It sometimes seems that the things you work longest on are the things that fail the most often. Let me give you an example. I've been working with Mirna for about a month now creating this presentation for her to present as part of a Central American program for Chocolate. She is supposed to represent all of Panama and working with her has been more than challenging. Like many other women here she has an extremely low education level so basic concepts like not stopping for 5 min during your presentation and the concept of turning outlines into actual sentences have been almost impossible to get through. I spent a good deal of time getting the power point together including doing interviews and taking pictures and getting a large amount of information together and then putting it in Spanish. We also had to pay for her to get a passport and put together all the documents for the red tape of bringing chocolate across the borders of 6 different countries. She was supposed to leave tomorrow. Well, her mom got sick today apparently and now she is not going. She already left the community to go to the hospital.
I had been feeling pretty slow and my spanish was pretty terrible for about a week but didn't feel really sick. I was a little bit more tired during the day but thought it could have just been from the heat. Well it turns out I had another worm. This is the 4th time I've had ascaris worm and my system seems to be getting used it. This time wasn't that bad and pretty much just made me a little slow.
Brian, our country director and the guy that is in charge of everything here actually came to my site. He doesn't get to go to many people's sites but he had the chance to come out to mine and it was pretty cool. We got to show him what we do here and we actually were able to join a tour that was going at the time. He seemed to have loved it. I had never really spent any time with him for obvious reasons and it was cool to hang out. I didn't realize how down to earth he was.
I have been working on getting the chlorination unit installed on our aqueduct for about 3 months now and it has almost been impossible to get the chlorination tablets. We finally got the tablets and my neighbor who is the president of the water comity already installed it. It seems that people don't mind the taste too much but I noticed right away that there is too much chlorine in the water. Of course the government agency that helped us put it together has no way of checking the level of chlorine that is coming out. They didn't even want to help us in the first place. The tablets are supposed to last 3 months but we will see if that is actually the case. I will probably go up next month to see how much of the tablets are left and hopefully we can make adjustments.
A meeting was called yesterday in the Community House which unfortunately sits directly next to my house. I noticed right away that I didn't recognize many of the people and that the group included a couple afro-antillians and some Latinos. So I dropped in and listened. It turns out that the Latino family which has lived at the very edge of the community next to ours for two generations got a notice that someone bought their land. This was to the surprise of the owner as he was not selling it. Turns out there is a corrupt lawyer here that is making false documents and selling land. So now this mess is happening and this guy and his poor family have to try to fight a lawyer and his client just to keep his property that has been in his family for 80 years. This is not un-common here and its the unfortunate result of property prices going up do to more gringos trying to move here.
One thing that absolutely blew me away was that here a town meeting was called that involved two communities just to help this man. Many things were said along the lines of “we should help our neighbors no matter what color” and “if we let them win this then they will just keep doing it and eventually get us”. There were also things said like “They will have to pull me off my property in a casket” and “we will fight anyone and everyone for what is right”. It was nice to see that these people see that getting together to help individuals is in their best interest and that working together will be the only way to fight the people that have money on their side.
The more and more I work with supposed aid groups and non-profits down here, the more I realize that most do it wrong and that most have no one that is actually regulating them or giving them any type of guidelines. There are exceptions and I think it has to do with the level of professionalism, organization, and down right want do something that is sustainable. I can't even tell you the amount of self-ego- boosting-wanna-be-social-work-non-profits there are out there doing work that can't even be considered a band aid. It's more like someone having an allergy to salt and instead of simply explaining to them that they can not have salt, you buy them expensive allergy medication that they are then taught will be the only way they can live and then after awhile you leave while they are left with no way to get more of the medication. What is more is that most of these groups go back home talking about all the “good'' that they did and how they saved this poor poor person that just didn't know any better. It's sad and I wish there was a sustainability governing body that could at least set guidelines for these groups. I'm not going to say that large organized aid groups don't do the same thing. I've seen that too. I will say that for the most part though, these “poor poor people” are living Guinea pigs for the developed world to come in and pretend like they doing something good so they can sleep at night.
Ok. Done ranting about that. Now to other updates:
It was raining almost non-stop when I was gone and I came home to an empty water tank. It seems that my neighbors were using it. I let them know that I was not happy about that. I then proceeded to my shower where I turned the shower on and the entire thing came crashing on to me while I was looking up at it and gouged my right now. So now I have a blue right eye socket with a cut.
The guy that was supposed to build our electric grinder bailed from Almirante and I was only able to find his phone number after talking to about 5 different neighbors of his. Luckily Engineers Without Borders got right on it and contacted him. Come to find out that he is close Panama city and someone from their group can check out the machine, pay for it, and get it sent here. They are also checking up on the solar panel system that we want to get to move the machine. Its all very exciting. Especially because we now have an organization to help us. We were really dead in the water with my engineering skills and because the guy that was supposed to build the machine moved away we were left in a tough spot.
I'm excited to be going to the Darien this month and then travel back to my site with some friends from home. The Darien is pretty crazy and I have to get all sorts of clearances to go. Should be great.
Until next time...
