Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope this finds you all doing well and enjoying the start of the holiday season. I spent yesterday in Cerro Punta, a small town up in the mountains (about 6,000 ft) with the majority of Peace Corps Panama volunteers. We rented out a lodge and hotel and cooked a traditional Thanksgiving meal. It was a lot of fun, but not quite like being home in the states for the holiday.

This article has lots of pictures, so enjoy. Also, the article following this one has my mailing address. If you find yourself traveling within the states or especially internationally please send post cards if you can. The children in my site love to look at pictures, and it would be a great opportunity to teach them about other places around the world. I´ll post anything that´s sent up on my wall (once I have one) for everyone to see. Thanks!

Praying mantis fighting a leaf.

A lot has happened since my last post. I finished with training at the end of October and moved into my site permanently after a weekend of fun on the beach for Halloween. So far things have gone well and I´m enjoying the "real Peace Corps experience" a lot more than training. There are certainly good days and bad days but overall I really love it.

Celebrating the end of Santa Clara.

I´ve spent most of my time so far shadowing my host family around and getting to know the community (about 7 homes, maybe 100 people). I spend about two out of every three days working in the fields with my host dad. We have finished harvesting the season´s rice and have cleaned the fields for the next crop: beans. We´ve also been harvesting some coffee and yucca. Sorry, I´m not a coffee drinker, so I really don´t know if it´s good or not. However, they give me tea made from lemon grass and hot chocolate made from fresh cacao two to three times a day and both are amazing!

Now that´s face painting!

As for meals, all we really eat is rice. I get a bowl for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Occasionally there will be a piece of yucca or some other vegetable, but mainly rice. There was one dinner where I got half a pumpkin, which was pretty good (certainly the change was welcome). We killed an armadillo in the fields a few weeks back, which I was interested in trying, but another family got the meat...I´ll get my chance. Talking to friends at Thanksgiving, I´m pretty lucky to be getting rice. Most of them are eating boiled green bananas three times a day! Once I get my own house built I´ll be cooking for myself and able to carry in food from outside, so I should be eating a wider variety then.

New environmental health volunteers at swear in.

I did try buying 10 pounds of beans and giving them to my family to cook with the rice. They loved the gift, but instead of eating them we immediately went out to the fields to plant them. Hopefully in about three months those 10 pounds will be 30 pounds of beans. However, I imagine they will turn around and plant them again anyway!

Halloween at the beach.

Aside from the armadillo I´ve been surprised at how many snakes and tarantulas I´ve come across. Every few days we come across a snake in the field, and they even let me kill one of them, which they say was quite poisonous...but I´m getting the impression that all snakes, to them, are poisonous. Whenever a snake is spotted there is a lot of yelling and everyone around stops working to help sling rocks at it with hand made sling shots. Once the snake has been hit in the head several times and is no longer moving, someone ("the killer") approaches with a machete and removes the head before posting the body on a stick high in the air to rot and let the birds eat. When you spend six or eight hours at a time picking rice by hand you begin to look forward to the excitement that an occasional snake brings!

Nothing like a Coke to cool you down.

Besides working in the fields I´ve started to design my house. The people in my site live in huts with large sticks and branches for walls and steep grass roofs with mud/dirt floors. I´ve found a spot with a beautiful view of the valley and hills around but will be building on the side of a hill. Consequently I´ve decided to build out of wood (hand cut with a chain saw by someone from a nearby community) and a grass roof. Tomorrow we are supposed to cut the trees down and all the wood should be dry and ready to go by the end of December, if all goes as planned. I hope to be living in my own house by the end of January.

Do you think she knows she´s chewing on the Panamanian flag?

In terms of projects, not a lot happens the first six months of the volunteer's time in site as they become acclimated to the new culture. However, January to March is the dry season and the best time to put holes in the ground for latrines. That said, I´m planning to put 10 to 30 latrines in this dry season so they don´t have to wait another year to see some progress there. Also, I´ll be measuring the water´flow and monitoring 3 to 4 aqueduct systems in both my community and surrounding areas to design for improvements and additions over the coming two years. Currently drinking water is not a problem in Laguna, but there are several small communities scattered nearby that want their own systems set up.

My host dad harvesting rice.

That´s about it for today. I don´t think I´ll be able to access a computer again until Christmas time, but I´ll try to post some more pictures and information then.

I love hearing from all of you, please continue emailing me (roblittle@gmail.com) as you have time. For now, enjoy the rest of the pictures and Happy Holidays!

My host dad with a snake we killed.

Some of my host siblings.

View from La Laguna.

The rain moving in on La Laguna.

Fishing in the Lagoon.

That would be an avocado shell she´s eating with.