Less than 1 Year Left!

  El Pantano, Panama
Saturday, September 29, 2007

Hola!
 
So although it has taken me more than half of my time here in the jungles of Panama I have finally managed to download pictures and write a more detailed entry as to what I have been up to over the past year, what I am doing and what I plan to do in my last 9+ months here.
 
First of all I can´t beleive that I have been in El Pantano for over a year, let alone that I´ve been in Panama for almost a year and a half. I only have 9.5 months left! And I feel as though things are just now starting to come together.


My Adorable Neighbor
 
I´ve already described my town a little bit so I´d like to fill you all in on the projects that I have been working on and projects that I´d like to get going before I leave. So this is all the amazing work that I´ve been up to for the past year.
 
ENGLISH CLASSES
Yes the amazing work that I have been doing is teaching English to the people in my community!!! I´ve been saving the world one English phrase at a time. ENGLISH, ENGLISH, ENGLISH! Everyone here was gung-ho about a year ago to learn English. For the first few months I regularly had 20+ people attending the class, but now one dilligent women attends once a week and has definitely made progress. I don´t think the majority of the class realized how much work it is to learn a new language and the rest were at a more advanced level but would never tell me (the million times that I asked) that they wanted a separate advanced class, even though they would tell just about everyone else in the community. Panamanians in the campo have such pena (shyness), it has definitely taken a lot of adapting on my part to get used to this and it still makes me crazy half the time. Anyways I started an advanced class in addition to the regular class and pretty much everyone stopped showing up to either class altoghether. I honestly hate teaching English, but I am glad that I started the class up right away because it allowed me to get to know a fair amount of people in my community pretty quickly.


English Class - Even the School Cat Wants to Learn English
 
I also give English classes to the kids (grades 1-6) at the school 2 days a week. I meet with the teachers every other week and they let me know what their English objectives are for the next two weeks.  One week I usually teach vocabulary and the following week I come up with a fun and creative activity with the vocabulary from the previous week. Most of the time, with their teachers, the kids just sit at their desks and copy from the chalkboard; THANK GOD I went to school in the U.S.! I understand that the school does not have a lot of money to buy resources, but the way the teachers are trained is so archaic, and a little creativity definitely goes a long way. I have made sure that the teachers stay in the room while I give my class (after subbing in the inner-city schools in San Diego I want nothing to do with dicipline), even though most of them just sit at their desks with their heads down grading papers and ignore me, but every once in a while something I do or say catches their attention and the kids definitely like these activities. Thank you Mom for all your great ideas, I can´t imagine what I would have done without your help and all the resources you have sent that I´ve lugged up the hills to my community.
 
ENVIRONMENTAL CLASSES
Once a week I teach an enviromental class to all grades except 1st, (those little ones are too much for me twice a week). I usually choose one topic for the month and do a mini charla (lecture) accompanied by an activity. This past month they´ve been learning about why plants are important for us and for the environment. Sometime in October we are suppossed to plant some saplings around the school. 


Leaf Rubbings

SEX ED. 
I´ve helped out a couple of my friends with sex charlas at the schools in their communities. Basically we have done the old condom on the banana demonstration, talked about the reproductive system and about sexually transmitted diseases. I´ve helped with these mini lectures in Jr. High Schools, and my friends who live in these towns have told me that they have kids and their parents coming up to them frequently asking for condoms. I am hoping to recruit some of my freinds in the next few months to come up to my site to help me out with a 2-day sex ed. session at my school - with the 5th and 6th graders and the school in Santa Fé - with the Jr. High and High School kids. If sex ed. doesn't get them up here I´m hoping that adventure rafting and the cool climate will entice them.

SCHOOL COMPUTERS  
This past March the principal (my counterpart in the community) and I attended a project design management seminar. During the seminar we developed a plan to get computers for the school (at a parent-teacher meeting the month before, the parents all decided that they wanted to work towards getting computers for the school). My principal and I had heard of a program called CONECTATE, a program through the ministry of education that has funds from the government and the United States, that gives computers to rural Panamanian schools. We first contacted the school´s supervisor about the program and he said he would send the paper work. Well he never did, so I found out that the CONECTATE office was in Panama City and scheduled and appointment with them. People from CONECTATE came out to the school, met with the principal and have started remodeling one of the classrooms to accomodate the computers: they are enclosing the walls, putting in real windows (all the rooms are open) and installing the proper wiring and air conditioning. We should have computers with internet this November!!!!

I really can´t beleive that I will have internet in my site before I leave. When I arrived there were 3 public phones for over a thousand people, now there is a cell phone signal and the main road to and in town should be paved by the time I leave, such progress! Hopefully once the roads are paved busses or chivas will start running. It has been almost a month since we last had public transportation, one day the chiva driver just stopped working, I really don´t understand why, the roads are in good shape and those dudes make a ton of money. I tell y´all I will definitely appreciate my car when I get back to the U.S.    

COOKING CLASS
Twice a month a few people come over and I give a cooking class. Once a month we make a dulce (something sweet), actually that is all they wanted to learn to make, but I talked them into making a main meal every other class. I almost always come up with a recipe that involves baking, and for the main dishes I usually use an international recipe. A lot of people in my community have ovens and do not use them, they cook over an open fire instead. I hope to show them that they do not have to fill their lungs with smoke 3 times a day.  

ESTUFA LORENA (MUD OVEN)
Speaking of cooking over an open fire and filling your lungs with smoke, a lot of people in my community said they wanted to learn to make an estufa lorena. I arranged for one of my peace corps friends, who has a lot of experience making estufa lorenas, to come to El Pantano and make a stove at the school. This past week we spent 12 gruelling, sweaty, muddy, and shitty hours (yes, literally shitty - one of the ingredients is horse or cow poop) making the biggest estufa lorena in Panama. Estufa lorenas are made of clay, sand, and as I already mentioned, horse or cow poop, they hardly cost anything to make, and they have a chimney. Oh, and the best part about them is that they use less wood (this means chopping down less trees in the National Park that my town borders) than cooking over an open fire. I am hoping to help make quite a few more before I leave. 


Making the Estufa Lorena

     
THE LAST PROJECT THAT I¨M WORKING ON........
is to be determined this week. I have been trying to get a small group comprised of: the principal, teachers, directiva (the president, vice president, etc...) of the parent-teacher association and parents to meet with me to work on another project for the school. The principal at my mom´s school would like to raise some money for the school in El Pantano so it looks like there will be some funds for another project. I have previously tried to get this group to meet with me with no luck. I cannot tell you all how many times I have heard the people in my community and of surrounding communities say, with a lot of pride I might add, that Santa Fereñens (the district that my town is in is called Santa Fé) do not go to meetings and do not work together. Now I´m gonna bitch a little bit, but this really has not made my job any easier, and one of the rules of the Peace Corps is that I cannot just hand money over to my community. To receive the funds they have to meet, design a project and basically write up a grant proposal. What they will write up is called a Partnership Grant. I will submit the proposal to the Partnership Grant website and anyone (my mom´s school) can donate money to the project. I really hope that some small miracle happens and a meeting occurs; the school has no money and such a long list of needs, for example: a library, flushing toilets, more resources for the teachers to teach more effectively, and I can go on and on but will stop there. Anyway, if these people will not meet with me they simply will not receive the money, so here´s hoping yet once more that they will show up to the meeting planned this week. It would be such a shame if money was raised for them and they weren't able to receive it.

SUMMER CAMP
Summer vacation here starts at the end of December, so in January after my visit to the States I plan on meeting with the kids a few times a week to do all the things that there is not time to do during the regular school year. I usually bring a short book with me to school and read to a group of kids during recess. Earliar this year I bought Harry Potter in Spanish and tried to read it during recess, but it was too involved for such a short hectic break. So I´d like to read the book to the kids and then watch the movie. I also plan on doing simple science and environmental projects once a week.  

APART FROM WORK  
I´ve made a few good girl friends in my group. I usually end up hanging out wth them a few times a month, it is so nice to have a group of awesome girls to hang out wth again, I haven´t had this since I left Flagstaff.

My family and a few friends have been out to visit. During their visits I´ve been able to travel and see a lot of Panama, but there is still so much more to see. I don´t think 9 months is enough time to do all the exploring I want to.

Well that is all for now. I really hope to be better about up-dating this site over the next 9 months or so. As always I THANK everyone for the support that you have given me.

Arisia