Currently I am stuck in David under the Standfast Phase because of protests blocking the Pan-American Highway, the only and therefore most important highway in Panama. In other words, I have plenty of time to catch up on my blog, so a month and a half late, I am going to write a bit about Christmas, my new house, and Gender And Development (GAD) Camp. I should also forewarn you that my “s” and “3” buttons no longer work, so I am currently copy and pasting each s and 3. You don’t realize how many plural words you use until you are missing an s. So, please pardon any misspellings.
I’ll be honest and say that Christmas was one of my lower points here in Panama. I can only say that spending the holidays away from family and friends confirmed my love and appreciation for family in my life. I was very homesick, and really only wanted to be at home visiting with all of my extended family and friends. I also wanted to hear Graeme, my nephew, singing Christmas carols in person rather than over the phone.
Finally at 9 pm on Christmas Eve, the church service began. The service was nice. It was their typical three-hour long service with a few Christmas songs in both Spanish and Ngabere. To the delight of many children, or at least the ones that hadn’t fallen asleep by midnight, Santa arrived after the service finished. Santa was my 16-year-old host brother, Roger, dressed in a red pants, a red sweatshirt stuffed with a pillow, white socks to cover his hands, and a white cloth to cover his face and to create a beard. Santa handed out some presents, but only to kids whose parents had purchased the gift in advance. No freebies here. Afterwards, we exchanged Secret Santa gifts. The trick was that you had to guess who gave it to you by the description that the crowd gave you. Luckily, I went next to last and my host sister, Armani, had my name, so I didn’t have to worry about knowing the person’s name. That could have been embarrassing. At about 2 am we ate a very delicious soup of bananas, yucca, and other root vegetables. Finally, we went to sleep and I felt content and uplifted after seeing the community celebrate together in the church.
The following morning, Christmas morning, hosted another three-hour service. The specialty of the day was eating fish with bread, which they call Johnny cakes. This bread is amazing because it incorporates coconut milk. They are essentially round, but flat rolls that are baked in what we call a “doble paila,” a big, covered pot with a fire burning on top and below it. On the whole, Christmas was a good day to experience the culture, but I couldn’t help but miss my family and friends back home. You should look at the pictures I posted on Facebook. Let me know how they match up with the description I just gave.
Following my New Year’s Eve adventures I spent 10 wonderful days with my second host family. This family is the most forward-thinking family in Valle Escondido, in the sense that their son is the only community member attending college and they plan to send their youngest daughter to live with the oldest daughter in order to attend the last three years of high school. I also enjoyed playing with the two-month old grandson, David. Another major factor in my happiness there was being fed regularly, because in my previous host family, meals were sporadic on an unpredictable schedule or simply skipped. Simply put, I had a wonderful time with this host family, and I especially enjoyed the conversations with the family and the many visitors that would stop by.
After 10 days I moved into my beautiful, beautiful house. Some may call my house a hut, but I consider it a very beautiful wooden house on stilts with a corrugated metal roof. Moving into your own house and out of a host family is unbelievably amazing and rewarding. While I enjoyed my time with host families, five months with host families is a long time. Additionally, being able to cook for yourself makes a huge difference for a Peace Corps Volunteer. I can now eat as many vegetables (especially non-root, non-starchy vegetables) as I want, and it is glorious! Furthermore, I have many visitors stopping by just to say hi and to see the many pictures of family and friends on my wall. They often ask me if my nephew is my “chichi,” or my baby. Then, I get to explain that I am waiting to have children. But, my three-year-old friend, Chela, tells me daily that I should go to the big island to “comprar un chichi,” or buy a baby, so that it can “tomar mi chuchu,” or drink my breastmilk. Gotta love three-year-olds. J So, I had another funny experience when I was showing a few girls the photos I had recently printed. They brought along their little two-year-old sister as well. Cutting to the chase, the little girl pooped on my floor. While we weren’t paying attention, she pooped in her underpants and because she wasn’t wearing any pants, the pooped just plopped out onto the floor. On the bright side, I view this experience as a validation of my service, especially the latrine project I’m working on.
Wow! I’ve written a lot so I’ll save my description of GAD Camp and road blocks for another blog post.
