No intro this time: article already too long. Roll those...

Fast Times in Agua Buena

by Will Woodfield

As I start this article, noise pollution is invading my private space, driving away my muse. 12 year old Paula next door has finally discovered Shakira somewhat belatedly, about a year after Shakira fever infected most of adolescent/pre-teen Panama. But young Paula is determined to make up for lost time, by trying to break the Guiness Book of World Records for the most times a Shakira album is listened to, over and over. And when it comes to volume level, Paula, like most of my neighbors, is no shrinking violet. Hence: one badly-overheating cassette in continuous rotation13 hours a day from 7am to 10pm (Paula's Bedtime) at maximum decibel level; including right now.

I should cut the poor kid some slackit's the only music she can call her own. When I was her age, I had 4 cherished albums (Paul Simon's "Graceland", Beastie Boys' "License to Ill", DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince's "I'm the Rapper he's the DJ" and the Footloose Soundtrack, in case you cared). Nevertheless, I didn't listen to them all the time (nor at Spinal-Tap levelsi.e., 11 on the volume knob). Paula, Paula, Paula open your ears! Turn on the radio! There's a whole musical horizon out there, waiting to be listened to! (even if the majority of it here in Panama involves an accordion).

So here I sit, hemmed in between Pucho's 24-hour discoteca spewing típico and the cauterwauling of Shakira trapped between Scylla and Charybdis. Enough to drive a sensitive music lover like myself stark raving mad. What should I do? Stuff cotton in my ears? Tie myself to the mast? No I fight fire with fire (like the Metallica song).

I have a discman, 2 little speakers that kick moderate butt, and a case of 100 CDs of mostly extreme music nonpareil. You see, from Mariah Carey to the BackStreet Boys, whenever bland, prefabricated "listener-friendly" music insults my intelligence and threatens my sanity, I believe in purification by fire: playing the most extreme music I can find to cleanse the air. Shakira, with her tuneless, faux-Alanis Morissette whining and her faceless backup-band playing derivative, undistinguished and uninspired latino alterna-crap, is no different. Even that one Middle Eastern-sounding song I originally liked has lost its luster after the 15th time listening to it the same day. And as for típico: as you may know, I don't miss a baile. But típico in its canned form the lack of rhythmic precision, the flat back-up vocals and the teeth-grating timbre of the accordion take their toll, especially if you hear these songs all the time, all day long.

So I listen to extreme music. Techno with its machine-crafted, inhuman precision, pounding out 140 beats per minute every minute, programmed by guys in Germany and Holland who deliberately remain anonymous by changing their nommes de guerre with every release; minimal; inspiring psychedelic psychoactives and inducing a state of trance, like sanysins chanting mantras to achieve Mahabindu. Industrial in the vanguard of extreme music, inspiring techno 10 years later, with bands like Coil, Death in June, and the great Throbbing Gristle incorporating noise into an rigid yet organic musical montage.

Then there is the metal black metal, death metal, you name it, it's on my stereo. With blazing, down-tuned guitars, machine-gun blast beats and vocals alternately shrieking on the gallows or vomited forth from the grave, bands like Godflesh, Deicide, Carcass and Cradle of Filth are on a Satanic jihad to sever the shackles of Christian Oppression and offer to Our Dark Lord a world shrouded in preternatural darkness.

The neighbors groove on the techno and, to a lesser extent, the industrial. Olga, the little old lady who lives next door, says she likes to dance to it while washing clothes. As for the metal: to anyone passing by while it's blasting, I shrug and say "rock" in my best Panamanian accent. They nod, knowingly.

Shakira's not going away. Time for decisive action. A little Destroyer 666 ought to do the trick... there. That's better. Take that, Nenito! You can cram that accordion where the sun don't shine! Take that, Shakira, you puling hussy! May you burn in the fires of hell forever.

Sorry about the diatribe. I feel better now. Let's go pick tomatoes.

*

Monday morning dawned cloudy with a light breeze perfect tomato-picking weather. By 6:15 I was out of my house, snagging a loaf of bread from Nico, the early-morning bread delivery man, and hopping in back of the cattle truck, with the other peones.

As we traversed the wakening streets of Agua Buena, we stopped in front of certain houses and honked the horn the men in back shouting with the usual casual disregard for anyone within earshot lazy enough to be sleeping at such an hour. Another montuno-clad man would emerge and hop aboard, and the truck moved on.

These men with me in back of the truck are the dying soul of Agua Buena and perhaps the entire country. Clad in the uniform of the campesino Santeño the montuno, casually unbuttoned revealing washboard stomachs, cutaras, long pants, and of course the sombrero pintado these men are the backbone of the community, ebanistas or no ebanistas. They are the ones you see by the side of the road, chopping remorselessly with efficient swings of their machete, shirts stuck to their backs with sweat. They are the ones who erect fences, dig ditches, build your house for you, who will cut your rice or pick your tomatoes, all to the tune of $6 a day. Quite a lot, compared to other, more impoverished areas of the country, but it's still a day by day, hard-scrabbling, hand-to-mouth existence, and a lot of that $6 is drunk away every weekend. These men are the past, and technology of all kinds, from weed-whackers to mechanized rice harvesters, is slowly but surely rendering them obsolete, leaving them as living anachronisms, fodder for logarithmic rates of global economic convergence.

Yet they hang on. They are campesinos, fiercely proud of it, and despite sweeping changes, they still cast a shadow over the land; land which they have subjugated to their will with their own blood, sweat and sinew.

As a Small Business Volunteer, I don't work with themthey would be better suited for agroforestry projects. I work with those upstarts, the furniture-makers, who have turned Agua Buena around from a sleepy agricultural community where the campesino rules into an economic cluster, a mecca for small businesses of all kinds. But these men's simple existence based on generations of tradition compels me to get to know them, to participate in their activities, if only for one morning. That's why I was on the back of that truck, jostling towards the tomato fields.

I was a little intimidated. They are as hard as nails. Their callused hands are like rocks. Their skin is the color and consistency of leather. Despite trying to keep in shape with pushups, chinups and the like, I felt like a plump white pigeon, surrounded by a covey of hawks. They regarded me with piercing eyes, even as they laughed and joked.

Arselio was with us, and I was relievedhe's one of the first people I met in Agua Buena. He's the biggest campesino I know not in terms of size, although his forearms are huge from milking cows every morning since he was a wee slip of a lad. He, too, could toss me over his shoulder like the proverbial sack of yucca. He doesn't even wear the sombrero pintado, but a Pintura Sur baseball hat instead. But he is the biggest campesino I know because he never leaves Agua Buena, never goes to dances or any social events, scarcely even goes to the cantina, preferring to drink seco on the porch until passing out. He has absolutely no idea of what's going on outside his little world, and he's happy that way. Ignorance is bliss.

And the way he talks: extremely fast, and throwing in more campo words and expressions than anyone else I know. Luckily, he bellows with laughter after everything he says, so I feign a hearty laugh along with him, thus cleverly hiding the fact that I have no idea what the hell he's talking about.

He calls me "tio fulo." "¡Vaya, tio fulo!" he yells as I go by. "Arselio, ¡Presidente!" I yell back an old joke going back to the 1999 Presidential election, when I tried to convince him to run for President: Mireya and Martincito and Vallarino would have nothing on him, he'd soar to victory in a sweeping landslide.

We finally rounded up all the peones and headed out into Cañasa, into the potrero. After crossing a particularly rough quebrada, the engine gave out something stuck in it and some of us decided to hoof it towards the tomato fields, as the others waited for backup.

We crossed umpteen barbed-wire fences. If the Olympic games had a barbed-wire fence crossing event, Panama would surely be a contender. I, however, managed to disentangle myself without ripping my clothing too badly. Those empty pastures were a minefield of cowpies. Witch-birds crotophaga salcirostris, the Smooth-Billed Ani croaked to each other from bare branches. Occasional cattle drinking holes, stagnant pools of greenish scummy water, brought to mind Grendle, emerging from such a pit deep in the fens, dripping ichor, off to wreak havoc on Hrothgar and his soundly-sleeping host at the mead-hall of Hereot. But then we arrived, and suddenly green! On closer inspection, flecked with red: an abundance of tomatoes. The river, obscured by riparian vegetation, flowed near by, the agent responsible for the lushness of the tomatoes, thanks to a simple yet effective pump-driven irrigation system.

The truck, back in order, arrives just as we do, and the peones waste no time marching out to the furthest rows to fill their buckets. After doing some back stretches, to amused looks, I squatted beside my row (everyone else was bending at the waist) and started to pluck tomatoes. This was easy! Much less tricky than cutting rice (which I'd done before). But then Toñin straightened up, swung an overflowing bucket onto his shoulder, and headed towards the truck. What?! I'd just started, and he'd already finished a bucket! The other guys started to get up too, to dump their tomatoes into the crate. I've got to be the slowest tomato-picker on earth! I thought. I redoubled my efforts, clumsily spilling tomatoes out of my hands. Finally, I had a somewhat full bucket. I walked with it awkwardly swinging against my leg, then attempted to swing it up over my shoulder, spilling more tomatoes, praying my spine wouldn't buckle. My $4 sombrero (no $70 sombre pintado for this PCV!) was knocked awry by the bucket, and clung to the left side of my head for a few paces before falling off completely. At this point all the peones were staring at the gringo, wobbling unsteadily with his load. Some of them chuckled. Trying to maneuver through the narrow rows in my unwieldy cutaras, I swore not to fall down and really give them something to laugh about. But finally I made it over to the truck and dumped my load in a crate. The other guys were coming with their second buckets as I gingerly made my way back.

The time passed as the guys sang décimas or snatches of típico songs. Dorindo was a favorite. They also said the work "arrecho" a lot, which you probably won't find in the dictionary, but has many shades of meaning, including "exitado" or more commonly, "a certain je ne sais quaoi". Bellaco is also a favorite word.

One of the other peones, a wizened, elfin little campesino named Modesto had picked up a little English in the Zone, and now took this time to show off. "I no espeak English, man!" he declared, and cackled. The other guys looked at each other, impressed. Encouraged, Modesto continued: "¨juan, tu, twee, forrr..." and so on, petering out by "10": the fount of English slowed to a trickle , then ran dry. Then he kept quiet. I later learned that Modesto is 82 years old. Fairly aged, but beating the pants of young whippersnappers such as myself.

By this time I'd reached 5 buckets. "Cinco" I declared proudly to Toñin, staggering towards the truck. "Once" said he, walking back to the action.

Then Arselio, unusually quiet up till then, started talking about an episode of "Ocurrió Así" he had supposedly seen, and soon everyone's interest was piqued. "Así que eso fue en otro paí', encontraron e'te tipo arrecho con una yegua y lo multaron $1000 dólar." What country? "Se me olvidó, mire. Un paí', por ahí." He gestured vaguely. He went on to describe the psychological profile of this "tipo": "Nunca le gu'taban las mujeres, pa' na'" Yeguas were always more his type. That and chickens. "Le filmaron con una gallina, asì, miren" and here Arselio, caught up in his narrative, struck a graphic pose. "y la gallina hizo así '¡CLAK CLAK CLAK CLAK!'. ¡Diablo! Ese bellaco era bajito, pero gruuuueeso!" he finished, and bellowed his hearty guffaw.

Yegüero is not a word you will likely find in a dictionary either. But the yegüero is a veritable institution in the Azuero, a foundation stone in the colorful culture. To hear it said, assuming the role and trappings of the yegüero is a rite of passage in every boy's quest for manhood. And some men never stray from this chosen path. There is no direct translation of yegüero in English another example of the beauty and versatility of the Spanish language. "Gallinero", unfortunately, means nothing more than "chicken coop".

Now I was bending over at the waist, too, straddling the row; I knew I'd feel it later. On my 8th bucket, Rodolfo told me we might have to haul 100 buckets each that day. I couldn't tell if he was kidding. "¡Bueno, pués, solamente 92 más!", I bluffed, but inside I was quivering like slime mold on a log.

But I was getting the hang of it. Though I did not have the huge yet nimble hands of Toñin, by the 15th bucket I was keeping up with Arselio. Maybe that's because he kept talking, always returning to the "yegüero" theme, throwing in some personal anecdotes (I'd been here too long to be shocked). His incessant diet of rice and a lot of beans did not sit well with him either. He'd let one rip, then his eyes would open wide, as if he couldn't believe his own flatulence. Then came the huge laugh. The rest of us stayed upwind.

He started talking about a gringa who came to visit me once, whose name he couldn't remember. What'd she look like? "¡Alta, fula, simpática!" (he probably could be describing any one of the female volunteers who had visited, even if they were short, brunette, and ugly [Ouch! That's harsh! Just joking! As we all know, all Peace Corps Volunteers, male and female, are beautiful people, inside and out...]). He said he'd been tempted to ask her to marry him, but he'd kept quiet. "Ella ya está comprometida," I said, just to throw him off the scent. Shame, though, I told him: he would be a real catch, especially to a gringa. She'd take me back to the U.S., he said. What would you do there? I asked. Maybe he could work in a restaurant, Toñin suggested. Yes!, I cried, that would be perfect! A fancy french restaurant! Of course, Arselio, you'd need to put the salad fork just so, clear the dish when the knife and fork are in the 11 o'clock position, recommend a good wine with the entree such as a '94 Pomard Rugiens with the boeuf crespi, or a light cognac with the mousseline aux chocolate... He looked at me for a moment, blinking, then blurted: "¡Le daría lo que hay!" and roared his head off. I couldn't help but admire his logic.

The picking dragged on (as does this article), but the conversation was more subdued as the heat and arduous labor began to take its toll. My legs were trembling a little, the muscles of my inner thighs dancing around. I decided my personal goal was 30 and "entered the zone". Feel no pain, there are only tomatoes. An unknown person started salomando from beyond the river. Arselio and Toñin shouted in response and soon the valley resounded with artistic gritos. In the zone, I barely noticed.

Ori, the owner of the tomato field (and my counterpart), showed up in another truck, just as the last crates were being filled. "¿Cuantos cubos?" he asked me as I hobbled in with my latest bucket and stopped to dip some water from the milk container, using a KLIM can as a ladle. 28, I said. "¡Chucha Madre!", he said, impressed. Having wet my whistle, I shuffled zombielike back to the front and went for broke, for a grand total of 31 buckets. The smell of ripe, gassy tomatoes rotting in the sun was etched indeligibly upon my brain. We gathered the last few tomatoes to bring back to our own houses and vigorously rinsed the pervasive dirt off our hands and faces with tomato juice, drying off with the tomato leaves. Still, I would have dirt under my nails for a week. My long-sleeved shirt would never recover. I would dream of tomatoes for many nights to come.

I later found out that 30 buckets is the accepted daily haul for a day's work. I had earned 6 bucks, which, like a good Volunteer, I refused magnanimously. The others slammed me on the back; I'd earned my stripes I was a peon! I reveled in their acceptance and admiration, and the warm glow of camaraderie suffused the air. My back might never be the same.

Ori asked me if I wanted to pick on Friday. "I'll think about it," I told him.

Anyone still here? I have the exciting results of the contest I sponsored last issue, to guess the number of times that the name "Agua Buena" appeared in all my previous answers. ( Drum roll, please) The answer is: 79. 79 times I`ve uttered the sacred Agua Buena Mantra. Missing a few million more times to acheive Mahabindu, The Great Oneness. But I`m on my way. No one participated in this exciting event., so I guess I get to keep the bottle of Agua Buena water (which kinda tastes like chloro, anyway). But I´m saddened and disillusioned. Just don't come to me complaining that you have nothing to do in your site! Well that's it for this time. I'm outta here.

Panama Verde: Promoting Environmental Awareness through Positive Youth Development

Brantley Browning, PCV 1995-1997, Panamá

Environmental Education Teacher/Trainer

Background Information

Panamá Verde started as a collective effort to raise environmental awareness among Panamanian youth through the formation of clubs or chapters at rural magnet schools that link to form a national youth conservation corps. Every chapter is necessarily different, reflecting the unique environmental, social, and economic factors across the country. However different the groups may be, each chapter is trained in small project development, group initiative skills, and environmental education.

Purpose

To engage youth as active participants in the quest for sustainable development. In particular, I hope to provide an example of how a youth group can provide an opportunity to promote positive youth development, employ new concepts and skills, and generate "hands on" experience through local projects to tackle group-generated objectives.

Target Age Group:

Junior high through high school youth.

Materials Needed:

None other than ingenuity!

Activity: Youth-Led Small Projects

Experiential learning forms the foundation of this activity and should be a guiding principle of your approach to youth-led small projects. In short, you want to distance yourself from the actual execution of the project while empowering the group with the skills and knowledge necessary to accomplish their goals. Bear in mind that your role as steward may require constant supervision and on occasion, an intervention may be necessary to keep things on track.

To illustrate, I started a youth group in a local magnet high school with the support of an enthusiastic teacher who graciously drummed up support and provided me with much-needed insight and professional authority. After making our sales pitch to nearly 40 interested students, 22 signed up as volunteers. We agreed to meet once a week immediately following classes and spent the first month getting to know each other and fleshing out the group's common environmental concerns (trash, reforestation, endangered animals). Next, I gathered as much information as I could to prepare lessons (extremely informal lessons!) that usually took the form of group discussions, personal experience/testimony, and even short field trips to witness the effects of our existence on the local environment. If you aren't a teacher, don't fretmuch information and material exist through the Peace Corps Country Office, your fellow PCVs, local/international organizations, and host country nationals.

I spent a good deal of time encouraging the students to dialogue and debate on the local environmental situation as well as possible actions we could do to address the problems. Eventually, the students settled on a project to install trash cans in public areas as their big year-long project. As a facilitator, I leaned heavily on questions to help them design their project. Where will we get trash cans? Do we need permission and from whom? How do we pay for this? How will the trash be disposed? How do we raise community awareness of the need to use the trash cans? With no money, how do we solicit donations/supplies and who does the talking? Brainstorming these questions provided us with a draft plan of action that guaranteed everyone's active participation throughout the life of the project.

We divided the group into task forces responsible for the following functions: Permission, Donations, Advertising, Work Crew (everyone!). My co-leader and I worked closely with the individual teams to provide advice, keep them on track, and step in when tensions simmered. Through this process, the students presented and won approval for the project from municipal officials; designed and created simple posters to raise awareness within the high school as well as community; sought and obtained donations of used steel drums, the services of a welder, and paint; and ultimately spent two summer work days painting the barrels green and white with their group logo, slogans, and names of team-members.

In the end, students learned a great deal about trash; designed and executed a small project from beginning to end; picked up new skills; contributed a tangible example of youth making a difference; and perhaps most importantly, derived a real sense of empowerment and satisfaction from working together.

I believe the value of such an exercise is that regardless of geography and culture, the idea of a youth project can be modified to fit existing situations and provide youth with a positive growth experience. There is no right or wrong way to do thisevery project will necessarily be different which is exactly the way it should be!

USE PEACE CORPS PANAMA FRIENDS
FOR DONATIONS TO YOUR PROJECTS

Suppose you have a great, but unfunded, project. Suppose you also have friends or relatives back home who want to contribute cash to your project. How can you channel the cash from friends and family to the project? If you do it through Peace Corps Panama Friends (PCPF), the alumni group of Peace Corps Panama, then the U..S. donors can deduct the contribution on their federal income tax return.

Step 1 is to send PCPF the following:

A. A write-up describing the project, to ensure that PCPF agrees that the project will help accomplish the objectives of Peace Corps.

B. Instructions to the PCPF treasurer explaining where he should mail your check, and to whom it should be made out.

Step 2, which can happen as soon as PCPF agrees that the project fits the Peace Corps' objectives, is to have the donors send their donations to the PCPF treasurer. Checks should be made out to Peace Corps Panama Friends and must be accompanied by the donor's name and address. (PCPF will send an acknowledgment letter to each donor to substantiate their tax deduction. If you send the donors anything of value in return for their donations, please tell the PCPF treasurer what the value of that item is; its value must be stated in the donor's acknowledgment letter.)

Step 3 is to send PCPF a progress report explaining how the money you received via PCPF was spent. This is only necessary if PCPF has channeled $1,000 or more to you and you want PCPF to continue to channel donations to you.

Step 4 is for a member of the Peace Corps Panama staff to send written confirmation that the funds sent so far are being used for the intended purpose. This is only necessary if PCPF has transferred $5,000 or more to you and you want PCPF to continue to channel donations to you.

The letters describing projects to be funded, and the donations, should go to PCPF's treasurer:

Jerry Lutes
21 Farm Haven Court
Rockville, Maryland 20852
jlutes@PCPFhntb.com
(Note: To use email address, remove "PCPF".)

La Vaina lavaina@PCPFpa.peacecorps.gov June-July 2000
(Note: To use email address, remove "PCPF".)

Bemar Tulemas Gunoe

(You will eat Kuna food)

by molly mccracken

I know that this is just what you all have been waiting for, a break from beans and rice...yes indeed, the recipe for Tulemasi (Kuna food), the staple of life in Ustupu, Kuna Yala. Since arriving just over a year ago, I have had the opportunity to eat this soup every single day! So without further adieu....

Tulemasi

1. Ingredients (Tulemas e imarmar):

4 coconuts (ogob cuabake)

As many green bananas and/or platanos as you can find (mas ichasuli)

Water (di)

Enough fishor crab, conejo pintado, iguana, deer, random birds, sea turtle, tortoise, wild pig, whatever meat you can find (ua bugesuga, sule, ari, coe, butu, guama, sigli, morogoi, yau, wedar, yoisar begisi)

A little salt (palu iche)

-andif available:

1/2 a lime for each person (naras, egad egad)

hot pepper (ka)

2. Preparation (Imaket):

a) Remove husks (e uka) from bananas and/or platanos. Throw all husks in a big basket (sile dumad) to throw in the sea later. Cut the bananas and/or platanos in half and put in a big cast iron pot (esmet dumad).

b) Using a machete (es dumad), carefully remove the hard hairy part of the coconut, leaving the inside meat in one whole piece. (**note: this part is tricky.) Grate the meat of the coconut into shreads and place in a colander (puibu). Pour water through the shreads and put the resulting milky white water in the big pot with the bananas/platanos.

c) Put the pot with the bananas/platanos/coconut water on the fire (so). Throw in the fish (or other animal of choice). Boil (kuakuarmake) until done. (**note: the fruits will be reasonably soft, the liquid will be sort of grey, and the fish will normally be a bit stickyother animals may vary in texture.)

3. Serving recomendations (ogunnet):

a) Serve the soup in one bowl (bate) with fish or meat in a separate bowl. Set in fron of the person eating.

b) Put the spoon (wesar) and the 1/2 lime in a pot filled with about one inch of water. Set this also in front of the person eating.

c) Put the salt and hot pepper on a small plate (bate pipi) so that the person eating can stir (wirwirsai) the desired amount of salt and picante into the soup.

d) Make sure that there is an extra random plate in front of the person eating for and bones or crab shells (cala). It is also recomendable that you let the soup get lukewarm before serving.

e) After the person has eaten a huge bowl and the server has offered seconds (napi?), be sure to have ready a glass of water so that they can rinse out their mouth and spit on the floor (assuming the floor is dirt). Allow the full person (ime itoge) to wash their hands with soap (morgaut) in another small pot of water which should be located nearby on the floor.

So that's it. The long awaited Tulemasi recipe. I recomend a visit to Kuna Yala if you want the full effect...you know, women wearing molas serving you, kids staring at you as you eat, billows of smoke from the fogón, etc. Enjoy! (nued gunet)