It's Official!!!

Since I returned from Barranquilla and my site visit, a lot has changed! In the last few weeks, I finished PST (training), moved out of my host family in Santa Rita, and swore in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer. It's been a crazy few weeks and I'm trying to update my blog one last time before I move into my site tomorrow and have much more limited access to internet.

In the last few weeks of training, I began to learn Ngäbere, the indigenous language spoken in my site. It’s a huge challenge and I’ve forgotten how difficult it is to start learning a new language. I don’t know how to say much, but in class, I made a video introducing myself in Ngäbere. 

I am saying my name, where I’m from, who I’m working with, what I’ll be doing, and that I am excited to be in Barranquilla. I am also wearing a Nakwa (pronounced Nag-wah), the traditional dress of the Ngäbe people. The dresses are typically worn by women and decorated by “dientes,” which are the colorful stripes and designs embroidered on the dress. Many women in Barranquilla wear the nakwa, so hopefully I can acquire a few of my own!

I also wanted to give my host family in Santa Rita a gift, but it was hard to come up with something that would work for my host parents and both host sisters. I decided to make dinner with another VOLUNTEER because our host families are related. After much debate and a thorough cost-benefit analysis, we decided to make tacos. It sounded really simple, but just finding all the ingredients proved difficult. We spent over an hour in the grocery store calculating what .78 kilograms meant in pounds, how many Panamanians that would serve, and searching for crunchy taco shells. Overall, the dinner was a huge success and we did not burn down the house or give anyone food poisoning. It was quite a feast and we had so much leftover, that we fed a bunch of volunteers too!      

During my last weekend in Santa Rita, I took a trip to an island with a few other volunteers. We went to Isla Taboga, which is a small island about a 30 minute boat ride from Panama City. There were same awesome views of the city from the boat. It was a perfect day to hang out on the beach and escape Santa Rita for a while.

The Bridge of the Americas

Panama City in the distance 

My host sister and host cousin

To finish off our time in Santa Rita, the volunteers worked with our language teachers to plan a "despedida" or sendoff/goodbye party with our host families. It was the perfect way to thank them for all the hard work they put in over the last 11 weeks. We had a ton of food, games for the kids, and several performances. The volunteers translated a song into Spanish and sang it for the families and my Ngäbere class presented a traditional dance called the "baile de las mariposas" (dance of the butterflies). It was a lot of fun!!

Piñata scrums are culturally universal

On Monday morning, at 4am, I gathered up all of my stuff and headed out of my host family. The volunteers spent two days in Panama City staying near the Peace Corps Office for the final training sessions.   

They are heavier than they look...

Heading to Swear-In

Wednesday was a much awaited day: I finally upgraded from a trainee and swore in as a Volunteer. It was a very cool ceremony that took place in the center of Casco Viejo (the old part of town, and the best in my opinion). We had leaders from the agriculture and health ministries, as well as the US Ambassador to Panama and the Peace Corps Panama Country Director present. Our entire training staff was also there!! All 45 members of G79 swore in and officially became Peace Corps Volunteers.  

G79 after Swear-In

WASH G79

After swear in, we had two free days to celebrate and enjoy each other's company before we all head our separate ways. We spent some time in Panama City and also went to the beach for a night. It was a lot of fun and a perfect chance to celebrate together!

Fountain in Panama City

During our last day at the beach, we gave each other paper plate awards. It was really adorable! I was voted "best site nickname." My Ngäbe name is Buchi, which means little guava and is what all the people in my site call me.

My paper plate award!

PST has been quite the crazy, busy, informative experience! Tomorrow, I'll be arriving in my site and starting my work as a Volunteer. During my first three months, I will not be leaving my site often so that I will be able to focus on integrating and doing a community analysis. After the first three months (around the end of December), I will move into my own house and no longer live with a host family. I will also be able to start working on projects and have a few more training events. I can't wait to get started on this journey and get back to Barranquilla!

PS: I will be using WhatsApp almost exclusively to communicate. Download it and I (or my parents :) can get you my Panamanian number!

¡Barranquilla!

A couple weeks ago, I found out where my site will be for the next two years! The previous 5 weeks of training all led up to this point. I will be living and working in a community called Barranquilla for the next two years. It is in Ñökribo, which means the part of the Comarca Ngäbe Bugle that is in Bocas del Toro Province. It is a community of about 60 houses and 500 people and is three hours away from the closest large city. Just a few days after getting my site announcement, I spent a week visiting Barranquilla.

On an early Monday morning at the Peace Corps Office, I met my community guide and host dad, Victorino. Each trainee had a guide come to Panama City to pick them up and take us back to our sites. After a long day of icebreakers and sessions, the group going to Bocas headed for our sites. To get to Barranquilla, I take an 8-hour bus from Panama City to David. We got there at 3:30am and luckily spent a few hours sleeping before continuing the journey. Then I take a smaller bus for two hours and finally a chiva (local transport) for an hour to my site.

Me with my guide and host dad

Once I arrived in site, I met the rest of my host family. I will be the 12^th person living in the house! It took me nearly all week to work out everyone’s names and ages, but I finally did it! I live with my host parents, my host mom’s sister, a host grandma, and 7 kids ages 1 to 13. The entire family was really nice and welcoming. I didn’t have a very busy agenda for the week, so I spent a lot of time getting to know my host family. My host siblings learn English in school, so at night we did language lessons; I taught them English and they taught me Ngäbere. Ngäbere is the local indigenous language that is spoken throughout much of the Comarca and in Barranquilla. A lot of community members, especially the older ones, really enjoyed yelling Ngäbere at me, and then laughing at my clueless stares.

I was able to introduce myself to all of the teachers and every class at the school! One of the teachers even took me to the river one afternoon and we walked up the entire river. A highlight of the week was my “naming baptism.” Typically, volunteers in indigenous sites receive Ngobe names from their communities that they use during service. We had a town meeting where I introduced myself and explained a little bit about Peace Corps and my role as a Volunteer. Then, the community discussed what to name me and a few minutes later I had a Ngobe name: Buchi Yokibo! Buchi in Ngäbere literally means small guava and Yokibo is named after a nearby river.

One of my host sisters

Barranquilla is surrounded by mountains and the views are just amazing! I am really lucky because there are not too many bugs (like mosquitos) in my site and I have not yet seen any scorpions or snakes. It was a great week to spend in site and start getting to know the community and my host family!

Once I was back in my training community near Panama City, we started another week of training. This week has been great because I started Ngäbere classes. I get a few classes to start learning the basics of the language and then will have follow-up classes after I go to my site. It’s very challenging to learn as much of a new language as possible in just 5 classes, but it will be very helpful once I’m in site. Training is quickly coming to an end; on September 14^th I will swear in as a Volunteer and then head back to Barranquilla for good. During the first 3 months in site, I will live with my host family and focus on analyzing the community. After 3 months, I will move into my own house and begin working on projects with the community. I can’t believe how quickly training has gone and am excited to get back to Barranquilla!  

Tech Week

Last week, I was in Bajo Gavilán in Bocas del Toro for a week of technical training in a current Volunteer’s community. From Santa Rita, it took two days to make it all the way to Bocas, but once we arrived, the community was amazing. I spent the week living with a host family and they were all very welcoming. I lived with 8 other people in the house from Sunday through Saturday. I ate a lot of boiled green bananas and warm chocolate water, both very common foods in Bocas. My host family was Ngobe (indigenous), so I got several Ngobere (language) lessons throughout the week. I now have a list of nearly 100 words to study!    

The group did a variety of projects throughout the week. I learned how to mix concrete by hand in order to poor the slab for a pit latrine and make the seat. We also worked on the water tank for the aqueduct system being built. We helped created the frame for the tank that the community will complete in the upcoming weeks. The water tank is about a 30-minute hike up a fairly steep mountain. Bocas is a province known for its abundant mud, so the hike was tough on the way up, but a lot of fun to slide back down the mountain.   

By far, the highlight of the week was the group hike up to the water source that will be used in the aqueduct system. Peace Corps primarily constructs gravity fed aqueduct systems with spring sources. After an hour and a half hike up to the spring, we were able to actually see what a source looks like and how the Volunteer is going to capture the water and pipe it to the tank. Just as we started hiking down the mountain, it started raining very hard. The hike down was super wet and muddy, but also the most fun part of the week. By the end, nearly everyone (myself included) had fallen in the mud and was soaking wet!

On our last day in Bajo Gavilán, we went in groups to give short presentations on WASH topics to kids in the school. My group had to cross a river in a canoe to make it to the school! The presentations were a lot of fun and the kids eventually warmed up to us and participated. In the afternoon, we had ad goodbye party with all of our host families. There was tons of food and people danced and played soccer. Saturday morning, we all packed up and left our host families. It was really sad because my family was so nice and I really did not want to leave after such a fun week!

All 24 Peace Corps trainees started to make our way back to Santa Rita. Only one car came to pick us up in Bajo Gavilán, so all 24 people plus our backpacks stuffed into a 15-passenger van. Thankfully, it was only a 30-minute ride to our stop because we were packed into the van. By Sunday, I was back in Santa Rita! It was my host mom’s birthday, so I got to celebrate with all of the extended family. It was very interesting to experience a Panamanian birthday party, especially after an exhausting week!

Today, in just a couple of hours (assuming this blog post uploads when I think it will) I will find out where my site will be for the next two years. To this point, all I know about the sites are the 4 provinces where WASH Volunteers are sent. I am very excited to find out this afternoon where I will be living and working for the next two years!! Training is going by very quickly and next week (8/22-8/28), I will spend the week visiting my actual site. Time to go find out my site!!!        

Volunteer Visit

       A few weeks ago, I went to visit a current WASH volunteer that has been in her site for one year. I went to the Comarca Ngäbe Buglé, which is in the Chiriquí province, with another trainee. We got up very early on Tuesday morning and took a six-hour bus ride to the town of San Felix. From there, we met our volunteer, Maria. We got some groceries and then headed to her site. The small bus dropped us off about 30 minutes from her house, so I had my first taste of the Comarca hills. The area is very mountainous and the trails are unmarked and slippery after it rains. It was a beautiful hike in! Maria’s house is made of wood and has a tin roof. After settling in, we headed to bed, excited for the week.

During the week, we visited several community members and work sites. Maria’s main project at the moment is latrine building. We visited a few different sites where the community members were digging the holes for pit latrines. We also visited two neighboring communities and saw the elementary school. During the rainy afternoons, I learned how to “double paila,” which is turning a stovetop into an oven. We made brownies and banana bread by putting one pan inside a larger pot and covering it to keep the heat in. I was pretty amazed that we could cook desserts and good food without refrigeration or an oven! Maria also taught us how she does laundry in the stream and carries water from the stream up to her house. The 5-gallon bucket of water is very heavy and she carries it up a fairly steep hill. I tried to carry it and barely made it a few steps! The entire visit was awesome and I certainly learned a lot about the life and work of a volunteer.

Two weeks, ago  I was back in Santa Rita for more training. My Spanish group led an activity on Panamanian myths and legends. There are some very interesting indigenous traditions that many volunteers will definitely encounter. We also got to tell some of the scary legends to the group. It was interesting hoe many of them mirrored legends that are common in the US, or at least have the same takeaways. Last week, from Saturday (8/6) through the next Sunday (8/14), I was in Bocas del Toro with the rest of the WASH trainees. We will spent the week at a current volunteer’s site doing a week of hands-on technical training. I was very excited to finally get to try out many of the things we have been learning from PowerPoints. It was a great week to continue exploring the different provinces of Panamá!