1st Impressions

We arrived in Panama on August 15th after a two day “staging event” in Washington, DC. Our group of 42 people has already been reduced to 40 people after two girls left within the first two weeks for personal reasons. Our group is half Community Economic Development (CED), and half Environmental Health (EH) volunteers. There are four married couples in our group (which I hear is a lot), as well as two older retired guys. Everyone else is between 22 and 30 years old, and all are college graduates. Our training is taking place in a small community of about 2,500 people an hour from Panama City. We are living with host families all of whom have electricity and running water. I have an indoor shower and toilet, but some people have bucket showers and latrines. My host señora is a 60 year old retired widow. Her two sons and daughter live with their families on all three sides of our house. Her kids and grandkids are always stopping by so there is never a dull moment. She is very friendly, cooks good food, and does my laundry. What more could I ask for?

I love Panamanian food so far. For lunch or dinner I get a heaping plate of rice, potatoes, or spaghetti accompanied by beans or lentils and chicken or meat. Some people in our group complain, especially the vegetarians but I find it all delicious. Panameños fry almost everything they eat. “Hojaldres” which are basically just fried dough are scrumptious and can be eaten at any time of the day. Panameños also eat a lot of hot dogs, I think mostly because it’s cheap meat. I got two hot dogs served to me for breakfast the other day. I also tried cow tongue recently and it was pretty good, better than a hot dog at least. If I ever get a craving for something familiar I only have to travel to one of the larger cities where you can find most American fast food chains including McDonalds, KFC, Subway, and Pizza Hut. There are also Chinese restaurants everywhere and most corner stores even in small towns are owned by “chinos”.

From The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough: “Days and nights were made a living hell by bichos, the local designation for ticks, chiggers, spiders, ants, mosquitos, flies or any other crawling, buzzing, stinging form of insect life for which no one had a name.” Thankfully I have a mosquito net (and a fan) that keeps me cool and bug free at night, but the workers who built the Panama Canal in the late 1800’s were not as lucky. On a recent trip to the beach sans mosquitero I got at least 100 chigger bites on my legs and arms. Chiggers actually go into your skin and live there but die quickly and are relatively harmless. Bot fly’s on the other hand lay their eggs in your skin and eventually grow into fingernail sized larvae that have to be suffocated and squeezed out. I’m hoping to avoid those, youtube it and you’ll see why.

Most Panameños keep gallinas de patio (porch chickens) that they kill occasionally for celebrations. Since they control what the chickens eat they say the meat is tastier. My señora has about five roosters that all start crowing promptly at 3:30am, but I’m already getting used to it. Our front and back doors are always open to keep the house cool and so we get a lot of visitors. A hairy tarantula strolled into my house the other night startling my señora. She said she hadn’t seen anything like it in years and called over her son who took care of it with a few machete swipes. Bats fly in at least once every evening but usually find their way out after a few circles around the room. These are fruit bats, but there are also vampire bats here in Panama. According to my señora they live in caves and usually bite cattle, horses, and other livestock. They also bite humans (we met a volunteer who got bit) and aim for the spots where blood lets out the quickest such as fingers, toes, and nose. Geckos are limpias de la casa because they take care of a lot of the bugs, but their droppings look a lot like mouse turds. I was happy to discover that the shit next to my pillow wasn’t from a rodent but a friendly gecko. I really like my mosquito net.