Chocolate, Sickness and Spanish

I've come to the conclusion that I'm not a healthy person. Well, I might try to eat well. Except for the occasional hamburger or fried piece of chicken, but I try. What I mean is the fact that I get sick everywhere I go. I'm not sure why. I eat the same things, do the same things, and follow the same guidelines as everyone else and yet I find a way to get sick. Case and point last weekend. Too much has happened since my last blog post and I've explained the story too many times so I'm going to give you the quick run down of how things happened.

I got on the bus with the rest of the Peace Corps trainees that were going West for their site visits and was glad us selected few got to leave a day early and get a hot shower in a hotel. The bus ride was long cramped and cold. They love to crank the AC as much as possible in the country and we were warned to bring a jacket. I did. I was also the only one out of about 17 of us to bring a bag small enough to fit under a seat keeping all my belongings at my disposal. This comforted me. I had no idea what to expect at the site other than it was some type of chocolate factory and that it was in a place called Bocas Del Toro which I remembered from about 5 years ago as being a tourist trap.

We arrived in David at about 2am and the first real Peace Corps test ensued. Not only was the map that they gave us complete bullshit, but we were all tired as hell. Having 5 different people ask directions and getting 5 different answers is not optimal when nerves are running on overload. Suffering from “group think” we finally made our way to the hotel with only a few outbursts from our EH counterparts whom didn't seem to be adjusting to Panamanian lifestyle as well as expected. One EH'r “Environmental Health” not only decided to walk in the middle of the street, but then offer a rather loud “fuck you” to a taxi trying to get by. He also commented on the size of the beds that we had not seen yet. I think it was along the lines of “they are probably Panamanian size beds and they are short”. And these guys were supposed to be the rugged trainees? It bugged me that someone was already thinking this way and I hoped no one would follow his lead.

The bed was nice and the hot shower was maybe the most amazing thing I had felt in weeks. I can't even explain how much I love taking hot hot showers. David. The guy I was splitting the bed with to save 12 bucks failed to realize that both knobs read “hot” on them and therefore took an ice cold shower. I laughed.

Everyone else left early in the morning. Making sure to catch buses to their assigned sites where they would spend 3 days seeing how another Peace Corps volunteer lived and worked. David and I were going to the same site and we both decided that waking up early was not in our best interest. We had both been to Panama before and knew that getting a bus through the mountain would not be a problem.

The drive through the mountains is nice and the road is new. The bridges are brand new even though work was still being done to them. This is where the canal money was going. We saw more of the canal money being spent on the road to the “indigenous” site which we took a taxi to after meeting Brian and buying items for dinner. Brian explained to us that just months before the road had been dirt and for good reason. No one in the community owned a car. Only the taxi came about once a day along with the occasional visitor. The village stood at the dead end of the road and split the community in half with the river raging besides both. A river that had recently raged over its banks flooding the entire area making exit impossible.

We arrived at the site and expectations were met. Wooden stilted houses sat in rows among native trees, scattered trash, and wondering kids. The terrain was rugged. Rain constantly battered the ground making a type of mud I can only explain as “slip” for anyone that has ever worked with pottery. Any hard mud available was sure to covered in slippery wet mud on top making for a dangerous journey in any direction. I loved it. And so did the local Nobe Indians to which this terrain has been their home for thousands of years. My sandals quickly gave way on any steep hill and I found myself flat on my ass more than once. David had a couple spills too, but we both agreed that my no handed, straight as a bored, back flop into the side of a mountain took top prize. I was winner of back full of mud and plenty of laughs.

Brian's hut was new. The natives built it for him 6 months into his service and it looked sturdy. We were told that it took 4 trees and 3 months to build. It was a simple one room hut on stilts with only single boards between the outside world and the inside. It was simple. No running water or lights and full of bugs and geckos, but it was nice. Primitive, but sufficient and capable. I liked it. It needed a slight remodel that included a solar shower, and place to keep my horse that I'm sure to have, but I liked it.

About the trash. Her is my theory. For thousands of years these people have lived in a society that all food was organic and gladly accepted by the animals and dirt. Only in the last 30 years has the introduction of things with plastic rappers and bags made it complicated. If these things weren't scattered everywhere, which they were, then they were piled up and burned. The daily smell of burning plastic is something that I will never get accustomed to. I would work on changing this behavior in the community but who am I to say that they are dirty people. They have lived just fine without our help. At least Brian didn't care. Or at least not after living there for so long. It seemed to bad to me that such a beautiful place be trashed literally, but I'm a gringo. What do I know. Maybe they like the way it looks. Maybe Sprite bottles and ketchup containers are more appealing to the eyes after staring at the same damn plants for all their life. I don't know. I do know that I won't be able to tolerate that or the beating of animals in my site and I'm trying to think of ways I can educate the people on these things.

Chocolate

Chocolate isn't what you think it is. Or maybe it is and its me that didn't know. I found out that pure chocolate is literately ground up seeds that have been dried and roasted from a cacao fruit. So we made chocolate. The Nobe people live as simple as could be and so goes their chocolate production. Chocolate trees strategically planted deep into the forest make scaling the mountain to get to them a challenge. Finding poison dart frogs, tucans, and tarantulas along the way is not a hard task as we found. The chocolate fruit is sweet and cutting the center of one and pulling it apart will reveal a membrane similar to string of pumpkin seeds but more uniform, larger, and sweeter. They taste like grapes.

Solomon, our tour guide and local Nobe leader had already dried and roasted some seeds for us. All we needed to do was grind them. Not as easy as it sounds. The damn grinder was archaic and hard as hell to turn. David and I took turns crushing the fairly large burnt-like seeds into a dark rich chocolate paste. The smell of what we know as chocolate filled the air of the hut. Solomon's wife then took the paste added boiling water and sugar and we had the freshest hot chocolate one could have. Heaven. Reaching the bottom of the cup resulted in a rich mud chocolately goodness. I can't imagine if someone were to add this to the fresh coffee. The world might end. I bought a pound of pure ground chocolate which hardened, and I plan to put it in everything.

The River

The river was amazing. Well it was cool that there was a place to swim near his hut because he had no running water and it was where people took baths and washed clothes. Brain, the volunteer we were visiting, made it a daily routine to walk up to the waterfall which the locals didn't go to due to a ghost superstition. On the way, cut vines made for great rope swings, and Jesus lizards ran from out rocks and across the water. If it started raining the river quickly swelled and we saw it happen. At one point while we were out of the river it started raining hard and the river quickly went up by 2 or 3 feet. Enough to sweep anyone away to a point where you would never see them again.

Getting Sick in a Foreign Country Where you don't Know the Language Sucks

I could write a book about getting sick in different countries and I could write about 3 pages about my visit to the hospital here but I'm going to just some observations instead. Here they are:

I got sick somewhere in Bocas during my visit.

Started feeling sick in David after eating some chicken.

Had violent attacks of puking and diarrhea for 12 hours straight threw the night.

Brain drug me the hospital where I puked so loud the whole place felt sorry for me.

For some damn reason they decided to give me x rays on an old rusty machine instead of immediately giving me fluids and anti-nausea.

After trying to explain that I was going to puke on the all equipment if they didn't do something the 3rd attempt to get an IV in me worked on the top of my hand.

They pumped more Antibiotics in me than I've ever seen and told me to poop in a cup.

After pleading for them to let me leave that night they refused and I watched Lord of the Rings in Spanish.

They wouldn't let me go in the morning so I walked to the front counter with my IV still attached and told them to take it the hell out cause I was leaving.

They took it out and gave me a bag full of meds I haven't even looked at.

Still don't know what the hell I had but my stomach is still a little off and I'm feeling more dizzy than usual lately.

I lost about 3 pounds that will be hard to put back on.

Ate one cracker, got on a bus with Brian that was supposed to be 5 hours, the AC on the bus broke, it started raining so no windows were open, it was hot as hell.

The bus then blew a tire going 70.

I got off the bus laughing and we made it 6 hours later.

I ate two hamburgers from Mcdonalds and which I would never never do in the states and I'm pretty sure that the hormones and antibiotics in the burgers made me feel better. Plus it somehow tasted like home. A home that was so far away. I'm finding its the little things here that make me happen. So far they are music and small shitty hamburgers.

Go figure......