The Interrogation part 2

After the day I moved out of the first host family’s house, I went into a little slump. I still didn’t know my place here as a volunteer. I have only been in my site for about two months, but I still felt like I wasn’t moving fast enough. Sometimes the problems in the community seem like they are way too big for me, and I felt that the school really didn’t need me. For weeks I just sat and tried to brainstorm ideas on what I should do. Most of the ideas that I came up with required too much money or required participation from too many people. At the same time I was still getting use to the obvious differences from my culture and the Panamanians. Little everyday things that happen here were becoming big to me. I was getting tired of people just randomly cutting me in line, interrupting me when I was talking, rushing off the buses like there is a bomb in it, and constantly eating rice and beans. These are small things that usually I laugh at but when I felt like I didn’t have a purpose, it just made it hard on me. In the last few months, I have met many volunteers throughout the country. I believe that all volunteers come here with the purpose to help, but after a while things change. Some of us get soo frustrated with the differences here that they just give up. They become heavy partiers and are worthless to the community that they are supposed to serve. Some just say “FORGET THIS” and go home. I doubt that I will become one of these people; however I don’t want the temptation. I would like to be one of the volunteers that I have met who find that happy median and don’t allow the frustration to weigh them down.

A few days ago I had a change of heart. I went to visit the school counselor just to see how she was doing. After speaking to her I found out that she is the one who actually requested me to be at the school. We sat and talked about ideas that I came up with and what she felt that the school needed. After an hour of talking, we brainstormed a lot of ideas that would keep me busy for the entire next year. It’s as if my energy was renewed from that conversation. I was again happy and ready to move on to other challenges that I have to deal with, like finding another place to live and getting to know more people.

 I have been extremely aggressive in trying to find an apartment. This month I’ve been searching crazzzy hard. I have no idea how many miles I walked to go see apartments and how many people I’ve called for information. Unfortunately I haven’t mastered the art of speaking Spanish over the phone. The only thing that I can do is to listen for the important words and phrases. The conversation usually goes like this. Hola Como esta…. Rakataka rakataka bbbllluugg blug 2 bedrooms….does it have its own kitchen and bathroom…rakataka rakataka yes…where is it…. Blug blug rakataka rakataka.. in David City..how much does it cost…. De repente.. blug…rakataka 150 a month..How long is the contract for…raaakkkttaa..a year..where are you from? Are you Arabic?.. No I’m from the States, Thank you and I’ll give you a call back. Eventually I found a decent place in a great part of town that is a short walk to the school and all the stores that a shop at. Bam now my second problem is solved.

Not too long ago, I was talking to a couple Panamanians about how I haven’t had the chance to make a lot of friends here in the city. So far I have a lot of acquaintances but not many people to talk to on a regular base. They suggested to me that I should join this website that a lot of people in Panama use to meet people. They said it was kind of like a Panamanian facebook. At first I said no I don’t feel like it, but about after 2 weeks or so I decided to give it a try. So I sat down and took about 15 minutes to make a profile. There is a question on the signup that says who are you willing to meet? I put whoever because I figured I’m on here to network with natives, no matter what their sex is. SOO a couple of days later I check my email and the site alerted me that I had six new messages. Wow this site works fast. I log on to check the messages and all of the messages are from MEN. One message is from a 52 year old man that has constantly checked my page. They message read “hey fella”, the next one was from some guy with his shirt off and oil all over his chest. The message read, “Hey how are you, I want to see more pics.” I stopped reading after that. No Mr. Oiled up man you cannot see anymore pictures! I guess I’m going to shut down my profile and just meet people the old fashion way. Wish me luck

                                                                                                                 

The interrogation- part 1

Oh, how I cant wait to move into my own place. So far I have been sleeping on worn out foam mattresses, hard couches, sleeping pads, and wood tablets. Most of the time I wake up feeling like someone was stomping on the back of my neck all night. If I haven’t told you already, the first 3 months in my site I am required to live with a host family. The plan is that I am supposed to live with three different families for a 1 month in order not to wear out my welcome. To move into another person's house after already living with a 2 different host families during training just isn’t favorable to me. Actually I think Im pretty much over it.  Also the poor unsuspecting host family doesn’t know yet that I don’t have much money to pay for my stay there. Unfortunately this puts them and I in a difficult situation. When each family agreed to house me, I asked them what would be a fair price for me to stay there. Each of the families didn’t give me a direct answer. They would say ooh just help with the food , or oooh we'll figure it out later. So i figured ooh Ill be fine, it shouldn’t be too much. How sooo wrong I was. In the first house everything started off great. The food was excellent, the host mother was really nice and her family was very welcoming. The only downfalls were that I had to share a room with a guy who snores extremely LOUD. A couple of times I thought I would have to do CPR on him because it sounded like he was choking on his tongue. Also I had a strict curfew. I had to be in the house by 7. But things started to change when she busted out the calculator during breakfast, Ill tell u about that later. The second host family, weell what can I say about that situation. The second house that I was supposed to move into happens to be a teacher at the school. I would occasionally ask him in advance before i moved, what was a fair price for him and he would always say I need to talk to my wife. After the 3rd time I figured I would just have to make him an offer. So i did, after I gave him a number he just made a bitter beer face and said I’ll have to talk to my wife. So I gave him my phone number so he could call me after he spoke her. He then pulled out a piece a paper and wrote it down. When I was back in the states, if a girl wrote down my number on a piece of paper and did not put it in her cell phone I knew that she was not going to call. So when he did that I got kind of worried. When December 1st rolled around it was my day to move. Twelve o’clock no call from the professor. Two o’clock rolls around I give him a call, No answers, 4oclock no answer. By this time I came to the conclusion that he just flaked out on me. So I called the third host family and asked her could I move in early and she said, yea when. Today.... TODAY your crazy. Uhm Im serious. Then she said ok just give me time to clean up then you can come. 

I went to visit my assigned community the other day. It felt kinda strange walking around by myself. Usually I am with someone that knows the area and can let me know which places I should and should not go. I still haven’t developed the bravery to go everywhere in the area. There are some places that look just too shady for me to go there. One of my first stops was to my former host mother’s house. When I arrived her husband was happy to see me and very friendly. He’s such a cool dude. He reminds me of my late granddad. He always has his signature hat on, fishnet tank top, and his thick bifocals laying in the hammock on the porch. However I wasn’t welcomed warmly by the host mother. She just sat by the door and gave me a stank face the whole time. She never got up from her chair and continued sewing a blanket of scarf or something, I don’t know. After I sat and talked to her husband I walked towards to say bye and she still continued with the stank face. The only thing I think of why she would be mad at me is because of the morning that she whipped out the calculator. It’s possible she wants more money from me because of my stay there.  On the morning that she whipped out the calculator she asked me to calculate 5 dollars times the amount of times I am will be eating here. I did and the number came up to more than I will be paying rent for in my own apartment. From the get go, I told her that I can’t afford what she wanted to charge me and I was willing to move if it came to that. She then told me that I could continue to stay there and, I suggested to her that I will just find my own food and she doesn’t have to cook for me. She agreed to this but days went by and she would continue to offer me food. I would continuously refuse and she would continue to offer me more. After a few days I figured that she must have had a change of heart, so sometimes I would go ahead and eat what she wanted to serve me. Within the 3rd week of me being there she would drop little clues about money and how everything is sssssssooo expensive (bien caro), and how here kids would send her money from the city because she didn’t have much. Since I made me point clear from the beginning I just ignored it. On my last day there I woke up in the morning and she asked me do I know someone named Natalia. I said no, and she began to tell me how this volunteer did nothing for her community and she was there for 2 years and was lazy. She then interrogated me on what am I going to do for the community and what have I already done. Then she said that your are suppose to help us with all our issues but you refuse help with bridge down the street (a week before this she asked me if I can repair a bridge, and bluntly said that’s not what I am here for). I gave her a nice answer that included I am dedicated, to being a good volunteer and helping with the youth however I still have to get acquainted with the country, the culture and my surroundings. What I really wanted say was, what the hell is your problem? I still can’t speak in the past subjunctive tense, I still need help finding my way to the grocery store, I only know 10 people here, and do you expect for me to pull some metal rods and some cement out my anus and start building a bridge that I have no idea how to make.

Why is there a roach hiding in my man bag?

My relationships in the school with the professors are starting to change a bit. Some teachers are warming up to me and less of them think that I am a spy. Ive had lunch and dinner with a few of the teachers and am starting to form a good relationship with them. The students are no longer afraid to talk to me and go out of their way to say something to me. Some try to practice a few words with me in English or scream “Hola Profe”, or “Hola teacher, but I still have a few people that act kinda flacky. There are some teachers have asked me to join their class and help with lesson plans. However when the day that I’m suppose to help comes, they say either they are too busy or they send me to a hot classroom and say wait for me there and no one shows up. Even though it can be annoying none of these incidents make me angry any more. The longer I am here in this country my patience and my since of humor expands.

One day I was walking around the school looking for the professor of English. She wanted me to join her class to talk about families with the students. All of a sudden I hear someone on my right side call for me. It was a professor that I’ve never met before. She started off by saying Hola como esta. I responded accordantly and then she asked me do I speak Spanish, and I said yes more or less. For some reason she decided this was the right moment to display her newly acquired English skills by saying. “You…… fat.” I asked her to repeat what she just said to make sure I heard correctly. Here the Panamanians speak a lot with their hands. She then made a hand gesture like a pacman chomping on some ghost towards her mouth and then blew her cheeks up like a balloon. I didn’t understand why this 5ft women, I’m estimating about 200 pounds was going out of her way to call me fat. I waited for her to say something else, but that was it, that’s all she wanted to tell me. I just smiled and walked away.

Here just about everyone has prepaid. So every couple of days I have to refill the minutes on my phone. Even though I have to constantly go to the store all the time I really don’t mind, there’s a cute women there that sells me phone cards. Just like any other day I went to the store and asked for a phone card. Today she decided to stop me and ask question about my life. That day I decided I was going to be smooth and test out language skills with the ladies. I was there for about 30 minutes talking to her and I ended up forgetting a word in Spanish that I couldn’t describe, so I opened up my man bag and pulled out my dictionary. I guess the roach that was hiding in my bag was hot because he jumped out on to the counter to say hi. FAIL!!! I don’t think there as any recovering after.  I need to move out of the house Im in ASAP.

A lot of the trainees here have had a lot of experience with bats flying around in their rooms. The majority of the houses here that are located in the poor communities have a roof made of zinc and the walls are concrete. Because of the slant of the roof the walls usually don’t connect with the roof, leaving about a 12 inch gap between. This leaves a space more than big enough for a bird or bat to fly in. The first month I was here in my training community I was outside taking a shower. While I was showering I heard another volunteer next door telling his host mother that there is a bat in his room at night. For some reason, here a lot of people believe in witches. She told him that she hasn’t seen a bat in the room but it is very possible that a witch could be flying around his room at night. I sat there in the shower for about 10 minutes just laughing out loud at their conversation. A month later another volunteer called me from his community and told me “why did I leave my comfortable life in the states to live in a room with bats”. I couldn’t resist laughing again. But Karma has its way of getting around, because a week after that conversation I saw 2 bats flying in my room.

I’m excited to be finally completing my first month here. It gives me an opportunity to move out of the hood and into a different part of the city. The school year is about to end also. So I can finally sit and plan what exactly I’m going to do in the school and decide if I’m going to teach a class. Hopefully I find the role that is best for me to do the best job I can. Until that day comes Ill continue exploring, learning, and making sure there are no roaches in my bag.

What did I get myself into?

I’ve been warned by the other volunteers that have lived here for a while that the first 3 months in your community will be frustrating and probably the longest 3 months in your life. Its only week two and I’m starting to feel a little bit of it. When in this short amount of time I have already asked myself a series of questions.

When I was in the states I was a target for multi-level marketers. I thought maybe I had a  huge sign on my forehead that said; Hey I want to make money on the side selling stuff  that I wouldn’t use myself. Now I ask Why am I a target for beggars. It’s about the 8th of November and I’m walking down the street blasting things fall apart by the Roots through my Ipod, with my man bag strapped on my left shoulder. I try to take a quick look to the right and the left to see where I am, Crap!!! I’m lost again. I would stop and think about where I’m going but if I stand in one place for more than a minute someone might ask me for money. I already tried the, I don’t speak Spanish card but it no longer works. For some reason every beggar knows how to speak English. I don’t understand how Panama has trouble finding people for jobs that require English speakers when everyone that asks me for money knows it fluently. How am I going to do this? This is a question that almost all Peace Corps volunteers ask themselves. I have been in my site for less than a month and I’m already asking the question. Before I became a volunteer I received a packet of information of the community that was going to be assigned to me. It gave me basic information on the community and what are my potential assignments for my two years. One of the assignments was to find out a way to clear out a field that is located in the middle of my community. If this field is cleaned up and maintained properly the neighborhood  kids would be able to use it for sports and dedicate their time on more productive  things instead of drugs or etc..   Yesterday the son of my community guide asked me to go with him to the cancha (the field). The field is a pretty decent size, enough to play football soccer or whatever sports they could come up with, and at the far end of the field there is a small basketball court where the kids are using it to play soccer. The field is overrun by weeds and the ground is completely uneven. To me it doesn’t seem like a simple lawnmower can fix it. This project will require a big machine to level the ground. It’s easy to see that there is a big need for something to be done. Even though the field has weeds knee high and probably has snakes in it; the kids are still playing on it. When I returned to the house I asked my current host mother about the field and why is it not maintained. She told me that when she was younger her and a few of the  people in the neighborhood would go out there with their machetes and cut down the  grass and spray something on the grass so it wouldn’t grow. She said she’s too old to  continue so she hasn’t done it in years and no one has the money to pay for it to be maintained. But the most disturbing thing she told me was that no one has tried  to do anything about it in 15 years. How am I suppose to get a community involved in fixing this when no one has cared in 15 years. How, me the gringo with the bad Spanish grammar suppose to inspire a community who is having trouble feeding their family and making ends meet to take this serious. Sometimes I ask myself, why am I here?  When I go to the school teachers secretly ask each other why is he here, and what does he want. When one brave soul comes up  to me and ask me directly all I can give them is this broad answer about me being able to give them support when needed and how I can help them with ideas and projects. Truthfully I don’t know exactly what I am doing just yet in the school. My first 3 months are supposed to be dedicated to getting to know everyone and learning how the school works. My community guide usually jokes with me and says everyone thinks that I am a spy. Their reaction is understandable I suppose. I am the first Peace Corps volunteer that they have meet, so it’s only natural that they are suspicious, however it makes my job a little harder. Why did I choose to be poor?  Yesterday I was figuring out my budget for the month and all I could do was sigh. There are different levels of being broke. There is the level where you have some money in reserve but it’s just a small amount. Then there is a level where you have only enough to survive and nothing extra. That’s the level where I’m at. When I was in the States if I dropped a quarter or dime I would just look at it and keep walking. I would say, Pssstt whatever. Now If I drop a nickel, I would probably do a swan dive on the concrete floor to pick it up. It’s kind of early in my service but I hope that I will find my answers soon.

If Panama was Arizona I would be Mexican

Its now November 5th 2010 and I have been here in Panama almost 3 months now. Since my last post I have moved out of my first family’s house and into another. The difference is that now I am in my assigned community and the other volunteers are all in their own communities. I no longer have anyone to speak English to and I only know a handful of people here.

But before I say what’s happening in the present day, Ill back track to where I left off last time.

When I was in the states I was against carrying the man bag. I always wondered why men carried purses, it made no since to me. Here everyone has a man bag, me included. I discovered that you always need to carry an umbrella, toilet paper, and your passport. Umbrella, because it rains all the time here. Walk into a store for 20 minutes and when you leave it’ll be pouring down rain. Toilet paper because I don’t have a car. There’s no way I can hold it in when I have a 20 minute walk to get to the house, and a lot of places here don’t have toilet paper in the bathrooms for some reason. No one told me these things when I arrived, so I had to find out the hard way. And you have to always ALWAYS, ALWAYS, carry your passport or an in country ID. If Panama was Arizona I would be Mexican. A few weeks ago I was walking down the street visiting the city of David with 2 other volunteers. One is brown skinned like me and the other had blond hair blue eyes (the true definition of gringo). We were just going to get something to eat when the police told me and the other volunteer to get against the wall and show our IDs. We asked him why and he just said pa revisar. At the time I didn’t know what that word was but I figured it was do it because I said so. Then I looked to my side and saw that they let blond hair blue eyes go. Oh and the exact place that this happened is now the community that is assigned to me for the next 2 years.

Sometimes living with a family from a different cultural background is difficult. When I first arrived at my host family’s house in Santa Clara it was real cool. I ate pretty well and they gave me space when I needed it. As time went by things started to change a little bit. Breakfast became bread and more bread.  I was being asked for the weekly allowance earlier and earlier. That was probably the most frustrating to me. It was already too early in the week to be asking for the money and he stuttered, so it was like he was asking me 5 times at once. The host father for some reason started walking in on me whenever he wanted. Just 2 weeks ago he walked in on me in the shower.  I looked at him like what the hell are you doing in here. After that his wife yelled at him and said didn’t you see the towel on the shower. For some reason I got along with her very well. Maybe because she was 28 and he was almost 50. After that incident she realized that I was over it, and asked me am I ready to move out on my own yet.

Soon after we all left Santa Clara we moved back into the army base in Panama City to do our final training and to participate in the swear in ceremony. Our  swear in ceremony was real nice. It took place in the ambassador of the United States house and we all had the opportunity to meet and take pictures with the president of Panama. I have one with him but I have to find the guy who took the picture. After swear -in we all went out to eat and a club. It was the first time I have been out in 2 and a half months. In those months I lost my ability to stay up late and my salsa skills diminished.

Currently I am living in David and enjoying it. I’ve had 2 host families here so far and they are both great. One was a house with a stay at home mother, the father and 3 daughters around the age of 20. The father was away working for the majority of the time so I was treated better than I deserved. I had nice big meals and coffee with every one of them. They were really nice and made sure I had everything that I needed. The second house I moved into and that I’m currently living in is a retired women and her husband. They are super cool.

To wrap things up, I hope all of you are doing well in the states. My thought are with all of you, take care. Till next time

A quick summary

If you don’t know by now I have been in Panama since August 18 training to be a volunteer for the Peace Corps. I haven’t written one entry since my arrival, so I’m going to try to give you a summary of all that has been going on here.

There are about 47 Americans in this class that are training together, there were 48 but one person decided that this was not for him. We are divided into 2 groups or what they call sectors. My sector and of 25 others is called CED or community economic development, the other is called EH which means Environmental Health. Within the first 3 days here we were lodging and taking classes in an old American Army base which is now called the Ciudad de Saber. We had internet, running water, air conditioning and wi-fi. After those three days, things began rapidly changing. Our two groups were separated into 2 different communities. The EH’ers was sent to a community called Rio Congo and we were sent into Santa Clara.

I know live with the Macias family which includes Bernuir, Jose, and their six year old daughter Natali. The living conditions are very different for me. So my initial reaction to the “letrin” or the outdoor bathroom wasn’t so good. In the first 2 weeks I refused to do number 2 in it. I ate as little as possible so I wouldn’t have to go. I literally held my crap in as long as I could. You know that cold shiver that you get when you have to go to the bathroom real bad, imagine having that for a week. I think I might have done some permanent damage to my intestines. After those two weeks I finally gave in and used it, but only during the day time. As soon as the sun goes down if you haven’t went by then, just hold it till morning. Because the ones we don’t speak of may be out there (refer to the movie The Village). I made that mistake once and only once. I walked outside at about 9oclock with my flashlight and saw some creatures that I didn’t know existed. Needless to say, I’m now a pro on when I can use it or not.

On another note, the country has some really beautiful places, and the majority of the people that I come in contact with are really nice. To me, our visit to Hato Chami in the mountains was one of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen. The whole trip up the mountain looked like a postcard but with a lot of rain.

The people in Hato Chami were great, the welcomed us into their homes and showed so much love. The only word I could use to describe how they live is just “gangsta”. There houses were made out of sticks and some had trash bags for walls. There’s no electricity, so when it gets dark around 7 its time to go to bed. They have 1 letrine that is shared between about 4 to 5 houses and depending on if there is water or not you have to bath in the creek. The water wasn’t safe for us to drink so were had to put iodine tablets or drops of bleach in the water. Unfortunately few people from the group got sick. Since it rained every day there was mud everywhere. I have never seen that much mud in my life. By the end of that trip all my clothes were brown and a split a pair of pants falling. Even though the living conditions were challenging, I had a lot of fun there and finally got my appetite back, the food there was so good.

There are ups and downs to being a foreigner here. The whole experience of just being here is new and exciting. I like that if I don’t want to answer a question or just don’t want to talk I can now act like I don’t understand. Lo siento..No sé, No entiendo, Mi español es malo. I have already used that line plenty of times. Actually I used it today when someone asked me for money. The downs about being a foreigner are that people will try to cheat you, because they think you have money. They have no idea how wrong they are, IM BROKE.

Within this time I have also found out where I will be working for the next 2 years. I will be in the 2^nd largest city in Panama working with the youth. I’m excited about the opportunity and ready to get started, but doesn’t start till November. I happen to arrive in a time where there is a push towards working in urban communities. Usually people are sent out to the boondocks working with the indigenous, farmers, and whatever else is out there. Don’t get confused there will be a lot of people in my group doing that but I will be the exception. At first people were teasing me and saying that “you have the easy site”, “Must be nice to have a indoor toilet”, “Are you getting satellite tv”. But after the safety coordinator came to a meeting and told us about the crime in my future area and the gang activity, the comments quickly changed. Now they ask me, “Are you getting a gun”, “Do you need me to pray for you”, and “I changed my mind I’m not coming to visit you”.

Over all it has been a good experience so far. I think about home every so often, but I rather be doing what I’m doing.