I’ve been catching some flak for not keeping up with this blog on a more regular basis, so I apologize to those who may have been waiting patiently for this next entry.  To those who have been partying in Italy, namely my dear sister, you will just have to take a deep breath and wait patiently with everyone else….love, Chet.

Anyways, I’ve got a lot to bring everyone up to speed on since I last wrote.  Probably the most important development is that I’ve selected both hair style and facial hair options which better agree with Panamanian norms…..which of course is a lie, but my appearance makes me laugh every morning when I look in the mirror, so I’ll keep it for now.  When we first got here I was talking a lot (more as a joke than anything) about getting a fohawk, which, for those readers not familiar with European soccer, is a cross between a fade and a real mohawk (see picture below).  But as time went on, and I continued to talk, everyone began to expect me to actually cut my hair….and that’s what I was forced to do.  So one day after class some friends and I walked to the neighborhood barber’s house to get some Panamanian haircuts.  I had asked our Spanish teacher what the Spanish word for ‘fohawk’ was and it turns out it’s mango chupado, which, roughly translated, means ‘sucked mango’ after the appearance of a mango that has just been bitten.  So I walked into the barber shop/house combo and asked Tin-Tin (the old barber’s nickname) for a mango chupado and he immediately began taking off large hunks of hair.  Tin-Tin also did a straight raze and then sprayed what was probably rum on my head to “kill whatever’s on there”.  As it turns out, my hair doesn’t work well for a mango chupado since it’s too suave to stand up straight but with enough hair gel it’s possible to get a mini Ace Ventura/John Travolta in Grease hairdo which works alright.  I’ve also started to grow a mustache, which for most of you is a great joke, since facial hair has never been my strong suit, but the men in the group have decided to grow out mustaches for our swearing-in ceremony (when we become real volunteers) on July 5^th, so I had to get a head-start.  In any case, the combination 50’s hairdo/terrible mustache combo is quite a sight and makes me chuckle to myself, so I’m gonna keep it for a while.

This is Cristiano Ronaldo. He plays soccer (although not as well as Messi, of course). The kids watching me type this say he's gay.  But they also say this is what my hair looks like.

On to more serious business.  We got back last weekend from the city of Chichica in the Comarca Ngobe-Bugle, not very far from where I went to visit Chris Kingsleya.  We were there for what’s called ‘Tech Week’ which is designed to give us more of a real experience of what it will be like to live in the very impoverished areas in which we will be serving as well as to give us basic experience with constructing infrastructure in the campo (a blanket term for ‘the sticks’).  Throughout the course of the week we worked mostly with concrete which we mixed by hand, either in piles on the ground or tossed back and forth in a tarp between two people.  The gravel, sand, water and cement, as well as rebar and tools, had to be carried-in to the some of the sites where we were working to build reinforced planchas (platforms which sit over latrine pits).  Later in the week we were working on ferro-cement rainwater catchment tanks (the one I worked on was maybe 70 Gallons and made strictly of cement and chicken wire).  These catchment tanks are a used as a solution to water shortage problems, especially in areas where groundwater is difficult to distribute (flat areas near the coast) and where it’s too expensive to dig clean wells.  In a country that gets as much rain as Panama, especially on the north side of the central mountain range in places such as Bocas del Toro where there is no dry season, these can be the perfect solution to a house’s water needs.

I lived with the family of the evangelical preacher of Chichica that week.  They were extremely nice to me but Ngobe culture is going to take some time to get used to.  Many of them, the women especially, are very reluctant to talk to us gringos and spend a significant amount of time just staring.  They had no electricity and shared a tap from the town aqueduct system amongst the three houses on their extended family compound, although the water only came for an hour or so in the morning.  My house, specifically, was one room made of sticks shoved into the ground and covered with some sheets of corrugated steel.  It was about as simple a dwelling as you’ll find.  Inside were three beds: one for myself, and two more for the rest of the family: dad, mom and 5 kids (I think, they’re hard to keep track of and get mixed up with all the other kids).  When I say bed, I mean only a platform made of bamboo up off the ground and away from the chickens (but not away from the cockroaches haha).  Apart from the beds, the house contained only some shelves, a hammock and one wooden chair and a wooden table where I ate.  The Comarca diet consists of Yucca, rice, canned sardines, boiled green platano (big bananas which are essentially flavorless when boiled green) and coffee which, as with everywhere in this country, is served insanely sweet.  This food was probably the most difficult part of the week as it would often times take me 30-40 minutes to eat four whole Yuccas or five boiled platanos with only cold coffee to wash it down.  But surprisingly enough, this diet does grow on you and it doesn’t sound all that bad, especially after your stomach becomes accustomed to holding all of that starch.

At the end of the week we gave practice health and sanitation charlas (the Spanish word for a talk/lecture) to groups of university students in Chichica.  This went off without much of a hitch, which is somewhat of a small miracle, and afterword we partook in a ‘cultural exchange’ which consisted of the Americans teaching swing dancing and the limbo and the Ngobes teaching one of their traditional dances to a line of 24 white kids.  It was a good deal of fun.  To end the day, we were challenged to a game of volleyball; gringos v. Ngobes.  To be honest, we didn’t think it much of a contest given that the Ngobe are a pretty short people in general and most of the men in our group are well over 6 foot tall.  We won the first game easily but then the Ngobes decided to put in what turned out to be their ‘varsity’ team who had just been sandbagging on the sidelines and we failed to score more than 6 points for the rest of the night.  So Ngobe volleyball skills are something to be reckoned with.  It turns out they play every day…

After Tech Week we were given a day off to do as we pleased, so we spent it at the nearest beach (called Las Lajas).  We stayed in little beachside cabins (again just made of sticks) for something like 15 dollars in total for the night and filled them with 5 or 6 people.  We ate at an American owned resort just down the beach a ways and generally made a great day out of it in various states of consciousness.  The next day was back to civilization where we have been completing our last week of classes and wrapping up our stay here in Santa Rita.

The biggest news is the announcement of our sites, which happened yesterday during a little ceremony at the Peace Corps office in Panama City.  So for those who are interested, I will be living for the next two years in a town called Pena Blanca not too far up into the mountains from where I visited Chris and where we spent Tech Week, so I’m already quite familiar with the area.  It’s a town of about 500 people at the base of an enormous, picturesque mountain which bears the same name.  We have a little bit of information about the community but I will save it for when I actually get there and see it for myself.  For right now it will suffice to say that I will be living with a host family there for the first 3 months at which point I will be free to move out and live in my own house.  We leave this Tuesday (today being Saturday) for what’s called a ‘community entry conference’ where we will meet one member from our community and do some activities of some sort.  After that, we will go to our sites for a week to move most of our belongings and get somewhat settled in our new homes.  After that week we will return here to Santa Rita for a going away party and then on to Panama City for the last few days of training before we swear-in and are finally released to our own devices for the next two years.  Stay tuned.

(Sorry for the lack of photos, they're refusing to upload....with the exception of Mr. Ronaldo)