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.