I Lied

Making sweeping generalizations about an entire country based on limited experience is never a good idea. Hence, I feel I should clarify a few statements I’ve made based on more recent observations since visiting my site this past weekend.

1) Forks and knives are not just for restaurants. I was served every meal with a complete set of utensils and at one meal I even got a separate salad fork. The fact that I got a salad with lettuce, tomatoes, and onion is incredible in the first place. I think the vegetarians in my group kind of hate me. I also saw my Panamanian host mom using a fork so I know I wasn’t just getting the special gringo treatment. Ultimately though, I found myself longing for my trusty old tablespoon as it allows me to shovel rice in my mouth faster and in greater quantities.

2) Some of the streets in my town have names and since there is regular garbage collection it’s actually illegal to burn trash there. My town has over 6,000 people in it which is huge by Peace Corps standards. Its also unique I think in that the population is very concentrated. It reminds me of an old west town where on the main streets the houses are all connected and people sit in rocking chairs on their porches a few steps up off the ground. My site also has multiple 2 story houses and the only church in Panama with its steeple directly over the central nave.

So basically my site is pretty ye ye, which is Panamanian slang for fancy and Peace Corps slang for pretty much anything relatively nicer than what the next person has. Its not that my site is that much nicer than other places we’ve been (it is), but because it’s only a half hour from the provincial capital the mindset seems to be more metropolitan in general. My community counterpart for example is a mother of three, but is also the Vice President of the co-op, and the Chief of the volunteer fire department in town. The guys in the station come to attention and salute her when she walks in. The second day I was in town we made a human chain link along the side of the road to promote breast cancer awareness complete with a sign and pink ribbons. In church on Sunday the women from the health center passed out pamphlets describing how to perform a self breast exam. This is in comparison to Environmental Health volunteers teaching indigenous peoples in the comarcas (reservations) not to shit in the same stream they draw their drinking water from. My town is also very big on festivals and promoting time-honored Panamanian dance, music, and traditional ways of life. There is a party planning committee with its own office in town that maintains a website about on goings in the community. While I was visiting a well known figure in the community, who was a big supporter of these cultural festivals passed away. The very next day the website was updated with a memorial to this man complete with photos and stories about his life. Pretty impressive stuff relative to the conditions some of my companions will be working in.

So you ask, what will I actually be doing? My primary job will be to work with the savings and loans co-op in town. It is only 2 yrs old and has only about 30 active members. My goals will be to help them organize their accounting, encourage people to deposit monthly savings, and increase membership in the co-op. I will also have the opportunity to work with other organizations in town on secondary projects. There is a computer center with internet where I can teach classes, a Panama Verde environmental youth group looking for support, and I'd also like to promote tourism through the community website I mentioned. My town is in most of the tour books on Panama and one of the highlights is a local artisan who makes devil masks for dances at the festival of corpus christi. I'd like to help him with his business in any way possible and he said he'd teach me how to make some sweet masks.

While visiting my site I attended a birthday party and shared some Seco Herrerano with the guys on the porch. Herrerano is the most popular of all brands of the sugarcane liquor seco and is considered the national alcoholic beverage of Panama. Another source of regional pride is the Herrera baseball team which has won the national title 3 years running. While conversing with my new amigos I also discovered that not all Panamanians love Mariano Rivera as I previously stated. He no longer keeps a house in Panama, rarely comes to visit and refuses to play for the national team because he says they aren’t competitive. I can definitely see why this could create a sour feeling and makes me feel comfortable in once again hating the Yankees. Baseball is definitely the most popular sport in Panama and last weekend we organized a softball tournament in our training town. We had 3 Peace Corps volunteer teams, one staff team, and 4 Panamanian teams including one all women’s team. I umpired some of the games and had to make some controversial calls, but overall the tournament was a great success. We had trophies for the winners, and raised about $300 for the town library through team sign-up fees, food sales, and a raffle we held. All in a days work.