I've decided that this post will be called: Occupational hazards of the Comarca Peace Corps Volunteer.

Just another morning in the Beach Corps

Animals: Although other areas of Panama have a larger variety of dangerous animals, we do have our share here in the Comarca. Really, these are limited to scorpions, snakes, spiders and possibly large felines. Scorpions are apparently more common for volunteers at lower elevations, but I have seen a few up in Pena Blanca (although apparently not life threatening). The spiders here may or may not be dangerous (I don't remember what we were told in training). I've seen some large types, but have yet to be bitten, so we'll see. The biggest real danger is the snakes. We have anything ranging from 10 foot constrictors to smaller varieties but these do include coral snakes (one of which we killed outside my house a few weeks ago) and some other highly poisonous varieties. Perhaps the most amusing story I've yet heard involves tigers (the orange and black striped variety). The story goes that a horse was killed in the town of Tugri (45 minutes walking from Pena Blanca). The owner, suspecting a large predator, apparently placed poison on the partially eaten carcass and waited. The next day there was a dead tiger lying beside the dead horse. This being the Comarca, where food, and especially meat, is quite scarce, the locals ate the tiger and mounted the fur on the wall.....Now I would give this story maybe a 30% chance of being true, but I do have an offer from friends to take me to the house to see the actual pelt....maybe it really does exist.

This is a big tree. Am I a bad person for cutting it down?

Don Francisco exhibits the correct form.

Transport: I've described the chivas which I take up into the mountains (the trucks with tarps covering the benches in back). If it weren't for these, I would have to do much more walking than I do currently (which is already a significant amount). But they do come with their risks. About half way up to my site, the road changes from bad gravel and some paved road, to legitimate 4x4 terrain. Most of it is still quite passable when it is dry but because the soil is really just clay, when it rains it is nearly unmanageable. Case in point, my last ride up to site last Wednesday started at 6:30 at night (it gets dark at 7) in a heavy rainstorm. There were only 4 people riding in the chiva that night (they can legally carry 15 and I've seen as many as 22) but at two separate locations we were forced to get out so that the driver could navigate up the more dangerous hills. With passengers riding inside, the driver was still too scared to slow down for fear of getting hopelessly stuck, so I was thrown on more than one occasion into the lap of the man sitting across from me. We did finally arrive in Pena Blanca at sometime around 9:30, an hour after we should have arrived, slightly shaken and glad to be safely home.

This hurts more than the smile suggests.

Building a house: So as you know I've been wading through the process of building my own house. Given the slow pace of life (and, frankly, the laziness of some of the people involved) the process is long and frustrating, but also kinda dangerous. The first step is cutting down a tree to begin to make your own lumber. In my case we cut down maybe the biggest tree anybody could find (and it has provided nearly ALL of the wood for my house), but this presented the problem of being very difficult to fell. We spent a half an hour, most of the trunk having been notched, trying to figure out which way it would fall and the chainsaw man not wanting to cut any more for fear of killing himself. Once it was felled, though, the challenge (which we are still grappling with 2 weeks later) is getting all of this wood down from the mountains (a 2 hour hike). This is maybe the single hardest thing I've done here, and also the most humbling. Most Ngobe men will carry at least two 10 foot lengths of floorboard, which must weigh more than 300 lbs having just been cut and still very wet, down very slippery and very steep mountainsides. I can't do that. First, I'm not nearly as strong as these men. But aside from that, I have no idea what I'm doing. I was wearing my nice hiking boots that I brought from the united states....which are completely useless in the clay....and the result was both Chet and the wood he was carrying tumbling down the mountain no less than 3 times. Once I figured out that the 7 dollar rubber boots that everyone wears are much better in the clay than my USA boots, I still couldn't figure out the correct way to carry the wood (having brought a t shirt for cushioning which resulted in two completely numb arms and the inability to lift anything for a few days). The correct solution is to bring a large blanket or a pillow. Luckily I've figured it out by the 3rd go-round, but it still hurts carrying this stuff.

These are probably the greatest dangers to my well-being currently. If I encounter more, you guys will be the first to know.

I think today I'll give everyone a rundown of what my day-to-day life is like here in the mountains of Panama:

I get up usually around 6:30 or so, more or less with the sun which rises everyday around 6 (but doesn't hit my house for a while given the surrounding mountains) and sets at nearly 7 (there isn't very much seasonal variation). After using the nearly full latrine (I'm fortunate enough to have one), which I do quite regularly...I sit down in the 'kitchen' area next to the open fire which is used as a stove and wait for breakfast (when I get any).  If there happens to be breakfast this particular day, it can one of a small variety of things: boiled green bananas (which are kinda just like potatoes...they're rarely allowed to age enough to have any sugar in them), yucca, otoe (like a big purple potatoe), or rice and beans (by far the most common). None of these options have any sort of taste, especially by our American standards, so it has been quite a challenge getting used to not looking forward to meal times. But as time has gone on, I have become accustomed to eating these things and have learned to appreciate very subtle differences in taste which can make a HUGE difference. Just a little bit of salt, or a couple of pieces of onion in a bowl of rice can go a very long way to making a slightly depressing meal into something capable of brightening my day (really...I'm not kidding haha).  If there's not breakfast however, I'll invariably get a cup of coffee.  But I should explain that coffee here, even if it is locally grown (often from "just over there") isn't like coffee in the States. Here the coffee is completely drowned in sugar, which, though disappointing so some in the States isn't so bad once you get used to it....you just have to think of it as juice, I guess. And since it's consumed in VAST quantities (maybe a gallon a day) it's probably better that they don't drink espresso.

Still alive. Still with mustache. Although I did pay a guy 1 dollar to cut most of my hair off since this picture was taken.

Once breakfast is done, I have some options as to what to do with my day.  Once or twice a week I wash my clothes, which of course is by hand here. And I try to do it as often as possible to prevent mold from growing on sweaty (or even slightly moist) clothing, although some mold is completely unavoidable in this country. If there is no laundry to be done, I might read (which I do a LOT), or go visit some of the people in the community to try to learn names, problems, let them ask me questions, etc...Sometimes I'll go to help in the fields.  Last week I helped my counterpart (the guy who is informally designated as my main partner in town) dig out and fumigate a colony of nasty big red ants in his field.  It turned out to be about 6 feet deep and extend out about 20 feet in all directions....pretty big.  Other times, I'll go to my 'cell phone hill', which is the nearest point at which I can receive service (about a 45 minute walk) to check messages and such.

Family compound. Kitchen/grandparents house on left. Mom's house on right.

If I'm home for lunch, I eat more or less the same thing as I did for breakfast, although on select days it might include a small piece of chicken on top of the bowl of rice (and the same thing for dinner), of course accompanied by 'coffee'.  

Trusty buddy Peluchi. Pretty much impossible to stop him from following me everywhere....mostly because I don't hit him with sticks like the rest of my family...

My favorite days, lately, have been helping cut wood for use in building houses.  This is done purely using a chainsaw.  The tree is cut down, a clean surface is cut and then the lines for the board (they cut either 2x4 or essentially floorboard (called tabla) which measures whatever they can cut, usually 1"x10-12") are painted using a string. How straight and square the lumber is is directly proportional to the skill of the individual chainsaw man and is quite a funny process to observe. I have a picture that I promise to post in the next entry (I've forgotten the correct cable to do so today). I can assure you, though, that OSHA would very much approve of the whole process...

Community meetings are also a great way to spend my time (if I'm informed that they are happening). I've been making the rounds to various health committee meetings, women's groups and actually went to a meeting for the organization of the entire transport system of the Comarca which was exciting since the reservation here is quite young and the government is still trying to take shape.

The chiva (or carro): Comarca transport solution. In this case it is transporting  the corrugated 'zinc' for my roof although we also carried some people up with us as well.

A couple of evenings a week I do a language interchange with maybe my closest 'friend' here in town. His name is Chirachi (pronounced Chee-raw-chee) and he speaks enough english that we can have a conversation.  So I help him with his english and he helps me with the local language (called Ngabere). My community has also given me a Ngobe name (which is the name I go by): Tochi Kin Ngimo (pronounced: Toh-jee Keen Gee-mo) which means Tochi from Pena Blanca. I like it, although many of the kids still just call me 'gringo' which more or less means 'white man', although they're learning.

More to follow soon,

Chet