I spent the entire past weekend with my Ngobe friend, Orsonia, and her very large family.
I wasn´t spending time with her and her family just for fun-I was living with them for the weekend to see if they would be good candidates for the new homestay program I am developing for the volunteer organization I am working with.
In the past, the volunteers have stayed at the health center when they needed accomodation for an extended period of time, as there are no hotels, hostels, or rooms for rent. In fact, a house that has a spare room doesn´t exist here.
The problem with volunteers staying in the health center is that the health center is run by the Panamian government, and is therefore staffed by mostly live-in doctors and nurses who care for the Ngobe. The manner in which Ngobe are treated at the health center is not always good-in fact, a volunteer staying at the health center would get a very inaccurate view of Ngobe customs and practices. I should know, because I stayed there myself when I first arrived, and my impressions of the culture and people were entirely derived from the doctors and nurses who I was living with. I did not have a positive impression of the Ngobe or their culture while staying there. (I should say, though, that there ARE many very nice, caring and compassionate staff who work there, and love the Ngobe people. Unfortunately-not everyone shares this outlook.)
It was in part due to this first initial experience, that I began exploring the idea of creating a homestay program for the future volunteers-and tourists-who sometimes come here. The idea is that the visitors get to experience Ngobe culture first-hand, and also that the Ngobe recieve the financial benefit of the guests living with them.
It´s also a practical solution to what has become a pressing problem…a lack of rooms to rent, and a lack of food sources available to guests. With two or three comedors available in the community that close when they run out of food-and a scattering of tiendas, with only the most basic of foodstuffs, volunteers have had to brave the ride to David to get supplies. In a homestay situation, the goal is that the volunteers eat what the Ngobe eat-for the most part-which is a pretty plain diet, and consists of many foods visitors are not accustomed to preparing, such as yucca and so on.
The other goal I have by creating a homestay program is that volunteers learn about Ngobe customs, and hopefully by living with Ngobe respect the customs while they are here(no bikinis here!).
So during my last month or so here, one of my main jobs is to visit/-and occassionally live with-every family that has shown interest in the program. We have 6 families that are interested in participating, and each family is very different. Some, like the family I currently live with, would be considered middle class by Ngobe standards-they have a cement cinderblock house, have a kitchen indoors and out, and have multiple incomes coming in. Other families are living a more typical Ngobe existence, based around swidden agriculture, working long days and living off the land-often with a house in ¨town¨, made of wood slats or sticks; and, another similiar house in a nearby finca.
My friend Orsonia falls into this latter group. Her life revolves around her land, and the farming of that land-which, by the way supports her very large family of 15 people.
I had visited Orsonia the day before, and we decided that not only would I spend time with her at her house in Soloy, but that I would also walk up to her finca in the nearby mountains. We agreed that this would give me an accurate picture of her life, and I would be able to decide if she was a good canidate for the homestay program.
I arrived at her small house made of wooden slats and a tin roof on Saturday morning. I had noticed the day before that she did not have much in the way of food, and knowing that for here to feed me was expensive, I brought along a bag of rice, some cookies for the kids, and-an expensive favorite for her family-several cans of tuna fish.
The first thing to do was look at the house, and see if it met the requirements for a homestay. I did this while she prepared breakfast for me, her several small children, and her grandchild.
The house was small, but adequate, with one large room for sleeping and working, and a simple kitchen with a table and a few stools. Adjoining the kitchen was a small separate bedroom-this was to be the bedroom of the guest. It was decorated with the few decorative possessions the family owned-a few trophies, a tea set, some drawings on the wall..it also had a desk, a bed(Ngobe style bed-basically, a wooden, low table), a wooden shuttered window, and most importantly, a door.
The kids were all very excited I was there-I was their first visitor ever to spend the weekend, who was not family. My being there was a big event. All the kids were clamoring all over me, clutching my skirts, yelling for attention, and so on.
We ate breakfast outside, under a large mango tree, on a large flat bench, very low to the ground. Breakfast consisted of wheat flour dough, formed into rounds, and deep fried in oil, and it was delicious.
We spent the morning discussing what changes would need to happen for her to host a volunteer, and I gave her some lessons in santitation and how to boil the water for drinking.
After breakfast, we all headed to the finca-Orsonia, all of the small children(the youngest of whom is five), myself, and a plastic pail of baby chicks, whose mother had been eaten that week by a coyote(and who were now being nursed into good health by Orsinia herself-she ground meal for them by hand everyday and handfed them).
The walk up to the finca was insane. She had told me it was only a fifteen minute walk-but it was over a hour(because we stopped at every neighbors finca along the way!), at least-and it was uphill. I had only brought a small bottle of water, thinking the finca was nearby, and I was very, very hot. Ngobe do not do their farmwork in the cool of the day-they do it when they whenever they get there, which is usually in the heat of the day.
We stopped at one of her neighbors along the way and I asked to buy a pineapple. A small child, about 4 years old, was sent off with a large knife to cut a me a pineapple, and returned with the most lovely, perfect pineapple, which one of Orsonias children promptly put in his chakra-a net bag, made of the fibers of a plant here.
We kept walking, and it was all uphill. I had on my tevas, and I was surprised how well they did on the narrow, slick trail. Orsonia had on plastic flip flops, as did her children.
The bosque in the hills and mountains surrounding Soloy are extremely beautiful, full of such a wide variety of trees, plants, insects, birds..it´s nature in a dizzying array of sounds and colors. The bosque is also unfortunately full of barbed wire fences, to keep people out of other people´s land.
As Orsonia explained, not everyone here has land-some have none. Many people do not have a finca to farm and to live off of, and so there is a big problem with people stealing other people´s food. Therefore, the barbed wire fences are everywhere! Strangely, you have to crawl thru many of them, and cross your neighbors property, just to get to your own.
We finally got to the finca, which was about four hectares, and the finca was edged with a beautiful hibiscus hedge of red flowers. We were greeted by their parrot-I´m not quite sure what kind of parrot he is-but oldest son was already hard at work in the finca, and had brought the parrot along with him. The parrot was tame and was obviously very much loved by the children. Also, I am happy to say that the diet of the parrot was his natural diet of fruits and nuts, and so he was healthy and brilliantly colored. (It is illegal to sell or own one of these types of birds in Panama-however, Orsonia´s bird did seem happy and healthy. Additionally, he was allowed to roam and fly freely all day, and only slept in his cage at night.)
I was really thirsty and had no more water(Bad Gigi! Bad!). I asked Orsonia if we could all eat the pineapple I bought, and one of the children brought out a knife and we cut the pineapple up, using banana leaves as plates.
After eating the pineapple(which was shared with the children, the chickens, and the resident pig), we walked around the finca.
The living compound consisted of a single one room house, built on stilts, and made of wooden slats, with a thatch palm frond roof. Adjoining this was a lean to kitchen of sorts, with some iron cooking pots, wooden trays, and a cooking fire on rocks. There was no furniture, except what was provided in the natural environment-a fallen tree served as a bench, a few rocks and boards served as additional seating and a table.
The finca itself totaled four hectares, and much of this was planted with yucca-at least two hectares were solely set aside for yucca. There were also plantings of beans, sugar cane, fruits, and so on.
Orsonia and her family actually live entirely off of this finca-it provides for all their food needs.
We spent the afternoon harvesting yucca, taro root, and eating bananas. It sounds idyllic but it was hot, sweaty work and it was seemingly endless. Just collecting the food took alot of work-let alone preparing it and cooking it.
Orsonia´s children are a somewhat wild bunch, happy, running around eating bananas, hugging the family pig, and creating games from things in their natural environment. They were rarely quiet, and Orsonia did not strike me as a particularly strict parent. The children sort of ran around and had fun, ate, and played, while we worked. Occassionally Orsonia would look up from whatever task she was working on and smile at the children. “They make me so happy, I can´t imagine being here without them“, she said. It is true that they all seemed at home in the finca, running around after the new little pig, playing games and singing songs.
When it was time to rest, we all sat on a large tree that had fallen over, and, although covered in biting ants, it did make a good bench.(You get used to bugs and creepy crawlies biting you eventually here. It´s just a part of the experience!)
When it was time to make the meal, a fire was lit on what sort of looks like a wooden table that is about 3 0r 4 feet off the ground. The table is held up by parts of tree trunks or branches that have been stuck into the ground, and the table is covered with small rocks that heat up and serve as the stove. The wood for the fire was collected by Orsonia´s oldest son, who had been working all day building a chicken coop.
The yucca skin was peeled by one quick mtion with the hand and then chopped into chunks with a dull knife and put into the pot of boiling water. We also prepared what seemed to be the inner part of grass shoots, which had a somewhat peppery taste, and best of all..eggs from the chickens and the ducks.
I was so hungry that I ate two platefuls!
After dinner, we all sat around and looked at the view and the stars. it was so beautiful-no city lights to get in the way of the view, and such crisp clean air to breathe. It felt like another world.
The children ran around while Oronia told me about her life and her dreams for herself and her children. She is a very industrious woman, and has many different projects she is working on-from working on the Artesian Ngobe cooperative for women here to farming all day long. She owns the finca we were currently visiting, and also recently obtained another one as a gift from her father. She considers herself a farmer, and started this finca as a way to both feed her children and hopefully sell some of her produce to her neighbors in town.
She also is an artist. She is one of the few women who make the chakra-a bag traditionally made by Ngobe women, and worn by men and women alike-from natural fibres and dyes. (Many women now use plastic fibres-equally beautiful, but not made from natural materials.) The plant they use to make the fibre is actually a bromeliad that grows in the surrounding forest, and if carefully tended they can grow quite large. This plant´s leaves are peeled very carefully and then the inner part is basically beaten for days until it is soft and pliable. Orsonia also makes all of her own dyes, and showed me one of her current projects, a beautiful wall hanging made of bromeliad fibres and colored with saffron and delicate rose colored dyes. When I told her it was a work of art, she just laughed. She has been working on it for many months in the hopes of taking it to a artesian fair in another city-but unfortunately, she does not have the money to pay the fee to sell her work.
The more I spoke with her, the more I had the sense that I was talking with a women of great intelligence and humility. We are close in age, and yet she has had such a different life than I have had. And yet our lives, and the direction they have taken, seems so random-solely based on where we were born and the color of our skin. Yet our dreams are very similiar-just translated in different ways.
When I asked her, “Aren´t you tired, with all of your children, and working in your fincas everyday?“ She just laughed and said, “This is my life. This is all I know. I don´t know any other way, other than to work every day, and hope I have enough for what I need.“
This is exactly the sort of family who could benefit from the income of a volunteer with the new homestay program. Someone who is working hard, doing their best, and whose gentle ways with the land will no doubt startle any visiting Westerner with a newfound appreciation of the simple things in life.
Gigi
