I’ve continued to work on my house, my garden, and begin capacitating a newly formed a water committee about potable water and methods necessary to design and build the aqueduct. The community certainly moves at a different pace than my energy and enthusiasm finds desirable. After returning from in-service-training last month I felt extremely eager to continue with the capacitation trainings. I arrived on a Sunday and tried to program a meeting with the water committee for Thursday. “No, we’re busy Thursday.” “Well how about Friday or Wednesday.” “Na, lets just wait until next Thursday because we picked Thursday for our meeting date and we should stick to it.” So I used the time to write a development plan and work around my house only to find out the following week that the community had planned for the president of the water committee to get merchandise for the store on Thursday. I protested so they changed the date, but nevertheless it made me have to give a little lecture about the importance of this committee.

Community members without tubes shoved in a creek bringing water to their house constantly ask me “when is the water going to arrive, my back hurts from carrying water” trying to complain in the most pathetic of voices so I hurry up with the project. But I try to empathetically explain to them that it’s a process and that now the water committee is just as responsible for the project as I am, and that they should ask those members. But even the water committee has yet to fully internalize that they are just as responsible for the success or failure of the project. And while I remain optimistic about the process of educating the water committee so that they can educate the rest of the committee and do the measurements and studies necessary to plan the gravity fed water system, they are struggling at times to assume such a role. Communities in Panama are never asked to be apart of a project like this. A politician usually hires an engineer from Panama City to come into the community, design and build the aqueduct with no education or feedback, and in a few years the aqueduct becomes damaged and the community doesn’t no a thing about how to fix it. This very thing happened to my community 12 years ago. I think this not only leaves them without water, but also hurts the morale of the community and their prospects for being apart of their own development. Any broken or unused infrastructure project sits there as a reminder that the community can’t develop and that they remain trapped in poverty. But if I can show them how to design the system, ask them to make some of the most important decisions about the project, have them build it, and teach them how to maintain it, then when I’m gone and a problem arrases, they wont have to wait another 12 years for someone to come along and try and fix it. It’s a slow process though and I’m starting from the very basics, teaching about water-shed management, the water cycle, contaminants, all while teaching about measuring flow, measure height differences between potential sources, tank locations, and homes, and then distances between these.

And then after we have the entire design ready the next stage will be soliciting for funds. It looks plausible that a local water and sanitation representative might be able to donate some of the tubes, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Most of the funds however will come from a funding source called Peace Corps Partnership Project (PCPP), where theoretically anybody scanning the web could read my (not yet written) proposal and donate to my project, but more than likely will come from friends, family, church groups, returned Peace Corps volunteers, or any other organizations that I email in search of funds. Then on top of that Peace Corps Panama has a strong relationship with two organizations that donate up to half of the funds received from the PCPP.

On top of the water project I’m also gearing up to start educating about the importance of latrines and hoping to build a pilot latrine project. I want to build just one composting latrine and have families take turns using it and providing me with feedback about whether they could actually see themselves using and maintaining it if we built one beside their home. Too often in the past Peace Corps Volunteers have built latrines in communities only to see them unused or never fully finished because Ngabes are simply much more comfortable pooping in the creek. Like mentioned earlier, I think it is a greater disservice to have unused latrines sitting in a community than none at all. So I’m not going to be twisting anybody’s arm to build a latrine next to his or her home. Those who remain committed after the pilot project will have to attend mandatory meetings and put a small financial deposit down before construction of latrines will begin.

Currently my sister Nina and my parents are here visiting (amazing!). After visiting the Panama Canal and enjoying many delicious meals in the city as mom tries to put those 15 pounds I’ve lost back on my, we enjoyed the relaxed rhythm of Las Lajas Beach Resort and are now currently in Boquete. After exploring the host springs, going on a coffee tour, and search for the elusive Quetzal we will take off for my site where I’m eager for my parents and Nina to see my daily life in Panama, the cabin I am oh so proud of, and meet my sweet community members. Hopefully we’ll get some good weather and be able to enjoy the great snorkeling I’ve discovered right in front of my house (where I will soon be honing my spear fishing skills), do some bird watching in the jungle, and eat some delicious michila maduro (ripe boiled and smashed bananas will coconut milk). We’re also discussing brining seeds to start a campaign to integrate more nutritious vegetables into the local diet after I figure out what grows well there and maybe some egg laying chickens which I’ve been promising to the local store so they can sell their own eggs rather than bringing them for Chirique Grande.