Nueva voluntaria de Chichica

Well it´s been nearly three weeks since I posted last, please excuse the delay due to the fact I have been stuck in the mountains. I have been quite busy, which is probably a good thing. Other people in my area haven´t had much to do yet, but I´ve had a lot of meetings with the schools and different businesses. Already I am going to teach four English classes starting in August, and everyone wanted more but I am drawing the line there. Also there are tons of small businesses that want training in accounting, budgeting, adminsistration, and so forth. They also want money, but rather than just find someone to give them money, at first I want them to see if they can earn some themselves because people around here are too used to handouts and they don´t take care of anything because they didn´t work to earn it and someone will come along and replace it anyway down the road. I´ve been trying to take it slow for the first little while but a lot of people are anxious to get started with projects, which is actually quite impressive for the area. Chichica really is a different town in the comarca, it has a totally different feel. Many of the people are more educated and there is more action in terms of getting things done, which makes my job a lot easier.

My host family is also not at all typical of the comarca, they are highly involved in the community. It has made my transition that much easier, but also sometimes I feel a little intimidated by the fact that there are people like that here. What if I screw up or don´t get as much accomplished as they think I should? Also the family at first wanted some special treatment for their own projects, such as me giving them private English lessons and business training for three hours every Saturday. I told them that I am not going to give private lessons, but I will try and teach them stuff while I live with them. I just don´t think it´s fair if I single out one business and one family when so many have asked for help. I hope I was able to explain it so they weren´t offended.

Also I still haven´t met the woman I am supposedly going to live with in August because she is never at home. She is always going to other communities, I guess teaching or working on projects or something. One weird thing though, she gave Orlando a letter the other day asking if I could move in that same day. I had only been living with them for less than two weeks at that point, and I thought it was kind of strange. I am going to make it a point to catch up with her this week though.

I also have been looking for housing options after I can leave the host families. There is a teacher named Vella that lives works in a different community most days, and she has this building in back of her house that is more like a shed but it could work as a house too. It has cement floors, bamboo walls, and a zinc roof. She also plans on adding a cement porch which would be nice. It has two rooms, each with a seperate door to the outside, and I think with a little work it would be fine. It is also located right next to the school which is nice to not have to walk so far to classes every day. The only drawback is it is right next to the road, which is noisy and has had some incidences of theft by passersby, whereas if I were farther away it would be mas tranquilo. But I would also have a higher risk of falling in the mud walking farther away. Give and take.

The kids I´m living with have decided that it is great entertainment to snoop through my stuff and use up all my batteries while I am out of the house, so I have had to start locking stuff up in the one pocket that I can put my little padlock on. I don´t mind letting them look at stuff if they ask but if they are going to be sneaky about it then they don´t need to play with my stuff. I think I have more privacy than other volunteers in my area, since I have been given my own room with a "curtain", or rather a very seethrough sheet and huge gaps in the boards, which people walk in and out at random no matter what I am doing. But other than the snooping and the constant borrowing of my flashlight and the comendeuring of my seeds, I haven´t had many problems.

I haven´t encountered any crazy bugs or animals, but right now the chitras are really bad. They are tiny little sand flies that eat you alive and are really itchy. I asked a health worker here if there is leishmaniasis here, the flesh eating disease that the chitras carry, and he said no. They also don´t really have problems in Chichica with hanta virus, malaria, or dengue, which is nice to hear.
I haven´t really even been sick at all, unless you count a little bit of constipation due to the fact that people don´t believe in eating fiber here. If it´s not carbohydrates or meat soaked with grease then it isn´t food.

I have decided I really like living in these mountains, it is kind of fun to have to walk around all over the hills to get anywhere. It is like an obstacle course to get from point A to point B. You have to avoid the slippery mud when possible, crawl under or over barbed wire, climb or descend a thousand times, and step around the plethora of horse manure. I haven´t even fallen yet, but now I will since I just wrote that. Crap. But the mountains are really pretty and the climate is about as pleasant as I could ask for in Panama. Not extremely hot or cold. The last few weeks it hasn´t rained very much either, which could be problematic for the garden.

I have been learning how to wash my clothes in the stream, which I actually find enjoyable because it is nice and quiet and solitary. I have been constantly surrounded by people and it is nice to escape for a while. But either I don´t wash my clothes very well yet or the humidity makes them stink still, and I am already having some problems with mold forming on them. Yuck. I will probably have to replace everything I own soon anyway.

Well, I had better go now because I need to type some stuff for my classes. I want to make a diagnostic test for my advanced English class (the English professors at the college) to see how much they know so I can plan lessons better. I think I am going to have to come down once a week so I can get work done on the computer and also have a little me time. Until then, chao.