Dengue, Christmas and New Year´s

We want to wish a very belated (but loving!) Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to all! The holidays found us at home in our village- with Peace Corps friends at Christmas and our community members for New Years- plus Ashley’s sister in the first part of December.
While Courtney was visiting we saw some great sites in Panama City that Brandon and I had not ventured around yet (Casco Viejo, The Panamá Canal, and Casco Antigua), as well as showing her around our village- and she survived the trip to our site amazingly well for someone who has a tendency to get motion sickness. The second part of her trip we had planned on going to the west side of the country to visit some of our Peace Corps Volunteer friends and (hopefully) to climb Vulcan Baru, the only volcano in Panamá. Unfortunately, we ended up spending almost an entire week in the city of Santiago because Ashley got Dengue. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this particular illness (and be very grateful that you are!) we invite you to Google it. Ashley spent the entire week hobbling between the hotel and the hospital, getting injections, popping pain pills and sleeping. Towards the end of the whole ordeal, she even got to spend a night in the hospital! Thankfully, she recovered in time for us all to make it back to Panamá City to see a few more sites and to send Courtney off (who has now vowed to come again to see what she missed, and PS- Ashley pulled through like a champ!)
Several weeks then passed without incident, and Christmas was upon us before we could say “Feliz Navidad.” (Sorry we had to.) We were very lucky to have Peace Corps friends that were willing to travel two days across the country to come and spend Christmas with us. (We are sure that the lure of the beach had nothing to do with it.) We had a full Christmas meal, including a ham, mashed potatoes with gravy and an apple pie. Everyone pitched in to help, and it was almost like being at home with our families (minus the yelling and drinking—joking!). We played card games, listened to Christmas music and had a white-elephant gift exchange. (Ashley received a magnetic photo frame, and Brandon a beautiful mermaid sculpture souvenir.)
Our visitors stayed for several days, and by New Years, we were again in the company of our neighbors. We spent a quiet night inside, playing cards to pass the time and drinking a cheap bottle of sparkling wine; but with no ball drop to look forward to, we passed out early and closed up the house. However, around midnight we woke to the sounds of bottle rockets and roman candles, and opened the front door to find almost every member of the community out and about, wishing happy New Years to everyone they passed, with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Not wanting to be left out, we decided to head out and share our own well wishes, and after an hour, turned back in and fell asleep.
And so our holidays passed. Resolutions having been made, we walked into the New Year full of ideas and drive. On January 5th we officially started teaching English with an Intensive Summer English Course- 8 weeks and 24 hours of English per student. We currently have more than 40 students from the ages 3-50, in four different age group classes. Children before lunch, and youth and adults after dinner- Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays every week until March 6th. The course was primarily designed with the high school students in mind, who are only in town during their summer vacation (January – March), but we had such an overwhelming response from the entire community that we opened three other class times for them.
Aside from English classes, we will be starting an environmental group for the youth in February, where hopefully we can instill in them the importance of taking care of the earth – or at least their own community – and how to have some fun doing it.
In between preparations for classes and our environmental group, we have been taking it pretty easy. We have started a small garden around the perimeter of our house where we have planted carrots, green beans, cucumbers, cantaloupe and watermelon, as well as several herbs and spices. So far, we have promising sprouts and we are working on making kitchen-scrap compost to aid our plant growth. We are also trying to grow our own spinach, lettuce and artichokes (which will hopefully be the bulk of our produce.)
As for other fresh produce (which has been a problem in the past due to irregular/difficult/expensive transportation) we have found a route whereby we are able to walk from our house to the next town via a long gravel road; once there, we can catch a bus, use the internet, or buy produce. The route is about 5 miles one way, and we have to cross a river, but the walk is flat and quiet and the river is usually only knee-high. We have walked it about once a week in the past 2-3 weeks to buy fresh produce and use the internet, (which is what we are doing today!) as well as get out of town for an afternoon.
With the influx of hormonally charged high schoolers who haven’t seen friends and family in a long time, our town has become, how do I put it- LOUD. From 7am until 11pm, there’s the constant sound of children screaming, singing, playing soccer (fútbal) or baseball (béisbol), throwing stones (literally…at each other), and lots and lots of Spanish pop-music. Add to this several new puppies who keep the entire neighborhood on watch at all hours- alerting us if anything happens to walk past them (Unfortunately, these puppies are not ours, as it makes it much more difficult to get rid of them! Joking.) Needless to say, our new 5 mile walk is nice and a big thank you to Courtney for bringing us an industrial sized pack of ear plugs.
In our spare time, we have also been reading a good number of books. Taking advantage of the down time we are able enjoy, to read (at last) some of the books that we have been meaning to read for years (Atlas Shrugged- Congrats Brandon!) or new books/authors that have been introduced to us through our fellow Peace Corps Volunteers (thanks Abby for our introduction to Bill Bryson!)
February however, brings more work as we continue our weekly rigor of English classes, and add to that our new environmental conservation group. We will also be hosting a good friend of Brandon’s from high school who is on is way back from China to the United States via South America and Central America (read- Panamá!). Yay for Justin- our second visitor! We are very excited for the upcoming month, but already tired. With New Years come and gone, we have our first measureable projects underway, and our days of assimilating are over; this is it, we have arrived! It is hard to believe that after so much time mandated for learning, adjusting and settling-in, that we are finally Volunteering. Our community members seem very grateful and excited to learn English, as for environmental topics- we’re getting there. Our strategy has been, and will probably continue to be- start with the kids- they’re still pliable.

Love from Panamá, (Only 1.5 years left!!)
Brandon and Ashley (Roberto y María)

Recycled Elephants

Just some quick photos from the Trash Seminar that Brandon and I mentioned in our last blog entry. We had some great opportunities to visit with some schools that were working hard to teach their students about the importance of using recyclable materials to make unique art projects and gifts. So here goes:

One of the school teachers showing me how to make a 'pollera' or traditional head-piece (more on that in another blog) out of recycled plastic bottles.

Teacher and I with finished product.

Here's a close-up example of a finished product and the bottle that it was made out of.

A recycled clothes-softener bottle, transformed into an elephant.

A paper mache vase holding paper flowers.

Some other Recycled projects... this bus was made out of a broken-down toy and a cardboard milk box.

At one of the schools there was a large fair and a competition to see who could be the most creative in coming up with a recycled outfit.... the girl's dress above is made out of hand-sewed newspapers (!.. check out her shoes too)

Check out this stud!

Her skirt was made up entirely of pre-paid phone cards- sewn together.

And this little girl's dress had bottle caps fastened all over it.

Red, Orange, Yell-ow, Green, Blue, Pur-ple...

This past week, Brandon and I began teaching English to seventeen 1st through 6th grade students. Seventeen 1st-6th graders who have had no formal English training, now walk (or skip) through the 'streets' of our small town singing the pre-school song about colors in english. Don't get me wrong, they don't actually pronounce all of the consonants (or vowels for that matter) but they definetly have the tune down. For those of you who are not familiar with this particular song (those unfortunates, like Brandon, who were cheated out of a pre-school classic) it goes like this:

"Red, orange, yell-ow, green, blue, pur-ple
Red, orange, yell-ow, green, blue, pur-ple
Red, orange, yell-ow, green, blue, pur-ple,
Makes the rainbow bright!"

It has been great to see some actual progress in our community this past month. Brandon and I had been working the first part of September preparing for a trash seminar where we learned some new techniques for helping our community start a trash and recycling program. We are hoping that we will be able to work with individual families in our community to start separating their organics from their inorganics so that we will be able to start compost piles as well as a recycling program where non-biodigradeable products will (hopefully) be sold to outside parties. This is more of a lifestyle change and mentality change, and we know that it will take a while to catch on with some people, so we are hoping that poco a poco (little by little) we will eventually have the entire community separating their trash. Right now the only trash system in town is to pour all of the garbage into a small garbage pit at the back edge of town- much like we do in our city dumps. This will be filling up quite quickly with the increase in tourists (which will be coming in a few years) and also with the over-use of plastics and non-renewables. The goal would be to reduce the amount of garbage that actually needs to be put into the landfill, thereby extending its life, while at the same time providing a small incentive for people to separate their plastics, tin, aluminum, glass etc. through the resale of their recyclables. This program would also provide a great organic fertilizer/compost that could be used in the home gardens that (cross your fingers) will be catching on soon.

We then spent the last part of the month preparing for a 'site visit' from our APCD (Associate Peace Corps Director, Aka: Boss) Francisco. His visit came the first week of October, and the intent was to gather the community together for a 'reunion' or meeting and go over what Brandon and I had learned about the community so far, what they thought our purpose in the community was, based on what we had talked to them about over the past several months, and also about what our work may be during the coming two years (a year and nine months actually!). We had been working dilligently the previous 3 months to collect information for this meeting, as well as to help us understand how the community functions, who its dominant/leading members are, the social system, health care, basically everything about how the community functions and its history. So during the end of September we were kept quite busy putting all of our found-information up on posters (the usual form of presentation here), in spanish, for all of our community members to paruse during our meeting. All in all, we ended up with over 20 posters (with full-text spanish), including a 3'x4' hand-drawn community map- to us it seemed like a 300-level final project for a spanish class. The night before the meeting I was kept busy making homemade oatmeal raisin cookies, one tray of 9 by tray of 9 as most of the ovens here are quite small and no one has a baking sheet to speak of. (It ended up taking me 8 hours to bake 150 cookies inside of a medium-sized cake pan.)

When the day finally came, everything was set up an hour or two ahead of time, but we didn't end up starting until about a half-hour late (this is actually quite punctual in terms of Panamanian time- or so we've heard.) Our boss gave a good speech to the 'crowd' of 17 people that attended (also good attendance for a town of about 60 adults), informing them of what Peace Corps is, what the Peace Corps mission is, why we were placed in this particular community, and what we would possibly be working on in the upcoming time. Group participation was decent as we asked for questions or comments, but all-in-all we were quite pleased with the people that came, the information that was provided (and hopefully retained), and the thought that people in town have a more clear understanding of why we are there (and it's not just to teach english!)

We then spent the night in town, only to leave the next morning to go to a regional meeting, where all of the PCV's (Peace Corps Volunteers) in our region (kind of like a county in the states) get together to discuss what's been going on, go over office news, and things of that nature- mostly pretty boring stuff, but this time we actually found out about a great book exchange for children's spanish books through our office. Brandon and I had been thinking about a way to spend time reading with the kids as most of them don't read outside of what is required in school, and they don't have access to any children's books or literature, so we had been thinking about just purchasing some spanish-language children's books to have in town to read with the kids- like an after-school reading program. Well we found out that there have actually been a few donations from people state-side to start a lending library here in Panama for children through the Peace Corps office. We will now be able to check out a bag of books every 3 months to take back to our community and use in any way we choose. After three months, you return the bag and can check out another one. Brandon and I are really excited about this as we can use the books any way we choose within our community. We have decided that we will be starting (or try to start, depending on community interest) an after-school program where the children will sign up for a time to come and read with us in our home for an hour or so, one night a week. We will try and help them with their homework, practice their english, or they can choose to read with us one of the new childrens books that we will have in our house. It will be kind of like a 'Book-It' club, where after 10 or 15 (yet tbd) completed 'meetings' or 'sessions' they will be rewarded with an american-style dinner with us in our house. We figured that it would be a good way to get to know the kids a bit better, to help them to learn more outside of the classroom, to hopefully cultivate an interest in reading and knowledge, and to also share some of our american culture with them through a meal. It all seems great on paper, but we will see how it goes in practice- we are hoping to start in the coming weeks after we get settled into our house.

Yes! We have a house! Isn't it exciting!? We finally, after living with relatives, friends, and host families in the states and in Panama since APRIL, we finally have our own space (well technically we aren't living there yet, but will be, hopefully, by the end of this week.) We have taken the only house that is currently available for rent in town- smack-dab-in-the-middle of everything. We have neighbors on all sides, and are inbetween very frequently used trafic paths (foot trafic, as there are no vehicles in town)- but the house is great. This past week we have spent about 8 hours a day, every day, scrubbing 10 years of neglect and mold (and a bit of crumbling paint) off of the walls and floors, and finally started painting this past Thursday and Friday. We will have 3 (!!!) bedrooms, a bathroom (sans sink), a kitchen (sans refrigerator), a living room and a small porch at the front. (We will make sure to take pictures for the next blog-entry.) The outside of the house is a schmorgasboard of colors including green, red-orange and purple. The inside however, will be all white (it is currently a mix of dark blue, green and pink- all crumbling off the walls) with blue and green trim. At first we were pretty disgusted by the interior as it has been neglected for quite a while, but after a good couple of days of hard work, it seems quite liveable and we are really excited to actually have our own home.

The coming months will be quite busy for us as well-the end of this month we will be heading out to Isla Grande in the Azuero for a Sea Turtle Seminar provided by an environmental agency here in Panama. Then Halloween is right around the corner, and the most major of all Panamanian holidays- their independence days and flag day, the 3rd, 4th and 5th of November (and lets not forget Brandon's Birthday!). Then several weeks will pass and we will have another training- IST (In-Service Training) with Peace Corps where we will hopefully be learning new techniques for working with our communities and in-country agencies. The day after IST ends is Thanksgiving, and we will be headed to the western side of the country to get together with other PCV's in Panama for an american-style Thanksgiving, complete with hiking a volcano and making diner together in a hotel. Then the Saturday after Thanksgiving my sister will be coming (yay Courtney!) and will be staying with us for a couple of weeks. Then before you know it, Christmas will be here! This year already seems to be over, but we haven't even made it to Halloween yet. We hope that all of you are not feeling the end-of-year pressure yet, and that you have a wonderful rest-of-October. We miss you all, and as always, want to leave you with this message: Write to us!!! Or better yet- come visit.

Love and hugs,

Ashley and Brandon