I just ate a whole raw onion and 5 cloves of raw garlic mixed with grape seed extract. That is pretty much what it has come down to in my Peace Corps service. Trying to find things to kill the amoebas in my stomach that doesn't have to do with going to the pharmacy and either paying for it myself or having the Peace Corps medical department find out. If you have read any of my last status updates on ol Facebook you will know that I've been sick with worms, amoebas, parasites, and giardia in last couple months more than any other time I have been here. Because of it I have been pulled from my community and have to sit in either the gringo-ville that is Bocas Island or David. None of which I care for at all. The plan is to get me healthy enough to go back into my community and keep on truckin. Well, it looks like the plan failed before it started because almost immediately after my last round of medicine I became sick with amoebas.
The Peace Corps office has told me to be ready to relocate and that if I still want to work in my community that I need to be ready to live on Bocas Island. Bocas Island is probably the last place I want to live in Panama besides Chorrera (you can look at my other posts about how terrible Chorrera is) but if it means that I can keep working with my community from the outside then I would do it. The biggest problem I will run into is housing which is gringotasticly expensive. As is food. As is transportation to and from the island. I would need to find someone willing to provide a free place and I would also only be able to enter my community about once a week. This would give me more time to be on the internet working on the grant that we want to get for chocolate equipment and we could strengthen our ties with the island as far as tourism goes too, I just didn't want my Peace Corps experience to end up being in the middle of a touristville.
We had a record amount of tourists last month and everyone seems to be enjoying the new money coming in. It is not a lot, but it is more than we had before. Part of the reason each person isn't getting a whole wad of cash is because the artisan group takes a pretty large portion of the money and puts it in the bank for future projects and investments such as a place for tourists to stay and a restaurant. Everyone seems happy with it. Especially Salomon who seems to love his new power as a manager of both tourism and chocolate. He is the best at it and loves doing it so it works out.
I will be a year into my service this week and it is crazy how time flies. My body has turned into an experiment for tropical diseases, I have gone through a whole list of emotional ups and downs, shaved my head last year and then let it grow out for 9 months this year, and made a lot of new friends. I also realize that many if not most people that started following my blog have stopped. That is fine with me as I realize time will just do that to some people.
As some know, I will be coming home for a week at the end of this month for Kevin's wedding of which I'm at the best man. I'm really looking forward to it, but I'm a little scared at the whole shock of being thrown directly into California after being in the jungle for so long. I guess the saving grace is that I know I will be coming back for another year. To be honest, I'm not actually sure I ever want to live permanently in the states again. There is such a large world out there and it seems like the US hasn't been doing so great managing itself so I've started to think of places to live and work outside the states. I will definitely have to start narrowing this down come next February and March but for know I can say Japan, Guatemala, and Switzerland are all on the map.
A quick note: For some reason a family of bats decided that my house was a great place to spend the night flying around and making bat noises. After hitting them off my mosquito net and shinning lights on them for about 30 min they decided to exit the premises. All part of the fun.
In the meantime, I will sit in my hammock smelling of garlic, reading books about how the human race has took a turn for the worse in every way possible...
