The Host Family

As I mentioned last week, I have moved out of my host family’s house and into my own place. After five months and living with four different families, I am finally a free man. The whole experience reminds me of The Seinfeld episode, wait, I can't think of a situation that is similar from the show. The closest I can think of is George moving back in with his parents, but that doesn't really apply for me. It looks like I am going to have to come up with some original thoughts for this post, so if it falls flat, well, you will know who to blame. And it’s not Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld.

Over the past five months, I have divided my time amongst four families. After having a home with the same family for the first 26 years of my life, rotating families like this kind of left me feeling like the plate of stuffing that gets passed around the dinner table at Thanksgiving. I started out with a full plate of eagerness, but by the time the dish gets passed around the table a few times that eagerness is gone and eventually my plate was empty. Pretty soon I started to look forward to the desert, which thankfully came in the form of my own house.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the experience. I did, quite a bit. Each family brought a different wrinkle to the table, but in the end, they all helped me reach my overall goal of becoming acclimated with Panamanian culture.

My journey started out with a family that I lived with in the site of our training in Santa Clara. I lived with a family of four that consisted of the mom, dad, a 13 year old and a 4 year granddaughter. The mom of the house was the one who really took me under her wing to show me the ropes of the Spanish language, which helped me tremendously over the first two months. Also, it should be noted that the mom called her granddaughter “Hurricane” because she could be quite the handful. From there, I bounced around two different families for a week each. Both families were nice and kept me well fed (you can’t ask for much more than that!). The one thing that will stick with me about these two families was the day I left town, the young boy wouldn’t come out to say goodbye because he was in his room crying over my departure.

Finally, I made it to my site, where I lived with my counterpart and his family for three months. My counterpart, Sergio, is the main person of contact I have in the community. In my case, he is the president of the cooperative. His family consisted of his wife, a boy that is two and half and a baby girl that is now ten months old. I am not sure, but the two kids could give any brother and sister combo a run for their money in a cutest contest.

And they are great people too. The wife helped me more with my Spanish and my counterpart has a good sense of humor. One day when I told him that I was starting to get pretty dark, he said “that in two years I would be as dark as Barack Obama”. Well, he said that in Spanish.

Now I am on my own. And it is definitely different. No more babies crying, no more rice two times a day, and no more Spanish soap operas nightly. I don’t miss the first two, but I do find myself occasionally longing for soap opera fix (I liked the Spanish practice, ok). Soon, I will get to start to tackle some of the things I want to get to over the remaining 21 months. I’ll tackle those subjects in upcoming entries.

First, I am going to enjoy some peace and quiet.

Ballad Of A Thin Man

Tomorrow marks the day I will be moving out of the house of my host family, and into my own house. Since one door will be opening, while another closes, I thought it would be good to take a look back at the past three months in my new home. To do so, I`m going to use some of the lyrics from the Bob Dylan song ¨Ballad of a Thin Man¨ to help me out.

You try so hard
But you don't understand

Even though my Spanish has improved quite a bit, there is a lot of times, I still just don`t understand. The Spanish language is a bit more complex than I thought it was. Present, Past, Imperfect, and Subjective all lead to a bunch of different conjugations of verbs.

And you say, "Oh my God
Am I here all alone?"

Yup. I’m here all alone. However, I’ve never thought of it this way, but there has been times when I wake up and it takes me a second to remember just where I am. It’s kind of a weird feeling as you might imagine.

Who immediately walks up to you
When he hears you speak
And says, "How does it feel
To be such a freak?"

I feel like this happened to me sometimes when people would see me for the first time. In a lot of ways I felt like a freak.

To just give a check
To tax-deductible charity organizations

With my salary, this year or next I won’t be writing any of these types of checks.

You've been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
You're very well read

I haven’t read any of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books, but I have read quite a few. I have read some very interesting ones from Liars Poker to The Omnivore's Dilemma. Coming up next ranges from a book about Robert Kennedy’s life to the movies of Stephen Segal. It should be quite an educational ride.

And he says, "Here is your throat back
Thanks for the loan"

I’ll be finishing up my service on October 21, 2010.

And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"

Instead of some milk, I ‘gave’ someone my bookbag. Or more like it was stolen. The one setback thus far cost me my camera, iPod, passport and some other things. Not fun.

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

The famous line from the song, gives me a chance talk a bit about the main project in my community. Working with a fishing co-op, we are trying to secure funding to ramp up efforts of the co-op. The group is working with some different agencies and I’m helping them in getting materials ready for those meetings. My hope is some money will come soon. In the meantime, I'm going to try to figure everything else that is happening in my community.

My Day in the Field

This past Saturday, I had the interesting experience of cutting rice with my counterpart/host family on a small plot of land. Before we delve into the details of the day, allow me to first set the stage.

Starting a few weeks back, my counterpart’s dad started to build a contraption to hold the rice. He built this was various scrap parts that were lying around the house. I have to admit, the final product was some inspired genius – a mixed and matched casket shaped box that looked like it might fall apart, but at the same time looked sturdy as a Great Wall. With the container built, my counterpart, his dad, and I loaded it up in the back of a truck to take it to the rice plot that was about a mile away. This is when I got my first look at the field. It was in a swampy area that had a stream running through the middle of it that acted as a natural divider of the land. As we carried the box out on the field, I had my first taste of mud in some time. Since it hasn’t rained in about a month here, I forgot about the wonders of the slimy stuff. But, since this was swampy land that was slowly drying out, it was a muddy mess.

As we left, my counterpart informed me we would be back on the following Saturday to harvest the rice. During the week, I would see my counterpart’s dad getting ready for the big day. My favorite activity was seeing him sew together bags that would eventually serve as a type of fence for the contraption (I’ll explain more later).

So, now the pieces are in place and it’s about 7:30 Saturday morning, my counterpart and I start walking out to the field. Oh, I’m also carrying my trusty machete. Upon arriving, we are greeted by my counterpart’s dad and a couple other folks who have already started. I’m given a brief tutorial on how to cut the rice. Essentially, the rice grows up in little plots. Sometime the plots have as few as 10 individual stands clumped together, other have as many of 25. The plots are scattered about a foot from each other. So, now to cut it, you grab the plot together in your hand about a foot from the ground and take your machete and cut it about six inches below that. You throw the cut rice into a pile and move onto the next plot. And on and on this goes on and on. The one catch is the further you get into the field, the more water and mud there is.

As you might imagine, it gets a bit tedious. So, there were a couple of wrinkles throughout the day that spiced things up. The first is the traditional bottle of Seco that is brought and passed around every hour or so. Seco is a dry liquor that has a taste that leaves a lot to be desired. I passed on the offer telling them I only drink beer. Another interesting activity is the yelling that occurs about once every half hour. Basically, one person lets out a scream that I don’t even know how to translate it into a typed word. I’m sorry. Come visit me and you can experience it firsthand. After that person lets his ‘grita’ (or scream) out, another person answers that call. And they go back and forth a couple times. Sometimes another person joins in as well. That’s when it really takes off. Going into the day, I knew about both of these work field traditions. However, the third one was new to me.

About an hour or so after I got there and was cutting rice, I had my back turned and was eyeing my next target. All of a sudden, I hear a loud pop. I turn around to look and see my counterpart’s 67 year old dad about to light another firecracker with a huge grin on his face. What he has is an imitation Black Cat. Suddenly there is another “pop”. He lights about four of them then scampers back to his work quickly, almost like a teenager fleeing a scene before any adults can catch him. They really love their fireworks here. On New Year’s Eve the fireworks started before midnight and went a good half hour into the New Year. These weren’t just public firework displays, but anybody who wanted to set them off. I still don’t know how the city didn’t burn to the ground. Anyhow, the fireworks went on throughout the day. It was great.

As the field was getting cut, a couple other folks were collecting the bundles that were left behind and moving them near the contraption where the rice would be removed from their stalks. This was done by taking a handful of the stalks and beating them against the crate. The crate had a couple pieces of wood going across it that would allow the rice to beaten hard enough to be separated from its protective shell. Also, there was a net that over top the wood, so that only the rice would fall into the casket like bottom. And, of course, the bags mentioned earlier helped seal the container by providing a wall that kept the rice from flying everywhere.

Doing one part of the field took pretty much the full day. By the end, I was so covered in mud that it looked like some hippie from a picture at Woodstock, only with a buzz cut though. All and all, it was an interesting day. Sure, I got a couple blisters on my hand from the machete (that’s what happens when you avoid manual labor most of your adult life!), but more importantly I got to help out the family that I’ve been staying with for the past two and a half months. Since they have been nothing but good to me, I was happy about that.

Now I gotta go clean my clothes as part II is this coming Sunday.

What's Your Name Again

In the Seinfeld episode “The Nonfat Yogurt,” Elaine starts seeing a guy who is an advisor for Mayor Dinkins. (Yes, another Seinfeld reference. This won’t be the last either; as I’m convinced during the shows illustrious run they put their own unique spin on nearly everything that happens in daily life.) Elaine pitches to the guy, Lloyd Braun, that everybody should wear name tags in the city.

In the show, the idea is a huge failure, but I think it might have some legs in my community. Because one hurdle I’m trying to overcome is remembering people’s names. I have identified two reasons why I’m struggling with the names:

1. In some cases, it is the first time I have heard a name, so I have no past recognition on my part. For instance, one guy in my town is named Faustino. It took me a couple times hearing the name before it started to click. On the flip side, one lady is named Jamie, and since that is the name of my older sister, I haven’t forgotten that one.
2. My brain is overloaded trying to listen and think in this foreign language that there just isn’t anymore room for something like a name.

Of course, there is a whole other twist to this tale. Most folks have a nickname that they go by, but when you first meet somebody, they will give you there real name and not their nickname. In one case, a member of the co-op first name is Angel, but everyone calls him Purre, which is his nickname. So, when I first got to site and people would ask me about Purre, I would have no idea who they were speaking of. None. Eventually, I put two and two together, and was able to see what was going on. And it’s getting better across the board, as I’m picking more names each day.

Still, it would be fun to do my best Frank Costanza impression around my community as I look at name tags, ”Hola, Conception”, “Buenas, Miguel”, “Adios, Adrian”.

Of course, there would be the whole issue of whether the name tags would have their first name or nicknames on them. So, maybe I’ll just avoid this political disaster, like Mayor Dickens should have.