As I sit down to write this, I have a heap of fried bread (called Hojaldres, God’s gift to mankind) and fried chicken in front of me for breakfast. A meal is not complete in Panama unless there is at least one fried food group or two starch groups. One of these conditions must be met in order to be authentic Panamanian food, says Micah. My taste buds usually don’t complain, but my bowels… that’s a different story. Im sure if I were to have a big bowl of spinach or some other dark, leafy green my body would go into shock.
I have started to feel more at home in Guabal. Yesterday was my birthday and the neighbor’s kid came up to me and timidly asked if it was my birthday. I said yes and he got a huge smile on his face, jumped up to give me a big hug and said happy birthday. Pretty darn cute.
I have also started to have simple pleasures of the campo highlight my day – like my little 7 year old host brother grabbing the family turkey by the neck, swinging a leg over its back with a hand in the air and riding it like a bull. Watching that odd dangly thing above the turkey’s beak flop around as he struggles to slash or peck my host brother is pure entertainment. Unfortunately I cannot upload the video, because it is priceless.
Now I assume there are at least a handful of people reading this horrified by my seeming enjoyment of turkey abuse, but this turkey had it coming. During my first week in site I had to get to the latrine at night thanks to the shock to my bowels described above and I hear this odd, guttural cooing coming from under the house. My bloated, half-sleeping self didn’t think too much of it until there was this surprisingly strong ball of feathers slashing at my legs and pecking at my back, quite viciously. The dumb turkey planned a sneak attack while I walked by and I had to get a stick to fight it off. I literally mean fight it off. He is much more dense than I would have imagined a flightless bird.
This is not the only time he has done this. He plans attacks on old men, pregnant women, drunk men (fun to watch), and his favorite is little girls under ten walking alone. I often find our neighbors 6 year old daughter waiting by the fence for me to distract the turkey so she can get home safely from school. So when I say my host brother road him like a bull, it is not too much of an exaggeration, his cousin has to distract the turkey like a rodeo clown as he dismounts so he doesn’t get mauled. I feel no remorse watching this horrible, horrible bird take some of its own medicine. I wanted to cook it for thanksgiving (a great time to teach my partially indigenous host family about how good the US government was at exterminating our own indigenous groups) but, alas, the idea was vetoed. I still do not understand why the family has him or where they got him, but I will be sure to investigate further and share my findings.
On a slightly more work oriented note…
After a little more time in site I have been able to start to identify possible projects. I have only been in site for a couple of months so these are all in the beginning stages, but it has been nice to start and wrap my head around the type of work I will be doing. Here is a little information about some of the projects I hope to be able to work on:
* just a little clarification: I live in Guabal and the closest big town is called Santa Fe. Guabal has a cooperative, which is small but growing quickly. The cooperative in Santa Fe is the largest cooperative in the country and (maybe?) the largest cooperatively owned coffee business in Central America. I will be working with both and talk about both below
Coconut oil project
In Santa Fe there seems to be an endless market for coconut oil. In other parts of the country it is very easy to get, but due to the microclimate in Santa Fe and other reasons, there is very little available. A gallon of coconut oil sells for $30 dollars in Santa Fe and I already have the market lined up (thanks to Will, my volunteer neighbor who is a godsend for many reasons), now we just need the oil. It takes about 40-60 mature coconuts to make a gallon of oil and the problem at this point is the grating the coconuts. Hand grating the coconuts is not only exhausting and extremely time consuming, it is often painful because people often snag a finger on what is essentially an extremely cheap cheese grater.
I have people who have land with coconuts on them and my goal right now is designing a coconut grater with a crank of some sorts (a re-purposed bike maybe?) to speed up the process and enable people to realistically make enough oil to sell. If you have any suggestions, please let me know!
Irrigation Project
My irrigation project started due to a need of my own. I have about an eighth to a quarter-acre in production right now – as a demonstration plot and as a garden for personal consumption – which is on top of a hill. The rain takes care of the majority of the needed irrigation, but after transplanting, on sunny days, and in my mini-greenhouse I need additional water. I was originally hauling 5-gallon buckets uphill, which got very old very quickly. I looked around online and found designs for a hydraulic ram pump, which essentially uses the force of a stream to move water uphill.
I repurposed the design to fit my situation and before I knew it I had people coming to my house to see my design. I now have people asking me to go to their house to help them design the same system to either water crops, start producing on previously unproductive land, or just get water closer to their house. The beauty of the system is that it uses PVC (which is readily available) and two well placed one-way check-valves to create a surprisingly cheap and efficient pump.
Improved Stove Project
Essentially all of the houses in Guabal cook on a “fogon” which is basically three well-placed rocks over an open fire. From a development standpoint, there are all sorts of problems with cooking like this, especially problems associated with deforestation and poor health. This is especially apparent when I see a mother with a child in a sling tending the fire and the smoke in both of their faces. The improved stove helps to funnel smoke out of a chimney (helping mitigate health impacts) and more efficiently use fire-wood (helping to reduce deforestation). There was a similar project in a close by town (Alto Ortiga, where my Peace Corps neighbor Will/ Guillermo lives) and during community meeting people have voiced interest in doing one of our own. The interest surprised me a little because, as Will said, “people just seem to like cooking with three rocks.” He said this as we were talking about why only about half of the families involved in the previous project actually use their stoves. Behavior change is undoubtedly the hardest goal for development (that is not me saying I necessarily think it is a good goal in general).
Coffee Project
The majority of families grow coffee at some scale (anywhere from 5 to 500 trees) although essentially the whole harvest is consumed in the home. There is an interest in Guabal in turning some of these plots into more intensively managed and more productive plots with the goal to be selling the harvest in Santa Fe. The great thing about coffee is that a well-managed coffee farm is essentially a healthy rain forest – coffee needs shade to grow, which encourages preserving primary forest and old growth trees. How often can someone preserve the rainforest and produce a crop as economically efficiently as possible? In the long term I have the most hope for this project to create a positive economic impact on the community due to the immense purchasing power of the coffee cooperative and the relatively easy access to government extension agents in Santa Fe. Hopefully this will lead to more work for me with the Santa Fe cooperative.
Cooperative Project in Guabal
My work with the cooperative is still in the process of being determined but will generally consist of determining how they can make more money. I have reached out to the Peace Corps agri-business coordinator to design a sort of market analysis to see what niches need to be filled in the local market. We are also working to improve the existing structure to make it more efficient and grow in ways to take advantage of the new paved road. We have already designed and built a market garden with a greenhouse, chicken coop and plant nursery to supply fresh vegetables and meat both to a small restaurant the coop runs and to the store. This cooperative has satellite stores as far as a six-hour hike away in, quite literally, the middle of the jungle.
General Agricultural Extension Project and Micah’s Mini-Farm
Although I have not set up a formal group dealing with best practices, I have starting visiting farms/ home garden plots and helping people determine what problems they are having with their crops (most of which are fungal) and how to solve those problems. Solving fungal problems in a rainforest is… difficult.
In addition I have been working on a mini-farm (about an eighth to a quarter acre built on 17 terraces with a greenhouse) to both grow some fresh veggies for me and to demonstrate some techniques I think may be helpful. I have been tweaking my mini-farm to demonstrate methods that can be used to mitigate the problems I am learning about in the community – trellising vines to reduce fungal infections, optimal planting rates, best practices with insecticides to kill leaf cutter ants (a terrible pest), organic composting techniques, best practices with chemical fertilizers, and creating cheap greenhouses and nurseries with local materials.
One of the most interesting aspects of Guabal is the newly built paved road. The road was paved in 2011 and has had a dirt road since around 1998. This progression has quickly thrust Guabal into formal markets and has kicked the dynamic process of “development” in the butt – before 1998 people basically had to hike 6-7 hours to get to Guabal. Now it’s a 50 minute chiva (pickup or van) ride from Santa Fe. things that were impossible less than two decades ago are easy to accomplish today - like bringing in propane gas for example. As a result, it is a very interesting time to be in the community and be a part of some of these changes.
Thinking about these changes has made me think a lot about the role the Peace Corps plays, the role of “development workers” in general and what the hell I am doing here. But we will save that for a later post. Be well and comment below!
I have started to feel more at home in Guabal. Yesterday was my birthday and the neighbor’s kid came up to me and timidly asked if it was my birthday. I said yes and he got a huge smile on his face, jumped up to give me a big hug and said happy birthday. Pretty darn cute.
I have also started to have simple pleasures of the campo highlight my day – like my little 7 year old host brother grabbing the family turkey by the neck, swinging a leg over its back with a hand in the air and riding it like a bull. Watching that odd dangly thing above the turkey’s beak flop around as he struggles to slash or peck my host brother is pure entertainment. Unfortunately I cannot upload the video, because it is priceless.
Now I assume there are at least a handful of people reading this horrified by my seeming enjoyment of turkey abuse, but this turkey had it coming. During my first week in site I had to get to the latrine at night thanks to the shock to my bowels described above and I hear this odd, guttural cooing coming from under the house. My bloated, half-sleeping self didn’t think too much of it until there was this surprisingly strong ball of feathers slashing at my legs and pecking at my back, quite viciously. The dumb turkey planned a sneak attack while I walked by and I had to get a stick to fight it off. I literally mean fight it off. He is much more dense than I would have imagined a flightless bird.
This is not the only time he has done this. He plans attacks on old men, pregnant women, drunk men (fun to watch), and his favorite is little girls under ten walking alone. I often find our neighbors 6 year old daughter waiting by the fence for me to distract the turkey so she can get home safely from school. So when I say my host brother road him like a bull, it is not too much of an exaggeration, his cousin has to distract the turkey like a rodeo clown as he dismounts so he doesn’t get mauled. I feel no remorse watching this horrible, horrible bird take some of its own medicine. I wanted to cook it for thanksgiving (a great time to teach my partially indigenous host family about how good the US government was at exterminating our own indigenous groups) but, alas, the idea was vetoed. I still do not understand why the family has him or where they got him, but I will be sure to investigate further and share my findings.
On a slightly more work oriented note…
After a little more time in site I have been able to start to identify possible projects. I have only been in site for a couple of months so these are all in the beginning stages, but it has been nice to start and wrap my head around the type of work I will be doing. Here is a little information about some of the projects I hope to be able to work on:
* just a little clarification: I live in Guabal and the closest big town is called Santa Fe. Guabal has a cooperative, which is small but growing quickly. The cooperative in Santa Fe is the largest cooperative in the country and (maybe?) the largest cooperatively owned coffee business in Central America. I will be working with both and talk about both below
Coconut oil project
In Santa Fe there seems to be an endless market for coconut oil. In other parts of the country it is very easy to get, but due to the microclimate in Santa Fe and other reasons, there is very little available. A gallon of coconut oil sells for $30 dollars in Santa Fe and I already have the market lined up (thanks to Will, my volunteer neighbor who is a godsend for many reasons), now we just need the oil. It takes about 40-60 mature coconuts to make a gallon of oil and the problem at this point is the grating the coconuts. Hand grating the coconuts is not only exhausting and extremely time consuming, it is often painful because people often snag a finger on what is essentially an extremely cheap cheese grater.
I have people who have land with coconuts on them and my goal right now is designing a coconut grater with a crank of some sorts (a re-purposed bike maybe?) to speed up the process and enable people to realistically make enough oil to sell. If you have any suggestions, please let me know!
Irrigation Project
My irrigation project started due to a need of my own. I have about an eighth to a quarter-acre in production right now – as a demonstration plot and as a garden for personal consumption – which is on top of a hill. The rain takes care of the majority of the needed irrigation, but after transplanting, on sunny days, and in my mini-greenhouse I need additional water. I was originally hauling 5-gallon buckets uphill, which got very old very quickly. I looked around online and found designs for a hydraulic ram pump, which essentially uses the force of a stream to move water uphill.
I repurposed the design to fit my situation and before I knew it I had people coming to my house to see my design. I now have people asking me to go to their house to help them design the same system to either water crops, start producing on previously unproductive land, or just get water closer to their house. The beauty of the system is that it uses PVC (which is readily available) and two well placed one-way check-valves to create a surprisingly cheap and efficient pump.
Improved Stove Project
Essentially all of the houses in Guabal cook on a “fogon” which is basically three well-placed rocks over an open fire. From a development standpoint, there are all sorts of problems with cooking like this, especially problems associated with deforestation and poor health. This is especially apparent when I see a mother with a child in a sling tending the fire and the smoke in both of their faces. The improved stove helps to funnel smoke out of a chimney (helping mitigate health impacts) and more efficiently use fire-wood (helping to reduce deforestation). There was a similar project in a close by town (Alto Ortiga, where my Peace Corps neighbor Will/ Guillermo lives) and during community meeting people have voiced interest in doing one of our own. The interest surprised me a little because, as Will said, “people just seem to like cooking with three rocks.” He said this as we were talking about why only about half of the families involved in the previous project actually use their stoves. Behavior change is undoubtedly the hardest goal for development (that is not me saying I necessarily think it is a good goal in general).
Coffee Project
The majority of families grow coffee at some scale (anywhere from 5 to 500 trees) although essentially the whole harvest is consumed in the home. There is an interest in Guabal in turning some of these plots into more intensively managed and more productive plots with the goal to be selling the harvest in Santa Fe. The great thing about coffee is that a well-managed coffee farm is essentially a healthy rain forest – coffee needs shade to grow, which encourages preserving primary forest and old growth trees. How often can someone preserve the rainforest and produce a crop as economically efficiently as possible? In the long term I have the most hope for this project to create a positive economic impact on the community due to the immense purchasing power of the coffee cooperative and the relatively easy access to government extension agents in Santa Fe. Hopefully this will lead to more work for me with the Santa Fe cooperative.
Cooperative Project in Guabal
My work with the cooperative is still in the process of being determined but will generally consist of determining how they can make more money. I have reached out to the Peace Corps agri-business coordinator to design a sort of market analysis to see what niches need to be filled in the local market. We are also working to improve the existing structure to make it more efficient and grow in ways to take advantage of the new paved road. We have already designed and built a market garden with a greenhouse, chicken coop and plant nursery to supply fresh vegetables and meat both to a small restaurant the coop runs and to the store. This cooperative has satellite stores as far as a six-hour hike away in, quite literally, the middle of the jungle.
General Agricultural Extension Project and Micah’s Mini-Farm
Although I have not set up a formal group dealing with best practices, I have starting visiting farms/ home garden plots and helping people determine what problems they are having with their crops (most of which are fungal) and how to solve those problems. Solving fungal problems in a rainforest is… difficult.
In addition I have been working on a mini-farm (about an eighth to a quarter acre built on 17 terraces with a greenhouse) to both grow some fresh veggies for me and to demonstrate some techniques I think may be helpful. I have been tweaking my mini-farm to demonstrate methods that can be used to mitigate the problems I am learning about in the community – trellising vines to reduce fungal infections, optimal planting rates, best practices with insecticides to kill leaf cutter ants (a terrible pest), organic composting techniques, best practices with chemical fertilizers, and creating cheap greenhouses and nurseries with local materials.
One of the most interesting aspects of Guabal is the newly built paved road. The road was paved in 2011 and has had a dirt road since around 1998. This progression has quickly thrust Guabal into formal markets and has kicked the dynamic process of “development” in the butt – before 1998 people basically had to hike 6-7 hours to get to Guabal. Now it’s a 50 minute chiva (pickup or van) ride from Santa Fe. things that were impossible less than two decades ago are easy to accomplish today - like bringing in propane gas for example. As a result, it is a very interesting time to be in the community and be a part of some of these changes.
Thinking about these changes has made me think a lot about the role the Peace Corps plays, the role of “development workers” in general and what the hell I am doing here. But we will save that for a later post. Be well and comment below!