Rodeo!!

I have finished 50% of my training! I continue to follow a fairly predictable and, by now, pedestrian schedule of language classes in the morning and agriculture lessons in the afternoon. While the monotony of such a schedule might bore many people I still feel like I’m trying to absorb a few drops of knowledge as a fire hose of information blasts me in the face eight hours a day.

It’s exhausting. 

Dogs are everywhere here in Panama. Most of the dogs we see are attached  to members of the community. But owning a dog here means something very different than it does in the States. Dogs are primarily for protection, not companionship. They are very functional alarms that let families know when someone is approaching their homes, and guards against unknown people and wild animals. But we do have a community puppy named Grizzly is neither alarm-like and lacks any semblance of a guard dog, but always manages to wiggle is way into our during classes.

I do miss the pets I have had that would climb into bed or lick my face in years past. 

My Thumb is Turning Green

Within a few days of arriving here in Panama I was given a multi-month assignment from one of my agriculture classes – prepare, plant, and farm a home garden with my host family. We planted ñampi and ñame (taro root) along with arroz (rice), plantains and yucca! My garden is doing great!  

Unfortunately for me, I will have moved on to managing a series of community projects elsewhere in Panama by the time any of my plants start producing food.

However my host family will get to reap the benefits! So, win win.

After four weeks in Panama I feel like I’ve crossed a communication bridge with my host family and have started to make some serious connections despite the the language barriers.

We sit and eat breakfast together and chat nearly every day.  While we used to stare and smile at each other after I had exhausted three or four stock phrases such as, “What’s for breakfast?” 

“How did you sleep?”  

“Did the coyotes take any small children during the night?”

We now chat and giggle together like little girls talking about a wide range of topics (like her favorite color).

This week I really wanted to do something nice for my host mom to say “thank you” for hosting me and spending gobs of time listening to and correcting my Spanish. Her daughter, who lives nearby, said that she would be visiting the hospital soon and needed a bag to carry her toiletries and sundries. She suggested I gift her a bag with a zipper and due to the increasing depth of conversations I knew her favorite color was pink. So, during my day trip into Chorrera (close-by town), I was able to secure a bag for her!

PS. She loved it! 

Come At Me, Bro!

My cohort of Peace Corps and I have been spending a lot of time together lately. We’ve been having more and more game nights consisting of mostly mafia and poker. Almost every evening of games is accompanied by some homemade chicha ( a juice drink) and a plate full of crackers provided by one of the host moms. My years of board, card, and spoon games have lent me an edge over my cohort volunteers as I routinely reduce the boys to tears and the girls quietly back away from the table and ask if they can just watch from a distance.

Thank you Hannah and Gracie!

The big highlight of the week was attending my first Panamanian rodeo! There is a company that puts on a traveling rodeo show and it came close enough to my community that we snuck away to have a new experience. 

It was quite a bit different than the rodeos I attended growing up.  Where the rodeos in the states tend to be competition driven, the Panamanian rodeo was more about violent spectacle. There were even events that embraced some aspects of bullfighting.  It was pretty gruesome.  It was difficult to watch these big gentle animals get poked and prodded for entertainment.

That said, on balance it was still very fun and I learned a lot about the culture here in Panama. Of course, the street food was my favorite part. It was so good! I bought a heaping plate of carne (meat) on a stick and yucca frita. 

I am, as my gastrointestinal fortitude grows, becoming more comfortable with buying prepared foods from street vendors. I look forward to several bouts of food poisoning and my first visit to a local health clinic due to something suspicious that I will undoubtably eat in the future.

Back to the rodeo!

After the bulls and rodeo animals had served their intended purpose of violently entertaining the crowd and after the sun had set, we made our way to the stage where the band had set up. My fellow volunteers and I danced the Típico. It’s a very intimate dance where one dances cheek to cheek with their partner.

The rodeo and dancing lasted for hours. We arrived at 4pm and didn’t get home till midnight. Definitely my favorite part of the weekend.

I became the poster girl for the Rodeo’s social media

Safety Class – An Eye Opener

Once a week on Mondays my cohort and I board a series of buses and go into Panama City.  It is a 2+ hour trip.  The instruction that we receive in Panama city isn’t Spanish nor agriculture.  It’s more about the PC programs and topics such as safety. Last week one of the regional instructors hosted a session about personal safely.  Stories were told about unfortunate, and frankly scary, instances of sexual violence against women here in Panama.  The instruction was a class of “what to do”  and “what not to do” that covered a range of possible situations.  It is not too different from areas of caution that I have heard my entire life.  But, as I wander down the dirt roads of my community I have wondered what would happen if someone needed the police, or an ambulance and realized that those very basic services that we have in our US communities and take for granted aren’t just lacking here but totally nonexistent.  

I have begun to contextualize and adapt much of my behavior as a young American woman to those realities.  And, once I began to think differently about the many “What If” scenarios I noticed that the Panamanian women have a working system on interacting with the world already worked out and ready to be copied.  

I ought to comment here that to date I have never felt not safe.  I am glad for the instruction I have received from the Peace Corps to help me navigate my experience as successfully as I can. 

Paul Mitchell Eat Your Heart Out!

To lighten the mood let me share that I cut my hair this week with my first aid kit shears.

To my family and friends who might be looking for a cost effective haircut I will happily share my toolkit and Panamanian haircutting skills for the very reasonable fee of a chicken and two malaria tablets.

Til next week!