Long time, no see!

Eyigo showing photos to some seminar participants



Notice that even when I am bent clear over, I am still taller than Cheila, the woman standing to my right

The facilitators with their gifts of pifá, which is the fruit of a peach palm that is boiled and eaten. We were gifted a lot of it.

This is Alvaro, who is an amazing person and member of the community, who facilitated the session on speaking in public. He did an excellent job!


Of course it started raining. This is a fairly typical aguacero, the daily afternoon event during the rainy season



My guava fruit that Elisha gave me (what they call guava in Panama is not the same as what they call guava in other parts). When you break open the pod, there are little cotton-ball looking fruits with big black seeds in the center.

Puppies! They are bigger now.

A butterfly about the size of my hand that spent the whole day relaxing in my house.

Hello! I appologize for not having written for so long, but circumstances kept preventing it. Besides, it seems to have just been more of the same old stuff: trying to work and not being able to, coming and going. I was sitting in my hammock during the rain after trying to give a class and failing because no one came, and my neighbor Alberto comes walking past from working in his farm. Here was the conversation:

Hi Alberto, looks like you´re getting wet!
Yeah, because I´m working. Looks like you´re just enjoying life!
Well I tried to work today but everyone else was too lazy to show up.
Oh I guess that´s not your fault then.

No it´s not my fault, although I am getting lazier myself because it is hard to keep trying when nobody else is.

Well my sexual health classes for the high school kids have been chugging along almost on life support. Last year the attendence was fairly stable at around 12 or so kids, but this year it has dropped to only 5 or 6. I also keep having difficulties with the actual school, because they keep sending the kids home early, or someone doesn´t have the keys to open the classroom, or whatever. I will have to cut out several of the class sessions because there simply won´t be time with how far behind schedule we are, and this lack of consistency makes it even worse for participation. So I will probably just have two more sessions and call it good. Maybe I will make a really good cake or something for the end of the course to reward the ones who stuck it out to the end.

I have finally gotten started on my world map mural at the elementary school after much delay. It will be a lot of work, and since time is short I hope I can count on some teachers to help me paint the sucker. It is about 8 feet tall and 12 feet wide. I have put in around 10 hours of work on it and only have the americas, europe, and the top part of asia drawn! So every spare hour in site should probably be dedicated to finishing this as fast as possible. I want it to be a nice thing to leave behind, and people will always say, "oh yeah Jenny painted us this great map!"

I was trying to find things to do to keep busy during all the setbacks with work, and my neighbor Encarnaciona offered to take me to visit a little old campesina lady who lives in Tijera to teach me how to make pots with my clay, so I thought that was a cool idea. Encarnaciona says her name is Elisha, but Cristobal says her name is Elila so I am not even really sure what she is called but I think I will go with what Cristobal says because Encarnaciona calls Ngwite, the guy who I lived with in my second host family, Gwitre. I don´t trust her pronunciation as much! We took the chiva part way down because it is a much easier walk that way, only about 25 minutes of moderate hills instead of two hours of horrible hills. We went down and talked about the process, but at the time she didn´t have clay. So she told me if I came back another time she could have some clay found. I offered to come back in a week, and she looked kind of doubtful so I tried to make sure if that was really ok, and she kept saying it was alright. So in a week I came back, and she said that she hadn´t gone to get the clay because it was far away and it was raining (it had only rained the night before I came, but I didn´t mention that). I had bought some tamales to bring as a present for doing me the favor of teaching me, so I gave that to her and she gave me a totuma of chicheme de guineo, which is like a porridge made of ripe bananas. We made a new appointment two weeks from then, which is later this week, and if it doesn´t happen this time then screw that idea.

So after that fairly expected disappointment after a weekful of work disappointments I headed directly on over to Santiago to visit Mile for the weekend, where we were still quite limited in our entertainment due to the fact that the ministry of education has still not paid him, and he owes me several dinners because I didn´t want him or me to have to eat like a pauper all weekend. So once again we did a little walking in the city and mostly stayed at home just hanging out. I would have written on my blog then but I don´t like doing it on Mile´s computer because lots of the keys don´t work and when I tried to do it at the internet café the website was down. So oh well, I am doing it all now!

As for tourism, after the fair I had been going up to see them every few days to see if we could get some kind of after-fair meeting to happen and talk about what went well and what could be improved next time, but so far it hasn´t happened. And then there was another meeting rescheduled for today, but I was not able to make it because I had to leave Erin´s site this morning instead of the afternoon (more about this weekend in a minute). So Jess just called me and sounded kind of annoyed that I wasn´t there, but apparently Deisy wasn´t there either and I bet it will just get changed again. So whatever, I am getting just as apathetic as the rest of them. If they want to continue with the group, they will. If not, then whatever.

This weekend I went to help my PCV friend Erin with a leadership seminar in her site, because she came to help me with mine and I hadn´t been to visit her yet. So it was a good opportunity to see where she lived. I arrived the day before, and as it usually turns out during the rainy season, it rained during most of my two hour hike over there. The thing about hiking in the comarca is there are no flat spots, it is all hills, and it is even harder to hike those in the rain because they are slippery. And I, still being in denial that the rainy season has arrived, decided to not wear my rubber boots because I hate them. But from now on I will accept that it will be raining and that I ought to suck it up and put on the boots. I didn´t fall and it really wasn´t that muddy yet (later in the year I am sure there would be a lot of mud bogs) so it was ok, but from now on...

Well I arrived and relaxed at Eyigo´s house (aka Erin) for the afternoon, and the next morning we moved half of the house (which isn´t much, she lives in a shack) and set up home base in the school for the duration of the seminar so we wouldn´t have to be walking back and forth so much. It was nice, especially because there was a light, cement floor, tons of space, and a gym mat to sleep on. Carolyn also came that morning to help out. We each ended up giving three sessions of the seminar which is nine sessions total about managing personal resources like time and money, group dynamics, involving the community, and working with institutions. The turnout was pretty good and the sessions were all good, so it was pretty successful. On the last day we got started at 8:15 when we were supposed to start at 8:00, which is like completely amazing! I wanted to leave right after the seminar but it had been raining and would continue to rain, and if it wasn´t raining at moments it was really hot because the sun came out for a while. Also it would have been cutting it close to get out of there and back to Tolé in time to catch the chiva, so I decided to stay another night (although if I had remembered about the meeting I probably would have just gone, but whatever. They can do stuff without me there.) Turns out that waiting until Monday morning meant that teachers came to the school in a truck, which was quite nice because he gave me a ride out.

And now I am in Tolé trying to get back home for another day of class and painting before another week of logistical movements: San Felix regional meeting (my last!), hanging out with the comarca crew at the beach at Las Lajas one last time, going back up to Tijera to hopefully learn a little more about the dying art of making pottery, and going to visit my boyfriend for one of the last times. I have been having some really mixed emotions about this whole transition process of ending my time here and going home to the states, I don´t think I can really describe it right here so I am not even going to try right now. All I can say is it is already harder than I thought it would be, what with lack of satisfaction in work, doubts about what I will be doing back in the US, and leaving a lot of people I have come to care about, not least of all Mile. Oh well, it will be what it will be and everything will be alright. Anyhoo, gotta get back before it rains hopefully, so until this next weekend!