A little About Life
There will always be a cultural gap of sorts between Peace Corps volunteers and the people in their communities, but after a year and a half, the biggest of the barriers are down. As I became more comfortable with the people I live with in Guabal, I started to get asked some great questions.
The hardest questions to answer are the totally ridiculous ones. For example, there is a downloaded Youtube video that has been circulating throughout the campo about how President Obama has enacted a law requiring that everyone in the US must use a implanted microchip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbnXTpjaR1A) and without it, you cannot get medical assistance, buy food, travel, or do just about anything else. It also says that those without chips are summarily rounded up and imprisoned.
Unfortunately the campesinos I live with have no experience navigating nonsense online so many believe it at face value. I have had people ask to see my chip and whether it hurt when I was implanted. I have done my best to dispel the rumor, but a gringo with so so Spanish is hard to believe over a real life video.
This is a problem with all sorts of videos. I was watching the newer planet of the apes with my host family and when the Golden Gate Bridge was shown overrun with apes, I told everyone that was where I lived in the US. The next series of questions had to do with what it was like when the “monos” (monkeys) took over the city… I don’t think I fully convinced people that it was just a movie and that never happened.
Occasionally I will tell children that Rambo’s niece is in my Peace Corps group and if they are disobedient she will come beat them up – everyone in the campo has somehow seen the Rambo movies.
One of the harder questions to answer is why white people smell bad. The Panamanians I know who travel regularly all have stories of stinky tourists getting on buses and no one wants them to sit near them. Some get offended – most people think all gringos are rich, so why don’t they bother to bathe themselves? This perception is made worse because whenever a campesino travels they get done up in their best clothes and douse themselves in cologne or perfume. Someone in Guabal explained it by saying, “I am poor but I don’t need to show everyone I am poor. I still have my pride.” Explaining the privilege of laziness is a trick. The great part is no one ever wants to sit next to me on the bus because they assume I smell, so thank you grimy tourists! I have all the space in the world to stretch my legs.
A teacher named Nati who travels a lot asked if gringos do not feel lust (it took a few minutes for her to tactfully explain the word lust in Spanish). I was confused about why she would ask that, but she explained that many of the white women she sees wear really short skirts (and sometimes you can see their underwear) or just walk around in a bathing suit. She spends a lot of time near a beach with a lot of tourists, so I kind of coped out by saying in the US its normal to walk around like that near beaches. It was hard to answer because she wasn’t judgmental, just genuinely curious if gringos feel the same sensations of lust. Don’t the white men lust after the essentially naked white women?
Some of the questions are a little more pointed although I really appreciate them. Another teacher I am close with asked me if Peace Corps is successful in completing the goals it sets for itself. He has worked throughout the country, seen many volunteers and has a pretty thorough understanding of the challenges faced by Peace Corps in Panama. It was a great question and that I still am not sure of the honest answer, but it started an interesting conversation.
Peace Corps benefits many people and none more so than the volunteers themselves. The experiences, memories, lessons, and ways of thinking we gain through Peace Corps greatly outweighs whatever benefits we provide to the communities in which we work.
One of the clearest memories I will carry with me after my service will be approaching my front porch and being greeted by an odd sort of high-throated howl, mixed with the sound chewbacca makes in star wars. Something about me arriving home excites my dog Melvin to the point of howling and I love it. I am sure he has a little hound in him.
This greeting is one of the small things that have made Guabal feel more and more like home over the past several months. Having my projects come together in concrete ways has allowed me to relax more and appreciate the relationships I have formed over the last year and a half.
Yesterday was a perfect example of the memories I will take away from Peace Corps, much more so than the projects I will have completed. In the morning I had coffee with one of my counterparts who wanted to talk about our project but quickly regressed into harassing me for not finding a Panamanian wife yet, which happens a lot. Later, my neighbors who split time in Guabal and in the comarca (indigenous reservation) came back for the first time in over a month. They had been walking for over four hours and started without breakfast so I made them coffee and fried bananas. The eight year old who is the younger brother of my best friend in site (he is eleven) gave me a hug and said, “gracias tio (uncle) Micah” which really made my day. As I was leaving site the chiva (pick-up transport) driver Vicente told me to sit in the front seat with him. We ended up getting into an hour-long conversation about socialism, communism, and capitalism after he told me he used to work as an agronomist and socialist organizer. When I got out and tried to pay he waved me off. To top it off I went to get lunch and the owner gave me a salad with kale in it – the first time I have eaten kale since I have been here. He sat down with me and he told me about how his mom was growing kale that a Peace Corps volunteer had gifted them around six years ago (they have been saving seeds from each harvest).
Memories like these or the horse rolling around on its back in my yard, or the sound of the rain on my metal roof as I sit in my hammock and read, or having a pack of small children try to help me finish washing my clothes quickly in the river so I will play with them are what I will take with me more than anything. I have learned a lot through, and am very proud of the projects I am completing, but they will not be what I remember from my service.
There will always be a cultural gap of sorts between Peace Corps volunteers and the people in their communities, but after a year and a half, the biggest of the barriers are down. As I became more comfortable with the people I live with in Guabal, I started to get asked some great questions.
The hardest questions to answer are the totally ridiculous ones. For example, there is a downloaded Youtube video that has been circulating throughout the campo about how President Obama has enacted a law requiring that everyone in the US must use a implanted microchip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbnXTpjaR1A) and without it, you cannot get medical assistance, buy food, travel, or do just about anything else. It also says that those without chips are summarily rounded up and imprisoned.
Unfortunately the campesinos I live with have no experience navigating nonsense online so many believe it at face value. I have had people ask to see my chip and whether it hurt when I was implanted. I have done my best to dispel the rumor, but a gringo with so so Spanish is hard to believe over a real life video.
This is a problem with all sorts of videos. I was watching the newer planet of the apes with my host family and when the Golden Gate Bridge was shown overrun with apes, I told everyone that was where I lived in the US. The next series of questions had to do with what it was like when the “monos” (monkeys) took over the city… I don’t think I fully convinced people that it was just a movie and that never happened.
Occasionally I will tell children that Rambo’s niece is in my Peace Corps group and if they are disobedient she will come beat them up – everyone in the campo has somehow seen the Rambo movies.
One of the harder questions to answer is why white people smell bad. The Panamanians I know who travel regularly all have stories of stinky tourists getting on buses and no one wants them to sit near them. Some get offended – most people think all gringos are rich, so why don’t they bother to bathe themselves? This perception is made worse because whenever a campesino travels they get done up in their best clothes and douse themselves in cologne or perfume. Someone in Guabal explained it by saying, “I am poor but I don’t need to show everyone I am poor. I still have my pride.” Explaining the privilege of laziness is a trick. The great part is no one ever wants to sit next to me on the bus because they assume I smell, so thank you grimy tourists! I have all the space in the world to stretch my legs.
A teacher named Nati who travels a lot asked if gringos do not feel lust (it took a few minutes for her to tactfully explain the word lust in Spanish). I was confused about why she would ask that, but she explained that many of the white women she sees wear really short skirts (and sometimes you can see their underwear) or just walk around in a bathing suit. She spends a lot of time near a beach with a lot of tourists, so I kind of coped out by saying in the US its normal to walk around like that near beaches. It was hard to answer because she wasn’t judgmental, just genuinely curious if gringos feel the same sensations of lust. Don’t the white men lust after the essentially naked white women?
Some of the questions are a little more pointed although I really appreciate them. Another teacher I am close with asked me if Peace Corps is successful in completing the goals it sets for itself. He has worked throughout the country, seen many volunteers and has a pretty thorough understanding of the challenges faced by Peace Corps in Panama. It was a great question and that I still am not sure of the honest answer, but it started an interesting conversation.
Peace Corps benefits many people and none more so than the volunteers themselves. The experiences, memories, lessons, and ways of thinking we gain through Peace Corps greatly outweighs whatever benefits we provide to the communities in which we work.
One of the clearest memories I will carry with me after my service will be approaching my front porch and being greeted by an odd sort of high-throated howl, mixed with the sound chewbacca makes in star wars. Something about me arriving home excites my dog Melvin to the point of howling and I love it. I am sure he has a little hound in him.
This greeting is one of the small things that have made Guabal feel more and more like home over the past several months. Having my projects come together in concrete ways has allowed me to relax more and appreciate the relationships I have formed over the last year and a half.
Yesterday was a perfect example of the memories I will take away from Peace Corps, much more so than the projects I will have completed. In the morning I had coffee with one of my counterparts who wanted to talk about our project but quickly regressed into harassing me for not finding a Panamanian wife yet, which happens a lot. Later, my neighbors who split time in Guabal and in the comarca (indigenous reservation) came back for the first time in over a month. They had been walking for over four hours and started without breakfast so I made them coffee and fried bananas. The eight year old who is the younger brother of my best friend in site (he is eleven) gave me a hug and said, “gracias tio (uncle) Micah” which really made my day. As I was leaving site the chiva (pick-up transport) driver Vicente told me to sit in the front seat with him. We ended up getting into an hour-long conversation about socialism, communism, and capitalism after he told me he used to work as an agronomist and socialist organizer. When I got out and tried to pay he waved me off. To top it off I went to get lunch and the owner gave me a salad with kale in it – the first time I have eaten kale since I have been here. He sat down with me and he told me about how his mom was growing kale that a Peace Corps volunteer had gifted them around six years ago (they have been saving seeds from each harvest).
Memories like these or the horse rolling around on its back in my yard, or the sound of the rain on my metal roof as I sit in my hammock and read, or having a pack of small children try to help me finish washing my clothes quickly in the river so I will play with them are what I will take with me more than anything. I have learned a lot through, and am very proud of the projects I am completing, but they will not be what I remember from my service.
Someone a lot smarter than myself asked told me a while ago they liked my blog but they wanted to know more about how my experience was changing my thinking and perspective. It was a great question I have been stewing over it since she asked me almost a year ago, but I still cannot give a good answer, nor do I think I ever will be able to. I can of course point out specific changes in how I view the world but I am sure there have been certain fundamental shifts in my thinking that I have simply internalized and may not be able to verbalize.
One thing I have learned is that poor campesinos in Panama rarely express gratitude verbally – it is more often expressed through generosity. After spending around eight months running around to finish a coffee post-harvest processing project in my site (more below), only one of the beneficiaries really said thank you. From a US perspective, this is simply rude, but I am not in the states anymore. But I have made peace with this and started to appreciate more the small ways people say thank you here by gifting me part of their harvest, or giving food to my dog when I am out of site, or other acts of generosity that show gratitude. Generosity from truly poor people is a beautiful and truly humbling act.
Projects in Site
I have three projects going on in site. For the first two my job has really just been coordination. I have been working with a group of missionaries to make eco stoves in homes. In June, they will bring the materials to make the first twelve with more coming while the next volunteer is in Guabal. Right now, most people cook over open fires, which as you can imagine, is terrible for health. These stoves include a chimney and will funnel smoke away from the person cooking and is more efficient so they will need less firewood.
The second project is a grant proposal to the Inter American Foundation I have been working on with the local cooperative for $93,000. The goal is to help integrate local farmers into the larger Panamanian economy, with the cooperative being the tool through which to sell. It will include thousands of plantain and coffee plants, along with technical assistance and a place to save the harvest until it is ready to be sold in bulk. We are just about to send in the final draft and assuming all goes well, my follow up volunteer will walk in to a very hands on project when they arrive. You are welcome.
The main project I have been working on has been funded in part by the One Acre Fund (https://www.oneacrefund.org/) and The Rotary Club in Davis, CA. The project includes hand crank coffee de-pulpers and materials to make solar dryers for coffee. With both of these post-harvest technologies, farmers will be able to earn around $17 on coffee for which they previously earning only $8. The project has included a series of trainings on pest control (focusing on the coffee borer beetle which has been decimating harvests), as well as general farm management skills like tree pruning, shade management, and financial administration. We still have a lot of work to do finishing solar dryers, but things have been moving along smoothly.
Work Out of Site
In addition to my work in site I have been working as one of the two National Coffee Coordinators. Along with the other coordinator, I have designed a couple week-long training seminars for the new group of volunteers and been visiting other volunteers in site to give trainings to their community counterparts. It has been rewarding to teach others about coffee production, something I have become oddly passionate about.
All of these experiences have made me interested in a variety of possible work after Peace Corps, which is oddly only 7 months away. I remember a couple years ago, people telling me the time will fly by and I didn’t really believe them. Now I am looking for jobs to apply for when I am done here and I am wondering where the last couple years went.
Who knows, I may end up staying down south. I cannot believe people are talking about a possible Trump presidency. I leave you guys alone for two years…
One thing I have learned is that poor campesinos in Panama rarely express gratitude verbally – it is more often expressed through generosity. After spending around eight months running around to finish a coffee post-harvest processing project in my site (more below), only one of the beneficiaries really said thank you. From a US perspective, this is simply rude, but I am not in the states anymore. But I have made peace with this and started to appreciate more the small ways people say thank you here by gifting me part of their harvest, or giving food to my dog when I am out of site, or other acts of generosity that show gratitude. Generosity from truly poor people is a beautiful and truly humbling act.
Projects in Site
I have three projects going on in site. For the first two my job has really just been coordination. I have been working with a group of missionaries to make eco stoves in homes. In June, they will bring the materials to make the first twelve with more coming while the next volunteer is in Guabal. Right now, most people cook over open fires, which as you can imagine, is terrible for health. These stoves include a chimney and will funnel smoke away from the person cooking and is more efficient so they will need less firewood.
The second project is a grant proposal to the Inter American Foundation I have been working on with the local cooperative for $93,000. The goal is to help integrate local farmers into the larger Panamanian economy, with the cooperative being the tool through which to sell. It will include thousands of plantain and coffee plants, along with technical assistance and a place to save the harvest until it is ready to be sold in bulk. We are just about to send in the final draft and assuming all goes well, my follow up volunteer will walk in to a very hands on project when they arrive. You are welcome.
The main project I have been working on has been funded in part by the One Acre Fund (https://www.oneacrefund.org/) and The Rotary Club in Davis, CA. The project includes hand crank coffee de-pulpers and materials to make solar dryers for coffee. With both of these post-harvest technologies, farmers will be able to earn around $17 on coffee for which they previously earning only $8. The project has included a series of trainings on pest control (focusing on the coffee borer beetle which has been decimating harvests), as well as general farm management skills like tree pruning, shade management, and financial administration. We still have a lot of work to do finishing solar dryers, but things have been moving along smoothly.
Work Out of Site
In addition to my work in site I have been working as one of the two National Coffee Coordinators. Along with the other coordinator, I have designed a couple week-long training seminars for the new group of volunteers and been visiting other volunteers in site to give trainings to their community counterparts. It has been rewarding to teach others about coffee production, something I have become oddly passionate about.
All of these experiences have made me interested in a variety of possible work after Peace Corps, which is oddly only 7 months away. I remember a couple years ago, people telling me the time will fly by and I didn’t really believe them. Now I am looking for jobs to apply for when I am done here and I am wondering where the last couple years went.
Who knows, I may end up staying down south. I cannot believe people are talking about a possible Trump presidency. I leave you guys alone for two years…