So what exactly are you doing out there anyways?!

This is one question that I am sure most PCV´s spend their time trying to answer. The longer I am in my community, the more I realize that the answer to this question only becomes more complex instead of clear, harder to answer instead of easier. The culture, history, my relationship to the people, their relationships to each other...navagating through all of these things my biggest job of all...the actual ¨work¨becomes secondary.But, now that I have been living and working in San Cristóbal for almost seven months, I feel I can try to give a better explaination of what I do day-to-day and what my overall role had become there.

Officially, I am a community ecomonic development volunteer working for the Peace Corp. Peace Corp is a grassroots development agency, meaning it takes a bottom up approach to development as opposed to top down. We are considered grassroots because our focus is people, process over a product whereas other topdown approaches work on a much larger scale bringing lots of money and big projects. While these top down approaches have good intentions, they sometimes fail because time isn´t taken to get to know the people and what they actually want. We live in our communities for two years in order to build relationships, gain trust and through those relationships work together to transfer knowledge and accomplish goals the community themselves have identified as projects they want to make happen.

My primary project is helping my community tourism group with all aspects of running a sucessful tourism business. We work on things like accounting, basic record keeping, marketing, putting together tour packages, building a hostel and working with outside tour operators who visit the community. I have also become a link between outside agencies, such as USAID and other NGO´s, helping my community to navagate things like paperwork and excel documents. I also spend a big chunk of time doing physical working with them, whether we are hauling wood, cleaning our nature trail, cooking food, or making artisanry. When and how we work on these things depend on them. They have lives, families and responsibilities so I also try to keep things on track to help us complete important paperwork. Obviously, I don´t work on this project all day everyday. I have also started some secondary work which includes starting a girl scout group (yup, just like in the states minus the yummy cookies) and working with the english teacher who works in the school.

I consider San Cristóbal my home, so I do normal stuff like laundry, hang out with my neighbors, color with the kids, sew, read in my hammock and gossip with my friends. In a way I think it is these small everyday things that have the biggest impact. People see me as there friend, adopted daughter, the gringa who lives next door who lets us color in her house, as Pai. Those things are far more important to me than having people see me as a Piper, Peace Corp development worker. At the end of the day, they will remember that I spent the afternoon making bread with them just visiting, not that I helped them balance a check book.

Here are a sampling of photos I have taken over the past few months.

I have started sewing more and have made a few dresses for the little girls and new babies in the community. Everyone calls this little girl Muñeca, which means doll. She is one of my favorite babies and always makes me laugh.

I went on a all day hike across my island with some friends and we came across this grandpa hauling a load of bananas back to his house.

I have started taking photos of all the new babies so the mothers can have a copy. This is Yasi, the new baby girl of one of the artisan ladies, Darmaris.

Where did the last two months go?!

I guess that is what living on an island does to you. All sense of time sort of slips away...like living under an imaginary rock of sorts. I am doing great and have been getting more into the groove of work and life on San Cristóbal. My main project is helping my tourism group get a hostel up and running. The area of Bocas del Toro is currently booming and the country is pushing tourism hard, so there are lots of agencies and other NGO´s here working to promote sustainable tourism, ecotourism, ethnotourism, geotourism....pick one and it is happening here. Luckily the community I work is motivated to take advatage of the action, so we are working on completing this hostel/hotel so people will have a different option for accomodations here in the islands. We already have a group from France that comes to stay every other month or so for a cultural exchange, so they will be happy to have a place to stay. I have been working with the president of the group, Esperanza, do things like track expenses, work on creating a price list of activities, and whatever else... including builiding a composting latrine for people to come use when they come visit. Lucky for me the latrine is right next to my house!

View of my house and new latrine from the hostel. The guy working hard is my friend Jesse or Krawdi as he is know, who lives about a 40 minute hike away in a neighboring community called Valle Escondido.

Fun times with concrete. I have a new respect for anyone who does construction/mansonry. It is hard work and mixing concrete in a wheelbarrow in the heat is no easy task. Pai seems to have caught on as my nickname of choice. I was dubbed Melly when I arrived, but only a few people use it anymore. Fine with me, I like Pai better.
My friend Brian, or Kogira, he came out to lend a hand. He is in the process of having me dread his hair so he looks a little more crazy than normal.

View from the second floor of the hostel at sunset. Pretty huh?

The guys working hard to trim the inside of the thatch roof. I got up there to help out too. Not easy work.

Last but not least here is little video I took of my house. I have been living there for about a month and it is wonderful. I love having a place to feel at home finally unpacked the slippers my mom gave me almost 6 months ago. I have been enjoying cooking and having some nice quiet time in the evenings to read. I do miss my host family thought. I always felt a part of things and didn´t have to do much to be out and involved in daily activities. Now I have to go out and search people out. Kind of a weird switch to make...luckily I have no shortage of visitors.

It is hard to believe I have been here almost 8 months. A new group of Peace Corp trainees, group 63, arrive in a few weeks. On the one hand, I am almost a little sad to know I won´t be a new volunteer anymore but on the other I am happy to have training and the first few months in site behind me.

Home Sweet Home...almost.

One of the biggest projects I have been working on this month is fixing up my soon to been house. It can be a bit of a long process because you have to find a tree, cut it down and then haul it out from the jungle. Luckily the woman who is my landlady had a tree on her farm, so after that got cut into boards we spent two days hauling wood. I can honestly say, I never in my life thought I would be hauling 2 x 4 on my shoulder out of a jungle. But when it is for you own house, it is not hard to find the motivation.

Luckily, we are just fixing it up at you can see from the photos so once the wood was there, it wasn´t to hard. As you can see from the top two photos, we are fixing that corner, which is the kitchen and the front half of the house also got a new floor and window for my sink. The man in the red shorts is my host dad, Martin. It will still be a few weeks before I can move in because we used up all the wood and still need more for the shutters and some furniture. That means going through the whole process again. A bit of a set back, but that is the way it goes.

I have been in Panama for almost 6 months now and have loved living with both of my host families, but I am ready to have a place to call my own. I can´t wait to finally unpack my bags, put up photos and cook my own food. There will be lots of room for visitors, hint...hint!

Time Flies

Top photo: the view of my neighborhood, Middle: My host sister, Leyda, hanging laundry we just got back from washing, Bottom: My host families living room.

I can´t believe it is already one month into the New Year. I am getting more settled into the pace of life here and this last month has just gone by in the blink of an eye. The first few weeks of the year, I got sick with a bad cold, followed by a nice bacterial infection but I am back to feeling great and enjoying life.

The ¨job¨part of Peace Corp is starting to kick in and I have spent a lot of time working on a community analysis as well as talking with people about what changes they want to see. I just attended my first regional meeting which is where all the volunteers in my region, Bocas Del Toro, get together to talk about projects, issues, life, and get updates on what is happening at our headquarters. As volunteers we are responsible for reporting and quantifying all of our work in site and worldwide Peace Corp is implementing a new system for tracking so we were also given an introduction to that. It is important, but I guess even in the Peace Corp you can´t escape bureaucracy.

In one week I have a week long in-service training with all the other volunteers in my group, 62, which should be fun. We have language instruction and lots of different seminars on topics such as basic accounting, the current economic situation here in Panama, starting youth groups and group leaderships. I am really looking forward to it since I haven´t seen a lot of them since we left training so it will be nice to share stories and see how everyone has changed.

Thanks for all the great comments and emails! I love reading them. Hope eveyone is happy and healthy so far in the new year.

Merry Christmas!

It is almost Christmas here and aside from strands of lights here or there it doesn´t feel much like the holidays to me. I am used to some nice crisp weather, wearing a warm sweater and seeing some snow not wearing flip flops and trying to stay out of the heat. I have been suprisingly busy the last few weeks which is good since it takes my mind off the fact that I am missing time with my family. I have been living in my community now for almost two months and am starting to feel more at home, which is good. Everyday I learn more about the people and relationships that exist there. Some of my favorite moments have been sitting on the floor of peoples houses talking or most likely eating. People ask a lot of questions about how things are in the United States which is a challenge to talk about since most of ideas they have are from movies or tourists who visit the island here. But is good for my Spanish to tackle things like politics and geography.

I hope to move into my house in the next month which will be amazing. It has been really hard not to have much privacy. Plus, the noise really gets to me after awhile and it is difficult to find a place to sit quietly or do nothing if I want to. I feel fortunate to have a great host family and in some ways I think I will miss having them around. They have been very warm and always include me in whatever they are doing.

We have a group of tourists coming for a few days on the 25th, which will be an interesting experience for me. The tourism group and i have been working hard to prepare for their visit and I have been told that I am definitly part of the show. I am pretty sure that means wearing a traditional nagwa or dress and doing tradional dances with them. We shall see how that goes. I hope all my friends and family have a great holiday, know that I am thinking of you and sending my love.

A few photos for you all to enjoy. At the top, view from a typical wooden boat, cacao drying in the sun of my neighbors house, walking out in the finca.

Dia de Madre

Just as in the states, November and December here in Panama are filled with lots of holidays and celebrations. November is "Mes de la Patria" or the patriotic month here and they celebrate everything from independence from Colombia, independence from Costa Rica as well as local celebebrations to mark the day each province was founded. Students recite poetry and salute the flag, there are tons of parades and lots of eating. Think 4th of July all month long.

December is no different and it started off a few days ago with with Dia de Madre. I know most of you are thinking, isn´t Mother`s Day in May? Not here. It is December 8th here in Panama and my first Mother`s Day was a few days ago and it was an experience. In my community, the fathers fundraise for 6 months prior to buy gifts and food for every mother in the village. Food preparations start the day before since there is so much to do. I helped the women bake bread for breakfast and we used over 70 lbs of flour. The men butchered a whole cow, which was certainly something I hadn´t seen before and I didn´t realize it was so much work. The day of, all the women are presented gifts, play games to win prizes and are served mountains of food, but the highlight was watching the women try to climb a greesed pole to reach a bag of prizes at the top. I think this is something we should make all mothers do back in the states and it was hilarious to watch. I am posting a little video for you all to enjoy as well as some photos from the day off.

This is a photo of our community "rancho" all decorated for dia de madre. It is in the middle of town and serves as the main gathering point for any event, meeting or graduation as well as a sometimes-classroom, playground when it is raining, and basketball court.


These are just some of the cooks working hard in the kitchen. Most of them stayed up all night cooking. The guy on the bottom left in the blue shirt is my host dad, Martin. One the menu was rice, marinated beef, potato salad and "chicha", which they use to refer to any is any sort of beverage. I think they made tutti frutti punch.




I just posted the video below and as you can see is not turned the right direction. I tried changing in my camera and on blogger, but I can`t figure it out. It is short so turn you head side ways and enjoy. I think this was the fourth attempt at trying to reach the top and it took them only about 10 minutes. These ladies were not giving up.



I think this is my favorite photo from the whole day. It is the host-aunt, Leyda. She is awesome and I like her a lot. She is nineteen and usually around the house so we have gotten to know each other pretty well. She has an adorable 4 year old son, Christian and lives in my house with her man, Poe. She is normally pretty quite and reserved, so when she saw this photo she couldn´t stop laughing. Neither could I. Needless to say I can`t wait for Dia de Padre. That is in June and all the women are already talking about how they are going to out-do the men. Better gifts, better food...etc. Overall, I was nice to see a whole community come together to express appreciation for the work the women do. They work hard in the village to take care of the kids, cook, wash and work in the farm. Made me think about my own mom...I wish she was there to celebrate as well.

Impressions of Panama

It is hard for me to believe that in such a short amount of time I have seen and experienced so many amazing things. I decided to put up some of my favorite images of my Panama to give everyone a better sense of what I have been lucky to see so far.

Here in Panama, it isn´t a real piñata unless you put a ton of flour in it. This was a party we put on for families who hosted us for culture week in a community in Bocas called Valle de Risco.

During training we spent a week up in the mountains near the Costa Rican border. I was beautiful and reminded me a lot of being in the mountains of California. Every morning was crisp and it smelled like pine trees. The area is home to most of the coffee produced in Panama. The hills are covered with coffee bushes and the photo on the right is a small part of the Cafe Duran plantation, one of the largest coffee producers in Panama.

We had a free weekend during training and went to the beach. A few of us woke up early on our last morning there and went for an early morning swim. Below is a picture post swim of Dorine, me and Lisa. They are two great friends I have made here in Panama.


We were lucky enough to tour a family owned and operated coffee farm called Finca Hartman. They are a small operation that produces very high quality coffee for smaller buyers all over the world including the US, Europe and Japan. It was very interesting to see that process from start to finish. They also did a "cupping" for us, which was equivalent to a wine tasting but for coffee.

I hope this gave everyone a idea of where I am and the wonderful things I have been seeing. I can´t wait to take photos of my site and put them up for eveyone to see.

This is a photo was also taken while I was in the mountains near the Costa Rican border. We were watching as the sun was setting over the border and a storm was rolling in. A few minutes later the the valley below was filled with fog.