Odds & Ends #16: 1/25/11

 

Well since I haven’t done an Odds & Ends post since October, I guess its time for a new one. Here’s some of the stuff we’ve been up to over the last few months:

• In December, we attended the graduation ceremony for the 9th graders at our community school. Technically, the 27 students that graduated are done with school since school is only mandatory through the ninth grade in Panama. However, we’ve been told that all of these students will continue on to high school. The ceremony was nice (and thankfully brief) and included fireworks, presents for the six students with the highest grades, and plenty of happy families. The three students with the highest grades also received scholarships to attend high school. After ninth grade, students have to pay to attend school.
• January has been a somewhat productive month on our primary project (which, ironically, we have not discussed on the blog yet…this will be rectified soon). One of our community groups is soliciting funds from the United Nations Development Program, Small Projects Fund for a improved pastures project. In the last few weeks we have visited another project that was funded in 2009 twice and will be hosting a meeting with the national director in community today. Kate and I are both excited that the project is coming together because we have been working on this project extensively for the last six months. Stay tuned.
• I am also happy to report that Kate and I will be teaching Junior Achievement in the school next year in addition to helping out with the English classes. Junior Achievement (http://www.ja.org/) is a international non-profit that provides materials to teach students about business skills, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy. Kate and I have been waiting for these materials for almost a year and we finally received the packets two weeks ago. Its a long story, but it turns out that the packets had been sitting in a shipping company’s office in Las Tablas since August but nobody ever told us that they had been shipped, let alone where they were shipped. Once I knew that the packets had been “allegedly” (still wasn’t convinced at that point) shipped, I spent two hours hunting for the company’s office before I found it. Since addresses and labeled street names are not used in Las Tablas no one I asked knew where this office was, let alone if the company even existed. I asked at least 15 people in Las Tablas if they knew where this office was and only two people had even heard of the company although they didn’t even know where it was. Finally, a woman that worked in a furniture store (who I believed took pity on me after seeing me walk in front of her store 12 times) helped me figure out where the place was. Instead of using addresses, people often give directions based on what businesses or landmarks are next to it and we were finally able to get the name of a restaurant and a radio station that the office was next to. This whole excursion was frequently interrupted by me wagging my fist in the air and proclaiming “Damn you Panamaaaaa!!!” Alas, I have come to rely on the fact that Panama giveth and Panama taketh away. Therefore, I am happy to say that we now have the packets.
• In December, we returned to a nearby national park called Isla Iguana. The Island is beautiful and on this trip we went with our amazing Panama City host family when they came to visit Los Santos. The island and surrounding waters are protected and is a major nesting site for birds. Here are some pictures:

• In December, we also attended a provincial meeting of the Los Santos Department of Health. The meeting was held to honor the community members that serve as leaders for the health committees that each regional community health center organizes. The health committees are organized to help the health centers teach the elderly about diabetes, heart disease, and other important health items. The meeting was organizing by one of our host sisters and both of our host parents are on our local health committee so we were invited to attend. The meeting consisted of some remarks for our community priest, presentations from each of the 15+ health committees, the presentation of gifts to each of the committee members, and of course breakfast and lunch. The presentations were more like talent shows where each committee told a few jokes (most of which were dirty jokes…its always awkward to learn new slang words from your 74 year old host mom). The highlight for both of us was the little pageant that was held to name the king and queen of the meeting. Each health committee nominated one man and one woman and winners were determined to selecting the flower out of a vase that had a piece of paper that said King or Queen on it. The whole ceremony was quite hilarious because most of the nominees dressed up and the eventual queen played it up by blowing kisses to everyone and doing the traditional beauty pageant wave. Interestingly, they used the exact same pageant format that was used at our community schools anniversary last September (Kate wrote a post on this). I can’t say that the meeting was very informative but I think its primary purpose was to thank the health committee participates for their help. Here’s a picture of the king and queen as well as a picture of the employees of our local health center and members of our health committee:

• We are often asked how people in the U.S. can help us out with our work in Panama. Although we are not in need of any support at this time, there are several volunteers who are currently asking for financial support through Peace Corps Partnership Grants. Kate and I have a friend named Katherine who lives in an indigenous community in Bocas del Toro where she is hoping build several compositing and pit latrines. The community she lives in is particularly poor and primarily relies on subsistence farming. With this project, Catherine is hoping to drastically improve community sanitation and health by providing families with better access to latrines. Click here to donate or learn more about this or other projects looking for support.
• Speaking of latrines, I wanted to share the crappy (good pun, eh?) picture I took of the lunar eclipse on Dec 21. We got up at 3 am to watch the eclipse and it was quite beautiful. It turns out that our best and most comfortable view was siting in front of our latrine and leaning against the door.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Until next time….