A belated Merry Christmas to everyone from our community in Panama!
The video above is from a Christmas Eve tradition in Panama. For nine nights leading up to Christmas Eve (Dec. 16-24) community members gathered together to go caroling to a different house each night. This video is from the final posada (which literally translates to “inn” but in practice refers to Joseph and Mary looking for room at the inn). The posada celebrations include singing, snacks, and nativity scenes. Each evening at dusk, people gather at the steps of the church and walk together towards the house where we would be celebrating posada for the evening. A group of women from the Catholic committee lead the singing and music was provided by a group of boys who played drums and other various Panamanian percussion instruments (called tamborito). Once we arrived at the evening’s destination, the group sang a reenactment of José and María (Joseph and Mary) looking for room in the inn before Jesus was born. Later, snacks were distributed and everyone returned to the church together. The conclusion to the nine nights of posada was on Christmas Eve at the house of the community mayor, where in addition to the other posada activities, there was a dinner of chicken and rice with potato salad (the staple of Panamanian party fare), a children’s raffle for four bicycles, and the kids also received small presents donated by a community group that raises money for these presents throughout the year. Christmas Eve seemed to be the bigger event in our area, with more parties and celebrating. Christmas Day included a mass in a nearby community, but not many other activities. People in our area don´t really exchange gifts between adults (including family members) because they don´t have much extra money, but most of the kids in our community did seem to have a few new presents or toys and everyone enjoyed the day relaxing with family.
On Christmas Day, Kate and I visited many houses in our community to pass out oranges and other small snacks to our neighbors and attempted to cook a nine dollar “Christmas ham”. For us, $9.00 was a big investment because our typical meal costs between $0.50 and $2.00. Turns out the “ham” we purchased was actually a $9.00 “Christmas Spam” cleverly packaged (and labeled) as a ham. We did not discover this until we had cooked our Christmas Spam for almost five hours. Ready for a feast, we took the “ham” out of the oven and realized that it had not cooked so much as it slowly burned (and still wasn´t even very warm). Other than the Christmas spam debacle and a pretty strong cold I got on Christmas Eve, we had a great time in our community this holiday season and were very happy to avoid a repeat of last year´s hospital stay.
After Christmas, Kate and I went up to Panama City for a quick island vacation on Isla Taboga (12 km from the city). We had a great time on the island where we enjoyed good food, great hiking (we saw several black and green poison dart frogs and one GIANT brown tarantula) and lots of relaxation with a beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean and Panama Canal from our room´s balcony. Even though we only had one night on the island, we really enjoyed our visit and felt extremely relaxed, especially when the crowds of day trippers visiting the beach went back to the city. Isla Taboga was well worth a visit and it was nice to see a new part of Panama.
After the trip, our Panama City host family very graciously hosted us for a few nights of fun, food and fireworks. We celebrated New Year’s Eve with several other Volunteers and ended up in Casco Viejo (one of the oldest parts of the city) at midnight where we celebrated in the street watching fireworks around the city and lighting some of our own with several children. At one point in the evening I ended up having a (slightly inebriated) conversation with five other guys and we were all from different countries (Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, Morocco, and the United States). All in all it has been quite an eventful and fun few weeks.
Anyways, Happy New Year! Kate and I cannot believe that it is already 2011. We both remember when we saw our Close of Service date of October 2011, it seemed so far away. It’s crazy to think that at this time next year we will likely be somewhere freezing our butts off and wondering why the houses don´t have hammocks on the porches and the pineapples aren’t as juicy. Last night during dinner, we discussed our highlights from 2010. It has been a year with so many new and different experiences that we both found it very hard to even recall everything we´ve done in the past year, let alone pick a highlight! We finally agreed that getting our cat Tigrita (February 2010) was a definite highlight, along with moving to our new community (technically Dec. 30th, 2009) and completing the first draft of our community´s proposal for United Nations grant (November 2010). It´s hard to imagine what´s in store for 2011, but we are looking forward to many more new experiences! We hope that all of you had a great holiday season, wherever your travels took you. We miss each one of you and are grateful for your support and love!
Kate put together a great photo album of our holiday activities here. ¡Felíz Navidad y Prospero Año Nuevo 2011!
January 3, 2011 at 12:18 pm |
So cool! Glad to hear your 2010 Christmas was much more pleasant than 2009! The dog in that one picture totally reminds me of a flattened cartoon dog (could be that it looks like he’s almost in the middle of the street). Rummikub, I love Rummikub! What amazing views for your hikes! I’ve always thought those dart frogs looked cool…probably could have done without seeing a trantula in the wild though. Hope you have an even better 2011!
January 3, 2011 at 1:50 pm |
There was no Christmas caroling in our community. I assumed it was not a Panamanian practice. I wonder if it is common in Panama or elsewhere in America Latina. Thanks for sharing!