Adapting to the Culture

> Taking showers with a bucket of cold water aren't that bad anymore and I actually tend to look forward to them on days where I'm filthy.

> I've grown to dislike hot showers which I never thought could be possible.

> I no longer see Spanish as something that is "external" and needs to be learned, it quickly becoming a part of who I am.

> I find myself judging foreigners as if I was a Panamanian, wondering what the hell they're doing out here.

> Plate after plate of rice doesn't bother me so much anymore.

> Air conditioning is weird. 

> I've grown homesick for my first host family when I'm out in other parts of the country.

> However, internet will always be like crack to us and I don't believe many of us will be able to break the addiction.

Personal, Cultural, or Universal

One of the most eye opening things I learned during my training is whether to classify an action as personal, cultural, or universal. A basic example of this would be a person, named John, that sings. Does John do this because he personally likes to, does he grow up in a culture that enjoys to sing, or does the entire universe love to sing? Even with a basic example, the boundaries of where this action lies are blurred. There could be cultures that look down upon singing and therefore don't enjoy it, maybe everyone in the entire universe likes to sing.

Even though there aren't clear cut boundaries, it is something helpful to keep in mind when approaching difficult situations. For example, if you're in another country traveling and your being harassed, stop and think before jumping to classify these people with sweeping generalizations. I'm going to say for curtain, this doesn't fall under universal. There's a chance it's a cultural thing and this group of people just doesn't like you. Realistically though, in the majority of situations, it's just a personal action. So, before saying that everyone that lives in X country is rude, stop and think to yourself, is it personal, cultural, or universal?

An Update on Panama

So this past weekend, I officially became a Peace Corps volunteer which was pretty awesome! However, I had a minor(and to my sister, yes I do mean minor!) neck injury some time back that I got checked out and it has finally been decided that physical therapy is in order to tackle this issue head on before I end up four hours outside of the city and away from a physical therapist. Therefore, I'm hanging out in the city for some time to take care of that. Already had two days of therapy and I'm feeling better.

As far as the state of this blog, I'm going to attempt to start writing a book. I've been tossing around the idea in my head now since I backpacked through South East Asia and really want to try it out. At the very least, it is better to try and fail than to never have tried before. Therefore, I'm going to shy away from sharing stories here. I'll continue to give life updates, post pictures, and some stories every so often but if I am successful with a book idea, you can read about it all there! ...or if I fail you can read about it here.

So that's about all for now, don't really have any fun stories to report since I've been hanging out in a hostel most of the time or any pictures either. Expect some in the coming weeks though!

The Awesomeness of my Site

> Amazing mountain views everywhere. It doesn't take very long to find yourself standing at one.

> The food producing plants. I've seen oranges, bananas, plantains, coffee, papaya, mint, lemon grass, sugar cane and others I've forgotten to mention. My region is also the orange capital of Panama.

> A waterfall with a swimming spot at the bottom. Don't think I have to say much more about this.

> Ice cold Coke within twenty minutes of walking. ...Enjoy the little things

> Tea every night. I've had some amazing tea so far made from lemon grass, mint, and cinnamon.

> Orange juice! This sounds strange but 99% of all 'juice' in Panama, and other parts of South America, have the ingredients for these drinks listed as "Water, sugar, ..." My site was the first time I've had fresh juice since arriving.

> Electricity from sundown until about 9pm. It's nice to have just enough electricity to charge your electronics but not enough that you'll end up watching movies and mindlessly browsing the internet the entire day.

> Cell service within walking distance. I only have to walk about 5 minutes to get service whereas other volunteers need to walk one or several hours.

> Clean drinking water that doesn't need filtering. Of course I am there to work on water, only a third of the community right now has access to this amazing water.

That's what I've gathered thus far from only 4 days in site. Can't wait to see what other hidden treasures my community has in the coming months.

The Next Step

Today marks both two months in country and my last night in my training community, Santa Rita. For the next few days I'll return to Panama City for a few days of administrative meetings and then on Thursday, I officially become a Peace Corps Volunteer! I'll spend the weekend relaxing with my fellow volunteers and then finish moving my stuff to my community.

My first three months in site will be spent with a new host family. I will work mainly to understand the community through a set of tools known as PACA. I'll focus on creating a daily and yearly schedule of the community, a map, and assess the needs of the community so that I can begin working on projects in the future. During this time, construction will both begin and end on the house I will live in after the first three months.

After those first three months, I'll have established myself within the community and will know what direction to start taking my projects. The remainder of my time in Panama will be to work towards completing the goals set during the first three months.

Wishlist

Please take a second to read the wishlist on the right side of this page. Thanks!

First Week in the Community

This past week I got my first chance to visit the site that I’ll be living at for the next two years. You can read more about my site at the blog post here and see the pictures that accompany this post here. All day Thursday we had presentations with our community guide in Panama City and then left early Friday morning for our sites. It was a 3 hour bus ride and then about a 20 minute slightly difficult, but not too difficult walk, into the community. I stayed the first week with my guide but will be moving in with a host family when I return next week.

We spent the rest of the day lounging around on Friday, and then Saturday morning we got to work. Each day from Saturday on was pretty much structured the same. My host family would wake up before I did, probably around 6am and I followed at about 7am. We would eat breakfast, shower, get ready, and by 8am we would be off for the day’s work. Hard work would be done straight through until 1pm, at which point we would return home for lunch and spend the rest of the day relaxing.

Our activity for Saturday afternoon was pasearing in the community. Pasearing is Spanglish word that generally means to walk from house to house, stop and talk for a bit, possibly have a quick snack or drink, and then move on to the next house. This is the foundation for many of the relationships I will develop over the next two years. Our community was rather small and we were able to pasear almost the entire community in four hours. Their Spanish accent is very different from where I am staying now and I was barely able to communicate. Thankfully, I have an amazing guide and he did all of the explaining for me. After this time we returned home to relax for the rest of the day.

Originally this relaxing drove me nuts and the first two days I was out of my mind with how much free time I had. After the second day though, I completely flipped my perspective and am grateful to have it. The first two months in the country have been completely nonstop and in my free time, I made a list of all the things I could do once I got to site and now I have the time to do those things! I managed to finish a book and a half while there, worked on Spanish, wrote lots of stuff, swam in the lake, and relaxed and did nothing.

The second day was church followed by a water committee meeting where again, my guide was awesome, and presented all the information he had learned in Panama City to the community. I gave a little introduction about myself but I didn’t understand about anything the other community members said which was rough. However,  the meeting in general seemed to be a success and the community is glad to have me.

Monday afternoon we went and checked out the local school and health center. Both were places I had, by chance, visited during my first tour of a volunteer’s site and the volunteer joined me for the day. I got to meet all the teachers and students in the school as well as the doctor who works in the community. There is also another volunteer who just started working on a farming project at the school and I hope to help him with that when the time comes.

Tuesday, my last day in the community, we got to tour the water system. This trip took almost three hours to tour both water systems but was well worth it. I finally got the chance to understand what I’ll be working on for the next two years. I’m excited to get back to start working on it.

And that was my trip to my community. I left early Wednesday morning back to my host family community. 

Photo Post of my Site Visit

If you cannot tell from this picture, there are spikes sticking out of this tree. I inquired to my guide what the hell terrible tree would have spikes like this and he replied that it was an orange tree. Oh. To add to that, my region is the orange capital of the country, guess I'll just have to watch out for these spikes since oranges are so awesome. 

One of the many awesome views in my community. 

This is us walking down what one other volunteer called "that big hill" It's hard to tell from the picture but it's a pretty steep incline walking it. Luckily, my house will be on the top of the hill and the road that continues away from the hill isn't that steep. 

Sugar cane

This is a sugar mill. You run the sticks from the previous picture through the middle, where the guy in the red shirt's head is covering and out comes the liquid you see below. 

The Technical Aspect of Tech Week

Applogies the pictures aren't exactly in order. Sunday morning at 6am, the entire environmental health group gathered at the bus stop, waiting for a shuttle from Peace Corps to take us to the bus station in Panama City. Parts of our journey to our technical week training would be handled by Peace Corps while other parts it was up to us to manage. The trip from Panama east to Metati was on public transportation for about six or seven hours. At the Meteti bus station we met up with a chartered bus which took us the next half to the port where we then took four rented boat twenty minutes upstream to a volunteer's site.

Once we arrived, we had quick meetings and then were led off in small groups to meet the families we would be staying with for the next week. Meeting host families is by far the most awkward experience Peace Corps has to offer. You show up at the door of a family, loaded down with way too many bags, and everyone initiates in awkward conversation for a bit before you put down your bags and then continue you in more awkward conversation for a bit. The awkwardness quickly dies down though and everything returns to normality.

For this week, we would be staying in an indigenous Emera community. Emera are known for their awesome skirts for women and wide open houses. By this I mean the windows are always open and there is only one "room" for the house. Everything is rather communal and private space isn't really a thing. Since I arrived in Panama, I've been staying in a shared room and at this point it doesn't really bother me. The only thing that bothered me was one family member that had a snore that could rival that of of a bull. Luckily, I had ear plugs (the snore still managed to peirce the ear plugs a bit), and I loved every other aspect about my family.

In total there were roughly eight or so family members consisiting of several sibligings, spouses, one child, and a grandmother. The exact relationship was lost on me since conversations were pretty loaded and it was hard to understand the language and remembering what was being said at the same time. The family earned their money through the running of a tienda, or small shop, as police officers in both Panama and locally, soldiers in the military, and as a doctor... this much I was able to understand from the conversations. The tienda point was the most important part though. This meant that every night I'd get an awesome beverage off of the shelf of the tienda to drink, hot chocolate in the mornings, Cheetos for dessert sometimes, and other similar goodies.

Here we are making a simple water level to measure altitude changes.

Testing the system out.

Making a mold out of clay to lay the concrete foundation in.



One Big Thank You Note

I originally wanted to say thank you individually through cards sent from Panama but I've since realized that it is just about impossible to get the letters out and even if I did there's a good chance they won't actually arrive safely in the United States. So, before it's too late I want to say thank you to everyone for your gifts. The money has gone to the purchase of such awesome things as boots to trek in foot-deep mud, a 5" Android Tablet to use as my computer, a machete to "mow my grass", Harry Potter in Spanish, a basic smart phone to keep connected with the world, and many many more awesome things. I am grateful that all of you were able to attend and I greatly enjoyed my going away party. I hope all is well and I'll talk to you soon.

Brazos y besos,
Travis

Spanish Post

Querría escribir una vez en español para practicarlo y un tiempo, regresaré para mirar el cambio en mi nivel del idioma. Además, antes de empezar, quiero decir que con esto, voy a usar solamente mi cabeza y nada más. En las ultimas semanas estaba estudiando cosas que olvidé y aprendido nuevas coasa como objectivos pronombres que antes de Panamá, no pude entender. En el futuro, me gustaría aprender sobre subjuntivo, haber en futuro y pasado,  y mucho más vocabulario. En estes días, para practicar, estoy mirando tarjetas con palabras en español y ingles, leyendo Harry Potter y el Orden del Fenix, usando un libro de gramatica, y hablando con mucha gente incluyendo mi hermano que tiene 19 años. Es interesante que, miré casi todos tipos de gramatica al minimo de una vez. Creo que después de dos años en Panamá, podría hablar como ellos. 

Thoughts on Knowing the Language

I was having a discussion tonight with my brother about Panamanian culture and I started to compare it to my time in China and how I felt much more comfortable here in Panama. At this point I've considered staying here after for some time because I enjoy it so much. I went on to blame various aspects of China on why I wouldn't want to live there but after ten seconds of following this thought I realized how completely wrong it was. Almost all of my dislikes of the country have stemmed in some part due to my inability to speak the language. Situations I couldn't understand, I tended to fill in the blanks with what I thought fit without ever asking questions to people who could knowledgeably answer because I didn't possess the vocab to do so. I have come to realize that if you don't learn the language of where you're living or traveling, you'll forever be on the outside looking in with a distorted view of what is actually going on. I've grown to love it here in part due to the fact that I can question many things and get a reasonable answer in return. More likely than not, there's a reasonable answer to "Why is X this or that way?" and I encourage you to push to receive an answer instead of making assumptions on your own.

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My Home for the Next Two Years

This past Friday I found out my site placement! I've been waiting for this day since I found out I'd be moving to Panama. I'll be living in a small town of 120 people a short drive from the city of Penonomé in the region of Coclé which is about two hours west of Panama City.

The central part of town is made up of 24 houses of which, currently only 9 receive water. Potentially, I'll be working to increase the capacity of the system so that more water will be collected at the source and more houses will be setup on the receiving end. The community has also expressed interest in latrines. There will be no electricity in the the community but if they are interested, I hope to help bring electricity to the community as well.

For those that are thinking of visiting, it's about a three hour bus ride and fifteen minute walk from the bus station in Panama City. I'm to the west and also located along the way to Bocas Del Toro which is a popular tourist destination. I'm about an hour or so from the beach Santa Clara which is absolutely beautiful. The regional capital hosts events around the time of Carnival which are pretty popular.

That's about all the information I have at this point. I'll be visiting next week for a few days and will report back with more then.

Tech Week: The non Technical Part

 

We arrived at the dock and used these boats to get to site.



The dock.

On the way to the site. Gear in the front, gringos in the back.