Alto Playon

For the next 2 years, I will be living and working in the community of Alto Playon.  It community is located in the Comarca Embera-Wounaan, Cemaco in the Darien region of Panama.  To get to my site from Panama City, you take a Darien bus for about 6 hours to the entrada at Punuloso.  You would then take a ride share on a road for about 35 minutes which leads to Puerto Limon.  From there you, can take a boat ride down the Chucunaque River in a jamba (Embera for boat) down the river for about 20 minutes to Alto Playon.  Mind the howler monkeys growling at you to the right.

'Comarca' holds the same meaning as Native American reserve as in the United States.  The Embera-Wounaan are two indigenous groups of people, who share the same culture but distinct languages.  While Alto Playon is mainly Embera, there are some Wounaan who live here.  Embera-Wounaan people are known as "Chocoes."  This is because they are originally from the Chocoe River in Colombia, and have always lived in the jungle between Panama and Colombia.  If you went to an Embera village in Colombia, you would find the lifestyle to be the same.  The Embera-Wounaan are river people, and I quickly found that there is no difference between being wet and dry here.  

To the men falls the responsibility of farming the lands for rice, platano, yucca, name, otoi (all tubular), corn, cacao, avocado, borhongoi (a fruit), to name a few.  The jungle also provides them with wild game to be hunted.  The men will take off in a large jamba with rifles and machetes to go looking for game.  They often come back with gato solo (wild cat), bidoe (wild pig), zamo & zocorro (wild birds), armadillo, and iguanas :(.  Finally, there is plenty of fresh fish in the river that are caught by spreading out large nets in the river.  Donsella is the best because it barely has any bone.  

The women in the village mostly tend to household activities.  Every morning they are the first to be up and fetch water from the river or rain barrels.  They start cooking breakfast, which undoubtedly will contain rice - something you eat 3 times a day here.  The day will then continue with an assortment of activities:  washing clothes, husking rice, feeding the animals, washing dishes, taking care of kids, and working on a canasta (a craft of hand made plates and vases).  Some women to accompany the men to the farm, and can lift pounds of harvested goods like you've never seen before.

There is a primary school in the town which has 3 teachers and a principle.  The students go to class from about 8 to 1.  Primary schools is the equivalent of 1st through 6th grade here in Panama.  All the kids wear uniforms of white collar shirts and blue slacks or skirts.  They play and have fun all the time.  They are usually jumping in the river, or rowing a jamba, throwing rocks at birds, looking for fish in the nets, or playing marbles.  Playing with the kids is great, because you are a 12 year old again - where its fun to laugh things off.  I find that playing with the kids teaches me more about the adults and their traits.

I apologize for the lack of pictures but I don't have a connection that will upload them!

Chango's Encampamento

It was 4PM on a Sunday afternoon when Chango and his wife asked me if I
As a medium to heavy rain had just started to fall, and Chango, his wife, and I boarded his piragua with what we would need for the night and next day.  The rains had come for almost half the day the day before, and the current on the Rio Chucunaque was that much stronger thatn the day before.  With the rains come the roaring of howler monkeys.  In groups of 7 to 10, they are perched on trees beside the river bank.  As our piragua passed underneath them, their roaring would begin as a claim to their position above us.  Further up the river, the canyon of trees beside the river grew taller and taller.  Exotic birds sweep from brush to brush, skimming the river for prey.  About an hour into the ride, we turned east onto the Rio Membrillo which is much narrower than the Chucunaque.  Dramatic bends around the river reveal even more natural wonders, a toucan flies by, and the howler monkeys roar louder as the rain falls harder.

We reach Chango's encampamento with the pleasant surprise of his wife's parents already there.  They had come to the encampamento about 15 days ago and will continue to stay for another week or so.  My hands were instantly met with a warm cup of coffee.  Dinner was served - rice, platano, and fresh fish.  The question and peculiarity of me being there barely seemed to cross anyone's mind.  A smile, friendly hand shake, and my curiousity about who they are was all I could offer.  I slept that night under my mosquito net listening to the orchestra of insects that make up the Darien jungle. 

The next morning over a breakfast of platano, fish, and gato solo (smoked and fried wild cat that they hunted), we talked a bit more about Embera culture.  Chango told me about a marriage ritual where a man would have to challenge a father to a wrestling match to win his daughter's hand.  They begin by grasping each other's hair and whoever falls, loses.  Chango had it easy we joked, especially because his wife is nothing short of inspirational.  The three of us hopped back into the piragua and went upstream to their platano farm.

We disembarked with a machete and an 'em' (pronounced eh) which means basket in Embera.  The word Embera is made of up three words put together:  em (basket), be (corn), ra (god).  Most of Chango's farm is bien sucio (too much overgrown brush covering the area).  He's not really in any position to pay for any help.  To harvest platano, you simply find the good ones that are ripe, and chop the tree down.  Having forgotten my machete, I kicked the trees down and used my hands.  Chango's wife was laughing histerically at my method, but after I got a few I eventually got her approval, "Tu sabes Moises, tu sabes."  We would then pick up the platano and stage them at various points in the river.  She could easily carry about 100 platano on her back without breaking a sweat.  "I like to work in the monte", she says, "the women in the village just wash clothes all day."  It was great when she would chide at Chango too, "Ayyy Changito, sus ojos tan viejos, no puede ver el platano!  And why are you always running over the logs in the river?  Hoo, I've been driving piraguas since I was 10!"

About 4 hours later, with 4 points staged with platano, we returned to the piragua and claimed our goods at each point, collecting 400 in total.  On a good day with a big boat, they can do 5000.  As she is half in the water, and I'm sitting in the boat she says, with complete complacency, "This is our life Moises.  It's hard work but we have to eat and send our kids to school.  We're here because our parents didn't send us to school."  We pulled up onto the shore of Alto Playon, and Chango gave me my generous share of 50 platano to take back to my host family, some were platano maduro - the very sweet kind!  They tried to sell the rest, but with not a lot of income in the village, most of it sells on credit.  Looks like Chango and his wife weren't just feeding their kids, but they were feeding most of Alto Playon as well.

More pictures to come, it's very hard to upload with this connection!

Environmental Health Project

The Environmental Health project of Peace Corps Panama is designed to improve the health of rural Panamanians.  Peace Corps Volunteers train motivated community members in water borne disease prevention practices, participatory decision making techniques, and sustainable health infrastructure development methods.  The EHP is focused on community capacity development and technical assistance for constructing and maintaining potable water systems and sanitation facilities. 

The three main goals are:

• Community Leadership, Organization, and Mobilization - Project participants in rural communities will develop capacity to lead, organize, and mobilize community members.  This is a process that often happens naturally by visiting families and identifying community leaders, personal observations, and training leaders in project management and leadership skills.
• Potable Water Systems - Project participants in rural communities will increase understanding, access, and management of potable water systems.  This includes education for water borne disease prevention, training for water system management, and water system project implementation.  Typical projects include commuity aqueducts, spring boxes, and rain water catchment.
• Sanitation Systems - Project participants in rural communities will increase understanding, access, and management of sanitation systems.  This includes education for water borne disease prevention, training for sanitation system management, and santiation project implementation.  Typical projects include construction of pit latrines, compositing latrines, and solid waste disposal and recycling.

During a field based week of technical training, we worked on learning how to build tap stands, fix and re-route PCV pipes, built a bridge for a pipe to cross a ravine, a pit latrine and a composting latrine.

Working on fixing a piece of pipe