Glimpse in to the future

Isaac and I just returned from our first visit to the town where we will be living for the next two years. Deep into the deforested heart of the Ola district of Cocle province where our spanish is only understood by children under ten years. The landscape is dramatic with craggy mountains in the distance and steep grassy hills all around. The region is truely poor and their needs are far stretching. However, I believe there are some folks there that will make the experience.

We have been cautioned many times about the comfortable silences that we will become accustomed to, and that Panamanians consider time together sitting and just being there. Our commnity seems to be the opposite, My head is still whirling for the all of the very fast, campo style Spanish that we were flooded with this week.

I spent much of the week with quite a cold and people offering all kinds of remedies to fix me up. One of our guides (Anayansi - an amazing women) had asked the mother of the family that we were staying with to make some lime tea for my throat. She did and I drank it and it had little flavor if none at all. The next day she was so incredibly embarrassed when Ana told me she had completely forgot the lime part of the tea and had just given me hot water, because she was so so nervous to have us in her home. But really the women are incredibly motivated and active within the community. Which I feel lucky to have the oppurtunity to work with the women in the fields as much as the men (not a common situation).

We did a lot of visiting of the community, stopping into peoples homes explaining who we are and what we are going to be doing (which we are still too sure of). It is Mango and Avocado season and we would return from each visit with a handful of each. You would not believe all the mangoes rotting on the ground. We walked to the towns water source (the only forested area as far as the eye can see) an amazing cascading waterfall, where we saw this cute little blue frog. We requested a mini town meeting to introduce ourselves and ask for help with getting to know the community. It was a good week with ups and downs. For now we are heading back to Santa Clara for our remaining two weeks of training and the little birds will fledge their nests all on their own (or in our case- the two of us).

Here are a few pictures of the week: one is the kitchen and the other the sink area at the house where we will be staying

How about some photos



This is our host family for our culture week

Okay I will have to post more next time. Out of time and cumputer is sloooooooooooow!

We are finishing up on week 7! Time is flying. Our SAS (agriculture) group heads out Monday for our "community entry conference" and site visits. This will be a week of playing musical houses, blundering our way through 500 introductions in Spanish attempting to explain what exactly it is that there new Peace Corps vollies will be doing for the towns people (I am not sure that I have this all done in English yet) all part of the process. We will be heading to the OlA district in the province of Cocle. Isaac and I will be meeting our "counterparts" before hand to help guide us on our journey and direct us to each of the houses we will be traveling to for each meal. I will let you know how it goes!

The last two weeks helped to expand our horizons on what we might be experiencing when we finally get to our site. Isaac and I spent a week at a volunteers´s site in the western part of the Panama province, eating well, hiking a lot, working a little, and generally having a great time with the group of 8 other volunteers that will reside in our province of Cocle (next to the Panama province). We learned about the months long work gone into weaving one of the tipical Panamanian hats. We planted yuca, which I learned is tapioca (or casava or manioc- I had a conversation recently-at least 7 weeks ago- with someone in the states about where tapioca came from). We had the freshest coffee I have ever had- grown processed and roasted at the house where we were staying. We swam, watched leaf cutter ants on their great journey and did a little environmental ed in the local school. A really great week!

Here are some photos from ¨culture¨ week and ¨tech¨ week.