Hello all!
It has been quite the eventful week since my last update. Last Sunday, Kate McGuire, the AMIGOS Regional Director for EcuaNicaPanaRica (Ecuador, Nicaragua, Panama, and Costa Rica) came to visit. She is an incredibly energetic person and has been working with AMIGOS for something like 8 years, so her input into our project is not only valuable, but also incredibly fun. On Sunday we went to Santa Clara, a beach in the Pacific that is about 30 minutes from Penonomé. Our timing left a bit to be desired because it rained all day, but it was still hot and the water was still warm and we still had a great time! It was really nice to have a day of relaxation and to not be thinking about working and our volunteers for a little while and to just have fun! We watched the Argentina-Mexico game from a restaurant at the beach, which was a lively experience. I had decided to root for Argentina after the US and Italy were eliminated, so the result of the game was exciting (but unfortunately invalidated as of Argentina's loss yesterday). That evening Kate took us out to a fairly fancy dinner (for Penonomé) and we had a fun time discussing our spirit animals (I am either a camel or a dragonfly...).
On Monday I left again to spend the week in my communities. The beginning of the week was particularly challenging, for reasons I will not discuss here, but I just had to have some conversations that I was hoping not to have during my time here. But all is well now and that is what's important. The rest of the week was good and fairly uneventful - I went on a few jungle treks, played horribly during a game of volleyball, and got my clothes extremely wet crossing a river after a rainstorm. I really do enjoy going out to communities every week and seeing my volunteers and their projects progress; however, it requires a great deal of energy, which becomes exhausting. I am constantly worried about making sure that my volunteers are having the best and safest experience as possible, and there is always more that I can do. But I think that I am finding a decent balance and doing well. I guess I'll find out...
This weekend has been pretty relaxing thus far, filled mainly with fútbol and food. We have also been planning for midterm, which is coming up this week. Midterm is the day when the volunteers will come to the city to share their experiences and have the opportunity to reflect, call their parents, and use the internet for a little while. Logistically, this is very complicated so we have spent a lot of time figuring out exactly how it will work.
I have had two main highlights this weekend:
1). Meeting Peter. In Penonomé, there is this store named Casa Peter that I would equate to the city's equivalent of a Walmart. It isn't that big but it has EVERYTHING, and many American brand school supplies, toiletries, electronics, etc. As a staff we have spent a great deal of money there buying materials for the project and things for ourselves and out volunteers. There are weekends where I end up going to Casa Peter (affectionately nicknamed Casa P (with the a in Casa pronounced like the a in "happy")) every day. The frequency with which we go to Casa P has become a joke in staff house and we talk about it a lot. This isn't all, though. In addition to Casa Peter, there is also Farmacia Peter and Mr. Peter's, a restaurant. All three are located on the same street and are owned by Peter, a third-generation Chinese-Panamanian who spend ten years of his life in San Francisco. He speaks perfect English and has become incredibly successful in Penonomé because of how he has incorporated foreign (mainly American) products into his businesss. Anyway, the moral of this story is that I FINALLY got to meet Peter on Friday night when the staff decided to go to Mr. Peter's for dinner. It was a bit disarming to meet someone that seemed so American in Penonomé, where I have yet to meet another person from the US, but it was really interesting to hear about his life experiences as well. Mainly, the fact that we had built up Peter so much in staff house made the fact that I got to meet him extremely exciting.
2). Parades. I had the opportunity to witness two very different parades here in Penonomé this weekend. The first happened on Friday afternoon as I was walking to the lavandería to drop off my laundry. We were walking away from the main street in town when we heard a lot of honking, more than is usual even in Panama where people believe that honking is an acceptable substitute for using their side mirrors. Anyway, we turned around to investigate and were confronted with a long line of cars (probably about 60) that were decked out with balloons and decorations with the colors of various world cup teams. They were all honking and playing music and throwing candy out the windors. We were a bit confused because there seemed to be no rhyme of reason to the decorations - some of the teams had already gotten out of the world cup whereas others were still in, and we were just confused about how the whole thing got organized. We found out later that it really didn't have anything to do with the world cup, and was just a celebration from the local elementary school that is done every year with the "reinas" (queens) of each classroom. It always has some sort of theme and this year just happened to be the world cup. Nevertheless, the music, candy, and excitement were a fun pick-me-up for a Friday afternoon.
I saw the second parade yesterday when I went to the vegetable market. I heard a lot of music and commotion in the street so I went outside to check it out. It turned out to be a parade celebrating all of the cooperatives in Penonomé, which was really interesting. The parade consisted in blocks of people in matching baseball caps and polos, just celebrating themselves and their cooperatives. Some groups were extremely lively and had some trumpet and trombone players and drummers, and they would play a simple tune and dance, and some even had people dressed in traditional Panamanian clothing doing some típico dance. I loved this parade for many reasons. Firstly, I thought it was really cool that there was a day to celebrate all of the cooperatives in the city. But what was even better was its informality - it was just a bunch of people in matching polos with old trumpets, but they were having a damn good time (probably aided by the consumption of alcohol, but still...). There were fifty-year old men just having a good time dancing in the street, which is really just my idea of a good time, and something you would never see in the US. Nothing was especially choreographed or rehearsed, but it was just FUN. I spent about a half hour just watching this parade.
Any-hoo, I should probably go and help out with our little 4th of July celebration - we are grilling some burgers and making mashed potatoes and whatnot. Tomorrow I head back out to community for the week! I hope everyone is having a nice holiday!
Rachel
EDIT: I just realized that I forgot to explain the title of this entry. Usually, in Spanish, the word "ahora" is the equivalent of the English word "now", and the word "ahorrita" means something like "in this very instant". However, this is different in Panama, which has caused quite a bit of confusion in my experiences. Here, "ahora" really means "later", and "ahorrita" means "now". So I keep catching myself saying something like "Ok so you can help me AHORA" without realizing what that really means. Many people use the expression "ahora más tarde", which would usually be a huge contradiction ("now but later") but makes perfect sense with the Panamanian understanding of the word. Let's just say it's very confusing.
