Wednesday, June 1, 2011

It’s a small world after all, and Panama feels even smaller

I recently had a visit from a Peace Corps trainee who hopes, after 10 weeks of training, to be sworn in as a volunteer herself. The community where she is currently living is very near (relatively speaking) to my community as it is on the same road that eventually reaches my site. What makes this a small world and thus, Panama a tiny country, is that this same trainee is living with the sister of one of my community members. Craziness! How is this accomplished? Because Panama is just that small! I also recently met a man who works at the U.S. Embassy here who actually knows me from DeLand (where I grew up) and remembers my face from all the sports clinics I used to go to at Stetson University!!! So So small.

They finally fixed the water situation as well. Here’s what went down: The machines building the road were kind enough to wait for my neighbor to dig up the tubes that go to our houses and make them even deeper so that the machines wouldn’t damage the tubes. What they failed to wait for was the Padres de Familia (like the PTA) to put the tubes running to the school and the community pavilion even further into the ground so they wouldn’t get damaged. The result of this was a snapped tube and water spraying everywhere as well as the school remaining without water. Quite the problem. So what the water committee did was, and this is incredibly selfless on my neighbor’s part, was to connect tubes to the tubes running from my neighbor’s house to mine. However, they connected the tubes really close to my house because my neighbor, the sweetest lady out here, you know her as Senora Martina, told them that the ‘muchacha’ shouldn’t be without water and shouldn’t have to get water from the icky creek. This left them without water for a long time because there wasn’t enough pressure in the tubes to get the water up the hill to their house. Only to come downhill to my house and out to the community pavilion and the school and needless to say, I saw them a lot as they came to get water from my house. This happened in March and just now, on May 14th did they actually fix the tubes that originally went to the school so that we could have our water restored. I must say, having the pressure back in my shower is pretty fantastic. It’s so much more than drip. But this just shows you how AWESOME my neighbors are for making sure I had water always and they would just suck it up by carrying huge 5 gallon buckets up a pretty steep hill.

I have already been here one year. Almost completely one year in my community. It doesn’t seem like that much time has passed although I can’t imagine that those of you in the states feel entirely the same way. But it’s true what we learned in training about the 1 year mark: everyone really starts to trust you and be your friend and ask you to work in their fields with them (planting rice is not as much fun as harvesting it) and actually participate in projects you try to start. I can’t say this is true of everyone because there are still those who really could care less if there was a gringa living in their community. However, as I am feeling sad or lonely because I really have been gone a long time, these people are starting to make me feel like I belong and in doing so, I have less time to have these sad or lonely moments. I appreciate that.

The road is advancing along although not as quickly as I would have hoped (but I should know better, this is Panama). However, there is something to be said about the work being done here. The creepiness level of construction works is equal in all parts of the world. Their creepiness transcends international waters, borders, cultures, any barrier it might go up against, it will cross it. I apologize to those of you who might be a construction worker or know someone who is, but really, do you have to stare and whistle and be so painstakingly obvious that you are ogling me! It doesn’t help that I’m a female, much less a gringa but the good news is that even though it’s annoying and bothersome, it is harmless.

It’s a short one this time and it took me a long time to post again from last time but who knows, I might surprise you next time I come back out of site.

Until next time…

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