Six Months in Site

It's now been almost six months in my site and I figured it would be a good time to update you guys on what I've been working on in and out of site.

Work Stuff
The first few months, usually about three or four, of Peace Corps is mainly about adjusting to the culture, learning the language and meeting the community. While doing these tasks we work on PACA tools which is a set of tools used to gain information about the community and identify needs. For my community it was water and latrines.

The first few months flew by pretty quickly and were broken up by Thanksgiving, family visit, and two weeks of additional training. This past Sunday I organized my first water committee meeting. Before the meeting I went to my water committee president and asked him to notify the community of the meeting.

Sunday morning I woke up early and spent several hours preparing the presentation. At two I headed to the church to setup for the meeting, I brought crackers and juice for the early birds to wait while the others slowly trickled in. Panamanians operate on "Panamanian time" in which instead of the phrase "early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable" it is "early is unheard of, on time is early, late is on time". How's that for a mind boggle. So at 2:20, after 20 minutes of waiting and not a single person showing up, I pack up and head home. At 2:40 the president arrives.  Turns out he only told the committee of five. So only 1 in 5 people showed up... not as bad as the entire community of 100 not showing up. With the meeting a bust, we decide to hold elections for the following meeting and we'll get some more intersted people involved.

This is roughly an equivalent encounter for many volunteers. The going is rough and if it was easy, well, I wouldn't be here. So I've decided to turn to other projects.

My first attempt at stepping outside of my main role was to contact all Engineers Without Borders chapters working in Panama. Ten total. So I get to messaging them all and one group requests my help. I offer help in ways I can such as knowledge about culture, language, and hardware store prices/materials. We work together for some time and they invite me to travel with them and help out. I got rather excited at the possibility of a week in an indigenous community and I happily accepted. Sadly, it turns out that there was an incident with a volunteer being in the wrong place at the wrong time two years ago and Peace Corps had pulled out of the area, the same area I'd be passing through. Peace Corps refused my work request and my involvement into that project sadly fell through.

From here I continued chasing every possible lead and decided to get involved with VAC, the governing body for Peace Corps volunteers. I ran and was elected for treasurer. I'm responsible for the money obviously, but also in working on various merchandise to sell, organizing Thanksgiving, being the bridge between volunteers and the staff, and generally helping to serve the volunteers in the best ways possible. This has thankfully opened up a whole new door of possible work and if I cannot help the communites directly, I can help improve volunteers' situations so they can better help their communities.

Potential Work

Recently I got the opportunity to get involved with another Engineers Without Borders project. I'll be headed to a volunteer's site to help translate the community analysis interviews between EWB and the community.

The neighboring community had volunteers for six years and the lady who works at the health center is very motivated. I hope to help her fix the solar panel and vaccine refrigerator setup and to also start a recycling project.

Her sister is currently running for the Panamanian equivalent of leader of the county in which I live. She would like to try and start a water project in another neighboring community. I'll either work on that project as my own or help develop it for Peace Corps for a future volunteer.

It's surprising how quickly after the fatal blow to my first EWB project that new work popped up all over the place. I'll definitely try and get myself involved in as much work as I can while here.

Outside of Work
I've been keeping very busy outside of work. I've already mentioned by book reading at this point (closing in on 20!). I've also put up some painting and drawings I've done. Since having my point and shoot camera stolen during carnival, I decided to start using my fancier DSLR and finally learn how to use it. That's been going pretty well so far and I'll post some pictures soon enough from it. My garden has also been taking off. I've got roughly 8 feet by 4 feet of garden with beans, Jamaican Tea, peppermint, lemon grass, spinach, squash, tomatoes, spicy peppers, and one or two other things I'm forgetting. I've already consumed my first tomatoes and drank lemon grass tea. I've also been working on my cooking. In China I was lazy and continued to cook like an American but a lack of nearby food stores and electricity has caused me to change my ways here. I've started learning how to prepare and combine various vegetables, make sauces, utilize spices, poach eggs, etc, etc. Hopefully by the end of my service I'll be growing and eating awesome FREE meals. My sombrero is coming along. I finished weaving the required 40 feet of material but I need to get the mold to get the actual sombrero shape going. Last but not least are the random skills I've been working on. These include sewing, juggling, whistling with fingers and telling the time/directions from the sun.

In closing
I've surprised myself in being able to keep up my work habit without a set schedule. Hopefully things will improve within site with regards to work but if not, I'll continue the hunt outside and keep busy with my hobbies inside.