Doing Work

A pretty big storm passed through just now lingering lightening is still exploding far away. It's dark except for the flashing in the distance and neighbors kids are playing with my iphone. All three of them. Touching at the same time. I have to hand it to them. For not ever seeing or using anything like an iphone they are learning to navigate it pretty fast.

It's been a long day. Mostly because I've been traveling for a good part of the day and I've been traveling tired. Traveling tired is way more tiring than just plain old traveling. When you've got no where to rest your head and your tired it makes you more tired and more tired of traveling and you just want to be home. This was most of my feeling today and has been for the last couple days. Even though I haven't been traveling for three days I have been tired. Extremely tired.

I actually can't figure it out really. Why I'm so tired that is. I went to the lab and took pretty much every test they offered and apparently I've got a clean bill of health. So I called the Peace Corps doctor to see what his thoughts were on all my tests and me being sleepy all the time with bad stomach problems. He said I had indigestion. That wasn't really what I was looking for but I got some tums just in case. I tried to fall asleep on the way back but couldn't as I was on an isle seat on the way back and just hanging on around the corners is enough to keep you up. I personally think that the extreme heat and humidity is slowly eating my soul here but I guess we will find out if that is true in a year from now.

Live update: I just went over to my neighbors house where they are watching Miss Universe on a small black and white TV. There is about 10 people watching it and they look pretty confused. Once I got to see what Miss Panama looked like I came back.

Tours have been slow lately and there just hasn't been too many people on the island. This whole month has been pretty low which apparently was expected. It is kind of weird to me that more tourists don't come around this time as things are less expensive, there is more sun, and there is less people. I've tried to explain the importance of keeping up with advertising and keeping our contacts current but I'm not sure that this concept has sunk in. I know that we have permission from another one of the big hostels to put a big sign up and I know that Salomon knows about the opportunity. I just can't figure out why they are moving on it. For me to take charge and get it done would be the wrong thing to do for sure as they absolutely need to learn the importance of marketing and reaching out to customers. My next option will be to reach out to Samuel who is the tour guide. I think that if I can get him out on the island we can get some real work done in one day. Its also affecting his pocket book so I know he has got to have some interest. The hard part is getting the artisan group to pay for it.

There is tones of other crap I would love to talk about but I will save it. One being how me and a couple guys from here went to this swimming spot where we tied a rope across a small canyon, climbed to the middle, dangled, and then jumped into the water below. I'm just not going to talk about that right now. There just isn't enough time. One last thought: Every time I have to go to the doctor now I keep thinking about me having to live on the island and how I would cope with that. My service would be completely different and I've come to the conclusion that I don't like it.

Next week. My new obsession with dominoes......  

I Think I Ate Some Bad Chicken

Its come to my attention that I have been slacking a little bit with the blog posting. It has also come to my attention that other volunteers are getting more hits on their blogs because of it and I just can't let that happen. I don't always write for the 4 people that actually read this. I sometimes write for myself too. To let off some steam or just to work out things on the screen instead of just in my head. That said, here is to a new month where I will write more than one post every 40 days. In fact, this is number two in 3 days. Now you people just need to start reading them.

In between having explosive diarrhea and trying not to puke my stomach out all day, I starting thinking about my future here in Rio Oeste and even more specificly in the Peace Corps. I'm pretty much at the half way mark and after the holiday season it will be pretty much down hill from there. I've been trying to think about what I want to accomplish and how to do it. It seems that my work here has taken a life of its own and the government wants a chunk of the recognition. They have offered a free booth at all the fairs in the Bocas region for us and even want to start giving the business money for things such as machinery. They have good intentions and the fair booth will be great even though it is for 5 days at a time and I'm pretty sure its going to be me and two Ngabes sleeping in a tent together for most of those days. The only problem I see is the fact that the government here likes to just hand money over sometimes without stipulations. I've said this before and I will say it again “handouts are the worst possible thing you can do to poor people”. There is one exception to that and that is medical. If you don't believe me then you need to read Two Ears Of Corn. So hopefully it doesn't go down that way and the agencies actually come into this trying to work with the people and not just throwing money at them.

So I mentioned that I had pretty bad stomach problems and I wasn't kidding. If you have kept up with my blog at all you will know that I just came back to my site after being away for over two weeks. I felt good and it was probably the longest time I have gone for months without being sick. I kid you not, the day I arrived in my site I got terrible stomach problems. I really don't know what the hell is going on. I ate at a couple bus stops that looked pretty questionable but everyone does that here including tourists and not too many get sick. I really don't know what is going on but it needs to stop if I want to continue serving in my site and not from Bocas Island.

Another thing I realized today and something that I've been delaying thinking about is being alone once again in Panama. As some of you know, my girlfriend will be done with her service at the end of this month. It creeped up on us like a stalker and now we are both dealing with the possibility of not seeing each other for a year. I don't want to get too in to it but we have decided to go our separate ways and then meet up when I get done. We both feel it would be too hard any other way. I'm not sure how it is going to be but I do know that I will miss her and that after spending most of my time in the Peace Corps with her as my girlfriend, it is going to be very very hard to not have that support and love anymore. I've started trying to fill my schedule with giving extra English classes and seeing my friends that are serving in other places to take my mind off of things but the fact is that it will be much harder for awhile.

I've got another year left and need to stay healthy mentally and physicaly to ride out the good and bad times. Another challenge I'm willing to take on....     

Visiting that place called The USA

I'm sitting on a bus. Still. I left Chico around 11am yesterday and it looks like I will arrive at about 11pm in David which is where I will spend the night before continuing on to my community tomorrow. This might be one of the longest trips I've ever had to take and it has been pretty taxing on me. The last week has been a whirlwind as well. I visited home after being gone for a year and it was more than strange. Panama and California could not be further apart. Well, I was able to order some food in Spanish but that was about it. Its just a different world though and thinking people would understand that would be dumb of me. Most were polite and asked simple questions about the differences. I got a couple crazy questions like if I had a translator when I talked.

I think the biggest difference between the two places is mostly physical. We have such nice roads and infrastructure back home with tree lined freshly paved roads and kept parks. I think we really take these things for granted. Of course our tax money actually makes it into government which provides these services which can be a problem here, but I remember arriving into Marysville and thinking that it looked really nice. I thought maybe they had done a makeover or something but it was just that I had been living in a place where building crumble just years after being built and trash replaces sidewalks.

It was nice being back home and Kevin's wedding was great too. I have to admit that I was a little nervous doing the best man speech but was glad I practiced and revised it because I had about 15 people tell me it was probably the best they had ever heard. The bride's mom included. I guess I've gotten better at speaking from the heart which is one thing that comes with age. Speaking of age, I'm now 32. Yep, it happened. I got older. There was really nothing I could do about it. I would say that it is scary being this old but its not really. The fact is that if I turn my hat sideways and grow my hair out a little bit I still look 26......which is probably why I know have long hair and bought a baseball cap to wear. When it is all said and done here in Panama I will be 33 and will have had 3 birthdays during my service. I guess some would be scared by now. When you start racking up numbers like these you can't help but wonder if there will come a point where I need to settle down and start a family. I'm not going to lie, I think about it often, but I think I've come to the conclusion to give myself a couple more years of jungle/saving the world life before I start getting too serious about that. I should look like I'm about 29 by then and at least act like I'm 25.

Seeing my parents and brothers were amazing and seeing everyone at the wedding was great too. It was almost overwhelming to see so many people that I haven't seen for so long all at once. I did have one disappointment and that was getting friends together the last night Matt and I spent in town. A lot of people had said they were going to make it and very little showed up. I do have to give it to Ari, Jenna, and Lincoln among others that did come out, but people that really wanted to see again and won't be able to for at least another year just didn't show up when they said they would. I could probably just list their names right here because I'm sure these same friends don't read my blog. I don't know if they thought they would see me again soon somehow or if they just stopped being my friends because it's been so long but I had spent months in anticipation for the night we could all hang out. In a way I was a little hurt and saddened. Mostly because there is a good chance I will not be coming home for long time and these particular people are not very good at keeping in touch. Que sera

So another year. That is about what I have left. Actually a little bit more but lets just call it a year. I should be arriving back into my community tomorrow with a whole new excitement and enthusiasm. That is until I get sick again and get kicked out of my community. I'm really scared of this happening because the next step will be me living in the hellish gringo land that is Bocas Island. As with all things I can adapt and if I were to live in a non gringo neighborhood, I'm sure it would make it better. I just don't want to live in a place where the faces change every day and drinking and surfing are the two main pass times. I know that doesn't seem too bad but I didn't join the Peace Corps to have a good time. I actually like being in the indigenous village and doing real development work. I like being woken up at 6am to go machete some grass with my neighbor. I like being in the jungle, and having to deal with the mosquitoes, noise, sickness, animals, and constant kids running around is all part of that. It is something I will only have once in my life in this way and I want the full thing. Not some half assed service where I go into my community twice a week. I might as well be on vacation if that is going to happen. I have considered that there are some organizations on the island such the Smithsonian that could use help but again its not like living in an indigenous village. We will see how it pans out.

This month should be a big month for us in the community as we are going to be part of a fair where we can sell our chocolate and also we should start having our tour available online to buy through a new travel agency. More updates soon about those things. Until then, thanks for reading. It's been a wild ride so far...

Garlic, Bats, and the challenge of staying healthy

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...

Coming Up on a Year

Its dark and late and I'm sitting in my hammock swinging back and forth to the rhythm of loud zacaida bugs. I've been putting off writing a blog post for some time now and as time goes, so does my desire to write them. Part of the problem is that I've been pretty sick the last month and this pretty much drains whatever energy I have after the heat has taken its toll on me. I had giardia and Ascaris worms last week at the same time and realized there was something wrong when trying to give computer class I almost fell over.

I've become desperate in my pursuit to stay healthy and due to a recent declaration by the medical officer saying that if I get sick one more time in my site I'm going to get moved, I have been more diligent in trying not to get sick. I've resorted to boiling all the water I use to drink and make food, putting chlorine in the tank of water that I use to bath myself, not eating any food given to me from anyone in my community. I also have to wear shoes everywhere for now on apparently because some parasites can in through my feet.

The community and the artisan group are doing great. They work a lot and they are more organized than some American organizations I've seen. I'm pretty confident in taking them to the next level which is looking for a grant to get chocolate making machinery. The machine is from a company called cacoatown.com and the solar panel needed to run it all should be coming from Panama City. 11K in all should do it. Now I just have to find the money.

I've started to get a little nervous for a couple reasons. First, there is only two months left for the me and the girl that I have been dating and I'm not sure how it is going to be without her here. We will have been dating for about half a year which is pretty significant and going through all this with someone else always creates a bond that is hard to match. I'm not looking forward to the day she heads back home and I stay here. It seems cruel that the thing that brought us together is now pulling us apart. The other thing is visiting home. I'm excited and nervous at the same time. Not because I will be the best man at my best friend's wedding or the fact that I haven't seen any of my friends and family for a year now. I'm more nervous because of the sheer number of people I will be thrown into and craziness that is California. It will be shocking for sure but having the saving grace mentality that I will be returning to my hammock and dark jungle will be good for sure.

Speaking of dark jungle. I got a solar panel. A gringo on the island was selling it for pretty cheap and I could not resist. After buying an equally expensive battery for the system, my neighbor, Salomon and I set it up. Seems to work great to charge my iphone and computer which will be handy as I'm starting to write this grant and will need the power.

There is not much else going on. I did start working on putting in more catchment systems in community and they should be completed within a month or so once I can get the tanks here. We had another doctor group come in and it went pretty smooth. A women needed money to get the lesch meniasis shots for her kid so I worked out a deal with the artisan group to give her some money from our emergency fund to send her. Good to see the system working. It has been raining a lot more lately and everything I have is moldy. I will be spending a good part of the day tomorrow washing my clothes and sheets in the river. On second thought, I might actually pay my neighbor to do it...  

Tour Updates

This is pretty much just an update on our tour. The following appeared in the local newspaper which was written by yours truly and their are some links at the end that point to a couple other articles that others have written. Enjoy: If you have shopped at Super Gourmet specialty food store in Bocas town, you may have noticed some of the many chocolate products available. You can find anything from homemade brownies and cakes to roasted cacao nibs and handmade dark chocolate fudge. You might have also noticed the growing number of companies or organizations making this chocolate. You can find Oreba Chocolate produced by a local indigenous community, Dorothy's Own chocolate products made by an expat local who supports indigenous farmers and the Bocas Caribbean Chocolate Company, which makes delicious refined chocolate bars among other. And this is all just in the Super Gourmet. Walking down the street and into Starfish Coffee, you can find ground cacao liqueur balls for sale from various local farmers along with many books about what makes a good chocolate. Even further down the street, the Buena Vista Bar & Grill restaurant offers delicious goodies made from the Cerutti Family Chocolate farm, Green Acres. If you're the adventurous type, you can even take a walk to the Up on the Hill shop on Isla Bastimentos where you can find organic homemade chocolate coconut balls, among other products. It seems that Bocas has quietly become a small chocolate and cacao haven and for good reason. We are surrounded by it. If walk into the mountains of Almirante or pretty much anywhere in the Bocas archipelago you will encounter a large amount of cacao trees which produce the fruit that is then turned into chocolate. If you came to the island by bus from the Costa Rica border or over the mountains from David, you passed hundreds of thousands of cacao trees and most likely didn't realize it. Don't worry if you feel like you missed a big sign that said “Cacao Tree Here.” They're just not that obvious. The trees come in all shapes and sizes as do the fruits and that can make them hard to spot. Also, the fact that the trees grow within the jungle makes them easy to miss. In fact, almost all the cacao in Bocas is shade-grown. Cacao trees need filtered rather than direct sunlight to properly and generously produce. Young, healthy cacao trees Árboles jóvenes y saludables I'm not an expert on cacao or chocolate production by any means, but living in a cacao-producing indigenous community as a Peace Corps volunteer, I have learned a lot in the past year. Whether it be from the Peace Corps cacao training workshops, working in the farms with community members, or just talking to others in the chocolate industry, I can honestly say that I learn something new every day. The first week I arrived in my community I had no idea chocolate came from a fruit. Fast forward to today and you can find me grafting cacao trees with local farmers to increase yield. And from what I have seen, there is an endless amount that can be learned about cacao and chocolate at every level of production. Some say it is like wine-making in a way – as every slight variation in temperature, location, fermenting process, drying process, and production process will change the final outcome of the product. Those who read the cover story in the April 2011 issue of the Bocas Breeze already know a little about me and the project that I'm working on. Simply put, working as a volunteer in the Peace Corps I have used my business background to help the chocolate artisan group put together a native-style chocolate tour that takes tourists through the indigenous farms and surrounding jungle to explain the entire process of turning organic cacao into simple chocolate. Along the way there are always animals, such as sloths and parrots, and when we arrive at the top of the mountain we give a traditional chocolate-making demonstration where you get to taste dark chocolate that was made right in front of you on a grinding stone. In the short time since we started this chocolate tour, we have been contacted by various tour operators and are now even listed in guidebooks as one of the top things to see and do in Bocas.

http://gocentralamerica.about.com/od/panamaguide/fr/Bocas-del-Toro-Chocolate-Tour.htm

http://www.samanthalowe.com/travel/?p=909

http://www.facebook.com/Orebachocolate

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g304171-d2085833-Reviews-Oreba_Chocolate_Tour-Bocas_Town_Isla_Colon_Bocas_del_Toro.html

http://www.thebocasbreeze.com/previous-issues/april-abril-2011-volume-8.shtml

Doctors, Teaching, Chocolate and Porn

As the time passes I'm starting to feel more and more like nothing is really going to surprise or shock me any more. Weeks will now go by and significant things will happen that I completely forget to tell people. I guess it is just all part of getting used the system, the country, the weather, and the way of life that is a Peace Corps Volunteer. That in mind here a couple of highlights of the past couple weeks.

I took Salomon (he spells his name that way. I'm not sure why) to a Peace Corps week long business seminar that he had already been to. We had to split the trip up into two days as the seminar was pretty far away and we ended up sharing a room in David. The seminar was great and even though Salomon had already attended two years ago, things had changed a little bit and Salomon was eager to show everyone the results of business seminars such as that one. We wore our Oreba Chocolate shirts, brought what I thought was plenty of chocolate that we soon ran out of, and Salomon talks endlessly about how good we are doing. If you know me, you might know that I can't be in one spot for more than 45 min without either falling asleep or wanting to explode from boredom so being in a classroom for 8 hours a day almost killed me. I also somehow got Ascaris worms for the second time and it was slowing me down quite a lot.

We have been having meetings with the different departments in our artisan group about how everyone feels and anything we can make better. The majority of people wanted more money which I guess is a common request in business, but others just wanted more tourists and some type of machine to help make the chocolate. I really thought that after having 4 months of tourists that these people would see what they are all about and want to give it up or at least be content with the 30 or so people we are getting on average every month. But I guess they want more.

Salomon and I took a really long day out and went door to door pretty much on the island talking about our tour and pretty much only came away with the prospect of selling our tour and chocolate at one really nice place on the island called Palma Royale. We now have a meeting with the people tomorrow and hope to impress. Other contacts will have to wait and things like adequate transportation if we were to have more people come on the tour every day, will become a problem.

I coordinated a group of doctors to come into my site named Floating Doctors and the day long clinic went pretty well. It just so happened that this was the day that the government gave families money for kids that were kept in school so we had a large abandonment of people around 3pm so they could get to the bank. I didn't know this would happen but the teachers brought in every single kid from the school into the church that I had borrowed for the event. It was pretty much mayhem for the first couple hours and I was happy to get away to my house periodically to help out with sonograms for pregnant women. The doctors were great, we found a couple kids with Lech Meniasis, couple UTI's and tons of colds, parasites, and just plain old old people. They are supposed to come back every three weeks and I'm hoping to set up a cleaner system to see people. I'm thinking of making a board that lists times and numbers.

Salomon helped organize a lot too and he sat patiently throughout the entire event in the sweltering heat. It was only at the end of the clinic as they were packing up that I found out he is almost completely blind in one eye. For the last 3 years apparently his eye has developed a large dark spot in the middle that has only gotten worse. Never have I heard him complain about it until he mentioned to the doctors. That in mind, I have started the look for an ophthalmologist that can look at it. I've started making a couple contacts with regular doctors that might know of some.

I helped out with teaching sex ed one day in the school which was pretty funny, but have now moved on to teaching computers. This was of no choice mine as I have insisted that the school fix the computers and electrical system that it has before I bring my own equipment in. In another example of aid organizations absolutely failing the school has an incredibly large solar panel and battery system that could light up the entire town but about a month after the system was installed one part broke and no one knew how to fix it so only two rooms have fans and lights out of 8. The school also received computers which would have been great if there were a room to put them in. So instead of having electricity and computers, the electricity barely works and the computers rusted to a point where they don't turn on anymore because their was no closed area to put them in. Salomon and I have started talking to the head teacher to find out what the deal is with both cases but until then I have been signed up to teach computers on Friday's for 3 hours with one laptop. Its not really the type of hands on experience I was hoping for them to get.

Its not only the government failing the schools here though. There is also a giant $1000 water system that was dropped off by a supposed local non profit that failed to bring the tubes necessary to hook anything up. That tank has been sitting there for years unused.

I booked my ticket for home and will be coming into SFO on Aug 24^th! Can't wait to see my family after a year of being down here in Panama.

My Spanish has jumped another hurdle so to speak. I find myself being able to talk for hours in front of audiences and even taking questions with only a little explanation as to what they are saying. I've also started to visit more people's houses which is good to get to know them better but bad because they pretty much force me to eat their food. On another note I have gotten amoebas twice and worms once in the last 30 days and my immune system seems very fragile. I also feel extremely tired worn out most times which could be due to being so sick so much. I have a new filter so I'm hoping that helps.

In the Things I Didn't Need to Know category: Couple things I've started to realize about the people here and something that I'm sure happens pretty much all around the world, guys in particular will do one thing the first time they are alone with a computer that is connected to the internet. Look at porn. Not only have I seen many guys in open computer cafes here look at porn, but I've now caught two community members looking at it. I found out because they are the only two people here that have laptops which just happen to be filled with about as many search results for porn as there are virus' on the them. I guess technology really does bridge a gap. I'm pretty sure there is no place to get any type of pornographic material here and along comes an open invitation to as much as one computer can handle without going down in a blaze of virus glory.

I apparently have two packages on the way so I'm going to go ahead and say thank you in advance. I received the most amazing package ever from Desiree back home filled with organic goodies and some books. Thanks again. Next week I go to the island again, celebrate the 4^th with other volunteers, and start work on a new chocolate processing plant....