true life planet

 Preface: I spent the past weekend living with my friend Orsinia´s family, as part of a new program to train local families to live with volunteers. While staying at her home in Soloy, I discovered she had another home nearby in her finca(farm), where we spent the next two days…

Spending a few days with my friend Orsonia was such a positive learning experience in learning to eat ¨comida naturaleza¨. This is another way of saying, to eat from the land.

Eating from the land means not relying on foodstuffs from the outside as your mainstay food. There is a tremendous problem here-and in other places I have visited as well-that the people have come to see certain foods as having status. This is kind of hard to explain, so I will illustrate with an example.

Here in the Comarca, rice is the mainstay food for the people. Everyone eats rice, several times a day-and lots of it. The rice they eat is highly processed white rice that they buy in David. They do grow rice-but, because of their methods of agriculture, they can´t grow much-usually, a person that has land can only grow enough for a few months of the year. It is not a year-around crop, it is a seasonal crop. Instead of just eating rice when they have it, they have come to rely on rice grown and processed mechanically from the outside.

Rice, however, is not a native crop here in Panama. Native crops are things like yucca, maiz, and beans. Rice was brought here by the Spaniards a long time ago-and what has happened since is that the latino culture of Panama has fully embraced this food source.

Unfortunately, many Ngobe believe that the natural foods here are not as good as the introduced foods-so rice has replaced other crops which were previously a staple. My friend Orsonia pointed out to me many times during my visit to her finca, that her neighbors look down on her for ¨living off the land¨, for not eating much rice. and relying of yucca instead.

However, my time with Orsonia was well spent, as I have struggled in the past months here with attempting to sustain myself on a diet of mostly white rice. Eating bleached, processed, white rice everyday made me feel sluggish and ill. But when I visited Orsonia for a few days, I ate a completely different diet-I ate comida naturaleza.

I felt so much better and energetic after a single weekend with her, that I asked her to give me a course in eating off the land. We spent an afternoon together, walking from finca to finca, where she introduced me to the Ngobe framers who will be supplying me with all my food for the coming weeks.

Additionally, living off the land requires gathering. In the past, the Ngobe were hunters and gatherers-and although these traditions have somewhat died out, many people are still gatherers.

Gathering requires alot of walking in the bosque and observing the surroundings-and carrying a bag to collect whatever you find that day. Orsonia showed me many plants, nuts, and fruits that she and her family eats-and the Comarca is extremely well stocked with these foods. I learned alot about how to delicately pull up a single plant without disturbing the others; how to peel back the bark of a tree to find the tree´s sweet sap; how to crack open a seed pod and add it´s powdery sweet contents to water as a refreshing drink; what parts of wild fruits have medicinal value; and so much more.

Many Ngobe look down on these kinds of foods-they think they are something people eat only when they have to eat them. This may be true, but it is also true that in a community where there is much poverty, it is truly a shame that the Ngobe people have come to idealize the foods of the latino culture(rice , pork, and beef), over the incredible wealth of foodstuffs that are growing rampantly in their environment.

After spending the day hiking around from finca to finca and getting to know the wild plants that can be eaten, I decided to make a drastic change in my diet while here. I decided to change over to living off the land.

Part of my reasoning for doing this is that I have felt absolutely awful eating rice day in and day out-as I said before, very sluggish and low energy. My second reason is that I want to prove that a person can comfortably eat very well here without relying on food from the outside(except every once in awhile!). My third reason is that the glaring poverty here makes me want to spend my money inside the Comarca-not outside. By buying all my bananas, fruits, yucca, and greens from nearby fincas, I can support people who otherwise have very little cash income.

However, living off the land takes time-and alot of it. I have adjusted my schedule so that every other day I walk thru the bosque, up a mountain, to visit miscellaneous fincas and spend a dollar on my food for the next two days. As there is no refrigeration, what I buy only lasts two days, and then I´ve got to walk up the mountain again to replenish my food supply.

I also walk thru the bosque on my way up to the fincas and collect-gather-miscellaneuos seed pods, fruits, and leaves. I only collect just a few-just what I need for a day or two.

Walking up a mountain every few days is exhausting, I must say-as well as taking the time to cook and prepare each kind of food. It´s not fast or easy-in fact, it takes considerable time every day.

It´s an interesting way to live-kind of a day to day way to eat. It makes me think about the gluttony and greed of people in my own country. We have to buy simply enormous quantities of food in one shopping trip-and we have to have so many choices of what to eat. Myself included, of course.

It is perhaps true that we validate these enormous quantities of food by saying we don´t have the time to shop often, that things are cheaper in large quantities, that gasoline prices are high, and so on…

But we could still practice living alot more simply, I think. Certainly, we don´t have the time to walk around gathering nuts and berries, or farming a acre of produce to live off for the coming year…but we could really examine what we think we actually really need-and downsize accordingly. We do not make choices so that we can live simple lives-as a matter of fact, it seems to me from where I stand at the moment that we actually make choices so that our lives are as far from living simply as we can get!

One thing I did not realize, before I started this journey, is how much of the world idealizes America, and that what we do has a domino effect for the rest of the world. Every time we insist on more choices, on more stuff, and so on-we actually are affecting alot of people. It´s hard to understand this, until you are in another country-and you see the culture of a people being slowly replaced with American culture. It´s very sad.

I´m really enjoying this simpler, healthier life-and I´m hoping that when I finally return I can somehow translate this into my lifestyle at home.

gigi

I was walking home last night, when a skinny dog came up to me and bit me on my left leg.

This is the second time I´ve been bitten by a dog since the start of this trip-the first occassion was in Guatemala. That time, I was standing in my kitchen, when a dog ran into the house, saw me, and immediately panicked and bit me on my right leg. If you recall, Simon, the wonder-dog, came to my rescue-somehow sensing a strange dog was in my house, he ran down the hill from his sentry post and chased the dog away.

This time, however, there was no Simon to come to my rescue.

I had been walking down a dirt road alone when the dog came out of nowhere. I did not have time to defend myself-or get away-before he bit me.

After the first bite-he bit me twice-I tried to run away. The road was bordered by two fences of barbed wire, and I tried to squirm between the barbed wire of one of the fences. As I was squirming, I picked up a rock, and as soon as the dog saw me pick up the rock, it ran away . Unfortunately, I was tangled up in the barbed wire.

I don´t know what looks worse-the dog bites or the cuts from the barbed wire. One cut from the barbed wire was bleeding profusely, and so I decided to walk to the clinic. I had nothing to stop the bleeding but a dirty bandana, so I used that.

By the time I got to the hospital, it was bleeding quite alot. One of the dog bites looked gruesome-I will spare you the details-and I was worried about having to get stitches.

One thing I wasn´t worried about was getting vaccines for Tetanus or Rabies. Rabies doesn´t exist here in the Comarca, thank God. I had gotten Tetanus shots when I was preparing for my trip 8 months ago in the States. This was one of those moments when I was glad that I had gotten the Tetanus shot-getting bitten by dogs and tangled up in rusty barbed wire is not the right time to realize you forgot to get your Tetanus shot!

At the clinic, they were very nice to me, giving me some antibiotics-which were free, by the way, as all healthcare in Panama at the Government run health centers is free to all people. However, they had no antibiotic cream of any kind-and gave me pennecillin tablets instead. (Unfortunately, I am allergic to pennecillin. Fortunately, I did not take them until I got home-and read my handy travel health booklet I brought along for such emergencies. They had only told me they were antibiotics-I had to read what was printed on the capsules with my flashlight and then look it up in my booklet.)

While at the clinic, I considered getting stitches there. But-I don´t know-I didn´t have a good feeling about it. They were nice enough, but I have heard stories. I had had positive experiences thee in the past, like when I got my Hepetitis booster shots there(but I had brought my own needles). It seemed like I might not need  stitches and that maybe the wounds weren´t as bad as they looked. So I walked home from the clinic, and hoped for the best.

By the time I got home, I knew I had to clean the wound and apply a topical antibiotic as well. Luckily, I had loaned my antibiotic ointment to someone in my family, and she still had some left, so I used that. I also had bought some hydrogen pyroxide, the last time I was in David, and cleaned the wounds with that.

Two of the   wounds needed stitches-not many, but a few. I took some cat gut out of the tiny surgical kit I had bought in David, sterilized a needle,  and stitched myself up. I had no ice to dull the pain or anything. But it went pretty quickly, and I was surprised how much better I felt when it was done. I dressed the wound and actually admired my handiwork-pretty good for someone just following instructions from a little booklet!

If you had told me that I was going to give myself stitches six months ago, I would have thought you were joking. I am surprised myself that I was able to do it-but it only needed a few, and then it was over with.

Why do dogs bite here? Well, they are starving, most of them. Those that aren´t starving are generally eating because they are more agressive. Due the fact that the dogs aren´t usually fed-they are scavengers-they compete for food with people. Since people don´t have much food(or, alternatively, when they do have food, they do not want to feed animals), dogs are often aggressive with people. And in turn, people are aggressive with dogs. People here throw rocks and sticks at dogs. I have seen starving dogs be kicked by children.

So when aggressive dogs , or fearful dogs, see a person who isn´t chasing them away-or throwing objects at them-they react. Sometimes when I see a fearful or aggressive dog coming towards me, I quickly act like I´m going to pick up something in the street. Just this action alone scares the dog away.

There is a dog who lives near me, and her name is Violet. Violet is going to have puppies very soon, so I make a point of feeding her when I can. But my family doesn´t like it when I feed her. They say she is ¨brava¨-another word for aggressive, biting behavior. It is true that Violet has bitten the children in my family more than once-but I have also seen them mistreat her terribly. But slowly, I think they are realizing Violet is actually a very sweet dog. I have explained to them that if they are nice to Violet, Violet will be nice to them-and also to stay away from Violet when she is eating, as she will bite them to guard her food. They don´t always chase her away now, or throw things at her, or yell at her when she comes around. Sometimes when I go out to the patio with my half finished plate of rice and beans and start calling for Violet, they actually help me find her so she can be fed. Not a big accomplishment-but still, a change for the better.

At this point, I think getting the dreaded Rabies vaccine is probably for the best. Who knows if I will get bitten again-and next time, perhaps the circumstances will be worse.

And..I think I´m going to have alot of battle scars by the time I´m done with this trip!

gigi

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