A night out in Panama City.
The lack of rain these past two months has given me lots of time to work on the house as well as get out and see a bit more of Panama. While I no longer have the pleasure of a spring break, I can’t complain with such a simplistic lifestyle, relative closeness to the beach, and the cheap price of beer!
Gotta love the sangría!
My time here in Laguna has been spent continuing to cut wood, hauling materials, and beginning construction on the house. Although the majority of my time is spent out gathering materials, the hardest part has been transporting the nine columns for the house. Some weighing over a quarter of a ton, I estimate, it took nine guys three days to get them all to the site of the house. I was surprised to see the guys still in good spirits at the end of it all.
The community fishing as the pond dries up.
All of the material needed to construct latrines for the community has been delivered to Laguna and families are beginning to prepare their sites. However, I have told the community that no latrines will be built until I have a roof over my head, as the rainy season is quickly approaching. I have, at their request, started to give English lessons in the evening about three times a week. I have about ten students who primarily speak Ngäbere, some Spanish too, and they all appear to be learning quickly.
More fishing. In addition to working in Laguna I spent two weeks out traveling around visiting other volunteers. In one site I was able to design a water irrigation system for a plátano (like a banana) plantation. In another site I was able to design a spring box for an existing water system being improved. The real highlight, however, came at a festival I visited a few hours from Laguna called Krün in the native dialect, Balsaria in Spanish.
Coming back from the fields with a load of beans.Balsaria is a competition of skill and bravery (although I think stupidity may be a factor as well) between two communities. The location and date is determined by the winner of a drinking competition and there are usually three or four in the Comarca (like an Indian reservation) a year.
Posts for the house in transit.This particular Balsaria was located on a hillside with a flat field carved into it. Spectators, I would say 400 strong, lined the hillside watching members of their community below (some 100 to 200 of them) fighting for pride and in some cases each other’s wives!
My host dad and I on our way to a nearby community. There is minimal organization to the event outside of making sure there is plenty of “chicha fuerte” (fermented corn juice) to go around for the two days. There were 55-gallon drums of it everywhere! I think I saw fewer than a dozen sober people in my afternoon there.
Drying beans. There were two types of fighting that went on. The first was regular hand to hand boxing (Pads!? Please.) with the loser being the one to tap out first. The second type of fighting consisted of two teams, any size and a piece of balsa wood about five feet long and four to five inches in diameter.
A load of grass for the house. The person with the balsa stick would choose someone from the opposite side to throw the stick at (has to be from the waist down, any hits above the waist turn into a boxing fight). The person with the stick proceeds to do a little dance and run towards the target while hurling the stick as hard as he can at the target’s legs. The target would do his own dance to try and avoid being hit by the stick, but would often end up on the ground in what looked to be gruesome pain (and some instances potential long term damage). The stick would then change hands and be thrown back the other way. This exchange would go on for hours in come cases until one person conceded or more commonly couldn’t get up off the ground for more.
Yeah machetes! Something to make it even more interesting was that the partygoers got dressed up for the event. Many would paint their faces and wear fancy sombreros with feathers in them. The men would wear the woman’s dresses to make it harder to see their legs when throwing the stick. Also, many would strap stuffed dead animals (bobcats, mongooses, sloths, etc.) to their backs for good luck. It was very…different. Oh, and everyone had some sort of noise maker (horn, whistle, etc.), it was hard to think at times it was so loud.
Some waterfalls in Veraguas. I hope this entry finds you all doing well. I enjoy the email responses you all send letting me know what’s going on back home. Please keep them coming but have patience with my reply.
Hasta luego.
Choi Chi
More waterfalls.
Krün.
More Krün.
Krün.
Krün.
Krün.
Krün.
Krün.
Krün.
The floor of the house under construction.
The floor.
The walls going up.
