the air. Dispute? Didn’t think so.

Fact number two!! Plastic bags, when thrown on the ground not only take a long time to decompose, but are just plain ugly.

Fact number three!! Many people are far too reliant upon the utilization of plastic bags, in order to GROW FOOD. Or trees. Or coffee.

Why? I’d guess a lack of alternatives.

But now, here, today, para servirle, I am going to tell you about this idea that was regalo’d to me by our very own Jose Torres.

It entails banana leaves, a bottle, and some bejuco or other tying object. The idea is to wrap the leaf around a bottle and then use the tying object to hold the leaf in bottle shape. Once completed, you remove the bottle from the banana leaf, which should leave, in theory, a nice conical shape, (with a base). The next step is to fill the banana leaf bag with your fresh lombri-abono and plant away. When you are ready to transplant you just put the whole unit into the ground and let nature do its magic. What I am saying here is no root damage as you are trying to wiggle and squeeze the plant out of the bag. AND nothing to dispose of. AND there should be an abundancy of banana leaves at your finger tips. Once again, wrap, tie, remove, plant.

This is the theory, my friends. Please try it and si dios quiere, we will be entering a whole new world.

Por Jessi

Every other month we have to fill out an agroforestry, oops, permaculture, informe. Coincidentally, every other month I suffer a bout of guilt. What have I done? Have I done anything worthwhile? I can never even fill out a full page of an informe. What do I do with my time?

So I continue to fill out the informe, all the little boxes that admin people like to see filled. Number of bolsas filled, quintales rendered, number of people involved, etc. OK, here I go. 1) Planted a couple of tomato seeds. Couple of tomatoes harvested, no quintales to measure. 2) Hortaliza planted… and destroyed by the horse. 3) A couple of feeble looking platano and café trees planted. So I continue trying to fill the little boxes. But my life in Norteno does not fit into little boxes. What fills my time, and makes my time here so wonderful can’t be quantified for admin purposes. How do you think they would like to receive an informe with what really affects me, and the people in my site, quantified?

How do you measure finding yourself in a very weak horse-powered cayuco in a mar, bien bravo, keeping a vigil on the closest point of land to swim to in the event of capsizing, wondering if you should swim with sandals or drop the weight? Meters to shore? Pounds of shoe? How do you quantify when an enormous wave crashes over the boat, and you realize you can say "I’m soaked, are you soaked?" in three languages. And when the huge Ngobe driver, who we affectionately call God, laughing his huge laugh, hands you an old oil bottle, top cut off to make a scoop, and you start bailing water… do you measure that in gallons of water bailed?

Under "Actividad de Extension / Implementacion, Tema," I want to fill in "Debate: Flat Earth vs. Round Earth". We were actually making a vivero, which fits nicely in those little boxes, but what I remember most about that day does not. A group of about 15 of us were sitting on banana leaves in the middle of the rainforest in front of a pile of dirt to fill bags, having a contest on who could find the largest / strangest looking / most poisonous bug in the pile. One of the men stops and asks, "So is it true, what I heard, that the world is round?" Using a half-filled tree bag, I squished it into a globe shape, and attempted to explain that the world is round. After a lengthy debate, the man concluded with, "Nah, if I get in my cayuco, and go down this river, and keep on going out to sea, I will fall off the face of the earth." I guess I would have to list that under activities which have not resulted well.

And how do you quantify the sadness when a 19-year-old, ninth grade girl drops out of school to get married because her culture tells her she is an old maid. After getting married she wanted to continue with school, where she was in primer puesto, but she didn’t know she could get pregnant the first time having sex. She knows now. And her culture will not let her go to school while pregnant. Do I list her under "Promotor"? I don’t think so.

How do you measure the age-old quietness and tradition of a young Ngobe girl’s puberty ceremony? Sitting on stones by the rushing river, whose rapids are lit by starlight, pouring calabasas of water over the girl’s bowed head. The water makes tiny rivers of her waist long hair flowing over her skin, as the old women say "Niere niarabe," "Talk with her". They have already told me what to tell her, and I do it reluctantly, whispering, but how can I say no to a centuries old tradition? "Look for food. Clean the house. Wash the clothes. Cook. Care for the children." Then I add, and continue repeating, "Study, Study, Study!" That isn’t measureable under meters squared or quintales. Under comunidades? Yes, that is one way the community is made, but I don’t believe that’s what the column means.

So I will continue to grudgingly fill out the little boxes, but for every number I write down, I will remember so much more. The experiences which could never be measured. Hauling bananas around the rainforest. Encountering spiders so big their eyes shine back in my flashlight. Gagging on water from laughing so hard while I hurl myself into a swollen river with a group of women. Going basare. Hot chocolate and chicken feet. Ngobelandia Easter egg hunts. The laughter as I introduce the concept of a hula hoop… No informes will ever be filled by those experiences, but they are what count.

Bugle women are quite simple in manner

and in dress. It´s just that they

don´t know about western logic

or principles of small business management.

The peace corps volunteer in the Bugle village smiles

as she smells bread baking in a mud oven.

She listens to the stories of the day

and learns to measure prosperity with those smells.

The peace corps volunteer has two cats

whom she´s fattened up, always

fearing that it´s under hungry

eyes, the cats drink milk.

Under those same eyes, she calls a meeting

to arrange a blood donation;

the man she now shares blood with

will see her face when he leaves these comarca hills.

She watches the people too, her gentle

femaleness falling on them in embers,

and "la abuelita" wonders for the 100th time

why are the women always giggling.

The final moment slips into reality

the goodbyes are short;

shy declarations of love

shed aqua tears from her eyes.

The people return to church service

as she begins her last trip down the mountain.

She was going to fall, but the pines hold her up

and remind her of warm bread stories.

sc

Helped are those too busy living to respond when they are wrongfully attacked: on their walks they shall find mysteries so intriguing as to distract them from every blow.

Helped are those who find something in Creation to admire each and every hour. Their days will overflow with beauty and the darkest dungeon will offer gifts.

Helped are those who receive only to give; always in their house will be the circular energy of generosity; and in their hearts a beginning of a new age on Earth: when no keys will be needed to unlock the heart and no locks will be needed on the doors.

Helped are those who love the stranger; in this they reflect the heart of the Creator and that of the Mother.

Helped are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.

Helped are those who love the entire cosmos rather than their own tiny country, city, or farm, for to them will be shown the unbroken web of life and the meaning of infinity.

Helped are those who live in quietness, knowing neither brand name nor fad; they shall live every day as if in eternity, and each moment shall be as full as it is long.

Helped are those who love others unsplit-off form their faults; to them will be given clarity of vision.

Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception, and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.

Helped are those who love the Earth, their mother, and who willingly suffer that she may not die; in their grief over her pain they will weep rivers of blood, and in their joy in her lively response to love, they will converse with trees.

Helped are those whose every act is a prayer for harmony in the Universe, for they are the restorers of balance to our planet. To them will be given the insight that every good act done anywhere in the cosmos welcomes the life of an animal or a child.

Helped are those who risk themselves for others´ sakes; to them will be given increasing opportunities for ever greater risks. Theirs will be a vision of the world in which no one´s gift is despised or lost.

Helped are those who strive to give up their anger; their reward will be that in any confrontation their first thoughts will never be of violence or of war.

Helped are those whose every act is a prayer for peace; on them depends the future of the world.

Helped are those who forgive; their reward shall be forgetfulness of every evil done to them. It will be in their power, therefore, to envision the new Earth.

Helped are those who are shown the existence of the Creator´s magic in the Universe; they shall experience delight and astonishment without ceasing.

Helped are those who laugh with a pure heart; theirs will be the company of the jolly righteous.

Helped are those who love the lesbian, the gay, and the straight, as they love the sun, the moon, and the stars. None of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves shall be hidden from them.

Helped are those who love the broken and the whole; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves shall be despised.

Helped are those who do not join mobs; theirs shall be the understanding that to attack in anger is to murder in confusion.

Helped are those who find the courage to do at least one small thing each day to help the existence of another–plant, animal, river, or human being. They shall be joined by a multitude of the timid.

Helped are those who lose their fear of death; theirs is the power to envision the future in a blade of grass.

Helped are those who love and actively support the diversity of life; they shall be secure in their differentness.

Helped are those who know.

Last year for New Year’s, besides for making my perennial resolutions to write my friends more and wash my hair less, I decided to take full advantage of my PCV existence and read all of the works of Latin America’s most renown author, Gabriel García Márquez. Before joining Peace Corps I had read and loved most of his works of fiction. By rereading them here in my hammocked campo life, the realities and perspectives expressed in García Márquez’s words have taken on much more meaning for me. They have allowed me to see this world through his eyes, giving me a deeper and broader understanding, and consequently, an ability to romanticize this life in a way that I would never have been able to otherwise.

I should begin by clarifying what I mean by romanticize. For me, the idea of romanticizing life isn’t the idea of living in an idealized fantasyland where you are out of touch with reality, most often in an attempt to avoid unhappiness, discomfort, etc. To me, the ability to romanticize life is the ability to adopt a perspective taken from some source, whether it be movies, TV, books, religion or a friend, and use it as a surrogate lens with which to see or understand your life. Life passes the same, either way, but in the "romanticized" life we work to understand our own, innate perspectives, and maybe alter or discard them when we realize that they aren’t always helpful. A common occurrence of this for me is that after reading a great book or seeing an inspiring movie, I’ll carry the gleaned message or idea with me for a few days, sometimes weeks, feeling motivated by its influence on me. The feeling might be ephemeral, but with conscious effort it can be made to last. And I can think of no one better from whom to borrow a perspective than the Nobel Laureate García Márquez.

García Márquez is famous for his magic realism style of writing fiction. In magic realism stories, miraculous and supernatural things happen frequently, but are presented in a way as if they were as normal as the rising and setting of the sun. To me, after having lived in Panama for two years, magic realism doesn’t seem to be a literary invention as much as a device borrowed from the culture that resides in rural Latin America where superstition, as well as general romantic hyperbole in everyday conversations, makes this a world where those sorts of things seem possible, and actually make you want to believe. I am not just referring to brujas and duendes, but also extreme beliefs in the human condition and the forces of nature. It is a world where matters of the metaphorical heart are matters of life and death, literally; a world where the rains fall hard enough to knock the angels to the ground; where the craziness of politics can turn a man invisible; and where forgetfulness is an epidemic that must be treated like malaria. Hyperbole is so common in campesino story telling that even I want to believe it because it makes life that much more interesting and allows me to feel part of the lives of my friends and neighbors. Like Special Agent Moulder, "I want to believe," but the Scully in me would never allow that.

Aside from magic realism, the core of Gabo’s writing is its focus on life in the campo community. Simply put, the settings of his stories could be the places where many of us work and live here in Panama. They are small communities with histories well known to their occupants, where everyone is Catholic yet nearly no one seems to practice their faith, where Passion between the sexes runs rampant yet Love seems nonexistent, where poverty is the norm and bochinche is the currency of social interactions, and where racism resides entrenched, and yet to the untrained eye of a foreigner, the people seem a mestizo hodge podge defying race boundaries. When I read his words, I see my neighbor as a protagonist’s stepmother, the one who runs the clandestine lottery. The role of the town chicken thief is the kid down the steet, the town malcriado. As I read about the proud ganaderos in his story, I hear them ride by on their horse, sombreros puestos, in front of my casita. And even I have fallen into playing a Gabo role; the gringo, incomprehensible and at odds with so many of the cultural norms.

Seeing the connections between Gabo’s world and my campo one allows me to detach from myself from the conflicts I have with this culture, the ones that otherwise might drive me crazy (e.g. the importance of chickens, total lack of privacy, the machismo and drunkenness of men, women who allow themselves to be a second or third or fourth wife, the insanity and corruption of politics, to name a few). His stories give me a larger cultural context larger from which to understand campo life, a sense of where these behaviors come from, how they are sustained, and how that might affect us as outsiders in a foreign land. It helps me achieve the aim of the serenity prayer, finding the wisdom to distinguish which things require acceptance and which require the courage to fight for change. Putting it another way, it has helped me hate the "sin" and not the "sinner," looking beyond individuals and their behavior to appreciate the circumstances that have given rise to them, and that generally are well beyond their control. With my romanticized perspective I am able to, if not fully accept, at least understand why things are the way they are and consciously decide what role I feel I can play in all of it. My role may be to lead for change, or it may be to sit and watch, but at least I am making the decision myself, and I thank García Márquez’s insight and wisdom for helping me do that.

Although it isn’t a point to belabor, I would recommend reading Gabo in Spanish. I was never a Spanish superstar, barely making it through the first three semesters in college Spanish before saying ahh-dee-OSS to esp-pan-YOL, and that was way back in 1995. So don’t write it off just because you aren’t a Spanish Lit. major. Admittedly, at first it was hard to plow through the vocabulary and grammar. Once I got into my first or second book and was able to begin to fall into the rhythm of the prose, rapidly I encountered fewer and fewer words that I didn’t know, or, more importantly, words whose meaning I couldn’t infer from the context. And then at some point I stopped needing to mentally translate the words to English to make brain connections from text to meaning and feeling, and that, of course, is when reading in Spanish became a joy. Rarely do I miss important details (I think…hum?), and since usually words reappear time and again within a story, after I look them up once they are reinforced in later chapters.

I wouldn’t be so bold to say that the English texts lose something in the translation, but the fact that García Márquez’s world is so geographically and culturally similar to that of the latino campo of Panama, a lot of the vernacular in his stories is the same used here. The best example I can think of to illustrate the point is from the short story "Un día de estos" from the book "Los Funerales de La Mama Grande." At the end of the story after a dentist has purposely made a tooth extraction painful to make a corrupt mayor suffer for his sins, when asked whether the bill should be charged to the mayor’s person or the alcaldía, the mayor says without irony, "Es la misma vaina."

Edges, as defined by permaculture guru, Bill Mollison, are "wherever species, climates, soils, slopes or any natural conditions or artificial boundaries meet". Edges are places of abundance and variety, are places where the garapatas of the monte meet the pant-legs of the passer-by. Edges are where the forest meets the cliff-rocks along the ocean and where the sidewalks split above the stubborn roots of a tree that was there first.

The "edge effect" of permaculture implies a rich ecology and multiplication of resources because what exists in each of the two joining areas can be utilized in this interface where east meets west — two for the price of one. And the bonus track is that a new, unique ecosystem is formed — yellow and blue makes green — so that a new niche is made from the combination of the parts joining here and now.

This is not my pre-permaculture meeting run-through on a permaculture theme, tried out on my closest 120 friends (how many of us are we?). Well, maybe it is... Really, this is about how we are each a little edge affect in process. But more like north meets south. There are quite a few Peace Corps manual pages dedicated to discussing the Peace Corps goals of cultural exchange between US citizens and host-country nationals and what happens to us throughout our years of service. They could call it the "The Human Edge Effect" or "The Human Peace Corps Cultural Ecology Project" (better known in Washington as HPCCEP) or maybe just plain, old "Living as the Edge".

The interfaces I’m visualizing are places, words, actions, senses, ideas. The edges of these interfaces are the physical: the person, family, community. The effect is change over time. Gringa A meets Campesino B and they travel in time together, uniting and magnifying the resources they each have. One nivel tipo-A plus one entrepreneurial, machete-weilding campo soul and lots of hours of sharing sweat and chicha and we have a new system in place. It’s a beautiful thing. The monte before us becomes a "parcella de demonstracion" which then becomes their dinner which then becomes a part of other people’s monte which then, well, you get the idea.

The advantage we have over your regular, old edge is that we are On The Move! We are not confined by roots or shoots, by climate or water source — we are one edge for that interface anywhere we want to be. Well, I’m cheerleading now, but it’s damn exciting to be a walking niche. Edges. New micotinyecosystems — variety is the spice of life: We have naguas in our wardrobes, machetes in our hands and "buenas" on our lips. They have summer camps for their children, cooperatives to sell their beautiful artesania and abono organico in their fields.

Okay, I'm off to mingle. Suerte.

Author's note: After finishing a letter to a friend back home, I realized that the Vaina article that I had been meaning to write for so long had just written itself. So here it is, verbatim.

Dear Professor Falcon,

Earlier today I wrote you an uncharacteristically long e-mail. (I surprised myself--usually my brain shuts down in a computer-screen-induced stupor at the internet cafe.) There are so many things on my mind lately. What I mentioned to you in my e-mail was only the biggest, most tangible things on my mind. I didn't even begin to tell you about all the more intangible thoughts.

My trips into Colon City get me out of El Guabo, both physically and mentally. Whereas in my town, I can only see the ground in front of me, on those weekly bus rides, my mind waders farther, and I get glimpses of "the big picture". When I crawl into my mosquito net after a day in Colon, my body is exhausted, but my mind is racing. Tonight, my mind is full of things that I want to tell you.

A while back, I read that if 100 people represented the world's population, the richest 6 people would all be from the U.S. At the time, I found that very hard to believe. But the longer I live here and think about life in the States, or rather MY life in the States (since that's the only one that I'm really familiar with), I start to believe it. Growing up, I always thought that my family lived modestly. How wrong I was! By world standards, and even by U.S. standards, I lived the life of a princess! Here in Panama I can suddenly see it so clearly, and oftentimes it makes me feel like a hypocrite, preaching that "simple is beautiful", "less is more", "use less resources", "don't pollute", etc, when, as an American, I am 100 times more guilty of not "walking the walk" than any Panamanian I know.

Yet, I can't divorce myself from the things that make me who I am. Sure, right now I'm content to live the way I do, because I know that, come June of 2003, life will go back to "normal" again. Dancing, band, my love of cars, my little 1972 BMW 2002 that awaits me back home, my parents' beautiful house, my expensive college education, piano lessons, violin lessons, Girl Scout camp, hiking, camping, swimming in a POOL! My whole life--the very things that I cherish in my life are far out of the reach of the average world citizen. Yet those are the things that make me who I am.

Before living in Panama I used to feel so proud to be a citizen of a country where wealth is distributed fairly well and where people enjoy economic mobility. I felt like I lived in a world where everyone lived, or at least had the chance, to live at the same level. But now I see that my world was like the world of nobility. If a noble never steps outside of his cloistered world, he can continue living his life assuming that the whole country enjoys the same quality of life as he. I feel like the ignorant nobleman who suddenly ventured beyond the castle walls and saw that he and his world were a tiny minority among a vast majority of those that live a very different life. What good is it that there is equality among the nobility, if the wealth of the whole kingdom is distributed in such a grossly lopsided way?

I used to wonder why Panamanians wanted so badly to live like Americans. Is it any wonder when we're such a rich nation? But not everyone *can* live the way we do. If the number of people who lived the way we do even doubled, that would be an ecological disaster in itself. If the world's wealth were distributed truly equally, the life I would have would not even resemble the one I've lived so far. So now I feel like the nobleman who wants equality in the kingdom, but fears it as well, because that would mean a completely different kind of life for him. What is a nobleman to do?

One night, about 7 months into my service, I came up with a list of things that I could do after my service: don't drive as much, don't buy as much, live in a smaller dwelling, recycle religiously, live with less, etc. But those are only tiny alterations within the status quo. It's nothing. I'm going to live the rest of my life knowing that everyone wants to live the way we do, while being conscious of the fact that it's absolutely impossible,resource-wise. I would not feel this moral dilemma so acutely had I never left the States. And yet, I am also grateful for having had the opportunity to open my eyes. In college, when I made my first website, I decided that I only wanted to put thoughts that were worth their space in ether. The resulting website consisted of my name and one paragraph. In that paragraph, I wrote something to this effect:

There are two kinds of people who have conviction. There is the vast majority who, having seen a fragment of the picture, is convinced that it knows what is right. And then there are the few who acknowledge that they may be wrong, and therefore dare and seek to see the whole picture, and find a conviction that survives new truths. It is easy to have a conviction based on ignorance. It is far harder, yet so important, to look for conviction that resonates with all truths.

What I need to find now, is such a conviction. The illusions of my youth have dissipated. I need to believe in something that can encompass all that I know now, and leads me towards reconciling my existence with this dilemma of mine.

Ignorance may not be bliss, but it is painless. Consciousness, without direction, hurts. My greatest fear is ignoring my conscience. My second biggest fear is being conscious but paralyzed for the rest of my life, not knowing what to do. In my eyes, so many of my dear mentors, but in particular, you, Roz, Anjini Kochar of Econ, and Boyd Paulson of CEE, are people who see the world more clearly every day, and yet have found something that they can continue to believe in. It is people like you who lift my spirits and inspire me to keep looking.

With Love and Affection,

Yoko

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