Monday, May 21, 2012

How's Life?


            Life is good. Since my birthday I feel like life has kicked itself into full gear. Immediately after my birthday I traveled to Farallon, Cocle, where Peace Corps often holds training sessions for PCVs. In this case, I was there for Reconnect In-Service Training (or what we call IST). Did I mention that this training site is a convenient 20-minute walk away from the beach? And, yes I do feel like a spoiled Peace Corps Volunteer. Despite its close proximity to the beach, I learned a great deal at IST. For instance, I started off with a little refresher of the Spanish subjunctive and Ngabere. Then, the veteran EH PCVs went to work teaching us more about water committee seminars, aqueduct trouble shooting, rainwater catchment, ferrocement, NeatWorks, and latrines. NeatWorks is a computer program that can design a gravity fed water system, or what PCVs usually call an aqueduct, for you when provided with the surveying data, or essentially the change in altitude recorded using a water or abney level. Call me a nerd, but I thought it was cool, and I’m looking forward to using it to help both San Cristobal (my closest PCV Kim’s site) and Valle Escondido. Then, Louis, or Tolichi in Ngabere, talked about his work on composting latrines. Now is your chance to really call me a nerd because I am fascinated and extremely impressed with Louis’ composting latrine work in Bahia Azul. He has managed to adapt the compost latrine design to account for certain cultural factors of the Ngabes. In response to the water-washing habits of his community, Louis invented the Ngabe Bidet that utilizes a rainwater catchment system and retrofit toilet seat over the unused composting chamber. He has worked on other aspects of the design as well, including ferrocement seats, in lieu of the insanely heavy concrete seats. The lightweight seats will not be sealed with concrete to the base as is customary with the concrete seats, so these seats can be moved to allow for easier mixing of the compost. Now, the challenge for me is to get my community to accept a few changes to the design that they have been building for the past year and a half. Anyway, at the end of the training, I felt energized and excited to get back to site to get to work.
            After enjoying the rare chance to video Skype with Brad and a Sunday full of baseball between my community and Bahia Honda, a community on a neighboring island, I went to work at Kim’s site. Both Eric and Ben from my training group, Group 69 Environmental Health, joined Kim and me in San Cristobal to investigate her aqueduct. Accompanied by four community members, we hiked to the spring source. First, we discovered that something (What? We don’t know…) is growing rapidly in the catchment tank. Second, fist-sized holes have formed in the catchment tank but had gone unnoticed because of the mud and debris surrounding it. I have to admit we are still troubleshooting all the possible issues with the water system, but I’m hoping that we’ve made it clear that poking random holes into the pipe is bad. Yes, they may have issues with trapped air, but they clearly don’t need holes that now have nice fountains squirting out of them. You know, just a thought. We also began surveying the mainline of the aqueduct with a water level. Unfortunately, the water level can only measure 15 m at a time, so for a system that is about 1.5 km, you can understand it may seem a little tedious. Plus, the community members probably now think all gringos, including their Volunteers, are crazy. On one occasion, I actually had to be pulled out of (or what I would consider to be rescued from) thigh-high mud. I’m sure I’ve never looked and smelled so lovely in all my life. Oh, and Ben took a video of it. Overall, the surveying was a good experience of working directly with the community and its water committee. Last week Kim and I finished the survey with a few community members and I hope that in the next week I can report back saying that I have written up an informe (one-page description of suggested improvements).
            After working in Kim’s site, Ben made a little visit to my site. He recorded a video of Hipolito (or Poli), my counterpart, describing a composting latrine. I loved watching Poli advertise the composting latrine as if he were trying to sell it. He would make such a good Peace Corps Volunteer! I don’t know what sparked the sudden movement, but that following Monday Poli and I began working on the half-finished latrines. Using the damaged, or let’s say less than perfect, cement, Poli and I attached toilet seats to the base, sealed concrete doors to the base, and built the frame of the casita (the privacy structure on the composting latrine).  Other odds and ends involved installing the urine diversion tubes and collecting several sacks worth of dried grass to line the base of the latrine. Poli really enjoys making jokes about putting the grass there so that the poop doesn’t plop down and stick to the concrete base. Gotta love campo-style potty humor!
            I need to jump back in time a little bit to say that while I was at IST, Ministerio de Salud (MINSA) came to my community and talked with some of the community leaders about dengue and other mosquito-borne diseases. The result was a push to clean up the trash in the community that often pool water and become mosquito breeding grounds. So, Sunday April 7 I was picking up candy wrappers, tin cans, bottle caps, and more candy wrappers. I made the mere suggestion that we have a trash collection competition amongst the youth for a prize, and a few signs and prizes later, we had 25 kids collecting mountains of trash from all over the community. Seeing the success of the competition, Rogelio, a community leader and my first host dad, wanted to reward the kids with more prizes. The following Monday he went to Bocas with two letters, one in Spanish written by the Kindergarten teacher and one in English written by yours truly. He took these letters to various businesses, restaurants, and hotels to ask for a few dollars of support. He received about $10 in total and couldn’t have been happier with himself. Additionally, some people gave him their phone numbers for me to contact them. As a result, that Thursday three Canadians came to visit Valle Escondido. I played the role of tour guide, but luckily they just wanted to see how the community lives and to take pictures.
            I should also mention that the previous night the Artesanas (artisan group) met for the first time in three or so years. The Artesanas have decided to use the $60 that I got as a Volunteer Advisory Council (VAC) Grant to buy cacao from neighbors. The, the group toasts and grinds the cacao. From this ground cacao, the women form 4 oz (or there about) balls of cacao. Ultimately, these cacao balls are sold on Isla Colon for $1, so slowly but surely we are collecting money to buy poplin to make naguas. I hope to talk about the Artesanas more in a later blog because a lot of artisan training opportunities have recently developed.
            Back to the afternoon that the tourists left, I left with them and took the direct overnight bus from Almirante to Panama City. This visit to the city was for Training of Trainers (TOT). Sounds silly doesn’t it? Regardless, I am very excited to help train the incoming Group 71 Environmental Health Volunteers. Funny thing about this trip, afterwards I realized that Panama has changed me…I can’t even live in air conditioning. The overnight buses are notoriously cold, so I simply froze. I arrived in Panama City at about 5 am and hung around the terminal until 7 am when I took another bus headed in the direction of the Peace Corps Office.
            Probably only my dad and those who know my dad’s sense of direction can appreciate this story as pure evidence that I am his daughter, but I can say that I got on one of the right buses. The bus said “Gamboa,” as in Gamboa Rainforest, and this bus would pass the Peace Corps Office en route. Unfortunately, I learned that Gamboa is an hour away from the city. Standing in a packed school bus I couldn’t see out the windows as we passed the offices and continued on for another 40 minutes before turning around. I like to look at this little adventure as a nice tourist visit to Gamboa. From what I saw it looked quite beautiful! Plus, I still made it to my meeting at 9 am.
            Overall, life is just wonderful and in the next blog entry I’ll talk more about my most recent adventures.