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Reviving a Criminally Neglected Blog

Happy New Year from Bahía Ballena!!!

My one new year’s resolution (hate them as I do) is to keep a better travel blog. Life in Peace Corps can tend to get so hectic and busy that literally every second of your time spent at a computer (which is only a couple of hours a week TOPS) is spent doing administrative paper work and responding to emails. However with the revival of my computer – dead to me since month two of my service but miraculously resurrected after my two-week holiday hiatus in the United States – I am able to write when motivation strikes rather than feeling forced to cram in a few witty remarks at the internet café while the girl next to me cranks (and sings along with) Bachata and Tipico music over loud speakers, and the guy on the other side of me watches porno in a not so discrete manner with a more than creepy look on his face (yes this is completely normal at a Panamanian internet café).

Anyways…enough of that. I’ll try to sum up my experience - including the highlights and lowlights - of the 120 sum odd days it’s been since I last put fingers to keyboard.

You say Ngöbe I say Ngäbe

My time has been spent living amongst a community of 600 indigenous Ngöbe. A group of people traditionally isolated in family compounds in a hunter-gatherer society. Since the Spanish came to Panama in the 16^th century, the Ngöbe have been continually marginalized and their bloodlines and culture have largely died off. They survive today, not as hunter-gatherers, but as subsistent farmers…due largely to previous over-hunting and rapid depletion of surrounding animal populations. Whatever knowledge the culture once possessed with regard to farming has since died off do to urbanization of surrounding areas and the easy access to cheap consumer goods. However, this life produces an unsustainable reliance on the nearby urban economy and leads them further and further away from sustainable land harvesting practices.

The majority of the folks in my community speak a traditional dialect called Ngöbere as their first language and have only learned Spanish through government-funded education programs, and thus have a relatively narrow vocabulary and only a tenuous grasp of grammar and conjugation. Ngöbere sounds, as my mother so accurately described after hearing me say a few phrases, like a combination between French and Chinese. In other words…little if any similarity to Spanish.

Progressing forward, the issue of language is somewhat of a catch-22 for them. The majority of my community members realize that Ngöbere is not spoken by the outside world (although some have asked me if it’s spoken in the United States which leads to an interesting conversation). They understand that in order to assimilate they need to communicate with the dominant Hispanic culture in Panamá. Without this assimilation they remain isolated from the resources possessed by said culture. HOWEVER, the Ngöbe in Bahía Ballena are understandably frightened of losing their language and the small pieces of culture that they have left (i.e. artisanal work, traditional dress). So any move towards Hispanic culture is a move towards potential prosperity, but a move away from all that makes them unique.

This catch-22 is represented perfectly in their interactions with me. They want to learn from me, and converse with me…but they often only want to do it in Ngöbere. Even my relatively fluent Spanish is a disappointment.

This presents the most overarching of the many difficult cultural challenges I’ve had to try and overcome because try as I may Ngöbere largely remains a mystery to me!

While attempting not to duplicate information noted in previously blog entries, here are some other examples of Ngöbe culture that make it unique: 

• There is no word for “Thank You” or “You’re Welcome.”
• There are no words for the days of the week, and until western culture permeated, the general consensus is that there were no real descriptors of time (i.e. days of the week, months of the year).
• The words for “love” and “pain” are the same as well as the words for “first” and “last.”
• There is no concept of ownership, which leads to constant requests and sometimes demands to use what is someone else’s. There is also no real concept of value, and thus a computer would be treated with the same flippancy as a broken piece of plastic.
• It is extremely undesirable to give or receive bad news. Because of this people often either just won´t do it, or they will say the exact opposite of what is true. Example: saying that you will 100% attend a meeting that is to commence the next day, then never showing up, and when confronted about it later, admit that you had a conflict all along.
• Aside from frequent fits of laughter (often times directed at me), the Ngöbe do not outwardly express emotions. Even if they are presented with extremely good or extremely bad information the usual reaction is a blank stare. Thus when they interact with someone such as myself, with a number of different facial expressions, they often laugh hysterically. 

Standard Ngobe picture - zero facial expression & hands firmly at side

• Traditional Food: boiled bananas and plantains, peach-palm (which tastes like pumpkin only so dry that you WILL choke on it if you do not have an accompanying drink), root vegetables that all taste identically like unseasoned potatoes but all have different names, and white rice – nothing with taste and very little source of protein outside of the occasional piece of (completely plain) grilled chicken.
• The Ngöbe put even the most prolific of teeny-bopper gossip-queens to shame, engaging in what is known as “bochinche.” Bochinche is gossip that is often treated as complete truth, no matter how ridiculous. Example: “Did you hear that Pedro turns into a wolf at night? It’s true! Evanglina told me yesterday that she saw him, and he was eating chickens." 
• The one exception to the lack of emotional expression is when there is a death. The grieving process consists of staying up all night drinking Cacao (chocolate water), crying, and recounting stories of the recently deceased.

Every day I learn something new, and am either baffled or impressed by the very unique nature of the Ngöbe in Bahía Ballena.

Highlights and Lowlights of my First 6 Months:

Highlight: my community analysis. After 3 months of painstakingly acquire information about the community and culture with regard to education, religion, politics, health, economics, organizations, and family, I delivered a 3-hour presentation to about 40 members of the community in Spanish. I was helped with presentations by a few community men and women. The highest of highlights was seeing a few women (who traditionally are seen and not heard in public) overcome a tremendous amount of nerves and self-consciousness to talk about their lives in front of a room of people. A huge breakthrough.

Josefina and daughter Liska standing in front of the community presenting the Daily Activities Schedule portion of our Community Analysis

Lowlight: being present for three deaths in the community due either to dehydration or lung disease. The hardest of these being the death of an 8-year old child after contracting an intestinal parasite and failing to accurately hydrate. Hydration continues to be a challenge for many in the community – many failing to understand why they would drink water when there is coffee readily available. Lung disease is also rampant in women because of the hours they spend every day cooking over an open fire in an enclosed area filled with carcinogenic smoke.

Highlight: working with the women of the community to begin a project of raising chickens. The women of Ballena often struggle to be seen as valued members of the community, and this project gave them confidence and a sense of purpose. Whereas a previous chicken-raising project resulted in every single chicken dying within 2 weeks, this new project resulted in all 60 chickens surviving and being sold for $1.25 per pound…a huge influx of money for the community. They have since re-invested this money in new chickens and will continue to prosper.

Lowlight: the consistent visits I get at my house by children who say they do not have any food at their house and in their desperation come to me for a handout. I am unable to comply because of the precedent this sets. If I feed one child I will have the other 400 sum-odd children at my doorstep over the coming days expecting the same treatment. The hardest thing a Peace Corps volunteer can have to do is turn away a starving child.

Highlight: seeing the president of the local farmer’s cooperative nearly KILL himself trying to secure government aid to improve farms in the community, and securing two different government donations for a total of $64,000. His name is Humberto Palacio, and he is one of a kind around these parts.

Lowlight: meeting a child named Archimaedes who is 9 years old and has never been permitted to go to school. Despite being wonderfully well-spoken in both Spanish and Ngöbere, Archimaedes can not read or write, and knows very little about the world. He is not alone either…a number of the children in Ballena, whether they attend school or not, can not read or write. This is a continuing challenge for me as I attempt to do my best to educate them during my free time away from my primary project of agricultural assistance.

Highlight: it’s always appropriate to end on a high note. The biggest highlight for me has just been walking around the community on a daily basis. The amount of affection the members of my community have shown to a stranger is very humbling. From the moment I show myself in the community, to the moment I return home I am lavished with affection from dozens of smiling children, and dozens of adults eager to talk about their lives and what we can do together. The biggest breakthrough is that conversation no longer just consists about what I can do for them, but many ask about how I am doing, and how my family is doing back in the United States. This wasn’t always the case, but the longer I’ve lived here the more I am treated like a valued member of the community. Having a family come to my door recently and give me a fish from their daily catch (one that they could no doubt use themselves), may have been the nicest moment of my time here.

What’s next?

The New Sustainable Agriculture

Because of the aforementioned acquisition of government funds, this is a very exciting time in Ballena. This community needs resources for reforestation, nurseries, and storage units for coffee beans. They need to further market and productize their coffee, learn most sustainable farm management practices, and eliminate the coffee pest (“La Broca” Coffee-Borer Beetle), that is destroying their crops farm by farm at a rampant and exponentially increasing pace without using dangerous pesticides.

Receiving this money signifies that we will now be able to being forming a coalition to fulfill these needs and achieve these goals. This also means that for the next year I may be the busiest man in Bahía Ballena, likely giving trainings on a weekly basis.

GAD Camp

Every year, Peace Corps conducts a seminar for a few chosen youths (ages 12-18) in the various communities where volunteers live. In addition to sending two exceptional youth from Ballena, I have volunteered my services to help facilitate this seminar, which touches on many educational topics that the youths would never hope to learn about in their everyday lives (i.e. Sexual Education, How to Use a Computer, Personal Health and Nutrition, How to Set Life Goals, etc). The camp takes place over 3 days at the beginning of February.

Youth Class and Sports Program

My mother and a very close friend of hers did an extremely kind and admirable thing and took it upon themselves to donate some Spanish language books to the community ofBallena. The children of Ballena are currently out of school on their summer break (mid-December through mid-March), and because of this they are left to either work in the farms with their families or find ways to occupy themselves. Whereas summer break is a cause for celebration in the developed world, there are few if any activities for the youth of Ballena, and thus they spend most of their time restless and unstimulated. Thanks to these books, I can now begin a library out of my house. Every evening since returning from the states earlier this week my porch has been filled with eager minds ready to be read to. In the coming weeks I hope to expand on this reading program with a series of activities and a system that will reward consistent participants. To be continued! 

I have also begun organizing a sports camp that convenes pretty much daily and consists of baseball (played with a whiffle bat), soccer, and (slowly but surely) American Football (the game "500" mostly). We also have regular Yoga and P90x sessions on my porch.

P90x Core Synergistics on my porch....a favorite activity no doubt

A Brief Thank You

I want to take a minute to thank the people who have verbally supported me during my time here and continually reminded me why I initially chose to be here. Also I want to thank those of you who took the time to ask me questions about my experience during my recent R&R in the States. The more you show interest, the more it makes me feel as though what I am doing is relevant. Sometimes it can feel as though development work is simply a never-ending series of frustrations, but when others show unsolicited interest in the goals of this unorthodox life I abruptly chose to pursue in my late-20s it truly rejuvenates me.

So…THANK YOU! You know who you are!

Segundo Mes

I´m currently on medical leave from my site after contracting a particularly nasty stomach parasite called Giardia - acquired from sketchy drinking water - which means 2 things:

1) I´m physically miserable and doped up on Central American Manufactured Antibiotics
2) I have a lot of time on my hands to do nothing but mess around on the internet

Cue...BLOG ENTRY!!!!


Moving Right Along
Month two in Bahia Ballena has been an exercise in patience. After working daily to develop what ended up being a very good relationship with my initial host family I was moved to a new home with an entirely new cadre of Ngobes (as is stipulated by Peace Corps regulations - equal time spent with 3 different host families in your first 3 months at site). Interactions returned to the awkward silences and lack of eye contact that I had struggled to overcome with my family #1. The exception, as always, was the children.

Rather than general avoidance, which is what I experienced initially with the adults in family #2, I was always greeted with curious stares and sheepish smiles from Riquel, Bolo, and Norida - the three young kids in the house. Because Ngobe children do not traditionally receive much affection or positive attention from their parents and caretakers, any acknowledgement I give the kids of Ballena functions as an intoxicant. A few minutes spent kicking a makeshift soccer ball, wrestling, or drawing pictures and they´re completely enamored.

Just as with my first family, I was able to interact with the kids, and slowly break down the barriers of social pensivity held up by the rest of the family. At first I`m just a rather intimidating Gringo who is - for reasons they don`t quite understand - living in their home, but after seeing me unabashedly making a fool of myself while amusing the 3-10 year old demographic, they realize that my motives for being there are anything but malicious.

Day-in and day-out the most trying obstacle I face is gaining trust. This is often a draining activity, consistently requiring high energy levels, very thick skin, and unwavering patience. If I were to simply sit back and wait for my community to come to me with their needs, it is distinctly possible that I would never exchange a word with anyone. This is partially due to a Ngobe culture which seems to revolve around a self-conscious "don´t speak unless spoken to" philosophy of social conduct, and partially a natural human reaction to the newly presented "outsider".  The good news is that, all it typically takes is one "moment" for the people of Ballena to accept you into their good graces. It could be a joke that successfully translates...offering to carry a bag of recently harvested plaintains too heavy for your 13-year old neighbor...or what has become my favorite way to break down walls - my pictures.

The best advice I got prior to the start of my service was to create an album of family photos to show everyone in my community. I took heed, and brought this album with me to Ballena, and after showing pictures of my mother, father, brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, nephews, friends, and of my home city, I become a person to them. It´s amazing to me how much people´s attitudes in Ballena change towards me once they´ve seen my photo album. The veil of mystery is lifted and we can go about the business of working towards common goals together.

The Daily Pendulum
One of the primary reasons I came into Peace Corps was because I dreaded the droning monotony of daily routine in the states...and I think for better or worse I´ve gotten exactly what I wished for. Developing any semblance of daily consistency is a losing battle. Especially when living with host families. You may be presented with a lovely satiating bowl of white rice with a fried egg on top and grilled onions for dinner one evening (the equivalent of a high-end filet mignon around these here parts), and then you may see nothing more than dry bread and boiled bananas for the next three days. You may sleep like a baby one night (albeit in a hammock or on a wood floor), and then be awakened by a habitually barking dog, squawking chicken at a different time every night for a week (or worse by a curious and potentially dangerous insect or group of insects).
My role as a volunteer changes on an hourly basis. While I´m still determining the priority of needs in my community, I have to stay extremely flexible with what is asked of me on a daily basis. It may be an English lesson or six; it could be a request to give a training on raising chickens - when I am the furthest thing from Colonel Sanders; it could be a request to help carry 100-pound wooden logs over and through a 2-mile stretch of jungle covered hills. Because requests for my participation in community activities can be few and far between I have to jump at every opportunity I get, usually with very little advance warning.

The only way to learn from my community seems to be through active participation and observation. Any formal surveys or questioning lead to apprehensive and vague one-word answers. And as my Peace Corps predecessor advised me - if you want the correct answer to a question about the community you must ask at least 5 people and then you may be able to determine a ballpark consensus. A formal Q&A usually goes something like this:

Me: So how many community organizations are there in Ballena?
Community Member: A lot
Me: So like 5?
Community Member: Yeaaaahhhh...5 (*smiles and nods enthusiastically)!
Me: So there are 5 different organizations in the community?
Community: Yeah...well actually it´s like 10, I think...
Me: Ok? Are you a member of any of these organizations?
Community Member: Oh, of course!
Me: Really? That´s great! Which groups are you a part of?
Community Member: Oh, you know....(*trails off and stares into the distance*)

Pulling teeth to say the least! However, if you take a more natural approach and ask someone the right question, in just the right way, in just the right setting (i.e. asking about the history of peach palm production, while you´re drinking peach palm juice in the farm) you will have success!

Desperate Entitlement
Every day I´m faced with requests that range from frustrating to heartbreaking. Not a day goes by when I am not asked for a hand-out. Most all requests come from kids who see someone with slightly nicer things than they have and - not having a real grasp of value or ownership - simply can´t help themselves but to ask for gifts. This typically unfolds like so:

(I walk from one house to another with a beat up stainless steel water bottle in my hand)
Kid: Üli, what´s that you´re holding?
Me: It´s my water bottle.
Kid: What´s it do?
Me: It holds my water.
Kid: Ahhh. Well how much did it cost?
Me: I don´t remember.
Kid: So...I want a present...can you give it to me?
Me: I can´t.
Kid: Why? I want it.
Me: Because I only have one, and if I give you this one I won´t have one...not to mention I would have 20 more kids asking me for presents tomorrow after you showed your new water bottle to the entire town.
Kid: But...I want it?

If you´re not careful, you can get sucked into a vortex of circulur logic. In these situations it´s actually best to be a little bit mean. The question that will often blow their mind is "Why do you think you deserve it?" When you receive a baffled and blank stare in reply, you begin to realize that these requests for handouts aren´t a rude lack of manners, it´s simply that a deficit in material posessions causes a warped attitude of desperation and entitlement. It seems the perception of ownership becomes so jaded that these little ones often don´t know why they´re asking for a handout, just that they´ve developed an painful craving for what they don´t have. This craving becomes so overpowerful that the desperation is eventually completely transparent and manifests itself in a form of begging. The older the members of my community get, the less they seem to act on their desperation...although the ones who retain vanity passed the age when it´s considered natural still request handouts.

The most baffling thing to me is that any new possession is usually destroyed and completely useless within approximately 1-2 weeks. New soccer balls? Deflated with the patching ripped off after a few days. New coloring books? All pages ripped out and spine deliberately torn within a week. This seemed so counter-intuitive to me at first, but I´ve begun to attribute it to a simply lack of understanding for anything of value. The natural reaction for the children of Ballena, after something of value has been destroyed, is to simply run up to me and ask for a new one. No grieving of the old item...just a need to fill the void once again.

I avoid "gifting" anything because it is simply unsustainable. I may be able to provide the people of Ballena with the money to buy a new hammer or a new baseball glove, but one day I´m going to leave, and they´ll be right back where they started, without a sugar daddy, most likely having learned nothing. But then there are some handout requests - paternalism aside - that are literally impossible to fulfill. The most heartbreaking of these was when a 15-year old named Joelle asked if I would trade some of my skin with him (being that I´m white). He let out a slight smile afterward, but the request was only partially in jest. When I asked why he wanted to trade skin with me, he responded that if he were white he would be able to "leave Bahia Ballena and go to school." He later explained to me that his parents were not planning on paying the extra $50 or so to send him to high school next year. For a family that subsists on around $500 per year, this is simply too much to fork over for their son to have a basic education. Especially when he is one of 8 kids.

It´s time like this when I remember that as hard as it has been adjusting to living in abject poverty, this is still ultimately a temporary experience for me. This is a job for me...a tough one...but ultimately just a job. For the people of Ballena this is life. In a little less than 2 years, I´ll leave and go back to my relatively comfortable life in the states. That´s why when I´m forced to pick ants off my face at 3am, or eat nothing but bread and boiled bananas for three days straight, I have tried to use it as an opportunity to harvest empathy rather than apathy. Not exercising patience in every activity is nothing more than an affront to the 15-year old kid who has to spend the rest of his life clawing and scratching for an education because he lost the cosmic lottery.

With each obstacle I remember that inconveniences and uncomfortable circumstances will  come and go for me during my time here, but in the end this isn´t a job for the people of Ballena...it´s life. It´s a test of patience that I´m faced with at this point in my service. Days turn to weeks with a velocity that is hard to define and challenges present themselves with wavering intensity, and in a form unique with each appearance. I can do nothing other than continually brush the dirt from my shoulders and try to help them as best I can.

Tiko Üli

A triumphant day of fishing on the Carribean

This will be the second time I´ve erased and re-written this entry. Knowing how to sum up an experience like I´ve had during the past 40 odd days (the good and the bad) has been much harder than anticipated! The natural inclination is to take a very serrrrrious tone. The very grandiose "As I cross the threshold into the great unknown...." nonsense can be hard to avoid. The truth is that I´ve very rarely had the chance to even contemplate the varying gravity in my daily activities...I´m usually just trying not to fall off the edge of a cliff or accidentally call someone an "asshole" while speaking a language that is not my own.

For the past month and change, I´ve been living in the community of Bahia Ballena (Whale Bay in English - because prior to the accelerated change in climate over the past 30 years it was a particularly phenomenal spot for wales to congregate). The community is located in the Bocas del Toro region roughly a 30 minute boat ride from the frontier town of Chiriqui Grande. The residents are of the Ngobe Indigenous persuasion and have lived in the area for hundreds of years, however they´ve only recently forming communities around government installed school districts during the past 40-50 years. They´ve historically been subsistent fisherman and fruit tree farmers, but due to an oil spill that took place in 2007, they began to delve more deeply into the world of Coffee production in order to survive. Now, a very modest coffee production provides a very large chunk of the community´s yearly income. So for the next two years I will be primarily working with the coffe farmers - using my Peace Corps training to help them increase production and quality.

I follow-up a phenomenal volunteer, who paved the way wonderfully for my Ag work by teaching business skills and organizing the community´s coffee cooperative into a (much more) well-oiled machine. The only major threat that stands in the way of my community´s success is a beetle infestation in the coffee farms with the power to wipeout entire acres in a few months. This beetle, referred to as La Broca, is extremely resilient, and as of yet there is no silver bullet solution to its eradication. Enter: me! Trial by fire to say the least.

Traditionally speaking, the first three months of a volunteer´s service are the hardest. The primary reason for this is that obtaining knowldege about the community is very difficult to do. You not only have to learn the language (which in my case is Spanish mixed with the local Ngobe dialect and fired off with machine gun speed), but you also have to generally convince the people in your community that you don´t have ulterior motives - namely that you aren´t an American Spy or a government saboteur sent to secretly destroy their crops and kidnap their children. While that may sound ridiculous at first, the Indigenous communities in Panama have every reason to be paranoid about outsider involvement. They´ve experienced a history of persecution and marginalization from their local government as well as outside influences - namely The United Fruit Company.

All things considered, my early interactions with my community seem to indicate that I´ve lucked out in my placement. I´ve been welcomed with open-arms by nearly everyone I´ve come in contact with in the community. Although they tend to be pensive around the random gringo at first, once they realize I´m pretty normal, they ease up. There are the occasional misunderstandings and for me there is a general overriding mental exhaustion at the end of every day that comes with trying to communicate in three languages, but all in all the adjustment has been about as smooth as could be expected.

Since transitioning to Ballena, I´ve continued living with host families and paying a small rent to help with cost of living expenses. The challenges of living with a host family continue to be primarily space-oriented. Whereas my training community host family consisted of seven people living in a confined space, most Ngobe families easily cross into double-digit family members living in the same stilted-thatched roof hut. Another issue thrown into the mix since entering my site (which is more imporverished than my training community) has been around food. Because my community lives in extreme poverty, there is often little more than rice and bananas to go around. While many in the community fish as well, they tend to sell the majority of their catch, only saving the bare minimum for consumption. While my monthly monetary contribution has helped a bit, it is still difficult for anyone to fill their stomach. One of my primary goals during the next two years will be to address the issue of nutrition and better utilizing sustainable practices to help produce a higher quantity and more widely varying fruit & vegetable production. During my time in Ballena, the only fruit or vegetable I´ve consumed while in site is Peach-Palm which tastes like a cross between pumpkin and a lump of coal. The effect it has on one´s stomach is more similar to the latter.

The problem of malnutrition & dehydration is so serious that there is an everpresent problem of infant mortality. My second week on site I was reminded of this when a 1-month old living next door to my host family became sick and passed away in the span of 24 hours. Needless to say this scene was nothing short of heartbreaking, with female family members weeping, and male family members (ever machismo) staring at the ground trying their hardest to hold it together. As my own eyes welled up, I had to quickly slide my sunglasses down and leave the area to compose myself. Unfortunately this scene is an all too common one in Ballena.

It is common for PC Volunteers to be given nicknames in their communities because often times anglosized names are difficult for the Ngobe to pronounce. Immediately upon arriving in Ballena, my "community guide" Humberto christened me  Üli. Now, whenever I walk through the town I am serenaded with shouts of " ÜLI!!!!!!!!!!!" from every kid within eyesight. Their greetings are often accompanied by giant grins and frantic waving, which only subsides when I turn and wave as well. This never gets old.

While I´m always very tempted to take pictures of the people and the scenes that surround me daily, any appearance of my camera causes a hysteria on par with Beatlemania circa 1964. Many of my fellow community members have never owned a single picture of themselves, and the appearance of a camera in Ballena is about as rare as the gringo that holds it. Because of this the sum total of the pictures I´ve taken during the last month can be counted on one hand. I am still trying and figure the best way to manage this situation.

While there is a lot of downtime spent studying in a hammock, more days than not, I work with my fellow community members in the finca. My work primarily consists of "choppeando," which in other words is clearing an area of brush so that it can be used for planting new crops. Despite being more experienced with a machete than the average gringo (thanks to my time working in Ecuador), this is a constantly pride swallowing experience. Every Ngobe farmer operating a machete, conjures up images of a Samurai slicing and dicing through enemies without breaking a sweat. When I attack brush on the other hand I look more like a bulldog trying to hump a house cat. This accomplishes two things...many minor injuries for me, and much needed comic-relief for my Ngobe brothers who never get tired of enjoying my bumbling misfortunes and regaling the rest of the community with "what  Üli did in the finca today." However, I tend to improve my technique with each day, mostly because I´m determined to stop making a fool out of myself.

In the finca (from left to right) Chimira, Bonilla, Humberto, and Manuel

Because the soil quality is comparable to asphalt near the community, getting to the farms with soil fertile enough to sow requires an (minumum) hour long hike into the hills. Some days, this hike is the hardest part of my day. Straight uphill, at times without a trail, in 90 degree heat. What´s even more difficult is hiking BACK at the end of the day. For me at least, it is much more difficult going straight downhill on balance beam thin trails, with tumbling dropoffs on each side, that are steeped in mud that can be as slick as ice, while in other places taking on an ankle-deep quicksand quality. To add an extra degree of difficulty, you usually have your hands full carrying something that weighs upwards of 100 pounds (i.e. palm-thatch for a roof, a giant log, or a sack full of coffee cherries). I often return battered and cut, with my boots filled to the ankle in sweat. I then bathe in a stream after nursing any open wounds with alcohol to prevent infection - depending on the size and depth of the wound this can be a blindingly painful exercise...pleasing only to the most hardcore of masochists.

The absolute best days are when I get to go fishing. Because fishing poles are a luxury around these parts, we use a fishing line attached to the end of an empty plastic bottle. The line does have a leader and a hook, and we generally use sardines as bait. During my first experience with this method of fishing I managed to catch seven fish (which were promptly used to feed my entire host family), including a 20-inch mackarel (pictured above).

At the end of the day, I collapse into a hammock. My mind either becomes absorbed in whatever book I´m currently reading. When unoccupied my thoughts tend to wander to the past and my home in Chicago, or to the future and the goals I hope to accomplish in the next two years. I also think a great deal about my fellow volunteers and wonder how their time in site is evolving.

This entire experience is still very difficult to define and comprehend, and as clichéd as it sounds, the only way to attack it is one day at a time. What will my impact be? When are things going to speed up? Will I ever speak the local language without draining myself mentally? Asking these questions are important, but I´ve also found them to be dangerous. If I get too wrapped up in how foreign, isolated, and generally enormous the two years of Peace Corps service can be, I can fall into a downward spiral of anxiety. I´ve found it´s best to try and live in the moment and not bite off the entire chunk of responsibility at once...of course this is always easier said than done. There are little moments with my community that make this experience worthwhile every single day, and we´re only beginning our time together...

Alexi holding his best catch after our day out fishing

Into the Great Green Yonder

Up to this point I have been absolutely woeful about maintaining this blog. Partially because of computer difficulties, and partially because the life of a Peace Corps trainee is regimented to the point where you never really have more than an hour or so of free time. But, all that being said, I am currently sitting in a seedy internet cafe in the town of Chriqui Grande, within an hour of being picked up by boat to be taken to my site in Bahia Ballena, Bocas Del Toro, Panama, and the inspiration to connect to my social network has struck.

The past two months have been a whirlwind. Along with 20 other volunteers, I have spent my time mostly in the training community of Los Mortales - a town of about 250 people, who survive through subsistent farming and picking up odd jobs in nearby town. Despite being a rural location, it is within an hour and a half of Panama City and is thus able to obtain many of the modern amenities (ie electricity, a solid water system, and an elementary school), which are largely taken for granted in the US, but make Los Mortales relatively developed when compared to similar rural communities in Panama. I lived with a family for two months that consisted of 7 people, 5 dogs, multiple birds, and a conejo pintado (basically a large rat - which disappeared about half way through my time there. I´m pretty sure it was eaten because it is considered a delicacy).

I connected very well with my family, especially the matriarch who treated me like a son of her own. Like many housewives around the world, the backbreaking work she did on a daily basis was greatly underappreciated by her family, and thus I never missed an opportunity to tell her how much her welcoming nature meant to me. My host father was a very respectable, hardworking individual, but unfortunately impossible to understand given his country Panamanian accent, and missing front teeth. Towards the end of my time we understood each other well enough that we both agreed we would miss one another. Amongst the 5 children, it was a big difficult to connect. They were all of adolescent age, and extremely shy around me. The one exception was 11 year old Thalia who became my human shadow throughout my experience...always very curious, albeit shy.

There are dozens of anecdotal stories from Los Mortales that would be great to share, but to try to recount them in bulk after so much time has passed would be to cheapen the experience. All I will say is that the people were wonderful, addressed us at times like aliens & at times like celebrities, and all got very sad when my group left. We ate some VERY different cuisine (Iguana being the highlight...or maybe the lowlight for me), learned some very different day-today routines and costumes, but ultimately realized that despite our language barriers and lack of common ground we bridged gaps without incident and became very close in the end.

My group and I spent our days drinking from the firehose of information that is Peace Corps training. 7 hours of technical and languages classes, 5 days, a week with intensive all-day-long assignments for the weekends. The rollercoaster ride of stress brought on by an onslaught of new information and culture was at times extremely difficult, but by leaning on eachother we all managed to get through it, swimmingly and as of Thursday this past week, training commenced and we were sworn in as volunteers!

During swear-in we were lucky enough to meet the Panamanian Ambassador as well as the Panamanian first lady, and the national news even picked up the story. Without a doubt, the highlight of my first two months was being able to deliver a speech in front of the aforementioned dignataries on behalf of my group. Having to do it in Spanish was an extreme challenge, but one I very much enjoyed. Speaking in front of a room of 250 people is enough to make you pass out...and I nearly did...but the adrenalin rush that follows is nothing short of phenomenal.

So after a brief respite to gather ourselves, and our immense amount of luggage, we are all headed to our sites! For the next two years I will be working with an Indigenous Ngobe community in Bahia Ballena, along the carribean shores of the Bocas del Toro province. My first impressions of this site upon visiting it two weeks ago was that it is not short on beauty, nor is it short of obstacles to overcome. The people of Ballena subsist on fishing and harvesting robusta coffee cherries which they then sell to a buyer who distributes nationally. The problem being that their coffee farms have recently fallen victim to the deadly Coffee-Borer Beetle (known as La Broca in Spanish), an infestation so disasterous that it nearly destroyed the entire coffee industry in Costa Rica. They may have to raize their farms and start from scratch. It is my assignment almost immediately upon entering my community to help them work through this problem. Trial by fire it is!

In any event, I must be on my way, as my boat arrives in 15 minutes! I will be doing my best to update consistently every few weeks, and pictures and videos will be included in future postings. I hope every one who ends up reading this entry is doing well in their endeavors. Talk soon!

1.1 Yo Soy Mateo

Since this is my first blog entry it is entirely experimental and it very well might, maybe, probably, sort of, kind of, just suck…significantly, completely, totally, utterly, madly, e.g., i.e., etc. If you stumble upon this site, you may find me to be long-winded & uninteresting (you would be in good company). If that’s the case…well…the internet is a big place…go away. If you find my writing presents an iota of intrigue, please feel free to follow along, subscribe, and comment openly! I’ll be doing this for the next two years.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with why I’m starting this blog…well…I made a choice about a year ago to join a Non-Profit organization and spend the next two years living a more simplistic existence in the service of others. This time around, I will be participating in Panama starting in late-April, 2011. However, it should also be noted that I began traversing the path that led me here, long before that. While I recognize that attempting to derive meaning from anything other than the present moment can at times be about as useful as an ice cube to an Eskimo, I think it’s worthwhile for me to retrace the decisions, influences, and life events that brought me to this point and time in the cosmos.

 1.2 Early underachievement - mild success with my intensely underwhelming Science Fair Project…that’s a Cow Heart.

I SLEEPWALKED THROUGH THE MAJORITY OF MY ACADEMIC CAREER. I can remember vividly the first time I brought homework home at an early age…and I remember not doing it. My guess is that I spent my time watching Happy Days or Three’s Company re-runs, instead (I was a weird kid). Focus and motivation was never my strong suit, and I never saw the value in what I often flippantly dismissed as “busy work.” From birth until the day I graduated college, I made very little cognitive progress toward rectifying the age-old clichéd question of “what is it I want to do with my life?”

I thought about it constantly, but other than my pie-in-the-sky-dream of becoming the starting shooting guard for the Chicago Bulls (original I know), the mental moments of end goal aspiration were always vague (SIDE NOTE: when I topped out at 6’, with questionable ball skills, and the speed of an Emperor Penguin, I realized I had a better shot at going to space, than I did at becoming a Bull).
The question of how to motivate me, gave my wildly successful father his first grey hairs (now an impressive silver mop…”better grey than gone”), and left my very caring mother desperate for solutions. While I was oft-praised for intellect, I also heard the word “potential” (often preceded by “wasted”) so many times by the age of 13 or 14, that it began to give me a visceral, physically nauseous feeling every time I heard it’s utterance. However, despite all of the panic and rabble surrounding my future, I was always able to get by on a solid amount of common sense, scattered attempts to please my parents, and very occasional bursts of inspired effort. This mildly successful combination even got me into college (gotta love ‘Merica).

DURING THE FIVE YEARS OF HIGHER LEARNING I ENDURED, I attended three separate Universities, spent most of my time absorbing myself in friendships & relationships, and attending as many debaucherous gatherings as was humanly possible. After receiving mostly less-than-stellar grades, I was able to graduate from Miami University (Ohio) almost by default with a Bachelor’s (Arts? Science, maybe? I’ll give $1 to anyone who can tell me the difference) in Psychology. I’m still under the impression that they probably felt guilty continuing to accept my out-of-state tuition money, and ordered my immediate graduation. My most memorable experience was probably the time I went sledding down a hill in a canoe, in a blizzard, after drinking an entire bottle of Alizé (I was listening to a lot of hip-hop at the time).

Why study Psychology you ask? Well…it’s what both of my parents do (and do extremely well), and when I made the decision to pursue it at 18 years old, I was still woefully unoriginal and too timid and lazy to throw myself into anything with a minoot possibility of failure. Psychology seemed safe, and I simply had no better ideas. Not to mention that at this point, my attention span while sitting at a desk and “learning,” was tantamount to a Cocker Spaniel attempting to follow the themes of a Fellini film. All things considered, I was able to count on one-hand the amount of times I was inspired prior to graduating.

 1.3 My expression in this picture largely sums up my general attitude toward just about everything during the ages of 8-23 (and completely cracks me up)

ENTER: THE CORPORATE WORLD! For underacheiving people, such as myself, there are few options left after conning a four-year University into giving you an undergraduate degree. You are generally left to feed the corporatocracy - a faceless machine that leaves you with little idea of what it is you’re actually contributing to society - or go on starving while trying to chase whatever semblance of a dream you still have.

A burgeoning Dot-Com company was my first landing spot out of college. They had stupid Monkey commercials that were insanely (and perhaps predictably) popular as a marketing tool with the American public, and so they were hiring like crazy and took a flier on me. Entry-level sales - a glorified frat house. Good for four things:

1. A good-looking young staff straight out of college with lingering bad habits and little professional acumen…
2. A $28k a year salary, which to a 23-year-old still living at home and paying zero rent is spectacular…
3. A culture that encouraged excessive partying and often times funded it…
4. A decent opportunity for growth, despite a constantly manipulated compensation plan…
5. A staff of easily irritated middle-managers and low-level directors whose sole purpose it was to metaphorically beat you into mantra-chanting submission and convince you that you were worth nothing without the company, it’s product (which does not work), and a healthy record of hitting your sales quota with no exceptions.

The job of an entry-level sales at Dot-Com X was best summed up by my co-worker (who had to go by her middle name because Lourdes was “too difficult to understand over the phone” according to management). She said, “It doesn’t feel like we’re actually doing business, but more like we’re kids ‘playing business’.”

In this environment, I actually did surprisingly well, and managed to outlast every single member of my sales unit by perservering through an 11-month tenure. Maybe I needed the tough-love atmosphere to wake me up a little bit? That being said, I was completely miserable. Ironically, it wasn’t until I realized I was serving very little purpose in society, that I truly and deeply started to care about my purpose in society. Irony is stupid.

Towards the end of my time at Dot-Com X, I tried to apply for a new position within the company that was similar to a promotion, but ultimately a lateral move. Instead of being out by the airport, I’d be working in The Loop. These things are of the utmost importance when your 23 and struggling for status.

I ended up being hired, but was instructed to remain quiet and transistion at the end of the month. When my boss - an extremely bitter & venomous individual - somehow found out I was leaving the unit, she turned my life into Dante’s Seventh Circle. The unwarranted screaming and berating literally never stopped. When she initially found out, she flew into a tirade, but couldn’t technically fire me “for spite”, so prior to my transition she waited for me to show up 5 minutes late one day and used that as her “you can’t sue us for wrongful termination now even though we’re completely fucking you over” reasoning for letting me go. “You have five minutes to clear out your desk and then we’re calling security!!! BAHHHHHHHH!!!!”

ENTER: SLIGHTLY LESS CORPORATE, STARRY-EYED BOUTIQUE FIRM! After my experience at Dot-Com X, I went searching for a position that lacked micro-management and offered a little bit more creative & professional freedom. And hey…maybe I could even find a company that contributed positively to society rather than bottom-feeding off of marketing-related scraps? I found that company in Starry-Eyed Boutique Firm X.

They were very stiff, but professional, extremely intelligent, and they seemed like they knew what they were doing. They were promising me A LOT more money, and a position “at the top of a growing pyramid.” Ahhhh, what a visual. Unfortunately, what I was selling for them was an extremely complex consulting service, and what I gave away in micro-management, I also gave away in “give-a-shit-ism” from anyone in a position to give sales advice to a new employee.

I also found that even extremely successful young & small firms have a ridiculous amount of growing pains, and often your compensation relies directly on the piecemeal day-to-day decisions made those with their own savings invested in the company. In the process, promises that are made usually aren’t kept. Furthermore, I found out that my firm’s primary focus in “consulting” often eliminated skill-based labor positions and replaced them with technologically-advanced automated processes. Coming from a family largely made-up of blue collar workers, this was not really a practice that my liberal-brain was able to support. All that being said, I was making very respectable money, the firm was doing well, and relatively speaking, things were going better than they had been at Dot-Com X.
When the economy went to shit, ca. January of 2008, people started viewing our services as a luxury item. It didn’t make much sense for them to continue to invest in consultants and advanced IT services if they were already having to cut-back on their own internal staff. Sure, we salesmen cajoled and manipulated the truth, touting our ability to “operate within a budget,” but nobody bought it. I still remember the soul-crushing silence of the office around that time. No phones ringing, no salesman selling…just the hypnotic whir of the air conditioning unit, and 20 or so people sitting at their cubicles, struggling to stay awake. Bleehhhhh.

Shortly thereafter, our layoffs started. I had performed well enough to survive  Round #1, when about 50% of the staff was cut. However when Round #2 came through in November, the entire remaining sales team, along with a number of the technicians, were rendered obsolete. I was tossed to the street with the rest of the overhead, and I didn’t even get the crowded restaurant treatment. Eventually the company simply could not survive at all, and effectively went under.
I realized the belief I had previously held that you sacrifice a certain amount of independence and aspiration in exchange for economic security, was simply an illusion. To the unemployment line I went (actually there’s no line…it’s all done over the phone and online these days…much more convenient…and less smelly).

Recognizing that the increase in salary and the ancillary benefits that came along with it hadn’t ultimately improved my life, and realizing once and for all that I was done with coporate sales, I was once again left clueless as to what to pursue next.

But while Starry-Eyed Boutique Firm X ultimately ended in disappointment, it ultimately had a very positive effect on me. I was lucky enough to have worked with an executive who helped me greatly to realize that I was being dishonest with myself. “The problem with young salesman is that you don’t know what to do with yourself. You always want to make a change, but you never do it. You just end up doing sales because you don’t have any better ideas.” Sadly, he was exactly right. He also said “the difference between stress and panic, is having a plan.” Pearls of wisdom, I say! It took me awhile to realize it but that was exactly what I needed to hear.

DURING THE 4-5 YEARS THAT HAD PRECEDED MY FIRING from Starry-Eyed Boutique X, I had taken up an independent interest in the increasingly fiery rhetoric surrounding the supposed “Global Climate Crisis.” I read every environmental story published by Greenpeace or the New York Times, and silently seethed that there was seemingly more ignorance on the topic than the world could overcome in the short timeframe there was to take action. How could there be an argument about such elementary science? How could the public not care more about the perpetuation of the species? Should we care?

I had been lucky enough to be exposed to nature by my parents during our summer vacations, at a very young age, and the scientific evidence supporting the claims of an ongoing and increasingly dangerous climate shift not only seemed readily apparent, but also quite shocking.  But I had no degree in Environmental or Political Science, so I once again felt the need to succumb to my self-assigned worthlessness, and go back to the Want-Ads.

Despite my lack of professional ability in environmental matters, I kept wondering about how it was possible for a peon like me to break into this field. During a very serendipitous conversation with my younger brother, it was suggested that I consider volunteering. I had “always wanted to do something like that” (count how many times you hear this in your life…you’ll be astonished). To my detriment, I had always stopped short of cliff rather than taking the leap of faith. I harkened back to my early exposure to 80’s teen movie philosophy, and as my life mantra became more Bueller-Hughesian, I decided to say to myself, “‘what the fuck,’ make your move.”

Having no other prospects, I threw all of my energy into researching non-profits, and three months later I was moved out of my apartment and headed to The Galapagos Islands to participate in an Invasive Species Eradication and Agricultural Sustainability project. Shortly after arriving I was hired into the organization as a project leader and volunteer coordinator, and realized then as clearly as I do now, that this was what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I was out from behind the proverbial desk, developing a modicum of focus for once, and walking around with a shit-eating grin that you couldn’t have slapped off my face. I’ll spare further details here because those of you who know me well have already heard my talk about this excursion, ad nauseam.

When all was said and done, I spent three months working in Galapagos, and then two more in mainland Ecuador, and finally a month in Peru. At the end of my time there, I was not ready to come back. I missed my friends and family, but I felt as though I had so much left to learn & do…and for once I actually gave a shit about that.

Immediately upon returning, I applied for employment in another non-profit organization serving 77 countries all over the globe. After a year-long process of vaccinations, medical & psychological evaluations, countless essays & interviews, and a brick-wall of bureaucracy to penetrate, I was lucky enough to be accepted to serve in Panama.

IS THERE A MORAL TO THE STORY? A life lesson I feel the need to pass-on from my experience in "changing your life course"? Fuck…not really. Anything of that ilk would come off as completely smarmy and self-righteous. Better to go to Tony Robbins. I think I’m just someone who was lucky enough to have zero significant life attachments at a time when I was given a second chance to pursue something I personally saw as meaningful. Not to mention the incredible moral support from those around me, and more than one place to lay my head on any given night. I saw an entire economy crash and burn around my industry, and I chose to accept it as an omen and take a small risk by pursuing a divergent and circuitous route to an end goal that isn’t even completely actualized yet.
I have a good bit of determination to not fall short, but this journey I’m about to undertake in Panama, just like any other, could very easily end in disappointment or failure. I don’t think what I’ve chosen to do is admirable in the slightest…frankly it’s quite selfish!