Año Nuevo

Since my last post, we here in the Azuero (and all around the country) have been through the gamut of holidays and festivals.  Starting back during fiestas patrias, we managed to have one, maybe two full weeks of school.  November and December, for students, is like April and May for kids in the US.  Everyone is just waiting anxiously for the year to be over, to graduate, to start going to the beach and the river.   Couple that with ample distractions every weekend and you have a couple of months that are hard for educators.  Two days before Christmas, I attended the last graduation ceremony in my town (for the night school.  My librarian counterpart graduated this year.), and tuna-ed the night away at a "presentation" ceremony for a neighborhood queen for the upcoming Reyes festival we have during the first week of January.  I spent Christmas (actually Christmas Eve, which is the date they celebrate here) dancing (are you surprised?) with a few girlfriends who were invited to a nearby community. Christmas Day was a marathon of eating leftovers from Christmas Eve dinners, which included turkey, ham, and many different types of salad.  And now, after a week off to visit a fellow volunteer and climb up to the highest point in Panama, I've have come back to town just in time to ring in the New Year with my friends and surrogate families.

As the end of the year approached, I had a lot of conversations about what people do to celebrate the end of one year and the entry of another.  In Spain you put on red panties and try to stuff twelve grapes in your mouth before the clock stops chiming.  In Colombia people generally ring in the year with their families, often leaving the house at the stroke of midnight to talk to neighbors in the street and walk around the block.  Here are a few traditions I’ve stumbled upon in my conversations here:

Throw money (just change), rice, or corn into the street to represent the wishes you have for the coming year (riches, a good harvest, etc.).  I’ve even heard that some people throw a suitcase full of clothes into the street if they want to get out a lot.  

Put money in your pockets so that in the coming year you never find yourself strapped for cash.

If you want to travel in the coming year, pack a suitcase, and when the clock strikes twelve, act like you’re going off to travel.  Wave goodbye to your family, walk around the house or up the street, and come back before the clock starts chiming. It’s a way of manifesting the wish, setting the right tone for the year so the universe knows that’s what you’ll be doing.

Write your wishes/goals/desires on little pieces of paper and seal them up in a red bag.  Don’t look at them or tell anyone about them for the next twelve months.  On the next New Year, open up the bag.  See if your wishes came true.

Put dry foodstuffs (lentils, beans, rice, corn) in a bowl with change and set it aside to assure that you’re not left wanting for these things in the coming year.

Wear yellow underwear.  

Eat an orange or a grape and count the seeds.  That’s your lucky number for the next year.

All of the traditions having to do with wishes and desires also have to do with keeping them to yourself!  If you want to travel, don’t talk about it, just peace out of the house with your suitcase.  Don’t tell anyone what you write on those little papers in the red bag.  Your wishes are for you to think about, and in sharing them with the universe, it’s like you’ve made this sacred commitment to live up to what you want.  


Most New Year's Eve celebrations are at home, celebrated with family and a big, big dinner.  Everyone waits together for midnight, and then...dancing.  Were you surprised?  I invite you to sprinkle in some Panamanian customs for your New Year's celebrations.


FELIZ AÑO NUEVO!  See all you readers in 2012.

Tuna

Well October se me fue as well.  Months around here, they're awfully slippery...

Here in Panama we just passed through a marathon three days off from school to celebrate the fiestas patrias, or Patriot Days.  November 2-4 and the following weekend was a great big mash of processions, bands, and parades and the following Monday was spent re-orienting ourselves and the students at work.

You might wonder how I put up with so many festivals.  I never liked watching parades.  Sitting on the sidewalk as floats and people crawl by just isn't for me.  I'm restless like that.  Unfortunately there aren’t many parades in the United States (that I’ve been to, correct me if I’m wrong) where you just get to jump in and join the fun.   Lucky for me, here I get to do just that.

Civic parades in Panama are similar to those parades we have in the US--the sit and watch people march kind. However, a folkloric parade is something completely different.  I remember the first folkloric parade I saw.  Decorated oxen-pulled carts crawl down the street.  The carts are made up to look like scenes from old Panama: the mud house, rice and corn shucking tools, leather sandal making shops, tile roofs.  Atop the cart is usually either a queen or a group of people dressed in the folkloric style and waving at the crowd.  Following behind is a rowdy band of people singing, clapping, dancing, and jumping.  I remember thinking:  I want to be there.  

Behold the tuna (yes, like the fish): the group of people behind a parade float or cart (depending on whether it’s a regular or folkloric parade) in charge of showing the people watching the parade how sweet it is to belong to said party.  The essentials for a tuna: a few small typical drums (if it’s a folkloric parade), enough alcohol to kill any throat bacteria that would prevent you from shouting tamborito (a call-and-response song), and ample stamina to dance your way through the whole parade.  In other words, as a part of a tuna, you have one job: dance and get happy.  Make people jealous.  

I’ve been in several tunas since moving to Macaracas: the first time for the foundation celebration in my town and several others for the folkloric festivals in a nearby town in the neighboring province, including two during these past holidays.  Every time people are surprised to see me dancing behind the wagon instead sitting quietly and watching the parade.  But why watch?  I’m learning here, too, I tell them.  I like to refer to the chorus of a tamborito that I like singing:

Life is short (La vida es breve)

That’s the truth (Eso es verdad)

The years pass by and they never come back (Que los años pasan y esos si no vuelven mas)

Who am I kidding?  Words can't explain this (a scene from the fiestas patrias):

i

Can someone tell me if September happened? I think I missed it.

I swore I wouldn't do this again.  Leave you, dear reader, hanging by a month and a half long thread while I tromp through what is a constantly changing arena of foreign living.  Sorry about that, but September just kind of slid by me, as did the end of another year of my life, the end of another trimester, and several weekends of Panamanian parties.

I'll address that last one.  Here in the Azuero, we are deep in the heart of festival season, which is both beautiful and distracting.  Every weekend, someone asks me, "Chelsea, are you going to the (insert tipico artist here) baile in (insert neighboring town here) for the Saint (you name it) festival?"  It's not all that ubiquitous, but you get the idea.  At the end of August, I went to the Santa Rosa festival in neighboring Llano de Piedra, famous for its all night dance that ends with Alfedro, a romantic tipico musician, mounting a mare and trotting around the bar playing his accordion (I didn't stay up to see that part, since I had to work the following morning but have been heckled by my friends ever since for missing it).  September 12th and the preceding weekend marked my town's foundation celebrations, complete with multiple parades, a queen, a discoteca (a dance club that plays varied music, from salsa to reggaeton to electronica to tipico), and a baile (a strictly tipico event featuring a tipico artist, i.e. Alfredo--see above).  Last weekend was the nationally famous Mejorana festival in Guarare, celebrating all things folkloric and traditional in Panama (in fact, popular music is prohibited in town all weekend), boasting four different bailes in one night, and ending in a mud fight that takes place in the town square that has been converted into a bull riding ring (if you wear white to this last event, townspeople will grab you and throw you in the mud, fyi). 

Between festivals I have had a week of training followed by another few weeks of my usual rotation with the teachers at the junior high/high school where I work.  Workwise, the environment continually changes.  Co-teaching, for those who are curious, is a delicate ballet that is usually carried out as if said ballet were being danced by the Chicago Bears.  Each teacher is different and has different needs, themes to be covered, and students with varying levels of motivation, so each week poses a different set of challenges.  Kudos to my fellow volunteers for having found ways to work with teachers and explain our roles, which is something that, as the first group to be carrying out our project, we have had to navigate on the fly.  Amid co-teaching I also try and find the time to dedicate to other community projects that I'm considering undertaking as we move towards summer break, which starts on December 23rd (hint-hint all of you who are considering visiting me!).

One said project is working with the public library here in town.  The Macaracas library is in a unique position to reach A LOT of little potential readers, and I've worked on building a relationship with the librarians for some time now.  Minor success? Last week I delivered a book donation from the US Embassy to the library, hoping the delivery would spark some sort of motivation or at least conversation on how to use reading to reach out to kids.  And what you know?  It kind of did.  The librarian and I finally put together a story hour to take place last Sunday.  We got cookies and juice donated by the mayor and the district representative, respectively, and read two stories--one in Spanish and one in English.  It seems small, but for a library that rarely does programming it's a huge step in the right direction.  Turns out I like reading to kids and Jenny (the librarian) came out of the event with even more ideas on how we can keep the momentum going. 

A new trimester has brought a ton of new projects and a schedule that makes the days absolutely fly by.  Imagine me shrugging my shoulders.  I am honestly not sure where September went.  I think it was here.  In fact, I know it was, because I'm a year older.  But even that caught me by surprise.  So thanks for your patience, followers, and I´ll try to get better!  I'm alive and healthy, just so know.  I'm not promising anything, but expect more detailed updates soon on projects, life in the campo (countryside), and, of course, festivals.

Rhythm

I drafted this sitting in my new house with my feet propped up on a cardboard box, taking advantage of the only available outlet I have in the house now that my fridge is plugged into the other one.   I'm sending it sitting on the ground outside the free internet cafe in town in between co-teaching at the primary school and running an English Corner at the high school.

 

Last night, my night consisted of the following: come home from a 7 AM-5 PM day in the schools, try to make and eat dinner before all the neighbors and kids start to come over and talk to me and make me feel awkward eating my own dinner in front of them (since they so often feed me), fail at the former endeavor thanks to three kids sitting in my kitchen and telling me stories about going to the river and catching shrimp and fish with spears (which I can’t wait to learn and which they have promised to teach me), plan a Sunday pizza party with the same neighborhood kids, hear my neighbor get home who today filled in the channel in front of my house and fixed my piping just because he’s nice like that, make  neighbor and his wife coffee and tea (and secretly scarf down my dinner while making said refreshments), take a break from drinking coffee to watch my other neighbors chase an animal distantly related to a skunk out of a tree, finish coffee and tea amid more storytelling and musing with aforementioned friendly  next door neighbors, decide to put off doing dishes in buckets until the morning when I won’t have to do it by flashlight, and lock up for the night.  

So there is a glance of my rhythm, which is what I do practically daily.  If I'm not hanging out with my neighbors or keeping my house free of dust and bugs and dirty dishes in my free time, I head out with umbrella and water bottle in hand and see who I run into in town or who I haven't visited in a week.  Between work, which is heavy (I work with teachers in the primary, middle, and high school), and staying in touch with my friends and neighbors, my days are full.  If I don't eat at home I often get offered food at other people's houses.  If I don't have something to do on a weekend, chances are some family will invite me to their house, to their visit their family in another province, or to take an impromtu trip to a nearby river or beach.  In spite of what may seem like monotony within the system, and in spite of frustrations that come daily, I can't complain.  I have good people around me and so much to do.  I'm loving it.

Now accepting visitors!

I have reached that giant step in life where you finally move into to your own place, have somewhere to call your own, do whatever you want with.  Mine just looks slightly different than your typical American starter home.

A couple of days ago, my host mom drove me down in her pickup to the house I will (god willing) be living in for the remainder of my two year stay here in Macaracas.  The house is simple: two rooms, one for sleeping and the other for cooking, eating, and whatever else.  The majority of the walls are made in the old Panamanian style—mud—while the rest are concrete block.  I have an orange tree, a tamarind tree, and tons of pretty plants that the neighbor has planted.  It’s kind of a kooky, Weasley-esque combination, but it suits me.  The woman renting the house to me is a doll, and was absolutely overjoyed that I would be giving “human warmth” to the house after it being empty for nearly a year (she got married and went to live with her husband in a neighboring town).  She left me tables, chairs, a bed, two cots, all the pots and pans and plates I could ever desire, and only a few scary bugs to battle as I move in.

Living alone, especially for a woman, is not something people go into willingly here.  The general reaction I would get while searching for a house was, “but you’re going to sleep by yourself in that house? Aren’t you scared? And you’re going to cook for yourself?”  It is natural for people to live with their families up until the day they get married and move into a house two doors down or a job takes them to Panama City and they are forced to live alone.  Unlike our culture, people don’t favor being alone, and living is much more community style.  Meals are shared, everybody likes to know what everyone is doing, and human noise and warmth is comforting.  Most people are used to carving out a small space in their family homes that they can call their own.  

Yet in spite of having a house where I sleep alone, I am far from being alone here in Macaracas.  I, in my opinion, have the best neighbors in the world and a community that wants to make sure that I don’t feel lonely.  My neighbors, Doris and Donny, have three kids, two grandkids, and a daughter in law, although only two kids still live at home.  Donny is like a dad for me—we rebuilt the latrine together and he fixed my door and installed locks while I hung out trying to help wherever he would let me.  Doris is intent on making sure I don’t starve or lack coffee (she knows that I love it and Donny and I would take “coffee breaks” while we were working on the house before I moved in).  My first morning alone in the house, I heard Doris shout “Chelseaaa! Coffee!” from next door.  I hopped over and she had a cup of hot coffee and toast waiting for me.  Since I’ve moved in, the two basic questions from community members have been: “You don’t get scared?” and “Have you eaten?” followed by an invitation to eat if I haven’t.  

Security, along with an overwhelming amount of sliding locks on the doors and windows, has more to do with neighbors than anything, and again in that respect I lucked out.  The kids on the street always play in front of my house (and come in and invite me to play if I’m home) and the neighbors can hear everything that goes on in the house.  Nosiness is my biggest ally here, and the movement of the whole the neighborhood is watched by, well, the whole neighborhood.

The change has already been wonderful for my mental health, as having a house allows me to be out in the community whenever I want, leaves me uncommitted to a meal schedule or a chores schedule, and gives me a ton of space to work, relax, and play.  I’m 180 degrees from where I was for the first four months here with my host mom.  The house where I was, while extremely comfortable, was also located on the second story of a building and its residents seldom left the house.  In my new neighborhood, an open door is an invitation for neighbors, dogs, and chickens to stroll in and check on you.  In fact, I think since moving I’ve had less privacy than when I lived with other people, but I’m loving it.  There are nearly constantly kids on my front porch or poking their heads in to see what I’m doing (Are you cooking? What are you reading? Is that your computer? The table you built turned out cool.  Chelsea, how do you say this in English? Do you understand this song?) I’m the new kid on the block and everyone is curious and welcoming.  

And now…photos!

bedroom and entertainment center

kitchen

dining room/sitting room

side yard

front yard...

guard dog!

latrine aka my pride and joy