So there are alligators in my river...

So the other day I was out wandering around the town (which I do a lot fo these days) and ran into my neighbor, Capira. I work with him in the local coffee association, so we have talked a lot and gone out to work and drink guarapo a few times. He had returned from the river with another guy from town. They were out hunting for baby alligators. He says he can sell them for $20 each in Colon city as pets. Now I was under the impression that we didn`t have anything of the sort in our river, but it turns out we do. In abundance. And they reportedly grow 7 feet (!) long. I`ll let you know when I acutally see one that big.

And in honor of the 113th Civil War tonight, I will post this link for you all to enjoy. Banned by the UO Athletic Department for its use of the duck mascot but loved by Duck fans everywhere, I now present you with I love my Ducks (I Smell Roses):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hrjpe1VCNg

First blood! (Plus my new nevera)

So I was out at a mini-junta the other day (a junta is when a bunch of people get together to work on something) cleaning out some monte for an area to plant frijoles. Josengo (whose property we were working on) and I went off to the next ridge over to try and find where his dog went to. He kept calling ti and calling it but it only got further away. To make a long story short (and I'll be sure to give you all the longer version when I come home next month), we ended up killing the conejo pintado (litterly painted rabbit, though it looks more like a pig to me) that the dog had cornered in its hole/home. Below are the post-hunt pictures. (WARNING: beheaded carcass pictures follow)


The hunting party and the kill. They tell me that this one is pretty small at about 7 lbs or so, but it felt heavy enough trying to carry it back from the farm.

A close up of the kill. Gruesome? Yes. Awesome? Absolutely.

Cleaning the meat off in preperation for dinner. I meant to get a picture of the finished meal but I was so hungry by the time it was finally cooked I scarfed it down without thinking about getting a photo of it.

And today's extra about my house: my refrigerator! Now I know all you TEA volunteers out there are like "Pff. You didn't have a refrigerator until now? Please. I'm the one who has it rough. My wireless internet hasn't worked for weeks and the water keeps shutting off." And I really have nothing in retaliation to say to you. You've got it rough indeed. Anyway, this is a big deal for me, mostly since I can have cold water to come back to after a long days work in the monte. So what does a volunteer such as myself keep in the refrigerator? Let's find out.

Looks like we've got day old rice in the blue bowl, some Japanese oranges in a bag, Various sauces (including my imported Srirachi sauce, thank you Mom and Dad) plus some jelly in the door. Plenty of water, and some seed packets where there should be eggs. Well played if I do say so myself.

And finally, the kitchen is complete. Or as complete as it is going to get. I really think the fridge adds to the fung shuei of the room, don't you?

Panamanian Independence Day(s)

Hey hey hey Rudy. (10 points if you get the reference) The 3rd of November was the first of many Panamanian independence days. Depending on who I ask in my community, the country (or parts of the country) have anywhere between 2 and 5 days of independence. The 3rd is independence from Colombia, later on the 28th of this month (I think) is independence from Spain, the 5th was a day of celebration for Colon's independence, whew. The list goes on. Below are some pics I took of the presentation that the school put on for the community. It was about 4 and a half hours long, so you know they put some time into preparing it.

The students lined up in front of the school in the morning to sing the national anthem.

My buddy Brian in traditional Panamanian dress. He's a pretty funny kid.


The parade that's preparing to file through town. The flag being carried in front is the national flag of Panama and the second is the banner of the town, Union.

The percussion section of the parade. I hope this marks the end of hours long practices at the school on these things. It gets old real fast and the kids don't know the meaning of "bang the drum lightly". Maybe its because they don't understand English.

The gente of Union anxiously awaiting the program to start in the school.

Singing a song about Panama, which went something like "Viva Panama, llora Panama" if memory serves correctly. One of the other kids in town, Miguel, is tocaring that tanque with all his might.

A short melodrama about the different provinces of Panama. While slightly unorganized and though a lack of attention was blatantly apparent from the actors, it was interesting to hear about the different parts of the country.

A traditional Panamanian dance done by 8 of the students. Good stuff if you ask me.

So there you have it, the 3rd in a nutshell. The next day was Flag Day, and Union was supposed to have a discoteca on the basketball court, but the people from out of town who came in all left early and by the time I showed up around 9pm after returning from catching a World Series game, the music had ended and no one was dancing. On Colon Day, the 5th, I experienced one of the stranger things I have seen while here.

The men had strung a live duck by its feet upside down on a rope over the main road. They then rode under it as fast as they could on their horses and tried to yank its head off with their bare hands as they passed under. It took about 15 tries between 4 of them before it finally popped off. Needless to say, much beer was consumed in the process. The vent drew quite a crowd too with much ooh-ing and ahh-ing to be heard.

I have my communtiy presentation to give on Friday and I'm getting my refrigerator today so things just keep moving along! Hope everyone is doing well!

My swingin pad!

Here it is folks, the moment you've all been waiting for: the inside look at my hosue in glorious Union de Piña! As far as houses in PC Panama go, its pretty solid. And I mean that litterally. Not everyone is lucky enought to have a house made of blocks like mine. It has a zinc roof, which doesn't leak (Woo hoo!) and a zinc surroudning for my porch so the chickens can't get in and my Panamanian baby can't get out (HAHA, just kidding. I let him run all over the town). Here is a shot from the front yard, with one of the orange trees in the foreground and the other to the left side of the house. Note the clothing hanging up to dry after a day of work in the monte which I am more often than not too lazy to wash.

Below is a picture of my gourmet Panamanian style kitchen, complete with pilas (pots), gas tank, unused water filter, and typical Panamanian fare such as plantains, rice, sugar (for making chicha from my oranges, and, of course, plenty of coffee.

This is the reading area. The bookshelf and the two sillons came with the house, otherwise it would have been completed with my books on the ground a couple of plastic chairs. It was at one point infested with ants who apparently gnawed their way through my concrete walls. It was strange.

My bedroom, which has a bed that I miraculously fit on ( If i lay diagonally and move the pillow almost all the way off of the bed. I'm still looking for a clothers container thing to get my clothing off of the ground. But I do have a fan, and for a house that's in a small ravine type area, that's what really matters.

The best part of the house: INDOOR PLUMMING! Now, it may not look like much to all you statesiders, but we Panamanians know that this is as good as it gets in our communities. The toilet is a little old, and it smalls like raw sewage when you fluch it, and it wasn't working for the first week I lived there (I ended up snaeking into the neighbor's latrine or timing my trips with days out of site), but it flushes. After 3 or 4 tries. Sometimes more. And no, noone was shot in my shower (comment made by some wise guy in the city last week about the stain on the back wall). Plus I now know that I have what Caitlin calls a "Tail-less whip scorpion" living in there who makes appearances very early in the morning, to whom I say "I'm too lazy to find something to kill you with right now, show yourself again after I take a nap in my hammock." He doesn't show up for the rest of the day.

The guest bedroom. Not much to look at, but I can string my hammock up from the roof and have people stay the night if they can't get back to their respective communtiies while visiting me. The house had 2 other beds in it when I mvoed in, but the owner snatched them out the day I moved in. Drats!

This area is around the left side of the house. It has my sink for washing dishes and shaving and a fairly decent sized supply of scrap wood, which I may or may not one day use for a fogon (a cooking fire, much more work than my self-igniting gas stove).

So there you have it, my place of residence for the next 1 year and 8 months, give or take. I hope some of you will be able to come and see it in person, rest in my hammock, and maybe even help me find and kill that elusive scorpion in my bathroom.

BONUS COVERAGE:

The following picture is of my right forearm, and may at first appear like leprecy but I can readily assure you that it is not. It's just an allergic reaction to freshly cut rice stalks. We use a tool called an airplane, which is a piece of an old machete attached to a piece of wood, which is held in the hand and strapped on by a piece of rubber around the back of the hand. You can cut multiple rice stalks in a short time by using it and it makes the work very easy. However, you have to pass your arm across the freshly cut stalks to reach the following ones, which I did without realizing it would do this to me. I've learned to wear long sleeves since then and the effects have cleared up.

Updates on my life.

Hey all-

Its been a busy couple of past weeks but I´ll try to remember all of the highlights to keep you updated on how I´ve been doing.

• Yesterday I went down the lower coast to Rio Indio, one of the larger towns in teh area. The Casa del Campesino was having an event which the First Lady of Panama and the Ambassador of Spain in Panama attended along with many people from the local governments and MIDA, the agricultural governmental agency in Panama. I met a few people from Rio Indio and am trying to find spots for new volunteers in the area since all but 6 volunteers in Colon will be leaving next June. It was not as cool as I thought it would be to atternd an event that a First Lady would be at. Plus it was hot and I had nowhere to sit. Boo.
• I saw my first sloth, or mono perezoso (lazy monkey) at the bus stop in Piña the other day. Cool to see for the first time in real life and the guys I was waiting with tell me that people eat them in this area. It didn´t look edible to me.The sloth is in this picture somewhere, I swear.
• I ate my first shark the other weekend. I traveled up to Marin´s community in teh upper coast, a town named Nombre de Dios (Name of God), and we watched some guys cutting up two decent sized sharks on teh beach. After cleaning up the beach for about an hour with some ANAM workers we went to buy some of the shark and cooked it to eat with spaghetti. The verdict: Meh. It was rubbery and I prefer other types of fish more. Next up on the list to eat in NdeD: octopus. Possibly with something other than spaghetti.Proof positive that I ate shark: its severed tail.
• I still have yet to witness my first animal slaughter, be it chicken cow, or carne de monte, but I have seen a couple of butcherings. Here are some pictures from the aftermath of one of them that went down recently in town. (Note: dissected cow pictures ahead. Those of weak stomach, skip over them.)
• And finally: MY HOUSE! Its no mud hut or bamboo shed on stilts, but I´ve definately seen and heard about houses that are bigger and nicer than this. I´d say its about high-to-middle of the PC houses in Panama. It has 2 bedrooms, an inside bath with flushing toilet, a kitchen and a reading area. The sink is outside off to the side under a roofed area and the porch out front now has a hammock! I will throw in pictures on my next post since this computer is giving me guff for trying to upload more pictures now. 

 I hope everyone in Panama is doing well, staying dry, and finding people to stay sane with and that everyone back home is doing well!

Names that I am known by in my community...

One of the first things I learned when I got to this country is that Panamanians have a hard time pronouncing names that are not similar to thiers. Based on this, I have been known by a wide variety of names by the 300 or so people in my community. The following is a list of these names.

• Jeff- Suprise! Some people can actually pronounce my name correctly.
• Jess- Usually by children and semi-drunk men.
• Yes- Usually by very drunk men.
• Yes Man- By one guy who never drinks.
• Paulo- Since some found it impossible to say ¨Jeff¨,I decided to translate my middle name (Paul) into an alternative name for them
• Pablo
• Palo- Hahaha. Very funny. Palo means tree.
• Effey Jeff- One little boy, Manuelito, kept calling my Jess. I told him ¨No, it´s Jeff, with an effey,¨ which is Spanish for the letter f. ¨Effay, effay, Jeff.¨ He looked at me funny. ¨OK Effey Jeff¨ he replied. He hasn´t called me by any other name since.
• Gringo- Fortunately, almost no one calls me Gringo as a substitute for my name. I am referred to as ¨The Gringo¨by some people who are talking to someone who doen´t recognize my name, as in ¨You don´t know who Paulo is? He´s the gringo.¨ The only one who calls me Gringo to my face is a little girl of about 3 years of age. One day, out of the blue before I had ever spoken to her, he came up to me and said ¨Your name is Gringo.¨ ¨No,¨ I replied, ¨My name is Jeff, and I am a gringo.¨ She gave me a bewildered look and repeated ¨Your name is Gringo.¨ We´re still working on an understanding of my actual name.

A few observations

First and foremost, I really like the town I´ve been placed in. Starting off was tough, what with the language barrier and the whole being an ¨extanjero¨thing. But I´ve been getting to know the people who I´m living with and things are getting better every day. However, there are some things about this country that I will never get used to. The thing that gets to me the most is how wet this country is ALL THE TIME. It won´t rain for a week and the walk out to the farms is still extremely muddy. I can´t understand it. I used to think that I would eventully become acustomed to the climate here, but I still sweat everyday while doing nothing more than walking from one side of the town to the other. There is a strange mix of culture that seems very out of place here. Everywhere I go I see namebrand clothing (or knockoff name brand clothing) worn by people who live in houses that are practically falling into disrepair. They have ridiculous stereo systems but can only afford to eat rice and plantains for most of their meals. These things still strike me as strange, but less so everyday. I´m becoming Panamanian!

Sitting in an internet cafe in Colon city

So Colon city is as dirty and sketchy as they say it is. Write it down, put your money on it, and skip the visit you have been planning on making for oh-so-long. Below is a map of the entire city and I´ve marked (roughly) the area that is safe to travel in between the morning and the afternoon. After dinner time, all bets are off. Oh and half of the area is the Free Trade Zone, which is basically anoth city in and of itself complete with impossibly high concrete walls topped with barbed wire and entrances staffed by armed guards (armed guards are a much more common sight in this country than back home).

Yup, inside those two small boxes. I don´t feel threatened at all walkiing down the street, but I always check out the road before I walk down and always walk on the outside part of the sidewalk in order to avoid the entryways into the buildings. I figure that a 6´7¨guy such as myself with a neab look on his face (the meanest I can manage) won´t have too many problems. Time will tell for sure. A van on the street below this internet cafe filled with speakers is bumping one of the local Colon radio stations. It keeps switching between tipico (the Panamanian version of country music, nore or less), popular raggaeton, and trance music. All of which is calling out to the Panamania in me.

¡Viva Colon y todos los Colonenses!

Better late than never...

Hello dear family and friends to my brand spanking new blog! I told some fo yout hat I would start this thing up when I got here and just never got around to it, partly due to my laziness, partly to the hectic pace of training, and partly to the adjustment of having to use my time wisely as an hour on the internet in a cafe passes by very quickly when you're browsing through espn.com. But the time has finally arrived!

I'm sitting in the Pace Corps office outside of Panama City right now (the reason for being here will be explained later) and have some time to kill, so here are some of the highlights of my 3 months here so far:

• The other volunteers: There are 47 other volunteers besides myself in Group 63 of PC Panama. We are about evenly split between Enghish/Tourism, Environmental Conservation, and Agriculture programs. We spent our first 2 1/2 months living with host families in a city called Santa Clara de Araijan. I got to know each of them at least fairly well and I can say that there isn't one of them that I wouldn't want to be trapped in a crazy foreign country with.
  
• My site: I have now been living in my site for the past 2 and a half weeks. Its located in the province of Colon and is about an hour from the city to the west in an area known as Costa Abajo. I have to take a half an hour walk from the bus stop up the hill to get to my city, which in comparison to some fo the otehr volunteer's 2 hour walks through mountains does not bother me. I have a view of the Carribean ocean from certain spots int he town and get a cool ocean breeze coming in to keep me cool during the day.


• My new friend: Ah yes, the reason I am here right now in Panama City. It started about a month ago when I first visited my site. I woke up one morning with what appeared to be a mosquito bite on the back of my head. After a while I thought it was infected as it swelled up and started giving me shooting pains at times. I came in to see the doctor yesterday and she told me "Oh yes, this is almost certainyl a bot fly." Now for those of you who are unfamiliar with what a bot fly is, it bites host creatures such as cows, rabbits , or humans and lays an egg inside the skin of the host. There the larvae grows until it matures into an adult fly. In the month or so that my friend was living with me, it grew to be about 3 centemeters long and a centemeter and a half thick. I had it surgically removed yesterday at a hospital in town and am now carrying it in my bag in a small jar of formaldehyde. Yay for tropical parasites! My head feels fine now and I'm getting the appropriate antibiotics to take care of the rest.

Below are some of the random pictures from my time here so far. I had plenty more of them to share with you all, but my camera was stolen somewhere on my way to my site. Anyway, enjoy what I have to share!

Group 63 in all of its glory at our swear-in ceremony. We won't look this good again for 2 years.

The whole group of Agriculture volunteers.

The gentelmen of SAS (sustainable agriculture systems). Ladies, keep control of yourselves.

One of the kids in Playa Chiquita, the town we visited for Culture Week.