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