Machete!

Steve

I finally decided to get a machete of my own.  Every household here in the mountains has not only a machete, but an assortment of machetes, so I was seriously lacking without one.  I opted for a used machete, which was already honed to razor sharpness.  When you buy a new one, there is no cutting edge at all, to avoid accidents in shipping and handling.  You have to first use an electric grinder, then finish off with a file, which gets the edge what I consider very sharp.  The locals, though, will use a wet stone to get an even finer edge on the machete.  When you are working in the fields all day clearing brush, every bit of sharpness matters! 

Of course, once you have a machete, you want to find as many ways as possible to use it.  I went into the woods and cut some poles to hold up a new clothesline.  Then I cut some thin fenceposts for the new garden.  We have to put up a fence of plastic netting around the garden to keep the chickens and dogs out.  

Of course, I had to clear the garden plot of weeds before planting.  Many people in the US use a hoe or similar tool to cut the weeds.  In Panama we use machetes.  In order to cut properly, the machete blade has to be parallel to the ground, which means your hand has to be at ground level.  Most people here stand up, bending at the waist so that their back is horizontal.  This is pretty hard on the back, so I prefer to swing the machete on one knee and keep my back more vertical

Looking for another way to use the machete, I headed indoors.  As it happened, termites had invaded our bedroom.  They look for the tiniest crevice in the brick walls.  Once they find it, they come in and head upwards, hoping to find wood.  They build a small earthen tunnel to protect themselves as they head up the wall.  Luckily we found these guys after they had only traveled a foot or so.  The machete was the perfect tool to scrape their little tunnel off the wall.  Termites will eat anything made of cellulose, which includes paper and cotton, so you really want to keep these guys out of your house.  One Peace Corps volunteer that I know moved into a house which had been empty for over a year and had an established termite population.  He eventually got rid of them, but in the meantime they caused him quite a few problems.  Once he came back from a few days out of town and found that they had devoured half of the books on his shelf, starting and one end and working their way towards the other.  He got home just as they were starting in on the book where he kept his money hidden!  Another time he took off his blue jeans and left them on the floor as he slept.  In the morning he saw that the termites had eaten through the bottom layer of denim and were starting in on the top layer.

Take that, termites!

In the mountain preserve there are many petroglyphs, rocks which were covered with designs by the pre-Columbian tribes of indigenous people.  They made a thick paste to cover the rocks, and then made their drawings before it hardened.  These drawings have lasted for several centuries, and many people come to Chepo to see them.  

The chalk outlines make the drawings stand out better

There is another petroglyph that is not too far off the beaten path, but without a trail to access it.  Since one of my projects here is to promote eco-tourism, I thought a trail to this petroglyph would be a good idea.  It also gave me another excuse to swing the machete in earnest as I cleared a path through the jungle to get there.  This rock is overgrown with moss because it is in the deep woods and doesn't get sun.  The previous picture showed a rock which gets full sunlight.

One chunk of the rock's coating has fallen off in the center

Heather

I have just finished teaching an English class to the nocturna, or night school. It actually meets in the afternoon.  This is a group of high school students (grades 10-12) who elected to stay in the Chepo community to complete their high school education.  Most students go to one of the neighboring cities to continue their education.  They stay with family or stay in a dorm which is provided by the government.  My point here is that the group is less motivated and will probably spend the rest of their lives here.  The males will end up doing manual labor and females will become housewives.  Some have started families already.  They are nice kids and we had fun in class.  They had not  experienced such a hands on method of learning.  At least it was interesting for them!

The nocturna class

Once again, we end with a view from Chepo.  This one is from the hill behind our house, looking towards the east one morning.  You can see the ocean on the far right on the horizon, about 35 miles away.  The mountains on the far left horizon are part of the continental divide, the backbone that runs the length of Panama.  Those mountains are from 60 to 90 miles away.  This was an unusually clear morning.  We usually don't see that far.

We hope you will come to visit and see these views for yourself!

Steve and Heather

  

Fiesta!

This past weekend we went to the town of Ocú to see the Festival of Manito.  This festival is one of the country’s best folkloric events.  It was established to maintain the region’s traditional culture.  They had a parade, many dancing troupes, and a fair where many artisans sold their wares.

Our province is famous for the polleras, outfits worn by women at folkloric events.  The polleras are almost entirely handmade, and consist of two basic pieces – a blouse resting on the shoulder tops and a long skirt divided into two fully gathered tiers.  Here are some pictures of the polleras in the parade.

Girl with pollera and typical peasant food

Fellow Peace Corps volunteer Emily is part of the parade

There were also floats drawn by oxen

getting ready for the parade

These cloths are called molas and are entirely handmade.  They are made by the indigenous people in Panama.

Of course there was lots of food on sale.  This person is selling marañon chino from his pickup truck.  There is no English translation of this fruit that we know of.

You crack open the skin with your teeth to get to the fruit inside

The night before the parade there was dancing at the fairgrounds.  Click here to see a 1 minute video of the various groups of different ages dancing in their polleras.

There was also recently a folkloric day in our school.  Unfortunately we missed it because of Peace Corps training, but we did see the pictures.

Chepo students in their polleras

These students are in a contest to see who can salomar the loudest.  A salomar is a shout that people in the mountains give for various reasons - as a greeting, to communicate over long distances, but also just for fun, especially after a few drinks.  These kids are learning young.

Primary school students

Secondary school students

Steve’s surprise birthday party

As Steve’s birthday was on a Saturday and most teachers are out of town on the weekends, it was decided to have a surprise party for him the following Wednesday.  Heather left school early with a couple of other teachers to prepare the food.  Two other teachers detained Steve at school with various pretexts.  The party was a complete surprise!

Note the American flag candles!

At the party they sang a tamborito, which is a traditional Panamanian song where one person sings and the others chime in on choruses.  It is always accompanied by drums (tambor).

Damaris sings the tamborito

Also last week Steve and Ormelis (Heather’s co-teacher) took the boarding students out for a trip to a local pond on the property of our host family, and later to the town swimming hole.  The students are usually cooped up in the boarding facility at school from the time the school ends at 1pm for the rest of the day.  They were delighted to get out for a few hours.  It rained on us, but they didn’t mind as they were already wet from swimming.  When we went to the swimming hole there was another heavy rain, but their spirits weren’t dampened in the least.   They still had enough energy to race each other up the steep hill to get home.  Notice that the kids do not use bathing suits.  They just swim in their clothes.

Who's the bald guy hanging from the log?

We end with a picture of the local transportation passing by our house.  There are five adults riding on the back bumper, which is specially made to support them.  This truck has three people riding in front and at least twelve people in back (probably more) in addition to those on the back bumper.  No wonder it is riding a bit low in the back!  Even with the extra heavy duty suspension that the truck has, it has to slow way down for bumps.  Of course bumper riding is illegal, but these guys will all get off before they pass the new police station at the other end of town. 

One more picture of the countryside - this is from our morning walk.

Birthday Excursion

For Steve’s birthday we decided to hike up El Ñuco, the second highest mountain in our area.  It gives great views – on a clear day you can see the Pacific ocean in two directions – east and west – all the way across the Azuero peninsula.  On this occasion we were able to see west to the Pacific, but not east.

They farm the steepest slopes here

This photo below shows the location of our town, which follows the line just below the trees in the distance.  The town stretches for a mile and a half.  The reason our town is linear is that it follows the crest of a ridge, which you can't really see from this angle.  Above the tree line is the forest preserve, below is farmland.  The highest point in our province (3200 ft) is in the center of the picture. You can just see the Pacific in the haze at the right of the picture.  We live just to the left of the center of the line which divides trees from farmland.  You can see on the right that the farmland reaches up very high, almost to the mountaintops.  The national environmental agency is trying to reforest that land, but it means moving the farmers off the land.  Some of the remote villages there lack electricity or roads (travel is by foot or horse), and the population of those towns is shrinking, which makes the task a little easier.  We have students in our school from several of those towns.

At the top of the mountain was a radio station with an antenna tower next to a small building which houses the transmitter.  Climbing the tower gave a great view, and also let us get onto the roof of the building.

Ormelis climbing the antenna

Ormelis is the English teacher with whom Heather works in the secondary school.  One of Ormelis' former students, Chichi, also went with us.

Heather, Chichi, Ormelis, Steve on the roof

The next day we hiked to the nearby town of El Toro.  It was not a long hike, but also had nice views of the countryside.  This photo shows our route for the day.  Our hike follows the ridge and ends up just short of the last clump of pine trees on the left end of the ridge.  These clumps of pines are the result of reforestation about 30 years ago.  Pines grow very well in our red clay soil (other crops don't!).  The land you see is all in the forest preserve, but was deforested by farmers years ago when the rules were not enforced. 

Below you can see where they quarry the stones and gravel for the repaving of the road through our town.  They started the repaving process in early May, and hope to finish in a month or so.

Here you get a better look of what used to be forest, but now is farmland.  The light yellowish green is where rice is planted.  This is all in the forest preserve.  The high point of our province is at the top of the picture.

The view in the other direction

We end with some random pictures:

Why do dogs choose these places to lie down?

This hammock is made from one big piece of bark from a balsa tree. 

Here are a brother and sister who live next door.  We are lucky to have really nice kids in our neighborhood.

Jair and Myelis on our porch

We fade into the sunset for another week….

Peace Corps Training

For the past two weeks we have been doing in-service training with the Peace Corps.  They shortened the pre-service training, and moved some of it to July.  After four months in our site, we know more about our community and which projects will be most suitable to their needs, so the training can be more specifically tailored to those projects. 

We started out together for the first three nights. The environmental group then moved to the National Institute of Agriculture for some hands-on training.  Steve and his group learned about reforestation, mixing organic fertilizer, organic gardens, composting using worms, terracing, recycling, and building eco-friendly stoves.  There were presentations from current Peace Corps volunteers who are carrying out successful projects in their communities.  All in all, it was a very valuable experience, and Steve is ready to carry out more projects in our community.

One of the highlights of Steve’s time was the construction of eco-friendly stoves.  Most people in the rural areas cook their food over an open fire and support the cooking pot on three rocks.  We learned how to make bricks out of mud and make them into a stove.

Here we are mixing the clay soil with water.  The only efficient way of mixing is the old fashioned barefoot way.  Later we added some dry, powdered horse manure for insulation and for strength.  You don’t want the bricks of your stove to conduct the heat away from the food.

We then made the mud into bricks using simple wooden molds.  There are five different sizes of bricks for this stove.

Here is a picture of the mass production of mud bricks in the town of a Peace Corps volunteer in March.  They made enough bricks for more than twenty stoves during a three day period.

Later that day we assembled a stove using bricks which had been made a few days earlier.

The mortar is mud, manure and ashes 

The final product with the woman who will use it

On our return to our town, we found that there are many people who are interested in learning how to make stoves for their houses.  The materials are free, and the stove uses a lot less fuel and gives off a lot less smoke.  It also shields the cook from the heat, which is important in our climate.

In our training we also saw some examples of recycled material being made into items which can be sold.  Here you can see a bag made of old plastic bags which have been cut into strips and then crocheted to make the bag.

This takes a long time to do!

Here is a woman’s handbag made of food wrappers.

Heather and the Teaching English group stayed in a conference center for the entire two weeks.  She learned lots of useful information on making English teaching more communicative in Panamanian classrooms.  Fortunately the conference center was only a twenty minute walk from the beach, so that Heather was able to swim after the daily eight hour sessions were over.  They did give us the weekend off in between the two weeks, so that we were able to go to Panama City and spend a night in the old part of the city. 

Heather hung out with one of the presenters, who was her age.

Heather and Allegra

When we finished our two weeks of training, we headed to a beach with most of the Teaching English group.  We had a relaxing time swimming in the ocean and walking on the beach.  Here is a group of us in the waves.

  

Many of our group camped in tents on the beach.  Unfortunately there was a full moon that night and the tide was extraordinarily high.  At 4 am the tenters had to move their tents back further and further as the water rose.  Eventually the water reached the fence at the back of the beach and they were out of luck.  Fortunately we were in a cabaña for the night.

High tide!

Organic gardening at the Chepo school

Every two weeks a government agency comes to the Chepo school to train local people how to do organic gardening.  Steve has been taking part in the training, and will be starting an organic garden next to our house very soon.

Organic gardening lessons

Party time!

In July we had a birthday party at our house for Heather’s counterpart Ormelis.  The front porch was an ideal spot to relax and even dance to some típico music.

That's it for now.