Adventures of a Workless Week

Success! I found my sack of clay and it didn´t even rain!

Making benches at the store

Pancha and her puppies, which I have christened Snoopy, Pokey, and Fatty

So, this has been like the first complete week where I have had absolutely nothing work-related to do. In a way it´s nice to have some extra "me time", but I don´t like it still. I went to the high school to ask what else I could do to help out the english program there, because they haven´t seemed like they even want to talk to me recently, let alone work with me. My response that they gave me was that they would be glad to give me a farewell party because I have done so much for the school, which I am not sure how to take. Do they just want to get rid of me and not even consider working with me anymore? Or are they really being genuine in saying that although I feel like I have contributed very little to the English dept. in the last two years? I also wanted to confirm whether I would still be able to teach my class on Wed. since it was Holy Week and everyone would be leaving early, and I recieved a negative on that too. And everyone was in Easter weekend mode, which meant I was left to my own devices all week long.

SO.... I went looking for some clay to make the pots that I have wanted to make for a long time instead of teaching. I had been asking all over the place where I could get some clay, and most people don´t even know anymore because it´s a lost art. But I heard that Cerro Caña had some good clay, and I decided to go there because the car goes there as well and would make it much easier to carry the stuff back. So early Wed. morning I walked over to Cerro Caña, which is about a 2 hour walk. I stopped in Cerro Algodón to see if by chance Lidieth was around for Semana Santa, the girl I sent to the youth conference but is now attending university in Panama. She wasn´t, and when I asked her if she would be there that weekend her grandpa told me (was I imagining the edge of bitterness or was he just being an old Ngäbe man?) that she was in Panama and was not coming back anymore. So I continued my journey.

When I got to Cerro Caña I still had no idea where the clay actually was, so I had to ask around. There was a seminar going on to train people to take data for the agriculture census that was to take place this week, and a group of men building some benches for the store by the school. I asked several people among them, who also had no idea, nor of whom I should ask. Then I ran into Bienvenido from Chichica who as it turns out works there in the health center, and he told me right off the bat that I should ask Aurelio, he knows everything about the area from petroglyphs to rocks that sharpen machetes. However, he was in the seminar so I had to wait for them to break for lunch to ask him about it. He would have taken me himself if he wasn´t busy, but he told me to find a señora Chena and asked a girl to lead me down to her. So we walked another 20 minutes or so down into the valley to find the señora, who told me that there was clay but it was dry. I told her that I could get it dry and just add more water, so she said that was ok. So she took me down to her nephew Maximo´s house, where he dug out the clay for me. However, it had been contaminated with earth seeping through it, so who knows how good it will actually be, since Maximo had his doubts about it. I paid him $2 for digging it out for me, it wasn´t exactly easy since it was dry, and then they gave me lunch. It´s a good thing because I had only eaten a breakfast of fried green tomatoes and fried onions, very tasty indeed but not extremely energy-packed. I then found my way back to Cerro Caña, where the men had finished their benches, and I tested them out as we talked and they gave me more food. When the car came I went home, almost forgetting my precious clay in the car and thereby nullifying the entire ordeal of the day. As I arrived back home I showed my booty to Encarnaciona and Alberto, who told me that there was clay in the pond close by. I felt like saying, well why didn´t you say so when I asked you if there was any clay around here? But I guess that´s typical. So I still have to prepare the clay, form the jars, and fire them. We´ll see how it all turns out, to be continued...

Well, other than just hanging out at home doing not much more than reading, eating, and sleeping, I had to avoid being at a political rally that my neighbors were going to be hosting at their house on Saturday. As Peace Corps I am supposed to be politically neutral, and they had wanted me and Jessica to cook for the event. They were going to kill a cow to sell the meat as a fundraiser, but nobody wanted to kill the cow because it was holy friday and the superstition says (though these days nobody takes these things seriously) that you will turn into a cow if you do that (or whatever you do: climb a tree and turn into a monkey, bathe and turn into a fish, you are just supposed to sit quietly on holy friday.) So I woke up early in the morning on Sat. to the sound of machetes hacking at the cow corpse, and went to go buy my piece of carne to smoke. As I entered Orlando´s kitchen hut, it was like a scene out of a horror movie. Dim flashlights, meat everywhere, with orlando hacking away on the table with a machete and Edward chopping at the spine with an axe, and as a joke they offered to sell me the cow head that was sitting on the floor awaiting it´s destiny as some kind of soup I would imagine. I went to get a bowl to put my meat in, the good stuff not the head or the hoof, and when I came back someone had put my old swim cap on the cow head. All I could do was laugh!

Jess had already been invited by Ruben to go see some petroglyphs in Calabacito, so I decided to tag along with them and therefore not be at the meeting either. So I backed out as gracefully as possible and went hiking! Again, another 2 hour or more walk to Calabacito and back. It turns out I had walked right past those same petroglyphs twice without even realizing it! Ruben´s in-laws fed me, too much because it made me tired and lazy for the hike back. I stopped at the road to rest while Jess and Ruben went on without me.

And now today I went to Tole to use the internet, but the power was out. So I went on to San Felix, where I worked for a while until the power went out there too. So I came back to Tolé where I am now again, after having wasted lots of time in transport. And now, I must leave or I will be stuck in Tolé for the night, who knows what I would do! Bye!