Happy April from the Promised Land! (yes, that is the actual name of my community- given because when it was founded the government actually gave the land away to extremely poor families from other provinces…similar to the pilgrims moving west only it happened twenty years ago and instead of horse and buggy they drive old school buses and rundown toyotas). Anyway I hope everyone has been enjoying the warming temperatures. The rainy season has just begun here and a three hour monsoon yesterday really demonstrated what they mean when they say ‘tropical rainstorm.’ I’m a little worried about how I’m going to keep myself busy during these downpours, although for now I’m pretty content just studying my Spanish English dictionary.

To date I’ve been in site for about one month and wowzers what a month it has been. I’ve spent most of my time simply wandering from house to house chatting with the people and getting to know my surroundings. (My Friday and Saturday evenings have become local church crawls where I get to experience mass/cult at all three wonderful churches this tiny little community has to offer). Otherwise, my schedule is extremely flexible (ACA most days I wake up and have no clue what I’m actually going to do), but somehow the time seems to be passing quickly and mini adventures pop up here and there. The reforestation project is underway and I’m helping 6 families fill bags of dirt to plant seeds that we will eventually carry up the mountain to plant (this also takes up about 60 percent of my day). I’ve been meeting with engineers from ACP (Panama Canal Authority) to discuss the progress of the project. Not only do I enjoy the experience I’m gaining from meeting with these individuals, but it’s exciting to see that people within my community are motivated. However, frankly the project is extremely disorganized and it has taken a lot of self-control not to step in. (I’m still in my 3 month observation period where I am supposed to focus on watching and learning). It’s also fascinating to see how people from the city interact with my campo community members and vice versa.

Recently I went on what was probably one of the coolest hikes I’ve been on to date. One of the men in the community wanted to hike up the mountain to see where we were actually going to reforest so that we know how much clean up and preparation work needs to occur before planting season (june). Two male community members and myself left around 2pm with machetes in hand. It took about 30 minutes to actually get to the dense part of the jungle and then for about another 2 hours we rock hopped up a river bed, climbing over small waterfalls, etc. The speed at which these men could move was astounding and I obviously lagged far behind trying not to eat it with ever rock I stepped on. I would say I pretty much stumbled the entire way and wiped out at least 10 times (once I gracefully fell straight into a tree with spines and had to pull ten spikes out of my hand). Due to the density of the jungle the men didn’t know exactly where we were supposed to climb up so we spent a lot of time hiking up ridges and climbing trees to find our bearings. Finally we spent another hour climbing straight up the side of a ridge. Once we finally reached the barren section of forest we spent ten minutes acknowledging the fact that, yes, a great deal of machete work and soil preparation was needed and then we continued back down the ridge (mostly on our butts due the steepness). By this point it was about 6pm and the sun here sets at about 6:35 and it’s totally dark by 7pm. As we started back down the river bed one of the men mentioned that we should “hurry because it might get dark before we got back.” (I was in fact positive it would be dark before we got back because we had about a 3 hour hike still ahead of us). As the sun quickly set we decided that it would be safest (due to spikey trees etc) to simply hike back in the center of the river, rather than on the outskirts. With the light of a crescent moon guiding our way we stumbled and often accidentally fully submerged ourselves in the river and slowly crept our way back down the river. Finally around 8:45 pm we found the path back to the community (after a great bit of searching) and returned home drenched and exhausted. After this experience I am extremely interested to see how the engineer who is in charge of this project plans on carrying 40,000 baby trees up this mountain. He mentioned to me that he was hoping to pay workers 9 dollars a day to not only hike up there, but also plant the trees. (I frankly think he’s crazy because most of my community members earn at like $15-$20 working in construction, but we’ll see).

Overall I’m really enjoying my site thus far (although there have been a few hiccups such as the reality that every child has lice here, I live with the brattiest 2 year old in Panama, and the amount of disgusting food I consume is ridiculous) and am excited to really fall into pace here. Thanks to everyone who have written me! I miss everyone tons!

Lots of love and sunshine

Xoxo

Bridget