by Kara "Daughter of Clark" Griswold

Hola, me llamo Karina, and I don’t remember about four hours of what happened to me on Tuesday, August 28.

And as much as I wish such a program existed (so that I could send my drunk neighbor who was passed out on my stairs all yesterday afternoon and evening), this is not an introduction to Panamanian Alcoholics Annonymous. This article is merely my story of why I will always wear my bicycle helmet and encourage all you Peace Corps, bicycle-riding volunteers to do the same.

I woke up that Tuesday morning, downed my ChocoListo (I was out of oatmeal), and grabbed my bicycle to go do some errands (buy oatmeal). I had left my helmet at the colegio, but I didn’t think twice about it because the colegio was on my way into town. Sure it was a couple miles down the road, but I’d ridden that path almost every day since getting the bike, and never had a problem.

In the states I rode my bicycle regularly and wore my helmet almost as regularly. Honestly, I’ve taken risks that I’d think twice about now. I probably wouldn’t even have worn my helmet as often as I did except for my overprotective mom. When I was growing up, every time my mom caught me not wearing a helmet, she took me to the nursing home where she worked. She would reintroduce me to her 20, 30-something year-old head-trauma patients who would be in nursing homes for the rest of their lives. Gotta love the way those Catholic moms work that guilt! Tuesday evening when I called my parents, I knew what my mom’s first question was going to be, and after hearing my response, I half expected her to fly me back home so we could revisit those patients.

Well, it has been over a month since the accident, and I still don’t remember anything about that morning. One minute I was drinking ChocoListo and carting my bicycle down my stairs, the next thing I remember I am in the hospital in Almirante. I was conscious but definitely "out of it". I vaguely remember a phone conversation with Willy, but he had to fill me in on the details, synopsis follows:

Willy: How are you????

Kara: OK, been better.

Willy: Do you remember anything about what happened?

Kara: No, not really.

Willy: Did you get stiches?

Kara: I don’t know, maybe??

Willy: I got you a ticket to fly to Panama this afternoon. Be at the airport at 1 pm.

Kara: OK, Larry!

click-hang up

Larry???

Well, somehow I made it to the airport, and from the moment I arrived in Panama, received some of the best medical attention of my life. The doctors in Almirante had, in fact, stiched up the cut on my head. First stiches of my life, and I don’t remember a thing. I also whacked my shoulder pretty hard in the accident, and separated my collarbone from the rest of my shoulder, which sounds worse that it is. Actually, I feel remarkably lucky. Losing my memory of that morning made me realize that I could have lost more than a few hours.

After coming back from Panama, I went to talk with the school teacher who found me on the road and brought me to the hospital. I was fine one minute and crying the next. They were not really tears of gratitude; anyone would have done the same in her position. I think the tears were a culmination of all my frustrations with feeling so out of control, having to find out what had happened to me from a virtual stranger. She was on her way to school when she saw me waving down her taxi with my good arm. I had been thrown from the bicycle which lay further up the road. I was conscious, but I could barely stand up and was speaking to her in English as if she would understand. But as she was telling me all this, none of it sounded at all familiar. So the moral of the story is: Memories are good–Wear your helmet. We can be sweaty gringo geeks together!

by Yoko Kusunose

Dear fellow volunteers,

One day I decided to venture beyond platano sancochado, sardinas, and rice. Here is a recipe that will, no doubt, dirty every single cooking utensil you own, but is well worth it once in a while.

1.5 lb. potatoes, peeled and diced

one onion, chopped

two cloves of garlic, minced

two aji pimentones, chopped

two sticks of celery, chopped

pinch of salt

pinch of salt

1-2 tablespoons oil

3 tablespoons Soy Sauce

Boil potatoes with a pinch of salt, until tender. Drain, set aside. In skillet large enough for the potatoes, saute onions and garlic in oil. When garlic begins to brown and stick to skillet, add green peppers and celery, in that order, sauteing a bit between each. Add a pinch of salt and pinch of pepper. Add cooked potatoes and soy sauce. Stir around the mixture, but let the potatoes brown in places as well. Once the potatoes have sufficiently absorbed the flavor, they are ready to serve.

If you save the potatoes for the morning after, you can then tell your neighbors that you had Cold Fusion Potatoes for breakfast. Of course, you don’t have to tell them either.

Okay, here’s another recipe, but one that involves less work. I may be insulting your intelligence by writing out such a recipe, but it makes one damn fine mug of hot chocolate.

3 tablespoons powdered milk (KLIM works, but I prefer Vitalac.)

1/2 tablespoon cocoa powder

1 tablespoon sugar (add more if you want.)

pinch cinnamon

tiny pinch of salt

Boil water. Meanwhile, put all ingredients in a mug. Thoroughly mix them together–no lumps allowed. Add just enough of the hot water to dissolve the cocoa mixture in to a smooth past–again, no lumps. Slowly mix in the rest of the hot water.

Not only does this hot chocolate kick Nestle Packaged Hot Chocolate ass, it is, per serving, significantly cheaper.

by Sara Archbald

Oct.17- It’s been a month-plus and I’ve just finished reading the front sections of the NY Times, Oct. 12, 13, 14 sent by my brother, and as in so many of the survivor stories I read in those pages, I want to reach out and connect with FAMILY: touch, hug, feel connected to people I care about and who care about me. Adagios de Mozart from my CD player on this mountaintop gives me solace. My Ngabe-Bugle friends here listening and truly empathize with the stories and pictures I’m sharing with them. But I want family!

Yes, my loved ones are fine in the States, most importantly my sons who live in NYC and Wash DC. But when I think about family...it’s you guys, my Peace Corps family, who also come to mind. I love being with you guys. I love you guys.

Are those 5000-6000 buried bajo escombros hearing strains of Mozart this evening? Certainly not in the mode that I am. No one knows- but I do believe that love ultimately triumphs over hate. And life moves on.

My COS date looms in April 2002. Who will come to my door in Portland, Maine looking for a cartucho? for $2.00 of beca money for the class trip to Chiriqui? to look at my fotos? to draw a dibujo? to ask for help with the kinder class? to read a book or just hang for awhile? We don’t DO THAT in Portland, Maine - we call before we stop by someone’s house. Que tristeza!

Hope you all are doing well with your own variations of cultural disconnects- loneliness or sadness in the face of world events... or local, personal ones.

Con carino.

by Yoko Kusunose

A sailor understands the sea

a capricious yet desolate place

Likewise you claim to know me–

but my friend, you see only a face

Underneath swim menageries of fishes

flecks of light that flit and dart

The hopes dreams and wishes

that illuminate the depths of the heart

In the old sands of the floor

rest objects long ago cast

Pieces of a human lore

precious memories of days long past

Strong currents relentlessly pound

Things ephemeral soon disappear

Vast silence engulfs all sound

and swallows trifle worry and fear

In the deep waters are the enclaves

of the bizarre, beautiful and sacred

Life dwells far below the waves–

dive in, and see a soul naked

Entomologically speaking I suppose today was highly exciting. I was tuning in what ended up being an Ecuadorian religious broadcast featuring a bunch of Kiwis, when I reached to the back of my neck to brush my hair away. Lo and behold, it weren’t hair. It was a cockroach, the size of a deck of cards.

Wide and flat. It seemed a bit confused, and I, a bit faint. No sooner had it scuttled onto the floor that I was stooped over chasing it trying to see ‘what the hell was that thing.’

I’m outside now, changing the station, befuddled by what I thought that was going to be a travel show, when WHAP! A half-pound insect smacks into the side of the house. By the light straining out, I can see the Papa Roach silhouette lumbering (cockroaches this size don’t skitter) into the house. Oooh, bad news. I think it is time to get a new novel and get under the mosquito net before I have to wade to it through toddler-sized cucarachas.

I go browsing through the cardboard box for a book and hear a bizzare-o noise. It sounds like someone running its fingernail along corrugated cardboard. I happened to have been nose deep in a cardboard box, so I looked behind, under, nothing. Back to the books, but now it’s louder, so I look where the motion is, on the rim of the box. Bunches and bunches of what I can only guess are termites. Every few seconds, each little ruby-headed termite vibrates the front half of its body against the box making, when all put together, the noise.

So, perfect, my hair keeps scaring the spinach out of me, every noise is either an arthropod attack, or some bug beating itself against my trappings of civilization like cardboard, and I have some Kiwi reminding me that it is the time of the resurrection. Like I hadn’t noticed. Its like Wilson said, God has an inordinate fondness for beetles.

Two weeks later

Last night the comagen, tiny mayfly-type things swarmed, and I truly mean swarmed, around the light. Thousands and thousands of them. Unbelievable.

Well, I wouldn’t have that. I got the insecticide sprayer and went berserk.

THAT‘s for the cockroach on my face. THAT‘s for the beetles in my hair every morning. THAT‘s for the chitra, and THAT‘s for the mosquitoes. I went head first, shielding my eyes and spraying nutty, taking out 500 of the bastards at a time.

15 minutes later, there were no fewer than before. Disappointed, I gave up on the day, wiped the shed wings from my pillow, grabbed the flashlight and book and retreated to the mosquito net. I held my breath as I reached into the comagen cloud to twist the light bulb to off.

This morning I walked out to the living room, and started, grief stricken. The carnage from last night made a shimmery carpet of tissuey wings and little bodies over half of the house. It had worked! But now I was faced with what I had done. And how to cover up the evidence. Sweeping was only a minor help. It just seemed to keep uncovering more of them. Georgie (the house wren) came to the rescue. He has a mighty comagen appetite. I thought: perfect! But even Georgie, being only one tiny bird, and not an elephant, couldn’t possibly ingest all of those comagen.

There is no real end to this story. The carcasses are still there, and now there are just as many new ones. The spray is staying put, and I’m giving up on today and retreating before its too late.

por Caroline Pasion

From her bedroom window, a little girl sees them

On the BQE and the Brooklyn Bridge, she sees them

On a school field trip, she is on them

From the 31st floor across the Hudson, a woman sees them

On a Thirsty Thursday evening, she sees them.

On the way to work, she is under them.

In a hotel room on CNN in Panama City, she saw them.

by Brandon Salomon

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por Sonia Chérigo

La historia reciente indica que la población indígena sigue siendo objeto de presentaciones que tienen poco que ver con los cambios históricos recientes tanto en su organización social como en sus prácticas culturales. Para empezar, desde la década de 1980 los grupos indígenas rechazaran los gentilicios con que hasta ese momento eran conocidas popular y etnográficamente y demandaran a sus simpatizantes un cambio en las denominaciones con los que usualmente eran conocidos. Los Chocoes dejaron de serlo para convertirse en Emberá y Wounaan; los Guaymi; por el mismo tono, se identificaron como Ngäbes y Buglé. Así mismo, los Teribes, reivindicaron su gentilicio como Naso y los Kunas reafirmaron su identidad como Dules. Cada uno de estos gentilicios hacen referencia a su condición de pueblos con una lengua propia. De igual manera, regiones como San Blas fueron denominadas ahora como Kuna Yala; y al nivel internacional, los Kunas reivindicaron el concepto de Abya Yala como indicativo de América, aceptada igualmente por otros grupos internacionales.

Para los Kunas es de interés porque se asume que entre los grupos indígenas, la mujer Kuna ha disfrutado de un status relativamente superior al de otros grupos.

En todo caso, desde el punto de vista de los cambios ocurridos en las regiones indígenas, se puede afirmar que existe la fuerte tendencia a escolarizar más a la mujer, al mismo tiempo, su papel trasciende los límites del hogar para participar en la vida política interna y regional. Por ejemplo, los Emberá — Wounaan admitieron rápidamente la participación de la mujer en sus organizaciones políticas hasta el punto que una de sus dirigentes ha sido varias veces presidenta del Congreso General Emberá- Wounaan.

Estas nuevas condiciones brindan una oportunidad para que la población indígena pueda prepararse mejor para la entrada al próximo milenio, con mayor confianza y recursos políticos como técnicos.

El gran vacío en los aportes que el Estado ha dado a la comunidad indígena recientemente ha sido su rechazo al convenio 169 de la OIT (Organización Mundial del Trabajo), una de cuyas justificaciones jurídicas se relacionan con el concepto de pueblos indígenas que supuestamente riñe con el principio constitucional del pueblo panameño. Más que una justificación, podría esperarse que se trate de problemas más complejos relacionados con el trabajo y las tasas salariales. Esperemos que los nuevos gobiernos puedan percibir con más claridad el significado histórico de apoyar este importante convenio internacional.