I'm back! (Photos to be added)

For all of you who have consistently been checking my blog this past month or two, and unfortunately were always greeted by the same old posts, I apologize. These past two months have been very busy for me and unfortunately I lacked the energy and the right environment to sit down and blog. 

However that does not mean that it hasn't been a good two months. On the contrary it has been a very productive past two months. I have continued to meet many community members and i have gotten to know many wonderful families, near and far. I have also spent a significant amount of time at the school and have discovered many of its strenghts, as well as some weaknesses that I will definitely form a bit of an obstacle that I will have to face while working there. Being that my job for the first three months is to get to know my community, and the school, I think I have been doing pretty well.

 I finished my first month in the mining sector of town. I had so much that I still wanted to blog about while living there. Like How I planted my first seeds and they sprouted into these gorgeous little fellas that are now two months later are growing in the garden of the house that I will move into only a week from now. I named the first squash plant that sprouted, Milagros, or a miracle, because honestly I never believed myself to have a green thumb. Now Milagros is lost among the other cucumber, tomato, basil, spinach, bean, and okra plants that are growing in my garden.  I unfortunately haven't been able to check on the garden for a few days now since I live in a different sector of town ,but fingers crossed that the vicious little leaf cutter ants have't eaten everything.  

That first month I also did a  lot of work with our local ANAM group. ANAM is the environmental agency of Panama. They are starting out a  "vivero" or a tree nursery. Their goal is 1500 plants. I helped them mix the soil and fertilizer, pack it into little bags and plant 300 seeds. After a hard days work I sure do hope the little trees grow into storng trees. I was also able to join them and some locals from la Mina on a trash clean up day. On which we walked through that entire sector of town and picked up all the trash bags. It really is sad to see how much trash gets tossed out onto the ground here. There is all this gorgeous natural wildlife surrounding these people, and they cover it with chip bags, cans, bottles, and candy wrappers. Although there have already been many Peace Corps volunteers in this community before, and the one directly before me spent 2 years working on recycling, the problem continues to exist. She did a spectacular job educating them and getting the recycling project underway, but change takes time. Lots of time. We in the U.S. have been trying to tackle this same problem for decades. The problem is still relatively new here since all these products are just arriving to the "kioskos" (the little family owned shops that really are the front room of the house). Many will argue that this is a perfect example of a negative effect of globalization. And I will agree. But hopefully I will be able to serve as an example of a positive effect of globalization and help further tackle the problem.

Speaking of tackling the problem my second month I was able to do some hands on work with this issue.

However, first, a bit of a general overview. My second month I lived in the central part of my community, just a few short steps from the school. My host family was very nice and helpful when I encountered a few issues and needed some advice. My host sister in law, Sara, which was Sonia's (previous PCV) closest counterpart, played a significant role in helping me adjust to this new sector of town, and did a wonderful job on filling me in on all the recycling project things. 

Like I had already begun to explain, I had the opportunity to spend a lot more time in the school. I spent a significant amount of my time observing classes. I noticed some clear differences between the teaching methods implemented here as well as the school system and just a way of thinking from that in the United States. The thing I really enjoy about the school in my community is that the teachers really make an effort to make the classes interactive and fun so that the students pay attention. There is a lot of singing and games for the little kids. The older classes make posters together, things of that sort. Although we take this form of education for granted in the United States, here in Panama it is really considered progressive. In many schools all across the globe education still consists of a teacher standing at the chalk board all day with her notes in hand, and copying down everything from the notebook onto the board, word by word. The kids role as a student is to then copy everything down word by word from the blackboard into their notebook. And that is what their education consists of. This is how it has been done for years, and this is how many kids around the world are still taught. However, little by little, teaching methods are improving. CEBG Membrillo, I believe,  is a perfect example of progress due to peoples willingness to try new things.

This being said, any problems continue to exist. Classes are canceled constantly, and for what I believe to be the silliest reasons.  For example, Anjurpis, the adorable and brilliant 5 year old that I lived with during my second month is in Kindergarden. Her teacher canceled class one Monday, without providing any reason. She also canceled class that Friday to throw a party at one of the teachers houses, for all the teachers that are fathers. A very cute idea, but I don't believe that it is necessary to cancel class for this considering that school during their morning shift ends at 12:00, really 11:30am. And of course in order to go buy gifts for the fathers, class was also canceled on Thursday. Once again, plenty of hours in the afternoon to go shopping. So that week the students only had class 2 days... and this is not abnormal.  However what is frustrating to me, is to see kids walking through extremely muddy roads, for 45 mins to get to school, just to find out that the teacher did not show up, and then make the same trip back home. And yet they manage to continue on with a smile. I guess that is because they are happy they have no school that day, but the poor kids are loosing out on so much education time. Like with all else I guess I will have to adjust, because honestly this is not a problem that I plan to tackle during my 2 years here. Not exactly in the environmental conservation sector, and it really is just part of a wider mind set that I believe will only be changed with generations.

Another problem that I will have to deal with is that of what expectations have been formed based on the service of the previous volunteer (volunteers). There have been many occasions already well the teachers have come directly to me first to ask me to pay for things before even going to the director to ask for funds. This is an issue that unfortunately I have already had a lot of experience with and can say a lot about. However, I may save that for a future post. Basically I will have to stand my ground and let them know, that I am not here to provide financial resources for them. As a volunteer I get paid a lot less then them, and I certainly do not have the funds to pay for things simply because they failed to plan ahead of time and think about how they will fund their projects. Hopefully if I stay firm from the beginning they will understand. And of course my wonderful director will have my back if I ever need him to talk with the school.

Photos and some more stories will be added to this same post some time soon when I have more time to go through my 6000 photos. For now you can read my next post. As always, gracias for reading. I promise I will be posting more consistently very soon!


Karolina