School Anniversary Celebrations!

In the middle of September, the regional school in our community celebrated the anniversary of its founding in 1976 (34 years!). The school had special activities for two days, and many members of our community and the surrounding area participated. It was a lot of fun, everyone had a good time despite the intense rainstorm that lasted most of the morning. Now that we are entering the rainiest months of the year, these storms happen pretty much everyday and strongly influence daily activities here.

Anyway, the central part of the school anniversary celebrations was crowning the new reina (queen) of the school. I was trying to think of an apt comparison to life in the U.S. and I didn’t come up with much. There are Homecoming and Prom queens in high school in the U.S., but reinas here are much more important, and a much bigger deal than in the states. As far as the anniversary celebration, I guess it could be compared to a pep rally, but more for the whole community than just the students.

Anyway, our friend and student that we took to our Leadership workshop was crowned the 2010 reina! The candidates were all led in by a male student, and then given a gold balloon, all orchestrated to the Titanic song, “My Heart Will Go On” (and yes, lyrics by Celine in English). After an appropriate wait to build suspense, the balloons were popped, and Yeimy was announced the winner! It was fun to watch, and interesting because it is so different than anything we do at schools in the U.S.

Various groups of students performed dances and the parents in the community cooked food and sold it to raise money for the PTA-type group. All of the reina candidates and their escorts danced a slow version of the electric slide. I was at the school when they were practicing, and they were shocked when I stood up, began dancing, and told them it was one of my favorites! It was fun to be able to participate in the activities, and the students had a great time. The second day consisted of volleyball and baseball tournaments.

On a sad note, about a month ago, the very nice (especially by Panama standards) school bus for our school was in an accident during one of its normal morning routes. The bus typically made two routes to pick up students in the morning and two to drop them off in the afternoons. Having such a school bus was a definite luxury for our school, and is NOT the norm. Typically, students walk very far to school or are reliant on the public bus system to get to and from school (which can be very expensive, day after day). Anyway, the bus was coming around a curve and the driver (a community friend of ours) lost control on the slick roads. It rains nearly all the time here now, and the road is very curvy in some parts. The bus slid off the road with 13 students inside, and crashed in a ditch. Fortunately (¡gracias a Dios!) no one was seriously hurt, although there were neck problems, bumps, bruises, sprains and strains, and one broken leg. But, the students were mostly older, and fortunately none of the younger kids were involved.

This happened about a month ago, and the bus hasn’t been seen since. I guess it’s pretty badly damaged, and the school does not have any money to repair it. Nor is there such a thing as insurance for people or cars in this country. The bus was donated by a local political figure a few years ago, but the chances of getting a replacement are slim. As a result, about 1/3 of the students missed about two weeks of school because there was no transportation for them. It took a while to get things organized, but now, each of the area communities has a small passenger bus for the local kids from that community. This seems to be working okay, but losing the bus was a big blow to the school and the students and now places a financial burden on parents to pay for public transportation or contribute to fund a community bus and driver. Also, the driver lost his job, and we’re not sure if there will be work for him at the school since the bus is gone. It was an important reminder to us to not take what we do have for granted.

Other than this, school has pretty much returned to normal. With another Peace Corps Volunteer (from IDAHO!) we gave organic fertilizer presentations to the agriculture students. We are also planning an environmental fair at the school for mid-October and organizing a new recycling project at the same time. If the project goes well in the school, we hope to expand to the community level. We’ll keep you posted!

November is a busy month in terms of Panamanian holidays, and although there is no school the first two weeks of November, there are many parades and presentations at the school, so we’ll have pictures and videos of that soon.

Happy back-to-school time to everyone in the U.S., especially to my mom, and to my sister Meg who started college at the University of Idaho!

School Anniversary Celebration photos here.

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