October Photos: Exploring Panama City, Engineers Without Borders Conference, Sombrero Festival, and Black Christ Festival

Exploring Panama City

During a breakout session at the Engineers Without Borders conference, we listed on the board all the places where people have projects.

Marching in the Sombrero Festival.

Marching in the Sombrero Festival

Attractions at the Sombrero Festival.

Pilgrims relaxing on their way to Black Christ Festival.

During our own little pilgrimage walk, we came across some cows that had escaped, Jacob did his best to scare them back the way they came.

Eventually we stopped walking and took a bus.

View from our hotel.

Pilgrims will walk the last KM on hands and knees, sometimes having wax poured on them.

At last, we arrived at the church!

Pilgrims discarding their robes at the entrance to he church.

Inside the church.

More pilgrims walking.

Ice cream man.

Diablo Rojos, public transportation in Panama City.

Technology

Pooping in a hole, living without electricity or hot water, and hiking twenty minutes waiting ten minutes and 20 more minutes on public transportation to get to a food store, hardly compared to my withdraw from technology. I've thrived with technology, teaching myself electrical engineering and computer science, using Wikipedia to teach myself whatever topic, using Google Calendar to keep my life organized, etc. Arriving to Panama was taking a large step back in my life, and an introduction to living much more basic. This post is dedicated to all the gadgets that have made living a bit less basic.

 

Kindle 3G - While the Kindle part is pretty awesome, the 3G part is much more awesome. Amazon has, through some sort of magic, managed to offer free internet access throughout the world wherever the Kindle 3G can connect. I've managed to connect to the internet, a very basic internet consisting of only downloadable books, Facebook, and Gmail while in my site and also while traveling in Peru, for FREE.

Battery Pack - Thanks to my aunt, this is probably one of the best purchases I made before arriving to Panama. While in a place with electricity, I can charge the battery pack. Once I return to site, I can charge anything that has a USB connection. This means I can charge my smart phone, headlamp, Kindle, and iPod, all from this battery pack. It's got enough charge to recharge my smart phone about three times which can get me through a week before heading out of site to charge again.

Bluetooth Keyboard - With the hindsight that I have now, I would have gone back and purchased only a smart phone and keyboard in place of a laptop. The laptop is clunky and hard to charge. With a keyboard and smart phone I can do almost everything I'd want to do with a laptop. If you factor in the battery pack, which cannot charge a laptop, the smart phone and keyboard duo are perfect for Peace Corps living.

Waka Waka Solar Panel and Light - This is pretty awesome, it's got a light on one side and a solar panel on the other. Charge it through the solar panel during the day and use the light at night. It can also charge basic feature phones as well.

Smart phone - Oh smart phones. I try and think about the lives of volunteers before cell phones. I pay $1 for 30 minutes to call the United States, and can get international texting and email in my house. That's about it, no streaming Youtube or anything like that but the future is arriving to the countryside pretty rapidly. (My old Peace Corps neighbor could browse the internet from his house.)

Smart phone apps - I thought it would be interesting to list the apps that help me in the day to day. Feel free to skip this section if you don't have a smart phone or care about such things.

• Media Player - I can watch and listen to whatever and have a lot of storage to do so.
• My phone has word processing and spreadsheet applications which allow me to write posts like this. (I'm using my phone + bluetooth keyboard right now!)
• Gmail with offline sync - this allows me to check emails I've already received whenever, even if I have no connection.
• Wikipedia - Surprisingly, I can get Wikipedia in site. It's pretty slow and I generally cannot view pictures, but if I want to learn something, boom, done.
• Dictionaries - English, Spanish, English/Spanish, all useful.
• Google Translate with offline language packs - Google Translate is now available completely without internet.
• Calls/Texts Blacklist - Service providers in Panama love to spam at least a text or two a day. I can block those messages.
• Calculator/Converter - As an engineer I've got a special calculator and unit converter to help with my work.

And that's about it. Many others live a bit more basic or a bit more advanced like my friend who has a solar panel and cell signal booster so he can get electricity and great internet access an hour hike from the nearest road.

Whatever, Y.O.L.O., Crocs

Typically you travel to a place, observe the clothing, think "cool" or "weird" or whatever you think, and then you get on a plane and go home. Besides the fact that I still haven't gotten on a plane and gone home, I've also thought "hmm, that makes a lot more sense than what I'm wearing right now." And so I started wearing... (In order of my decision to start wearing them)

Sombrero and Man Purse

Sombrero - Month 3

This was an awesome unexpected gift from my host dad. I'd say in a store, it would have cost about $70 which is a pretty legit sombrero. Sombreros are pretty popular in many formal events such as dances, work meetings, etc. and I've used it on many occasions. Also important is the fact that I have a huge head and I've avoided hats in the states almost completely. However, this sombrero was custom made, as are all sombreros, and fit me perfectly.

Man Purse - Month 3.5

My neighboring volunteer during training lived just behind my host family's house. We'd typically have over the fence conversations, similar to Home Improvement, after classes ended. One day he arrived home with a man purse. I'd never imagined wearing one even though many Panamanian youth about my age wore one. I was jealous of his bag so shortly thereafter I purchased my own. It was amazing. Women, I need not explain to you, but men, oh my. Imagine all the things you need, in a bag!? For those times you don't have enough crap to fit in a back pack but don't want to fill all of your pockets with clutter, there's the man purse. The photo above has my first man purse.

Cutaras - Month 5

These are basically fancy sandals made of leather that are used in formal settings for Panamanians. For a while they were my default shoe. I went to shower, hiked, visited the Peace Corps office (Which is crazy strict about dress attire but these were cool, as well as most sandals), and walked around town with them. Socks suck. Also closed shoes suck. You have to wash the socks, by hand, and critters like to hide in closed shoes.

Man Purse Version 2- Month 12

I got myself a much cooler man purse while working in a friend's community. They are known as chacaras and typically they're woven together from a cloth-like material or old plastic sacks are torn apart and woven together. They're great since they never mold and if they get wet, no worries. They've served quite well for my work days on the water system where I'm typically getting pretty dirty.

Knockoff Crocs - Month 15

I swore I'd never wear Crocs. Until my flip-flops broke one day while I was away from home. I went to the store and I could get another pair of flip-flops, which were bound to wreak havoc on my feet, or buy a pair of crocs. Of course the only pair that fit me was pink. Whatever, Y.O.L.O. (you only live once), crocs. I instantly fell in love with them. They had cushion, didn't easily allow rocks to get trapped between the shoe and my foot (like cutaras did), offered more traction than flip-flops when walking back to my house after a shower, were great to hike in, etc. Besides the fact that they're not acceptable in the Peace Corps office, I wear them all the time.

Thinking to the future now, I’ll probably never wear this stuff after Peace Corps, but you never know, Crocs are just so damn comfortable.

September Photos: Water Seminar, Rainwater Catchment, and More

Preparing materials for the water seminar...

...and food...

...and 140 eggs...

Breakfast!

Breakfast!

Presentations given in the church about various topics related to water.

Hanging out around a plate of brownies after the first day of the water seminar.

Day 2 of the water seminar was a bit more hands on.

Presenting my water committee president with a certificate. 

Caught this little guy in my house. Took a quick rushed picture into the container before setting him free.

While working on the rainwater catchment system this cow came over to say hello.

Finished ferrocement tank for rain water. Currently testing it with some grey water from the washing machine.

Completed system. Holds about 60 gallons of water, or enough to water plants for an entire week. Cost about $60.

Friend got a kitten!

These flowers are everywhere in Panama in many different colors, absolutely beautiful.

[Insert Job Description Here]

During training, we are told, “your service is what you make of it.” If you want to be out of site all the time, hanging out at the bar, sure, you can do that. Or you can make something amazing of it. To remove any doubts that last sentence might have created; almost all volunteers opt for the latter.

I opted for the latter as well and there are days where I'm out and about in Panama, living another day of my Peace Corps service, and it will dawn on me that, I get paid (as little as I do get paid haha) to be doing what I'm doing. I had one of those moments today when I was in the middle of the jungle hiking up to a water source. A fellow volunteer, in a different sector than water systems asked if I could come and take a look at his system. After that simple interaction, I was now out hiking with him in his community, which is about twenty times larger than mine, to offer what experience and knowledge I have to help assess the water issues being faced by the community. I'm going on a tangent too far, let's steer this back in with some pictures of where I was working today:

Crossing a stream on the way to the water system.

Finally arriving to the water source.

I've also had other amazing work experiences such as when I helped my regional leader deliver some documents to a future volunteer's community. Besides the fact that the area was absolutely beautiful, we got to eat lunch and hang out with the future host family for a bit. The father of the household told us a very interesting story about the roof tiles which his grandfather had constructed over 100 years ago and still survived to this day.

Passing a large orange farm on the way to the community.

The rainy season is in full swing and mud is everywhere.

After taking public transportation to the end of the road, hiking an hour into the community,
we  now have a guide to take us the rest of the way to the host family's house.

Look at that beautiful roofing.

Then there was the time that Engineers Without Borders (EWB) visited a fellow volunteer's site and cultural/language facilitators were needed. I got to spent a few days hiking about my friend's community assisting EWB in their trip.

Community guide leading the way to the next house.

Back when I was a member of EWB at Rutgers University, I had seen a GPS map that was constructed by a group member and I was interested in making my own. As part of my first three months in site, I was required to make a map, so I ended up making a GPS map.

...and then writing a guide for other volunteers to do the same.

I also had interest in solar panels and the neighboring community's health post had some problems with theirs...

These are just a few examples of the many cool work opportunities that Peace Corps offers. Of course not all of my cool opportunities revolve around work. I also give myself some breaks to...

Attend the Black Christ festival.

Party at carnival.

Spend Christmas in Santa Fe with other volunteers.

Travel to Peru.

Watch the US-Panama soccer game.

Attend the Sombrero Festival.

At times it’s hard to justify my time here, typically when I'm sitting at the lowest of lows of a slump in my service. But when I'm not sitting there, life is pretty awesome. Of course you cannot have the bad without the good and the same carries over to life in the States. However, Peace Corps has some pretty awesome good times to offer and I think it has been well worth it. (And for you too if you're considering joining!)