I know I haven’t written in a while but my life has started to become a basic routine. Get up, go to school, read, go to the gym, eat, go home and sleep. That’s it……!! If I am not trying to meet with organizations to bring to the school or doing private English classes, that’s pretty much what my life is Monday through Friday. I didn’t feel the need to waste precious space on the web posting that. Life during the weekends varies. Im probably at the coffee shop reading, watching a movie on my labtop, or watching videos on YouTube. Matter of fact Im at the coffee shop right now typing this. Pretty exciting life right…..? However this is the life that I am now use to. But every so often someone calls me to hangout at night and some of the weirdest things happen.
One day another volunteer and I was walking back home on a Saturday night. I was way too tired to keep up so he was a little ahead of me. About halfway from home I hear him yelling across the street at a group of women on the corner. I don’t know what there are saying to each other but whatever it was it seemed interesting. So I sped up , by time a got up to where they were, one of the women in a deep raspy deep voice hisses at me and says “ssssss sssss sssss ssss “hey gordito venga aca” (hey chubby come here). I looked over to see a group of figures with no waist,,,,, or curves ,,,and hair that looked suspiciously too long. I said to my friend OH MY GOSH IS THAT A MAN HISSING AT ME? Yes those are men. Then he continues with his debate with the transvestitian prostitutes or whatever the term is suppose to be. Im not going to get into the specifics of their argument, all I’m going to say is they were in a heated debate over who has what kind of equipment. Probably was the funniest thing Ive heard since Ive been here.
Back at school things continue to fluctuate. Some days are good ones and some days are just disappointing. The good days are the ones where even though I know a lot of the students are behind in learning basic sentence structure in English, they still participate and try. Or when some of them are having trouble grasping what I may be going over, they stay after class longer to get help on how to do it. Of course there are some kids that easily grasp things and have no trouble at all, and I’m glad for them. However knowing that I’m actually being utilized makes me want to get up and come back the next day. But some days are just sucky. Like days when hope is giving to the kids just to be easily taken away. Within the last few weeks the professor in charge of the civil protection club and I have tried to get the fire department and the Red Cross to come to our school and teach the students first aid and CPR. Each organization agreed but on the appointed time they both acted as if they didn’t know that they were supposed to come. Even after they received a formal letter from us and a call confirming if they were coming, 2 days before the event. People that make more excuses than a crackhead caught in a pharmacy, make my blood boil. And that’s exactly who these organizations remind me of. Within 3 weeks I have completely lost patience for them. I am now working on a way to somehow get our own CPR dummies and I will teach them myself. The motto I have been told from our trainers is to not teach anything that other Panamanians can them, just make the connections to make it possible. But when things like this happen, I go by the motto “if you want something done you just have to do it yourself”.
