Site Placement!

Hanging out at the Ranchero

Yesterday most of us (in CED) bused to Santiago, the capitol of the province of Veraguas (4 hours from Panama city), where we´ll be staying in a hotel for the next week during technical training. I´m pretty stoked, since Veraguas is going to be my province for the next two years, so it´s a great opportunity to get to know the capitol. My site, which was announced last Wednesday, is a town of 5,000 people close to Santiago and my job will be to work with two local youth co-ops, helping them to organize their members and, hopefully, become profitable. I´ll have electricity and running water, though I don´t know if that means indoor plumbing or latrines and outdoor showers. Either is fine with me, latrines aren´t nearly as bad as I thought they would be and outdoor showers are really refreshing. There is something about staring up at the stars when you take a shower that is very peaceful.

I´m glad to be out of our training town for a little while, but I think I´m going to miss the kids in my house. Speaking of the kids, Gabriel is on the left. He´s 10 and has the greatest smile. I need to get a better picture of him.. I just love him! Iran is 12 and is great but also nearing the teen years so he can be a little sullen sometimes. And Irania (7), on Iran´s shoulders, is really sweet. I couldn´t have asked for better host siblings. I wish you could all meet them.

The bird pictured in the last post is pretty little, maybe the size of a cockatiel, but this one is a fullsized parot. He´s only 10 months old and he´s got a lot of attitude, but he´s cool. He lives in the backyard of my grandma´s house next door.

The other day, at our regular training schedule at the ranchero (which is oustide under a thatched roof) these monkeys came to eat some rice. They´re pretty small, maybe the size of a small cat, and really ugly. The picture isn´t very good, but you get the idea. They were about 10 feet from us, chattering and eating. Their faces are kind of a cross between a bulldog and a bat.

I got emails about the need for more photos so I´m trying to oblige. Unfortunately I don´t whip out my camera nearly enough. Here´s a picture of some of my group last night, though. That´s Joanna (her, Logan, and I are sharing a room), Lydia, Me, Michael, and Coco. We kind of feel like we´re on vacation. We´re staying in a hotel with air-conditioning, cable television (in English!), great food, and a swimming pool! So last night was a bit of a party. It felt so good. We´re kept pretty busy in training and we really really needed a break.

After this week we´re headed to Cera Punta in the Chiriqui province in the mountains. It will be awesome because it´s colder up there. This heat and humidity is a killer, though we are definitely adapting. We´ll be in Cera Punta for a couple of days for a sector conference and then we go to our respective provinces for culture training for a week. So I´ll be returning to Veraguas and then heading to a small village in the south that, I believe, is pretty close to the beach. Surprisingly, given how much beach Panama has, I have not yet been to the coast. I am really looking forward to it. I´ll be sure to take some more pictures!

Just back from the Darien

This is the house that I´m staying at in Santa Clara. We are, more or less, in the middle of the forest. The village is pretty small and the people are very friendly. I live with my host mom and dad and their three kids. The oldest son, Iran, is 12, the next son Gabriel is 10, and the daughter, Irania, is 7. They are amazing. We have a lot of fun together playing card games and swimming in the pool. I´m also teaching them to golf (I squeezed my 9 iron into my luggage). Iran is the next Tiger Woods, I swear!

The house itself is small. There is a common living area and two bedrooms. I have one bedroom and the rest of the family shares one room. There is very little privacy, as the walls don´t reach all the way to the ceiling. We have an outdoor shower though I take bucket baths often since the water doesn´t run reliably. And there is a latrine about 50 feet behind the house. It smells and is very uncomfortable, but it´s pretty clean compared to others that I´ve seen.


One of my favorite things is the house lizards. Since the homes are open, without glass windows, there are a lot of bugs but the house lizards (which look like small geckos) live on the walls and eat most of them. There are also chickens everywhere, which is fine except for the roosters that can´t tell time and sing at all hours of the day and night.


These are the little birds that live in everyone´s front yards. They´re really cute and friendly. Most people have dogs, too, but they don´t treat them very well, which is a little hard for me to handle. Typically the dogs are skin and bone and very used to being beaten. It´s pretty depressing. My family is generally okay to their dog, though. They only hit him when he comes in the house, which he knows so they only have to raise their arm and he runs outside. He´s a really sweet dog, though, so it breaks my heart.




This past weekend I visited a volunteer who is just finishing up her two years in the Darien Province, which borders with Colombia. There are parts of the Darien that are too dangerous to pass because of drug traffic but she lives in a small indigenous community on a small river. There are about 350 people in her village and recently she helped them set up an artesans co-op. They sell the most amazing baskets and figures carved from a particular kind of nut or hardwood. The community is very remote, though, only accessible by boat after a 5 hour bus ride from Panama City. The above picture is the volunteer´s house. It is very open and we spent a good chunk of our time reading in hammocks. It was wonderful.

I´m back in Panama City now, about to head back out to Santa Clara. Next week we find out where we are going to be placed. I can´t wait!