Above the Clouds

One Monday morning Heather and I took an early morning walk.  School starts late for the secondary school on Mondays, so we had plenty of time.  We started off on our walk, and saw this view:

It looks like the sea, but it is actually clouds in the valley.

When we got to the end of town, we saw the house which was recently built by a family from the regional capital.  They come up on weekends.  This past weekend they invited us in to see the house.  They have a great view from their balcony (actually two balconies – one on each level).  They weren’t there to see this view.  You can just see the ocean in the background.

This picture, taken from a short distance away, shows the ocean and clouds better.

On the way back home we passed the houses of elementary school kids who were going to school.  One mother asked us to walk her kindergartener to school.  Before long we had three kindergarteners and couple of older kids.

By the time we got to the school entrance, there were more!

Rounding the bend to get back home, we saw the clouds in the valley again.

Birthday party! 

 One of our good friends in the Peace Corps, Savannah, just turned 23.  We went down to her town for a party.  Here she is about to blow out the candles with her host brother and a couple of neighbor girls.

These three kids from our town couldn’t come to the party, but they sent Savannah their best wishes.  They know her from her visits to our town.

 The Adorable Incorrigibles

Here are all five of the kids in the family.  They are mischief makers supreme, but you gotta love ‘em.  As you can see, getting them to hold still is quite a challenge.

From top to bottom:  Jessica, Alex, Jorge, Jarisel, Armenio

You gimme fever!

You probably have noticed that we have not posted a blog entry in a few weeks.  We both came down with a tropical virus which gave us a fever for over a week.  We were pretty miserable then, but the fever is gone now and we are feeling much better.  It is still going to take a few weeks to get our full strength back, though.

Paving the Highway

The big news here is that they are going to pave most of the road that goes through our town, and the roads that go down to the school.  The town is stretched out along a ridge.  The first half mile or so was paved four years ago when they paved the road all the way up from the nearest bigger town – about fifteen miles.  Now they are going to do another mile, which will reach almost the end of town.   We are looking forward to this, as the road is always dusty or muddy.  However, in the meantime it is going to be messy.  On Tuesday they worked on the road in front of our house with a grader.  They ended up with three or four inches of fresh dirt over the old gravel, then it rained all night.  By the time we went to school in the morning it was the kind of mud that sticks to your boots in globs that just get bigger with each step.  Fortunately we only had a hundred yards or so of that!  Notice the water running down the side of the road.

Following Ormelis to school

The mud on the road was so slick that one of the pickup trucks full of school kids couldn’t make it up a hill and had to detour around it.

By the afternoon the sun came out and the ruts dried up somewhat, but it was still pretty sticky.



A day or two later we got gravel on the road and now it is better, but we are still hoping they pave it soon!

On Saturday we decided to take a hike up a mountain trail which gets very little traffic and is pretty overgrown in spots.  We wanted to take a machete to trim some of the brush.  First, though, we had to decide which machete to take.  Our host dad Aristides actually has ten machetes, nine of which are shown below.  It turns out that you can’t make do with just a machete or two.  It’s sort of like trying to exist with only one or two screwdrivers.  The big machetes are for big jobs like cutting down trees.  They actually cut down trees up to a foot in diameter with machetes!  They also use machetes to harvest root veggies like yucca, and they use the blunt edge to pound small nails or just to whack stuff.  It’s a lot more versatile tool than we had imagined.  We ended up taking a smaller one, which we regretted later, as it didn’t cut some of the bigger vegetation.

Which machete to use?

Here is Steve hacking away at some of the brush.













































At one point we got a nice view of the mountains with the sea in the background:



More fruit is coming into season.  Heather is holding a guanavana, which you can see is pretty big!  You can eat it as is, or you can make chicha with it.  All you have to do is put it in the blender for a few seconds to loosen the seeds, and then separate them out.  Add water and sugar and maybe some condensed milk, and you have a delicious drink!

On Monday there was no school. A day of mourning was declared because of the death of one of the ex-presidents of Panama.  His name is Jorge Illueca, and he was only president for eight months in 1984.  He was one of Manuel Noriega’s friends.  Noriega put him in for a while, and then replaced him with another buddy.  I’m not sure how he rated an official day of mourning, but we took advantage of the opportunity and decided to go for another hike, this time down the road in the direction of the sea in Veraguas.  We didn’t get to the ocean, but we did have a number of great views:

Another example of a "living fence"

The tiny dot in the middle of the photo is the house of another PC Volunteer

Along the way we were passed by a group of cows and three guys on horseback.  This breed of cows was originally imported from Africa because they can stand the heat of Panama.

Move 'em out!

Returning home, we found another of those little frogs, this time in the hallway of the house.  Luckily this guy is harmless!  He’s less than an inch long.


That’s it for this week!

Azuero Fair

This week was not quite so eventful as last week, but we still had a few things going on. It was a short week at school as we had a  Peace Corps get together in our regional capital on Thursday.  We had a city tour of places we need to be familiar with (ie. pharmacy, post office etc.), plus meetings with the Ministry of Education and the Environmental Authority.  We met the agency officials we will be working with for the next two years.  We went as a group with the other 11 volunteers from our group who are in our region.  We also met several volunteers who have been here longer than we have. We had good time at dinner with all of them, about 30 in total, Thursday night.   It was also the opening of the regional fair, so that all of the hotels in town were booked, but we were able to spend two nights with the family of Heather's co-teacher, Ormelis.


The Azuero Fair represented the two provinces of Herrera and Los Santos.  It was quite similar to a state fair in the US.  You could buy anything there from cell phones to cars, tractors, food, drink, crafts or real estate.  They had the same rides and sold cotton candy.  The one thing they don't have in the US is Nicaraguans selling hand-made furniture, which was of good quality and very cheap.  It's too bad we couldn't take it back on the bus with us! Another unusual thing was that there were a ton of nightclubs all in the same area of the fair.  Each one was trying to have louder music than its neighbors, with predictable results!

Want to ride a bull?  This guy looks pretty tame.

Flowers for sale!  This guy is giving the soft sell.

When we got back to town on Saturday Odilia had finished a wedding cake and she and Aristides were off to a wedding.  The wedding party forgot to pick up the cake, so she had to deliver it herself.

Odilia delivering her masterpiece

We also found out that Odilia is quite a talented woman.  She played her accordion for us.  It looks like it could be a collectors item, but it still works fine.

Odilia is pretty good with her accordion!

Back in town, we went to the swimming hole to cool off and witnessed two brothers trying to knock each other off the log.  Click here for the video.  They have really good balance! They stayed on a lot longer than we thought they would.

Since our town is in a forest preserve, no one is allowed to sell wood to outsiders, but you can cut it to use for your own house or barn.  They don't have enough business to support a sawmill, so the locals cut planks with chain saws.  Some of them are really good at it!

Cutting planks with a chain saw!

Food in season

Avocado season is here!  They are selling at 3 for a dollar, but a lot of people are giving them away, especially students who want a good grade!  We also can't wait for mango season to start.  The trees are full of green ones.  When they come in, one big tree can produce over 500 mangoes, and we are told that you can't buy them because everyone gives them away.  They all ripen in a few weeks, and it's hard to keep up!

Another popular fruit comes from the cashew tree.  You can eat the fruit or make a smoothie with it.  The strange thing is that the nut is attached to the top of the fruit.  It's a lot of work to get the nuts out, though.  There is an inner and outer shell with a liquid in between that is very irritating to skin, so you have to be careful and wear gloves when you get the nuts out of the shell.  After watching Odilia work quite a long time for just a few nuts I have decided to just buy the finished product at the store.

Ants!

On one of our hikes we came across an ant highway.  You can't really see the ants in this picture, but you can see the fragments of leaves that they have chewed off and are carrying away.  The leaf fragments are about four times the size of the ants.  Sometimes they make anthills a couple of feet high and several feet wide.  Their pathways are often four inches wide.

Here is one of our neighbors, Diosa, with her worm farm which she uses as an example to show people how to raise worms.  She is very active in environmental work.  At the far end are the veggie scraps she feeds them.  They create great compost!

That's it for now.  We will fade into the sunset until next week...