April 25, 2013
It's been a little while since the last post, so I'll try to get everyone caught up on the very interesting and exciting life of a Peace Corps Volunteer.
Early in March, I was visited by a new volunteer. She came out for a couple of days to get to know 'the life of a volunteer.' I lucked out and got a great visitor. We spent the time drinking box wine and getting to know each other. We even saw an alligator! We set out to see the howler monkeys and instead ran into a gator. I think she had a pretty good time. She has since been given her community and sworn in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer, Congrats and good luck!
On March 13, 2013, on my year anniversary of swearing in as a Volunteer, Loma Bonita got electricity!!! I totally forgot what I was missing. Life is good! I'm trying to get a fridge now. I have coordinated transportation to bring the fridge back from Torti, only problem is now that 4 new communities have electricity, there aren't any fridges--all sold out. I'm still working on it. I think I found some one who will bring me one from the city. Cold beer!!
I went to the yearly fair in Torti later in the month. I went with a couple of other Volunteers. We were the only gringos at the fair, which actually did surprise us. We also didn't get to sit down; we danced to just about every song until 3am. It was a good time! As Americans, the Panamanians think that we enjoy Miller. They are very excited to buy the gringas miller lite. We were bought so many beers, we had to start filling Sara's bag with the ones we couldn't drink.
Celebrated my 2nd birthday in Loma Bonita. It wasn't quite as extravagant as the first. I tried not to remind anyone, but of course some people still knew. All the kids sang happy birthday to me, and a couple of Volunteers came over to my house for the night.
Holy Week is a time of travel for Panama. Everyone leaves to visit family. Now that I have a pana-dad, I have a pana-fam to visit. I traveled with Manolo and 25 family members in the back of a cattle truck to the province of Herrerra to visit family. We left Loma Bonita at 5pm Wednesday evening and arrived at 8am at which time we cracked open the beers. It wasn't a good night, but it was a pretty good morning. It was an amazing experience (trying not to sound too sappy). Many people in my community, including Manolo's family, left the interior of the country to move out East to find land to farm leaving behind family. This was the first time Manolo's family had been back in 35 years. The older generation greeted us with tears, excited to see adults they had only known as children and new generations they knew little of. Everyone was curious to know who the gringa was and what she was doing with the Panamanians in the back of a truck, and with out stopping to think Manolo would just introduce me as "Sara, my daughter."
The community we were visiting ended up being a Volunteer's site, so I got to hang out a bit with another gringa. It was an exhausting but way fun 5 days. We went to the cantina, killed a pig, watched baseball, had an impromptu evangelical service, paseared out of the back of a truck, fixed a flat tire. We left Sunday morning and traveled all day in the pana-heat and finally got home at 9pm. Long day, but worth it.
In early April, I along with a couple of volunteers went back up to visit our water source. We are going to put a sand filter on our water tank. Our water comes out dirty sometimes, and some people have complained that they are getting sick from the water. I put up some pictures from the hike. This hike we went up higher than we did with my dad. It was the dry season this time around, so we were able to get around easier. Everyone fell on the hike, there are no trails, but I fell the most. Manolo found this to be quite funny. He had to stop each time to laugh at me. Karma did show up at one point. Manolo started to talk crap about my lack of gracefulness and ended up falling down the hill.
