Boquete and Back

Well my days in Boquete were fairly interesting and fairly dull all at the same time. I spent the first three days in the workshop for community leaders, which was interesting and boring at the same time. Interesting because it was a good insight on how the most active members of the Ngobe communities work (which ranges from "amazing great balls of fire" to, more commonly, "barely moving")and also was good for my spanish. The bad part was the fact that the workshops lasted from 8:00-12:00 with an hour break for lunch, then 1:00-6:00 with an hour break for dinner, and then from 7:00-10:00 at night! It was far too much to cram into one day. And the painful part about this is that Americans could fit everything that we accomplished into the morning session because the people move so slowly. They require more time to listen and digest information. For example, during my first session we broke up into small groups to discuss a small simple reading selection from the workbook about socialization (how we learn our gender roles) and to make a chart summarizing the main points. Easy, right? Wrong-- this activity took 2 hours, plus another 2 hours to present the findings of the various groups. I wanted to disappear about an hour into this. However, the part where they various representatives made and presented maps of their community was very interesting to me. There was also a whole day about sex education and HIV-AIDS awareness, which was basically just learning what the different parts of the body are called and how people get aids.

Anyway, it was a valuable experience despite the painfulness. We stayed in a Franciscan boarding school, and it was nice to have a toilet five feet away and a shower that kind of worked, especially after the week before where I was having bowel issues. There was a young mestizo doctor there who is also called Jenifer, and the day before I got there they gave her the same Ngobe name as me, which was kind of ironic. So we were the two Jennys-Mechis. Also I was glad to see my host mother Marietta in action, she truly is an inspiration for the whole comarca.
After that I headed back into Boquete where we had the comarca regional meeting, and it was nice to have the succinct American style after the painful process of the proceeding days. We stayed at a really nice hostal and pretty much just hung out enjoying the amenities of good food and movies on the big screen tv.

Yes, when I got back to my house it was pretty dank. My remaining clean clothes smelled pretty foul, I need to rewash them. Actually I think I need to hire out my washing, it is getting to the point where I don´t have the time to take care of everything and that would save me an entire morning every week, especially because I now have to cook and clean for myself.

I was invited to go see an agrotourism project in a neighboring community, so after waiting around for nearly two hours my guide finally showed up and we walked to Puerto Rica, where I found myself in a surprise community meeting. They had a lot of questions about what Peace Corps could help them with, which I did my best to answer. I have had a lot of requests for English courses from the neighboring communities, so I think starting next year I will maybe do some itinerant classes. But the agrotourism project so far is an empty field where they are working on reforestation and protecting the remaining trees in the area, not a whole lot going on there yet. I guess I can include them in my tourism workshops.

My classes in Chichica are going slowly right now, partly due to the fact that I didn´t have class for two weeks straight. Now nobody is showing up despite the fact that I went around and reminded them. So now I get to sit and wait all afternoon some more. That´s the most challenging part of all this, sitting around and waiting for a country full of flakes. It would be so much easier if I could just do things myself, but then that doesn´t help them either. So I will keep showing up, I guess that is all I can do.

It is really nice to have my own house, have I mentioned that before? I love being able to have some semi-private space to retreat to, and to cook things that I like, like pancakes. I think through experimentation I have stumbled on a recipe that is similar to english muffins, which happens to be pretty tasty with honey or an egg on top. I need to go food shopping after this, I am running low on everything except for rice. I bought a five pound bag of rice which should last me a long time, and a small panamanian family two days. Also I was gifted a bag of new rice, which has a greenish tint and a different flavor, and also a bag of yuca which should also last me a long time.

Well I will go now and get some other things done while I am here. Yes Mom, I will check the post office for my package. I can´t wait until it gets here!