true life planet

So last off, I had no real place to live.

After checking out several possibilities, of which there were very few indeed, I decided to ask a woman who works at the hospital if I could live with her. She immediately beamed, and said yes!

So that afternoon, the ambulance-the only car around at the time-took me to my new home.
My new home is with the Ngobe family of Catalina , her son Arturo, his cat Mieko(ngobe for cat), and their dog, Rocky(named after the movie series). Also visiting at all hours, eating, sleeping, and hanging out, are about fifiteen to twenty members of Catalina´s family. I couldn´t tell you their names just yet-I can´t remember them all. Read the rest of this entry »

I was camped out in the diningroom of the tiny hospital here when I last blogged…and although everyone was quite nice, it WAS the diningroom. It was hardly private or comfortable!
I was looking for alternative accomodation in the town, but had been as yet unable to find any, as people here are unaccustomed to visitors. There are no hostels, no hotels, no rooms for rent. Most people live in lean-to shacks, made of sticks.

As I was trying to figure out where I would live for the next few months, I got an email from a woman who had read my blog, Leyla, and her friend, Anne. They were in Panama, and they were coming to visit me! Read the rest of this entry »

So I´m here in Soloy, writing on a computer in the school´s computer lab-which was donated by Bill Gates. It´s a little surreal.

Soloy is kind of the unofficial capital of the Comarca, which is an independently governed territory of several groups of indigenous people in Panama. It is the dry season right now, so it´s rather hot and dusty. The town itself is rather spread out; there is no town center, jst a sprinkling of tiendas and few comedors which serve rice and chicken. There is no electricity, no running water, no paved roads-you have to sit in the back of a four bu four for several hours to even get here.

I am here to work with Medo, which is an grassroots organization that helps the Ngobe people in a variety of ways.

A bit about the Ngobe: They are the largest group of indigenous people in Panama. They have an extremely conservative culture, but they are surprisingly modern at the same time. The men wear western clothes, while the women wear these long, voluminous colorful dresses, with sailor like collars and puffy sleeves.

The first few days I was here, I was living in the Health Center-Panama has free health care centers all over the country, and this is one of them. They treat the Ngobe in the area there for all types of ailments, including tuberculosis. There is a compound next to the center where tuberculosis patients live with their families.

I am now temporarily staying in the schools dorms until some other alternative can be drummed up, as there was no space for me in the health center.

Yesterday was my first day here, and there is so much to tell of my impressions here. There is dire, extreme poverty; there are very very thin dogs everywhere; there are houses made only of a few pieces of metal or thin sticks. The poverty is constant and shocking.

At the same time, there is a certain energy coming form the people and the inhabitants, a cetrtain hopefulness. It´s not there all the time, but it is there. There are many community aid organizations here-both Panamian and international, and a dizzying array of projects, from a new public school, to road improvements, and going on at the same time.

The womens dresses are particularly appealing-sort of almost like something you would see in a circus, very very bright colors, with trims of triangles or zigzags of constrasting colors. Orange with red and blue. Hot pink with yellow stripes and purple zigzags…I am supposed to wear these while here, and I am having one made for me. It should turn out quite interesting-they come down to the ankles, so since I´m so tall, they have to make a special one just for me! That should make for some good photos!

I am working with Adan, who is Ngobe himself, and is the director of Medo. Today I got a better idea of what my jobs will be here, and they are numerous. here is a partial list:

Teacher of English for the doctors and nurses at the hospital
Teacher of English to the Ngobe children
teacher of English to the Ngobe adults
Help Adan with his English
Build compost bins for garden
Work on/improve watering system for garden
Improve library
Start kids group for recycling project
Latrine project
Work with the Artesian womens group
Develop ecotourism ideas for Adan

It´s alot. !!!

It´s beautiful, and outside of two peacecorp volunteers, it´s just me and the Ngobe.

gg

I arrived in Panama City on Wednesday night, then took a taxi to the bus terminal.
While in the taxi, I got a glimpse of the city: It´s huge, modern, and extremely multicultural.
There was tons of traffic, literally bumper to bumper, but the mood was relaxed-no one really honked ahorn or yelled. Pedestrians seemed to take their lives into their hands when trying to cross the streets, though!

I made it to the bus terminal, and was looking for aplace to keep all of my bags..although up til now, I had only been traveling with a single daypack, I had extra bags this time. I was told that I should bring alot of supplies with me to my next destination, the town of Soloy.

A security guard came up to me and offered to take all of my bags as the bag check was closed. As I walked with her to the office, we were joined by five other guards. I told them I had come to Panama to work with the Ngobe people in Soloy, and that I still needed to buy a few more supplies, as Soloy is rather isolated. This group of security guards then took me under their wing, and insisted on accompanying me everywhere for the next several hours. Real Panamian hospitality!

I had to wait in the terminal for Sarah, a woman who had been volunteering with the Ngobe in Soloy, and who was supposed to give me an orientation about the organization. When I finally met her and her Estonian boyfriend, they were very helpful and sweet, giving me a better sense of the place I was about to go live in for the next few months. Some of the most interesting tidbits about their culture: they are always late; they swim fully clothed;and they are one of the least empowered groups of indigenous people in Panama.

After the orientation, we struggled to find the guards, who had locked my bags in their office and left. We finally tracked them down, I got my bags, and boarded the midnight bus for David.

Buses in Panama are ALOT different than in Guatemala! For one thing, everyone is extremely polite. By that I mean, there is no loud music, people apologize for talking on their cell phones, people don´t really eat on the bus.

I was exhausted, and tried to take a nap..a little difficult, as the seat in front of me was on my lap! There was alot more leg room on Guatemalan buses..It was also hard to sleep because armed soldiers and so on kept boarding the bus, checking everyones photo id and passports. Several times, people had to get off the bus because they did not have correct id, and often they were left stranded in the middle of nowhere.

I woke up at four am, my shoulders being shaken by the driver. Apparently, I was the only person who wanted to go to David, so they had decided to have me take a different bus, while they were going to proceed onward towards the border of Costa Rica.

I got off the bus, and walked towards the median of the busy dark highway, where a second bus was waiting for me. I turned around and asked the first bus driver about my bags-and he assured me they were already in the second bus. There was no time to check if this was the case, they wanted me to leave NOW! So, exhausted and somewhat stressed , I boarded bus number two.

Several hours later, bus number two let me off at the bus terminal in David. Looking around for my bags(which they had unloaded as I got off), I saw four bags on the sidewalk. They looked like my bags..but they weren´t my bags-they were someone elses!

I grabbed ataxi, and we sped off after bus number two, hoping to catch it and switch my bags out. When we finally caught up to it and it stopped, I boarded it and…it wasn´t the bus I had been on.

I walked back to the taxi in tears.all I had was my passport, my credit cards, my camera and the clothes I was wearing. The taxi driver tried to convince me that my things were long gone at this point, and that I should give up.

I decided to lose taxi driver number one, and boarded taxi number two. Taxi Number two was driven by Marcos, who turned out to be acutely sensitive to my plight. Not only that, he was alarmed when I told him that I hated Panama!(This because the situation was a rather rocky start!). For the next 6 hours, Marcos helped me retrace the steps of both buses I had been on that previous night.

We finally tracked down my bags in Costa Rica, where they were apparently in the possession of a large Costa Rican family, who were apparently bewildered by my bags of canned goods and water bottles! We made the switch, then drove back to Panama…

But not without incident, as the Costa Rican border officials thought it strange that I would cross the border for only two hours, and insisted on searching Marcos and I for drugs! Not pleasant.

Cost of taxi for 6 hours, numerous phone calls, and two border crossings? Forty American dollars and a Big Mac at McDonalds for his little boy.

I love Panama!

gg

I´m finally here in Panama, but before I start writing all about my newest adventures, I owe an entry to Simon.

Simon was my constant companion when I was in Guatemala. You could say he was a dog, but he was so much more to me. Having left my dog behind in the States to go on this trip, I was especially vulnerable to his charms.

He was a brownish dog, with a liver colored nose, of medium build, and only about a year old.

From the moment we laid eyes on each other, we were in love. He was at my door every morning, waiting for his oatmeal…and hung out all day, waiting for a scratch behind the ears or one of Dina Minas tamales.

When I first met Simon, he was a bit unruly, like an out of control teenager-he jumped up on you with the intent of knocking you down! Slowly, over time, he began to listen to commands(but still only when he felt like it!) and eventually would come in the front door and lie on his special blanket.

The funny part about his name was that it is spelled ¨Simon¨, but pronounced like ¨Semen¨. It was hard bnot to crack up when I had to call out his name across the milpa, ¨Semen,Semen!¨

Simon had some special skills as well-he could smell a plate of tamales from the minute he nudged my metal door open. Once he detected where they were hidden, he could adeptly steal one with out anyone noticing, and take it outside, where he would delicately peel off the husk to get at the maiz inside. He also had amazing empathy for crying children, and his face would soften when he heard a child cry-then he would go over to the child and nudge them til they laughed.

My favorite story about Simon is when a strange dog came into my house one night. It was a large boxer and very dangerous. All the dogs where I lived were terribly underfed, and I´m sure when it saw me it panicked, probably only wanting food, not a person to deal with! The dog came at me, and bit me on the ankle-I yelled out, and in that moment Simon arrived, and chased the other dog away. From that point on, he kept all other dogs away from my house.

So Simon, this entry is for you. Thanks for all long walks together in the forest, thanks for sharing my oatmeal with me in the morning, thanks for comforting me at all the right times.

To see photos of Simon, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/truelifeplanet/
He´s the brown dog with the yellow eyes.

gg

So.. I can´t help but write about my last chicken bus in Guatmala, this one from Xela to Guatemala city…

There are no words descriptive enough to write about the chicken bus expereince, but here is a list of all the people that came on to the bus to sell things during the 5 hour ride into the capital.

7 women selling watermelon slices, atop big bowls balanced on top of their heads
1 man selling religious scrolls
1 man selling baby chicks
1 man selling diagrams of the nervous system
6 men selling cookies of varoius kinds
17 men selling soda and water
3 women selling tamales
2 men selling green mangoe slices with cumin and salt
1 woman selling slices of cake, on platter on the top of her head
1 woman evangelist, selling Christ(!), charging people for the privelege of being saved
1 man with a pen and paper, offering to write letters for people
1 man selling pencils
1 woman with a very disfigured face, holding a baby, asking for alms
1 man missing an arm, asking for alms
14 women, selling tostadas and empanadas
2 men selling fried plantains
1 woman, carrying a tiny man in her arms, asking for alms
3 men selling coconut juice with a straw
1 woman selling fried chicken
6 women selling tacos
13 children, selling hard candy and caramels
1 man selling bibles-and he also preached for about 2 hours
1 man selling ginseng tinctures
1 man selling a cureall medicine, supposedly from the USA, that smelled and looked just like mouthwash

Thats about it! A classic Chicken bus ride!

gg

I´m here in Guatemala City, awaiting my flight to Panama City.
Luckily, the wonderful hotel I stayed overnight at has given me some free internet time, so I thought I´d do a blog entry.

My last day in La Esperanza was wonderful.

In the morning, lots of kids came over to visit..some of them were very emotional at my leaving. The night before, I had had the final art class for all the kids in the neighborhood at my house, and several kids were crying and asking me not to go. It took all I had to not cry too.
Instead, I tried to focus more on the positive, and passed out cookies and we played games.
I invited the kids over that seemed particularly sad for breakfast the following day.

Some of these kids will remain forever with me. In particular, Alma´s son Emmanuel, whose intelligence and perceptiveness to those around him makes him seem more like an adult; Elky, who in spite of a life filled with difficulty, radiates love and warmth; Joselito, who must quit school this year to work, but who is incredibly bright and loves to read; Gabby, a tiny, round little girl, who just wants to be held while she colors…

I was, and still am, incredibly moved by all these charming , wonderful kids-and their families, who although they did not know me, invited me into their homes and their lives, and trusted me with their children.

In the afternoon, I went to have lunch at Dona Minas house, and it was really lovely to spend time with the family. Alma, my friend; her sister Anna; her brother, Jorge; Dona Mina; and everyone else showed me such kindness. My friend Alexis was also there-a man who had been staying in Guatemala for some time, and had a real comraderie and affection for the whole family, especially the children.For lunch we had a sort of chicken stew, hot sugary coffee, and some chocolates a guest had brought along as a gift.

Emmanuel, Almas son, had invited me to their house in the evening to watch a movie-it turned out to be ¨CARS¨, that animated American film-dubbed in Spanish, and pirated, of course. Thruout the film, you could hear the laughter from the movie theatre, see people´s shadows walking across the screen, and so on…halfway thru the film, it stopped and wouldn´t start up again-so Guatemalan! No one cared, it was just nice to spend the evening together, eating snacks Alma had prepared( Popcorn, waffle cookies, white bread sandwiches with velveeta cheese and ham, and a special treat, a few cut up Snickers bars!). When I had to say goodbye to the kids, particularly Emmanuel, it was hard not to cry.

After the movie, it was about nine pm, and we (Moira was with me) still had more visiting to do, as we had been invited up the hill to say our goodbyes to Elky and Joselitos family. When we arrived, their characteristic hospitality-in spite of not having much-was overwhelming. One thing I have learned from my time in Guatemala, is that no matter whether I want something or not, or like it or not, I always must accept graciously whatever is offered to me. For example, a meat taco, even though I don´t like to eat meat much here; a tattered wall hanging as a parting gift; a hot cup of steaming milk, straight from the family cow;or a child´s doll. People want to give something, even if they have little to give. Elky´s mother was no different, handing Moira and I each a parting gift, one of the few decorations she had on the bedroom wall.

Elky was the most special child to me while I lived in La Esperanza, and her spirit simply glowed, she was so happy I had come to say goodbye. While I live there, she visited me everyday-and she helped me around the house alot as well. In return, I bought her some clothes for school, and fed her breakfast. We have a deep strong attachment, based on our common characteristic of generosity-rarely have I seen a person., child or otherwise, who is so giving, and without complaint or jealousy towards those that have more than she. I think she will inspire me for years to come.

On this night, Elky glowed with happiness at my visit, and sang me a song. It was one of the most moving an inspiring moments of my entire trip.

Joselito, Elky´s brother, was also there, all smiles that they got to have some ¨special time¨to say goodbye. Joselito´s family needs him to work and drop out of school, but I found him to have a shining intelligence, and wanted to reward that with a parting gift. I gave himn a book of stories in Spanish and English-a special gift, as books here are a rarity, and well outside of the average person´s income or priorities. He told me he will have the book for the rest of his life, and I believe he will.

While there, I also had the chance to interview-for this blog- their two brothers, who are famous Guatemalan cyclists.In spite of being part of the national team, they still live very simply, yet their passion for cycling is really quite overwhelming, and they have the talent to match. We all watched a soccer match, while they pulled out newspaper clippings and talked to Moira and I about their dream to ride in the Olympics.

We finally walked home, finished packing, and I fell asleep, exhausted from the day.

On Tuesday I fly to Panama City, Panama.

Before then, here’s whats in the general works:

Saturday and Sunday, spend some time with the kids in my neighborhood/including our last english class tomarrow night. It will probably be more like a fiesta!

On Sunday, I’ve been invited to special catholic Mass at the seminary here in Guatemala. It is spectacular. There are only eight seminarians, and I plan on interviewing one of them for my blog. On Sunday, I will also be having a goodbye meal with the family.

On Monday, leaving la Esperanza for Xela early in the morning.
Plan on taking a chicken bus to Guatemala city, where i will then take a cab to my hotel/one of the ones near the airport, don’t know which one.

While in Guatemala city, I plan on interviewing and hanging out with an intersting man I met in Guatemala City in the past..he is lawyer for youth in gangs. A very interesting man, who has a tremendous heart for people.

I’ll spend the night in Guatemala City, then catch a plane to Panama in the afternoon. From Panama city, I’ll catch a bus to the main terminal, where I’ll meet the volunteer on her way out who I will be replacing..and hopefully get a mini orientation in the terminal about the Ngobe people and culture, as well as my tasks before me.

At midnight, I will hop on a bus/or perhaps I should say, drag myself on to a bus!..to David. I’ll get to david in the morning.
I will email from there to tell folks I am safe. From david, i will take a 4 by 4 pickup down a dirt road for quite awhile to reach Soloy, where I will be staying for the next 11 weeks.

Flight information can be found on the earlier entry.

Thanks for all the warm thoughts and words of encouragement1 Keep them coming!

gg

All right everyone, you can stop asking me now.
I have a flicker account, i am afraid it is a bit disorganized, but there are about 600 photos on it. They are not organized in any particular order, and in fact there are some very bad photos mixed in-but it´s all I have time for at the moment.
I will try to improve it when i have time, with all the bells and whistles. Until then, you´ll just have to look at the photos and try to figure it all out on your own!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/truelifeplanet/

gg

Well last off I felt like hell, no kidding.

What happened was after we left out hotel in El Remate, We-we being the three of us, Jackie, Moira, and myself-went to Flores. originally our plan had been to head back home from Flores that very night, while Jackie was planning on heading to Belize the next day.

What actually happened was much different..on the bus to Flores, I felt terrible, like I was going to pass out. When we got to Flores, Jackie ran up and rented a hotel room for herself-a rather grim room, painted hospital green with an airless feel despite a window. Somehow I passed out in there, I don´t remember much.

When I came to, Moira and Jackie were there. I was..very disoriented, very delirious I had an incredibly high temperature.
It was the Dengue, full throttle. I was so out of it, and somehow these two women-one of whom I had only known for a day-took care of me. I had the fever for 6 hours, and got blisters all over my body. I thought at one point I was in Italy, at another point that there were trees in my room.

There is a reason they have another, more descriptive name for dengue fever-its also called breakbone fever. And..now I know why, because it feels like someone is crushing the bones in your legs, your arms, and your face. It is very terrifying pain.

These women kept me covered in wet towels, calmed me-I was hysterical and crying, I was so hot, crying for my mother at some point-and these two women were angels of mercy. They rented the room next to mine, checked on me all night long, once the fever subsided, and barely got any sleep. They sought medical help, they made sure I drank water-which i had had an aversion to for some time since I threw up everything anyway-and they got me malaria medication, on the off chance it was malaria.

The following morning, it was over, the worst part at least. I could hardly walk at all, and was exhausted. I lost 20 pounds.
I still could not eat, but drank alot aof water and gatorade.

Jackie felt confident I was healing, and left me withMoira, who, for a 25 year old, was remarkably clear headed and helpful to my every need-which were many, since I was pretty weak.

I am so very grateful to these two women, who helped me when i confronted my worst fear of traveling, that of being really ill on the road. I am forever in their debt, and I truly believe there is a sisterhood of women travelers out there!

After I was well enough to walk and eat, I made the decision Tto head back to La Esperanza. the 15 hour, two bus journey was agony-no bathroom, absolute discomfort-but I knew once home, I would heal rapidly. Moira bore the journey beautifully, in spite of having to pee for hours. The one bathroom along the trip was in a bus terminal, and went I went in it was the very worst bathroom i have ever seen in my life-you had to wade to get in. So we just held it in for hours. Additionally, we took a night bus, and were freaking out we would get robbed. we didn´t of course-the bus was going 90 miles an hour, careening along, which made it impossible for any robbers to hop on board!

When we finally got to Xela, the town close to La esperanza, we ran into the supermarket-the only place with a decent bathroom around the area we were in-and we probably were in there for half an hour!

We took a cab home-a spulge, but a neccessary one-and after tidying up a bit, I promptly fell asleep for basically two days.

At this point, I am recovered. A bit tired, but that is to be expected..eating a bit, but not much, still not much appetite.

So no worries, everyone who wrote in-I am well!

gg