If you haven’t heard, my town is getting flooded. I write through the experience and although it may not sound that serious as I have inserted humor, it is pretty bad.  Please pray for us while we are in need of saving.  Read about it beginning two posts before this one.

…

I am tired of trying to get Skype to work.  The internet connection here is killing me.  It reminds me of the days that I was a new subscriber to AOL.  My screen name?  KP502.  Yes, I was one of those crazy 7th graders who thought having Korean Pride was the best, so of course, I used KP in my screen name.  Now, although I’m proud to be Korean, it’s just plain embarrassing.

Finally, the connection goes through and I could see Tim’s (the APCD for Environmental Health and acting Duty Officer) face and hear him clearly, but again, he cannot hear me.  We resolve to them speaking and me typing, which I prefer anyway because I have no idea how to communicate what I am experiencing verbally.  People are literally struggling and having a hard time getting through this.  On top of that, the number of people that have been displaced from their homes has risen to 192, all of whom are staying at the school.  The country director, Peter, isn’t in so we decide that it would be better to wait.  I tell them that I will call back in about 30 minutes to an hour.

I have been walking around in sandals and my feet have managed to stay wet at all times.  I couldn’t take it anymore and the patience of not having boots, as I have been waiting to buy the ‘perfect’ boots, had not only worn thin, but completely snapped.  I go to the ‘Chino’ (the local market owned by a Chinese person) and buy a pair for $9.75, $2.00 more than I paid for the exact same ones before.  I was peeved.

I need to update the Peace Corps office, so I begin my zombie walk from bank to bank and see if anything new was going on.  The people here just walk back and forth all day long, watching the water rise and recede.  It’s pretty funny.  But we had sent about 4 e-mails back and forth so they understood on a basic level what was happening, but they didn’t know the specifics or the magnitude of the problem.  I needed to be sure.  The north end, where the buses lead to Changuinola, was completely flooded in.  The river had blown through a natural earth wall, but because they were trying to create a sewage system right next to it, they ended up making the wall too thin to be able to hold up an entire river.  The Sixaola river was now rushing across the street and flooding the Chiquita Banana plantations.

I walk 7 minutes to the other end of town, down the newly paved road (2 months old), and notice that the water was receding slowly.  The water from this end of town, on the west end, was heading to the other side of town, riding the river’s current, while the east end was still flooded as the valley separating the mountain from the town was still flooded.  The home I was supposed to sleep in was still flooded.  I do not want to be dealing with this right now, I think to myself as worries about the people living outside of town are starting to ruminate in my mind.  I head back to make the call, which now, Peter (the country director) is around to take.  He asks me a series of questions and I give him all the answers to the best of my ability, then asks me if anyone is in dire need.  I ask him what ‘dire’ means, thinking that there is no one and tell him there isn’t, until I think of the people sitting on top of their roofs because their houses are flooded and are surrounded by water.  I ask some questions about statistics and numbers to other people and ask them how many people are unaccounted for and if there are any sick people.  50 people are stuck in their homes, away from the center of town, 192 people are in the school because of the flooding, and more people are making their way in.  This is serious, I realize, and I begin to poise myself to take the helms.

I ask the office if there is anything we can do, or that I can do, and they tell me that the storm is expected to be bad for the next 72 hours, by which, its a good chance that my town, like many others just 20 minutes away will be fully submerged under water.  The storm has reached a moderate level of turning into a tropical cyclone, something I am definitely not wanting to deal with and if it continues to escalate, it will be our doom as we will have to climb the mountain to where the aqueduct is.  As superficial as I am, I start to preoccupy myself with thoughts of what the heck I am going to do with my stuff, and how I don’t want to lose it, but the thought only lasts two seconds before I re-focus onto what’s truly important.  They tell me that if I can write a letter, the national disaster relief agency would be more inclined to prioritize us, before the others, and as bad as I feel about leaving other towns in the dust, I am here to protect and rescue my town first.  I send a kid to tell the mayor that we will be putting his name on the letter and have many of the town leaders surrounding me as I write.  The President of the Health Committee, President of the Junta Communal, President of the PTA, the Sub-Director of the School, the Mayor and myself have all put their names on this letter and we send it off.  They tell me that they will continue to work on getting a helicopter to rescue me, but I tell them that I won’t just leave everyone behind; especially if they have to flee to the mountains, which we were all prepared to do. They tell me that a helicopter will do a reconnaisance run tomorrow morning, and will try to find a rescue helicopter to come get me (as all of them today, are occupied).  I say my goodbyes and head out, trying to find solutions for those people who are stuck in the flood.  It’s 5:30p and the sun is starting to go down.

One of the people stuck is Rufina, the woman who worked hard to get a Peace Corps volunteer in the town.  I hadn’t noticed that she hadn’t been around because 1. I don’t see her everyday and 2. in the midst of the flood, nothing really catches your mind until it’s right in front of your face.  I ask Emilio and he is also worried, so we begin our quest to find a way to get a boat and get out to her.  Emilio knows most of the people in town, or should I say that most of the people know him, and manages to collect a motor for a boat, and then a boat.  The boat is a huge log that looks more like an old floating banana than anything else.  It is really hollow and the wood looks like it’s going to fall apart if I get in.  4 of us get in and begin to paddle.

There is only one paddle, but there are 3 bamboo sticks.  We use the bamboo sticks to paddle, and it actually works pretty well.  Here we are, paddling away to where the we will pick up the motor to attach it onto the soggy banana.  We are literally paddling on top of banana trees and through what used to be air.  This is pretty exciting, I smirk to myself as I paddle like Indiana Jones.  I try to remember all the details so that I could write about it in my blog.

We get the motor and it takes a few tries to get it started.  Emilio tells us all to sit at the rear of the boat so that the propellor will actually hit the water.  If we stay scattered throughout the 25 foot boat, the motor won’t hit the water, so we scoot our butts all the way back, almost like a double date.  It felt a little awkward as we kept brushing each others hands and feet in the cramped space.  I stare out to Costa Rica to take my mind off of this mutually awkward experience.

We head out to the Rio Sixaola and make it over the last banana tree.  It’s a cool ride and I’m enjoying the scenery.  Everything is always more beautiful when you are on the water, even if the water is brown and you could see the grease from the over flooded septic tanks that have poured into the river.  I do my best not to get wet.

After a refreshing 5 minute ride, we end up at a river bank, where we need to lift the boat out of the water and drag it 5 feet into the other end where there used to be a road, but due to the water, has been flooded.  Fortunately, there are three people watching the water flood the town, and we get them to help us get the boat out of the water and over to the other side.  We get about 6 feet of the boat off fine, lifting it the 3 feet above sea-level, but then we get stuck.  This thing is a massive paper weight, and it has probably absorbed all the weight of the water in the pores of the wood.  It’s pretty ridiculous how heavy it is and how pathetic 7 grown, muscular (except me, I’m just flab) men struggle to move it an inch.  One look at these guys and they look like they go to the gym twice a day with their washboard abs and cut up shoulders.

After twenty minutes of trying, we give up and push the boat back.  I am pissed off and discouraged because I think of the people who are left stranded for the night on top of their roofs.  As we head back into the river and the motor begins to barf up it’s exhaust fumes and I feel an itch on my neck.  I don’t know what it is, but I just ignore it.  The itch gets worse.  I finally pat my neck and feel something on it, there are not one, but two grasshoppers just chillin on my neck.  GREAAAAAAAT, is all I could scream as the others laugh at me as I almost fall out of the boat as I flick them off me.

Then, as we make our turn, a whole slew of bugs begin to land on me for absolutely no reason.  They must think, like the Panamanians do, that I am rich and could suck the life out of me.  I swat them little by little until they are completely off of me.  8 buggers in total.  Finally, peace.

As soon as I thought the word peace, I see something on my shirt.  It’s something like a combination of a wasp, a bee, and a flying ant.  I have no idea what it is, but I try to flick it off and the little piece of snot stings me.  I remember getting stung by a bee and this one hurt a lot more than the time I was 9 or so years old, playing on the playground, when a bee stung my eyebrow.  Why my eyebrow?  I have no idea, but I remember how mean that bee was.  I’m just glad it didn’t sting my tongue or something that would’ve made it hard for me to function as a human being.  Can you imagine if I swallowed my own tongue?  Hmmm.

The stupid sting starts to swell and I am just dealing with the burning itch on my left forearm.  I’m hungry, as I have been for the past few months and I just want to eat a good steak.  Unfortunately, its hard to come by a good piece of meat and even rarer to come by a well prepared piece of meat.  Plus, I can’t afford it on my salary.  We make our way back and tie the boat up.  The rain has stopped, but I am still worried sick about the possibility of another flood during the night, which will for sure overtake the houses of the people in my town.

We get back and I rinse off and head to the school to make my final call for the night.  I call into Tim (APCD of EH and Duty Officer) and he tells me some good news that the storm has gone from a moderate to a low and that the worst of it should be over, the operative word being should.  My hopes are that we won’t have to deal with another flooding as I have plans to sleep in the house and the water has trickled out from within.  I tell Tim that we have organized a small emergency task force and are looking to collect volunteers to help out the displaced people.  I also tell him that we will be making our way out in the morning again on the boat, but he tells me that due to the critical nature of the problem, that I need to stay in touch and should wait until after a call with the office before I head back.  He keeps on emphasizing that I am in the most danger and because I am right next to the largest river in Panama, I am in the most dangerous position.  I still worry about the others and ask if they were able to get in touch with everyone, and tell him that I can still go out and help those people who have now been stranded for two days straight.  They are still trying to get a helicopter to airlift me off my island.  I try to convince him to move the meeting to 11:00a, but the emergency of the situation has put me in a position to where I must stay in contact with the head office, and he emphasizes that Peter, the country director will want to speak to me as soon as their day starts. I agree to an 8:00a Skype conference (as it is the only way to communicate).

Thank God the rain has stopped for the time being.

If you haven’t heard, my town is getting flooded. I write through the experience and although it may not sound that serious as I have inserted humor, it is pretty bad.  Please pray for us while we are in need of saving.  Read about it in the post before this one.

Last night, I thought it was over.

10:00p, they told me that that the water was subsiding on both ends and that it would be safe to return home.  Only myself and Emilio (the man of the house) decide to go back, while the rest of the family stayed put at the grandparent’s place. The rain is still coming down sporadically, hard bullet-like rain drops at times and a gentle drizzle at other times, but I stop worrying about whether or not I am going to have to get evacuated from this mess, or worse, if the entire town is going to have to deal with the repercussions of a flood.  It’s a sad thought to think that the entire town will go under.

As we go back to the house, all of the water that had risen to the crest of the patio in the front of the house had settled and we could once again, see the side walk.  I made my way though the mud and the heels of my flip flops kicked mud onto the back of my thighs.  All I can think about is the sewage mixed in with the mud as my feet and legs have been perpetually itchy for the past three days.  I had no idea that poop water was a skin irritant.

We do a little cleaning and sweeping before we take the mattresses down from atop the dining table and rest them on the bed frames, still in tact because none of the water entered the house.  The only thing I had to worry about was if the water would come while I slept, but that was one of the furthest thoughts from my mind at this point.  I was just glad that we wouldn’t have to deal with the flood like the dozen or so houses that have already been affected.

I pull out my fan and pull out “Good to Great” from the ceiling as all my books are resting on top of the wooden frame that holds the drop ceiling together.  I quickly rush to the bathroom for one last time as I like to empty myself before bedtime, a ritual I grew accustomed to as a wee little boy.  I read for about an hour, then turn off the lights and doze off.  Good is the enemy of great, and leadership cannot be ignored, I say to myself as I doze off.

7:00a.  I hear rustling outside and what seems to be someone calling my name, but I am still half asleep.  The door bursts open and I find Emilio standing over me like the killer from the movie I Know What You Did Last Summer.  I am startled awake and ask him, Que Pasa? He looks down signaling me to look down as well, and there is he is, wading in a foot of water.  You must be kidding me, I think to myself pissed off that I have to wade in crappy water again.  I get up, wrap my feet in plastic grocery bags, and begin to pack up my faithful Thermarest mat and bedding.  I put “Good to Great” back on top of the ceiling and walk out the door.  It’s pouring outside.

Emilio takes my stuff and shoves it under his poncho and begins to walk out.  We are literally making waves through the bad smelling water and moving slowly in order not to slip off the side walk.  The side walk is about 2 feet below the patio, which is about 6 inches below the bottom of the door sill.  That means that on top of the 20 foot flooding on the river in front of us and the 15 or so foot flood on the valley behind us, we have an additional three and a half feet of flooding into the town.  As I head out, and make my way out to the road, I notice that the river has reached the brim of the the road, and that about 30 houses have been affected by the flooding.  What’s worse is that each house is not just a home to two to four people, but many are homes to eight or ten people as is usual here.  As we make our trek, people are beginning to do what we did two days prior and packing up their things.  I look towards the river where there used to be a giant banana field and see a boatman rowing with his things across ever so gently, to make sure his things to topple over.  We pass the mayors house, then the school that is now home to dozens of people that are left without a place to stay.  Most of the kids walk around in their underwear as its easier to dry off and their wet clothes are hanging from the holes in the cinder block walls.  The ground is filthy.

I can’t believe I am in the midst of this and most of the people aren’t mobilizing to do anything.  The only answer they have is to hope and wait to see what happens.  This is not very encouraging and I try to throw out options, all of which get ignored because, unlike me, they have already lived through this several times before, and it isn’t new.  When worse comes to worse, we will just grab our things and make our way up the mountain in a boat, something I hope, wish, pray, and beg, does not happen.

As we get back to the grandparent’s house, Seida (the woman of the house) asks me if I ate (which I did at Emma’s right before) and if I saved the TV.  I nod my head no, and head back out in the rain to go save the TV, resting atop of a 5 foot wooden stand/armoir/closet.  We go back and Emilio grabs the TV.  The water has risen to three feet in the house and he is now wading in thigh deep water.  It’s crazy.  I take a few picturs of the road that is inching in towards the town as Emilio makes his way back.  The water is closing in on all ends, and I laugh to myself in astonishment.  This is so ridiculous, is the only thought that enters my mind.  I head over to the other end of the road, which is only 6 minutes until I hit a dead stop.  The road is closed in on us and we are on a seven minute walk of an island.  What the heck am I doing here, is now the thought that comes to mind as I know I didn’t sign up for the Red Cross (God bless them).  I quickly realize that I am here to roll with the punches, and as terrible as this experience is, it’s an experience that will stay with me forever. How I handle it will determine the fibers by which I am made. So, I help a few more people move their stuff and head back to try and get in touch with the Peace Corps office.

While I try to figure out a way to communicate with the outside world, I hear that a town 20 minutes away has been flooded with 9 feet of water and that the river banks are continuing to collapse.  The cell phone towers are down, and the public phones aren’t working.  The only thing that is working is the internet from the school, which operates on a satellite.  Thank God for the school, I say under my breath as I begin to type away.

I try calling the Duty Officer, an emergency phone, from Skype because everything else is down and Tim answers.  After struggling to communicate through the slow connection, I finally communicate to him that I will write him an e-mail.  I send an e-mail to Tim (an APCD), who immediately replies back asking me for more information.  Then I receive an e-mail from the country director telling me they are trying to get a local government agency to evacuate me from the site.  The last thing I wrote them was this:

“Honestly, I don’t know if I want to get evacuated, even though it would definitely be more comfortable and sanitary.  It’s because I don’t want the community to think that every time something happens, I (the American volunteer) will jet out of here.  I don’t want them to think that I am not here “hombro a hombro” to live with them, through the thick and thin.  At the same time, they are all expecting me to get evacuated and asking me when someone will come and pick me up – with a genuine concern for my own safety.  I have no idea what to think.

I am really concerned about the 100 + displaced people that are living in unsanitary conditions here at the school.  Is there anything I should be doing for them to help them out?  I’ve been moving stuff, but not much else.  Most of the day is spent going back and forth watching the water rise, and at times recede, then rise again.  My feet and legs are itchy from the rain water mixed with the septic water.  I think that its irritating my skin.  Any advice for that?”

Yes, I am paranoid about getting poopy foot syndrome.

Note:  I will try and update as many times as I can.  There is no need to worry about me as I am currently safe.  My only hope is that it won’t flood where I am staying and that the water, which I can see is flooding the road 40 feet from me won’t reach me.  Please pray for the town and for us so that the rain will stop.

What the heck!?

It’s Tuesday night, aka Wednesday at 1:00a.  I am sleeping, probably dreaming about Jaques Torres, Richart, and Godiva chocolate as the memories of the wonderful sensations on my palate are beginnning to fade.  It’s sad to think that I don’t have easy access to my favorite things in the world (even though I only get Jaques Torres when Abbi sends it to me and Richart when Leslie orders it from France).  While I smack my lips and continue to dream (those who have spent the night with me know the sound of my smacking mouth like I’m making out with some beautiful, smart, sexy virgin who will one day be my wife… ha!), I feel like I am having a seizure.  It must either be the fading memories of the cacao treats or the anticipation of who I will end up with that have me trembling as I sleep, but then I hit my head on the bed post.  What the heck is going on? I ask myself as I start waking up.  The sound of the rain outside put me in a trance for the night and I have grown accustomed to the house I am staying at so I sleep like a rock, but something was wrong.  I woke up for a few seconds, sat straight up, but nothing.  So I did what any good detective would do, I went back to sleep to figure out the mystery, if there was one, tomorrow.  I simply love to sleep.

When I was at home, if no one disturbed me, I would sleep for an easy 12 hours straight.  No questions asked.  From the moment I dozed off into dreamland, you could watch my eyes go through the lovely REM cycles.  It’s a beautiful thing that God created – sleep.  Our body’s need to rest and rejuvenate should remind us of our limitedness and our dependency.  But unfortunately, most people just do what they do and think of sleep as simply a means to be ready for their immortal lives the next day.  I remember reading somewhere that the famous celebrity chef, Wolfgang Puck (is that really his name?) only sleeps between two and three hours a night, saying that he is wasting his life if he sleeps more.  The rest of his time is spent working.  I hope he is fulfilled.  I have no clue.

I wake up the next day a little later than usual.  It’s 10a and as I make my way out, they just stare at me and I wonder if I have something on my forehead that says, “stare at me.”  So I wipe my forehead and they ask me if I woke up at night.  I tell them I don’t remember, but that I think I did.  They then tell me about the 6.0 earthquake that hit.  It’s still raining and I ask them how strong it was.  They tell me it shook the whole earth.  I chuckle to myself wishing that I was fully aware for the whole thing.  One month into site and there is an earthquake, what else could possibly happen?

The rain doesn’t stop for days and people are starting to worry, it’s now Saturday and it’s been raining so bad that people literally put their lives on hold and have stayed indoors.  Five straight days of rain is what Gordo (my neighbor) said they needed before the town begins to flood.  Today we are celebrating Kevin, the cute 5 year old boy’s 6th birthday.  We have postponed his birthday party now for four days as his birthday was on the past Wednesday and we were not going to wait any longer.  The entire family made their 5 minute trek down the road to his grandparent’s house where we would cook his birthday dinner and sing him happy birthday.  I don’t think that a kid like Kevin exists anywhere.

Kevin is a cute little boy that I call little Hercules.  For a five year old, turning six, he has more muscles than I do and could easily be a mini body builder.  It’s really funny if you think about it.  He’s got the cutest smile and is one of the easiest kids to adore.    I come home, he yells my name and runs over to give me a big bear hug in his triangular fluorescent green or blue underwear.  Then he asks me where I was and that he missed me.  I smile, give him a big bear hug back, pick him up, and storm around the room like he’s my trophy.  There are a few kids here that get excited when they see me and I think that they are what keeps me going in this lonely time here.  They fill me with the love that I think people without friends get from their dogs.  But with any kid, you would assume that when their birthday begins to peak up at the horizon, about 1 month after they celebrated their last one, they get excited and begin the countdown for it.  Not Kevin though.  He just remains cool and tells his 10 year old brother to chill when he harasses him about the cake and the candles.  It’s like he doesn’t really care and was born with an infinite amount of patience.

After we celebrate his birthday, I make my way back, stopping by Emma’s to take a poop.  I have started to avoid my toilet-seat-less toilet for the past three weeks and randomly, ‘drop’ by other people’s houses who have cleaner toilets with seats to christen their’s with my holy poop.  I am careful not to clog their toilets as if you flush your toilet paper down with your remains, you end up with a pot of poopy stew – and no one ever seems to have a plunger!

After my deuce and listening to “Kiss Kiss” by Chris Brown and “Praise you in the Storm” by Casting Crowns on my phone (it takes me two songs to complete my ritual), I head back home.  It’s now 8:00p and I am ready to watch a movie and go to sleep.  I take my third outdoor shower for the week, which includes me taking a 5 gallon bucket and a small container to pour the water and walking over to a water catchment system that one of the neighbors has on their roof.  It’s raining so I put on my board shorts and fill the bucket to take a shower in front of my own house.  I’ve been doing this late at night (usually around 12:00a), but today, I want to just sleep early.  While I bathe myself, people walk by and laugh at the fact that I am bathing myself outisde.  They proceed to ask me if I wasnted to go to the center of town to participate in some games they were going to play (like dominos and basketball).  I tell them that I am going to bed.

After I finish my shower, another neighbor walks over and tells me to be careful because the water is going to flood the neighborhood.  They tell me that we are currently an island and are stuck 12km on one side and 2km on the other side.  That means that no cars or trucks can make their way in or out, as well as food and water.  On the radio, the hosts were warning people not to waste water as the sewage water was mixing with the other water as floods were already punishing neighboring towns.  Two towns over, one town was already flooded and people were making their way to the school in my town because of it’s “high-ground” location.  Then they proceed to tell me that if push comes to shove, we will have to climb the mountain and sleep like Tarzan or the Jungle Book.  Wonderful, I think to myself.

To be honest, I am not all that worried.  Panic doesn’t hit me ever, it’s just more of a hassle to have to think about packing all my stuff up and moving it up onto the drop ceiling.  I felt like I had just gotten settled, and now they were telling me that I have to move EVERYTHING out if the rain, which hasn’t stopped for five days continues to pour and the water from the river continues to rise.  I decide the best thing to do in this situation is to sleep.  After all, I can think more clearly after a good night’s rest.  It’s 9:30p.

11:00p.  Seida (the mom of the house) knocks at the door and tells me to open up.  I had my iPod on and was enjoying Corrine Bailey Rae’s soothing jazz voice, but I have grown accustomed to having no privacy and in the moments of greatest comfort, getting interrupted.  I get up, put a shirt on, and walk to the front door where she is standing in an impatient stance.  She starts speaking rapidly in Spanish, and I catch a few words, but don’t really mind the rest as I am tired and just want to go back to sleep.  She rushes in and starts packing some bags, telling me that the flood is coming.  I don’t really think she’s serious and I definitely don’t think that it will be tonight.  After all, right before I walked in the house, I took a look at the river and there was still about 4 feet left before flooding and 4 feet of rain was a lot of ground to cover (even though the water rose over 15 feet already).  You can see the tops of the trees when there is light out, but it’s more of a novelty than a concern.  After she finishes packing, she tells me not to sleep too heavily to which I respond that I always sleep heavily when I do sleep.  She laughs with a concern in her voice and reminds me again to stay alert.  I nod, lock the door behind her, say a quick prayer to Jesus, and jump into bed atop of my cozy Thermarest. I doze off.

1:30a. “Ray!  Ray!  Levantese!  La agua esta subiendo!”  Groggy and a little irritated, I get up and ask him what he wants.  It’s my neighbor Marcelino (or Gordo as we call him).  He is telling me that I need to pack my stuff and put it on top of the ceiling.  I ask him why and he tells me the flood is coming.  I walk outside to verify with my own eyes if what he is saying isn’t just exaggeration.  Panamanians have a tendency to exaggerate things, and with the amount of jokes they tell, I don’t believe the majority of things that come out of their mouth.  Instead, I look at them like they are morons when they joke around like they are 5 years old and tell them that it’s not funny.  They think its funny that I don’t think what they think is funny.

The water has flooded my backyard and the entire valley behind it.  There is a mountain behind the house and a valley that dips below our community filled with vegetation and about 20 feet lower than the houses at the edge of town.  You must be kidding me, I say under my breath as I am in awe that the entire field has been flooded, something I thought was impossible.  Plus, there is an entire soccer field that needs to get flooded before the water hits the altitude of our town.  That’s a LOT of water.

As I make my way back inside the house, I find that Seida has returned with the army of her family.  Every one of her siblings, including her mother has made their way into the house to start packing and put everything on top of the ceiling.  The ceiling is made up of wooden frames nailed down in a grid and the foam material of the ceiling is nailed upwards.  They want to elevate EVERYTHING and put it all up on the ceiling.  I start packing my stuff and its annoying becuase of all the books that I have.  On top of that, I am dealing with the reality that I took EVERYTHING I owned out of my bags and arranged it accordingly in my personal space.  To pack everything up will suck, but I start the process.

I am so tired.  I can’t get myself to do anything, but I notice that the family is packing up the entire house faster than I am packing up my two bags.  It’s almost embarassing.  Almost.  I still take my time to finish up packing then help them hang the sofas on the wall and put the beds on top of the dining table.  We shove everything else on top of the ceiling in hopes that the flood won’t be like the one in 2005, where the water rose above a meter and you needed a boat to get around the town.

We pack up a bag for a few days worth of living and head over to Seida’s family’s house once again.  We drop off our stuff and make our rounds around the community.  It was like the scene in the Pixar film “Cars” where they fixed the roads and spent an evening driving back and forth on the only road in town, except instead of cars, it was people.  Three people under each umbrella, people were literally walking for 20 minutes one way and 20 minutes back over and over watching the water close in little by little.  It was 3:00a now and people have been walking back and forth watching the water rise for 4 hours.  Many of the houses have already been flooded and the school was getting full from the swarm of people making their way from the community.  It was a sad sight, like we were all refugees hit by a natural disaster, and no one was going to save us; we had to save ourselves.  Now, there is no way anyone can get in and out of town and people were just silently making their rounds, back and forth from one end of the road to the other.

I keep laughing to myself and they must think I’m crazy.  The thoughts that I am dealing with this and going through the nonsense of dealing with a flood is making me laugh.  On top of that, I am in the Peace Corps.  People thought I couldn’t do it, but here I am, doing it, and ready to go camping (something I avoided at all costs) when I get back to the States.  It’s hilarious to think that I am actually dealing with this nonsense right now and that its so normal for them.  The sad thing is that I am enjoying the entire process because it gives me a story to share with the people back home (you who are reading these words right now).  I’m stuck on an island with no way in or out, my cell phone has no signal because the tower went out, and we are on the verge of having to climb a mountain and sleep under a tree.  Plus, these people can’t pronounce my name worth my life.  What am I doing here?

I wanted to see if the water had entered the house yet so we stopped by the house on one of our four trips back and forth to find that the water was on the verge of swelling into the house.  In the last 2 hours, the water rose 5 inches and fell 2 inches short of covering the floor of the house.  Some of the neighbors already had 2 inches of water in their houses as they were lower in elevation.  It was sad to see people that I played basketball with sleeping in the school and I was asked if I wanted to join them.  I told them that I would just stay with the family for now and if it got too crowded, as there were nearly 20 people in an 800 square foot house, it was going to be a snug fit.  I found out that in order to make room for me, one of Seida’s brothers headed out to the living room with a sponge mattress.  Now that’s hospitality for you.  It’s 4:30a and I am tired.  I roll out my Thermarest, put on a couple of sheets, say a prayer to God, and shut my eyes.

8:30a.  I don’t hear the sound of rain.  Instead, I hear whispers.  I remember falling asleep to the sound of pitter patter, but I don’t remember when it ended.  I listen more carefully and hear a light drizzle, it’s still raining.  I can sense someone staring at me so I open my eyes.  Three kids are staring at me while I wake up to a hazy sunlight in my face.  They laugh.  I say good morning to them and one of them, Kevin, gives me a good morning hug.  Betty and Ceasar have a plan and use Kevin as a decoy to distract me so that they could tickle me.  They waited over an hour, scheming and whispering, for me to wake up and now that I was awake, they could attack with full force.  But even in my groggyness, I wasn’t going to be over powered by these runts, no matter how cute they were and no matter how much I wanted them to win.  They needed to know who the master was.  So I played it cool as I saw their claws approach my innertube donught and then as they thought they had victory, I grab all three of them and tickle them until they beg for mercy and run out the door laughing and screaming. They rush back in thinking that they could catch me off guard, but I tickle the laughter out of them until they struggle to catch a breath.  I frickin’ want kids right now, I smile to myself.  They do this for about 30 minutes until I have had enough and was too tired to move.

When I walked outside into the living room, everything was as I had left it, and everyone still in the same spots they were the night before.  It was sort of creepy, but whatever, the Ngobe and indigenous people here have a tendency to stare off into space and remain put.  It’s actually funny if you think about it.

We eat a quick breakfast, fried dough and fried ham (like the sandwich ham you get from the grocery store) and head over to the house.  The water barely made its way in and it is nothing that would be too difficult to clean up and deal with as long as it stayed put.  This was only water from the valley though, and the river was still rising.  I noticed that we had only about two feet until the river topped over into the town and about 15 rows of 5 houses each would get flooded by the river tipping.

Now we wait.  We wait until the water rises or lowers.  I have no idea, but my prayers are that the waters don’t flood the town as it would mean that the nature of my work changes from development to disaster recovery, and I didn’t sign up for the Red Cross.

Ok, I just saw a herd of 50 cows rush down the street and I think it’s my cue to call this one quits.

Throw up a quick prayer and holler at me.

Yea, busy pretty much describes what my life is like on the regular.

I have been keeping to a strict 10-4 regiment, which means that I am outside 10 hours of the day doing whatever it is that I need to do to establish credibility and gain exposure in the community. At times I feel like I am going to run for a political office here because of how much I have to schmooze. And the reason for schmoozing? It´s so that I can provide close to free labor and teach them stuff that they need to learn and I could get paid a heck of a lot more money in the States for doing. It´s really backwards if you think about the way this whole system works, but I will say that the volunteers who master the small stuff here learn invaluable skills and lessons to apply to the big meaty projects later on on life.

For those of you who are interested in how this process works here in Panama, the Peace Corps initiates contact with communities or is approached by proactive community members and then determines whether or not the community is suitable for a Peace Corps volunteer. More than anything, and like everything else, it´s a process of convincing those who make the decision to place volunteers that 1. there will be work and 2. it will be a physically safe place for volunteers (getting kidnapped would not look good for the organiziation). But, outside of physical safety, there is work no matter what the site is, and if you can´t find work, you just aren´t applying creativity in your self-marketing as a volunteer and establishing credibility in your community.  There is a huge respect given to those with college degrees, and its impossible to mess up the reality that as long as you are willing to work and truly living with a discipline to do so, you will find work to complete.

When I first arrived here, I was assigned two tentative projects: 1. with a banana growers association and 2. with the school to teach computers. Now, after explaining to the community members over and over again why I am here (to serve them with everything that I have) and what I am capable of doing (anything, because together, we can find solutions to any problem), they are beginning to dream of the things that they want to see happen for themselves and their community. So after being here for about 3 weeks, I have the two projects already, plus a business project with Red de Oportunidades (women who receive help from the government), a Leadership project with three people who I will teach all the contents of the seminars I have put on in the past so that they can teach a first group of 10-15 people, an aqueduct project to fix our brown to no water crisis, a new venture with a group of 18-21 year old boys to start a farming business, and working with several stores and a restaurant to improve their processes and accounting systems. Not too bad for my first few weeks.  I pat myself on the back for being so calculated in how I approached the community as I made sure that they would want to work with me and approach me for my “valuable” time. I still have yet to figure out how some people say that there is absolutely no work in their communities. If they don´t have work, it is completely their own fault – no joke. Maybe the training program needs to include basic elements of how to get established in the community so that you can maximize your results and stay productive.

But I can´t express how bored out of my mind I am. I am busy and I see that the material that I have been teaching them is being used and is actually necessary, but I am having a hard time finding fulfillment in anything that I am doing here. I am always with people, which I don´t mind, when I feel like they are adding value to my life, but at this moment, I am having a hard time seeing that as well. But what can I say, I felt like that often in the States too and the chances of me finding a person here that I feel like I can truly connect with is like trying to find an eyelash in the remains of a barbershop. I have now gone through 4 seasons of Entourage, and 2 seasons of the Office, I need more stuff to watch because my computer has maxed out on its entertainment capacity. When I start reading a book, I quickly get disturbed by the kids in the house and everytime I lock the door, the family thinks I am sleeping, so I try to make sure that I am not giving off the impression that I am asleep every minute that I am in the house. I just need some time with people I want to be around, but they are all far far away in Never Never Land.

Outside of the boredom, you learn to become a better observer by living in a country and in a site that you have a hard time understanding what is being said by the people around you.  Everyday is a language struggle, so I find myself learning by sharpening my non-verbal communication skills by paying more attention to the things that aren’t being said with words.  One night for example, I was visiting with the mayor who after realizing how slow my language skills were, decided to make giant hand motions like he was the Wizard of Oz.  It was pretty funny watching him make gigantic circles and karate chopped lines with his thick arms.  It was the equivalant of what Americans do when they travel and think that SCREAMING at the top of their lungs will help the host country nationals understand the English they are speaking better.  Of course, the hand gestures are more amusing and less degrading for the recipient.

I live most of my life in my head.  Because I can’t communicate as fluidly as I would like and because I can’t speak freely, I find myself talking to myself more than anyone else out there.  Last night, after a few games of volleyball, I walked with one of my neighbors around the town and started to talk to him in English.  Then after splurting out about 10 sentences in a row, I told him that I felt like he did when everyone jibber jabbered in Spanish – which actually doesn’t make sense because most of the time, I just pretend like I am paying attention and just nod my head up and down in agreement to whatever opinions are being thrown around knowing fully that they will be meaningless the next day.  I think they all like me because I always agree with everything they say and they feel smart that the degree holding, Chinese looking, freakishly tall man thinks the same way as they do, even though I have no clue if they are trying to start a cult.

The other day, I heard from my source of sanity Abbi that her husband´s plane had to land unexpectedly.  Apparently, the cockpit started smoking and they had to land the plane.  Unfortunately, no one knew what was going on until they landed safely.  I´m glad you are safe and sound Steve-o, but would´ve loved to see how you would´ve handled the situation if you knew the plane was smoking.  I can see you busting a few heads a mile high.

I have this incessant itch on my head.  Yesterday, a kid asked me if I had something in Spanish.  I didn´t understand him so he asked me if I had ´Head Cockroaches´ – he meant lice.

One of our group members went home.  I still have yet to find out why, but its sad; a lot of people thought she was going to quit a part of the way through, and it saddens me that she actually did whatever of the reason.

I have new random bug bites on my ankles and buttock region, I hope it doesn´t make its way front and center.

I´d like to go to a nice restaurant, but with the amount of money that I make here, going out once will make me broke.  But there are no nice restaurants here so that doesn´t really matter.

I´m always hungry.  The only time I am not hungry is when I sneak two bowls of cereal when no one is home.  This weekend, I had 4 straight meals of my new favorite cereal, Komplete with Manzana, it was awesome.

I think I´m balding.  I take regular pictures of my hairline and compare them to the day before.  I hope it´s just me imagining things.

The closest movie theater is 7 hours from here.  That sucks.

I am so sick of washing myself in brown water.

I miss good fruit and In and Out.

I crave chocolate all the time.  I bought a $10 tin of Cadbury chocolate covered almonds and they were old.  The chocolate tasted more like bricks and the almonds tasted like cardboard.  Bricks and cardboard, never going to buy that again.

Ok, I´ll leave this post with a few pictures.  Sorry if it wasn´t the most entertaining of them all, but the pictures will keep you entertained, I promise.
° The toilet water is what the faucet water looks like.  When the water comes out clear, the toilet evididences it, when it comes out dirty (most of the time), it looks like the pictures below.
° The kid´s name is Kevin, he is 5 and always runs around in his underwear and hugs me when he sees me.  He is so cute.
° If you look closely at the picture of the coconut tree (without the kid), you will see a painters roller.  I tried to knock a coconut down and instead, got the roller stuck in it.  Everyone thought it was funny.
° I send kids up to get me the coconuts.  Christopher is the kid on the roof, he´s sort of the annoying older brother of Kevin and always steps on my feet and touches my face on purpose.  He likes to do stuff that you specifically ask him not to do.  Reminds me of me when I was little.  Sad.

My diet consists of 3 Snickers Bars and 3 Coconuts a day.  The snickers I get from the local `Chino` which is what they call the store owned by a Chinese person in just about every town throughout Panama.  I was reading through a travel book this morning and found out that some people estimate that there are around 155,000 Chinese people in Panama.  But at $0.55 a pop, the Snickers fest digs deep into my pockets to spend that much on an unnecessary, guilty pleasure.  I don`t even like Snickers all that much, but I don`t really have many options to choose from and at this point, I think I can use the stomach filler as my meals are like eating portions for birds.  I just don´t get enough food to be full on a daily basis and find myself in a position where if I went out and ate what I wanted to eat, I would go broke by the fifth day of the month as the kids in the house want to eat everything I bring home.

I get the coconuts from the tree in front of the house that I am staying at.  All I do when I want one is call out to my neighbors who willingly rush out at my beckoning call to get me whatever I want.  So when I call out to them, all I yell is `Pipa´ and they march out with a pole that has a knife connected to the end of it to reach high into the coconut tree to be able to cut off the nuts, or is it fruit?  Whatever.  When they drop to the ground, they grab a machete, and start hacking away at it until a hole about the size of a quarter opens up so that the milk can pour out.  Then I guzzle the beast to the last drop.  I think that I heard somewhere that coconut milk can be used as a replacement for an IV, but whatever, I can drink them all day and everyday.

I never knew that the taste of coconut milk changed as did the meat inside the shell until I moved here.  When the coconut is really young, the milk is bland.  As it matures, it begins to form layers in
the way it tastes and begins to find sugars to make it sweet.  But if it stays on the tree too long, it becomes bitter.  It´s local knowledge that you learn just by spending valuable hours of your life sitting and doing nothing with the people.  I can´t wait until the day comes when I stop referring to them as the community or the people, and start calling them my friends.  It will be an interesting point in my life as a Peace Corps volunteer when that begins to happen.

The days here are lonely.

I am busy most of the time and am beginning to find a routine.  In the mornings, I wake up around 8am to get my day going and leave the house around 9:00am.  I usually start making my rounds in the community, just sitting with people and getting to know them until 12p, when I return home for lunch, and presume to get to know the community members around 1:30p.  Around 4:30p, I put on my athletic gear and make my way over to the basketball courts or the soccer field, which is the nicest one I´ve seen yet in Panama – they even have the word Lyon imprinted in the grass with perfect lines around the field.  By 7:30p, dinner is ready and I am back home with my family for a couple of hours.  If time permits and people are outside, I will head out there and just the swat bugs that attack me while we sit together and laugh about things I barely understand.  Most of the time, I am simply explaining to them that I am not here from China and that I am not here to open up a store, and try to expain to them what the Peace Corps is and why it is that I am here.  Of course all this changes when I have meetings with groups and people.

The average meeting with me lasts around 2 hours and 30 minutes – not much of a change since the US as I love long meetings.  I always feel like my meetings are productive and fun, but then I could just be self deceived like Michael Scott in the Office and in my own Lala land.  I hope I´m not anything like him.  Yesterday, I held a meeting with a group of women that are getting a type of welfare from the government on a bi-monthly basis.  One of the women is the most negative person in the world and I start grinding my teeth when she shows up late, as she is one of the few that still shows up late.  The other´s have learned how much I value my time and how they should value my own time as well as the others in the group and have started to show up within 10 minutes of when the meeting was scheduled.  But this one woman, who is supposedly the group`s leader is poison to the group and I am considering kicking her out, even though I probably shouldn´t just for the sake of the group`s health.

The way I see it is that the group is too delicate and too fragile at this point to deal with negativity or any failure.  We came to a conclusion by the end of the meeting that we would be starting a business together and that I would be a consultant to them.  We decided that we were going to bake breads and sell them at a $0.25 each.  It would cost us about $8.72 to buy the ingredients, plus time which they would not get paid for, to make 80 Jonny Cakes (I have no idea what they are, but I have heard of them and have heard good things).  If we were to sell all 80, then we would gross $20.00 or earn a profit of $11.28 to go into the business.  Each of the 11 members would pay $1 in order to get the business started and I have put sanctions for them so that they followed the group rules.

Group Rules:
1. No being late or missing a meeting
2. Sanitation first – wash your hands, wear gloves, wear hairnets, and don´t put on any lotions or cremes before coming to work.
3. Follow through with your assigned task – i.e. buy materials, return cash to tresurer, collect signatures, etc.

Sanctions for breaking the rules:
1st time – warning
2-10th time – $0.50 per offense
11+ times – $1.00 or possibility of getting kicked out of the business

The way that I see it and explained it to them is that it doesn´t matter if we are starting a major corporation or a small business, the fact is that if people don´t show up when they are supposed to and if they don`t do what they are supposed to do, the business will fail, and if they want to work with me, they will have to adjust some of the bad habits in their lives.  I have heard from a lot of Peace Corps volunteers that its hard to get people to come to meetings and such, but I think that should only be in the case at the beginning before the community knows who you are.  If it is after the community has gotten to know you, then you have done a terrible job as a volunteer to add value to the community and more than likely, have become a lazy quasi-productive member of the community.

As you may have read in past posts, I have been suffering from brownwatervitus.  Well, fortunately it hasn´t rained now in my community for 4 days straight and the water is clean and clear, and under control.  The bad news is that the reservoir up on the mountain has dried out and there is no water in the entire community.  Its a catch 22 that I live in, and at this moment, need resources, man power, and an act of nature to kick in to high gear.

But I was naked in the shower last night, after a sweaty game of basketball when I thought it might be better to shave my head first.  The water was at its steady urine sized stream and the last time this happened, I just stood there in the stall for about 20 minutes before the water pressure kicked back on and I was able to take a shower.  So this time, I pulled out my Wahl clippers and a number one fade and started cutting away at my hair.  I learned to buzz my hair in a way that all of the clippings ended up in the stained toilet bowl that had no toilet seat so that I wouldn`t have to clean up after I finished the cut.

As I was buzzing away, i dug in too deep and the sheer fell off.  I looked at the toilet with disgust and started cursing myself as I wanted to burn my hands and gouge out my eyes so I wouldn´t have to remember what I was just about to do.  I contemplated and thought that I could pull out the clipper guard with a thick wad of toilet paper, which I tried to do, but I failed to convince myself that it wouldn´t work.  Well, I was right and the toilet paper immediately melted in the water, inching its way up the tp until the paper was wet right up to the point below my fingers to which I let go of the entire wad.  Now, there was a huge, thick wad of toilet paper covering up the clipper guard, and I was left with one option.  Get the silverware.

I walked carefully to the kitchen, butt naked, with clippings of hair on my shoulder as I hoped no one had come home or was looking through the see through curtains in the windows.  I made my way to the kitchen and stood over the silverware contemplating what I was about to do.  If I used this, I would have to second guess myself every time I wanted to use a spoon or a fork to eat, which was everyday, and I didn´t want to play the lottery.  After two or three minutes, I shuffled myself back, closed my eyes, jabbed my hand down down the toilet, felt the grimy bowl, and picked up the clipper guard with my pointer and middle finger.  It all happened fast, probably less than 10 seconds from the kitchen back, but I wanted to throw up.  I didn´t know what to do with my hand as the water still wasn´t coming out of the pipe in the shower.  Now I was stuck with a crooked hair cut, no water to wash myself off with, and a hand that was just in the toilet bowl, fishing for something that would be used on my head at some point in the future.

There is no way to explain how you feel when you know that the pores in your skin are absorbing the pure nastiness of dirty toilet water.  Your whole body feels disgusting and upchucking is a natural response. I felt this way for another 30 minutes before the water started dripping out of the pipe, at which point I didn´t care any longer if I was going to get peed on by the shower.  I yelled at the shower to at least let out a little more water because at the rate this was going, it would take a month to collect a tea cup`s worth of water.  Then it started dripping faster and faster, and finally the pee like stream started to make its way out as I huddled myself directly under the end of the pipe, frantically scrubbing my hand with Pantene Pro-V as I use it for just about every type of soap need.  I probably used 1/5 of the bottle just on my hand, soaping up and washing my hands over and over in hope that I would be able to erase the memory of what just happened.

After I finished up, I made sure that I didn´t place my hands near my face for anything, not even to scratch my head.  It was a horrible night, keeping my hand out of my bed, but thankfully, I can now rub my eyes with the hand that was once dunked in the toilet, and that you, who are reading this, can laugh yourself off the seat you are sitting on at my expense.  Thank you very much, and a happy New Year to you.

Leave me some love.  I need it.

A bee just landed on my nose.

I haven´t felt this fearful in a long time.  Not even at the time that a trantula decided to crawl on my foot while I was talking on the phone to my sister, even if it was the first time I ever encountered one face to foot.  But a bee is totally different because I have been stung before.  I was sitting on the swings at the school playground when a bee thought it would be hilarious to sucker stab me in the eyebrow.  That was the cheapest shot in history except for the kid that punched me in the nose at the end of the year, but he died so I feel bad when I bring it up sometimes.

But the bee just landed on my nose and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight seconds later, had mercy on me and just flew off, drunkenly bumping into my forehead as it buzzed out the door.  Phew, close call.

This week was a unique week because the Separation from Columbia (Nov. 3), Flag Day (Nov. 4) and the Foundation of Colon (Nov. 5) fell under this week, so that meant very little would be getting done this week as people were off celebrating.  Everyone loves to have a reason to celebrate, so I don´t blame them, but I´d much rather celebrate personal successes instead of arbitrary days that have little meanings (Ok, I´ll give them Independence Day).  I need to stay busy because I will go crazy if I don´t.  Being stuck in a little town without work is miserable and depressing, so if I don´t stay minimally busy, I will probably try to find creative ways to off myself.

I have this ongoing theory that momentum begets momentum and the more diversified I am and the more projects that I start early on, the more will stick.  My hope is that when the community members see the productivity and hopefully results, they will either build on existing projects or want to start others to better the community.  It´s not brain surgury, but most people don´t exercise common sense regularly.  Most of the time, I feel as if I care more about their community, then they do.

There is this ongoing tension that I feel and I am trying to find ways to put it at rest.  I don´t know if I want the culture to influence me all that much, and I am afraid that if I fall in love with it, allowing the culture to shape me will inevitably follow.  There is no simple appreciation without some assimilation in any culture.  On the other hand, I want to be seen as one of the ´peeps´ and the only way to do that is to act, dress, behave, and ultimately think like them.  Oh the tensions.  In all honesty, I think that the Panamanian culture is among the ugliest cultures I have ever been a part of.  Of course, its not so in all its entireity, but if I were to rate this culture on a scale of 1-100, it would probably rate in the 15-20 range.  Their music is a caucaphony of acordians, screaching trumpets, mediocre guitar skills, and whining yelps.  Their food is bland, without much creativity, and too much starch.  Their clothing is cute for kids, but seriously terribly influenced by past missionaries who opted for a mumu type overly conservative dress.  There is only one traditional costume that I found appealing worn by the women, which is a lacy type white, flowy dress with a head dress that makes heads turn (When I get a chance, I will upload pictures).  They, like the rest of the world, are out for number one and know how to do manual labor, but hate to work.  They are nice because they want to save face and keep harmony amongst themselves.  The pain of awkward discomfort and negative rumors being spread is something they try and avoid at all costs.  They work out of necessity and don´t try to grow out of it, when there are examples all around them of people who have achieved moderate successes.  On a positive note, they are hospitable and whenever you travel around the country, especially as an outsider, you will most likely be able to find a place to stay for free and easily bum off a meal, even though it may not taste like the best meal you ever had, or may be the worst you ever have.

Who wants to visit me now?

The past few days have been filled with parades and marches, reading in hammocks, and secretly watching episodes of Entourage on my laptop.  I have meetings beginning tomorrow again, but I need momentum on my side and some companionship other than the ones I have here.  It would be nice to be sitting in some bar in LA with some friends, drinking a couple of brewskis, trying to pick up chicks, and getting into fights – even though I´m a lover, not a fighter.

Speaking of fights.  Yesterday was the first time in about 6 months that I did any sort of exercise.  I played basketball.  I enjoyed it because I felt like Yao Ming on a court with Circus people.  I was posting up, bouncing balls of people´s foreheads, and dropping dimes to people as they cut to the hoop.  It felt good being the best person on the court, but I fear that I will not get any better.

Of all the people playing, there was a guy, probably around 30 who was short and stocky.  He wore a red cap and a sported a crooked mustache.  He´s annoying as hell, I thought before we even got on the court to play a little 3 on 3.  Everyone who knows me knows that I do not get angry at all.  But after we played the first game, he wouldn´t stop calling me Chino, something I am ok with as long as they haven´t heard my common sense explanation of the differences between countries in Asia.  I explained it to him 4 times, and then he started to do it with more intensity and frequency.  He´s trying to get under my skin, I started grinding my teeth.

During the second game, I made sure I was guarding him, and that he was guarding me.  After a few post ups, which was all but me standing in the paint with my hands raised to catch the ball, a quick turn, and a lay up, he didn´t want to guard me anymore.  I am embarrasing him, I smirked to myself.  But his incessant racist, ignorant trash talking was still getting under my skin, so I decided to deny him of any shots by not only blocking his shots, but swotting them out into the streets as I rejected him.  I was Shaq when he was playing for the Magic back in the day.

Then it got worse, four games, five games, it got to the point where he would start talking in dialect and after calling him a Mexican, a Mexican woman, and a Columbian, I finally used the lowest blow to a Panamanian, not something I am proud of, but something I knew would get him to shut up.  I told him he liked to take it from men and that he needed to stop touching me because I knew he was just trying to cop a feel.  I felt dirty saying it to him, but his face went from a smiling fool to a timid mouse.

I was fuming and you could see the smoke coming out of my ears.  I grabbed him by the shirt and told him that if he kept calling me Chino, that I would do more than just embarrass him in front of his friends.  He finally understood.

After that, I went home, took a nice cold shower, and sat outside to contemplate on what happened.  I felt bad, but I thought it was necessary to get my point across to him.  Then I spent some time talking to the neighbors and as I was about to get up and leave, I felt something on my right calf.  I first just shook my leg, and when the sensation continued, I looked down to see what it was.  A tailless Geiko Gekko was crawling up my shorts and I had to smack my inner thighs to prevent it from entering the twilight zone.  It plopped to the ground and my neighbor Chippy stepped on it, leaving a pile of greenish brown goo on the sidewalk.

Never in my 25 years of existence did I ever think that I would ever use the words clean enough to describe whether or not I brush my teeth. 

I wonder if the word sanity and the words sanitation and sanitization come from the same meaning.  If there was one thing I learned during English class in high school, it was that many words in the English language share the same root, thus, somehow sprouting a similar meaning.  Maybe that was in Junior High, but regardless, I am finding incredible connections between the words.  I should probably look up the meaning of the Latin root san, but I don’t have internet anywhere near me and at the point that I am writing this I am way too dependent on the internet as the source of all my knowledge needs.

I know I said that I like the rain here, but I lied.  I didn´t realize at the time that I said it that the rain would stir the water in the aqueduct that ended up spouting out of the faucets in the houses.  I guess its one of those lessons that life wants you to learn over and over again, like the lessons between tensions of waiting patiently versus going out proactively.  This lesson is a sort of Yin-Yang type of lesson where if there was no rain to begin with, there would be no water that came out of the faucet, but with the rain, comes the dirty water.  Apparently, the months of November and December bring forth such rains that the water is dirty for two whole months.  The other 10 months, since it doesn´t rain all the time, the sediment subsides and the water appears to be clean.

I feel dirty.

When I came here to visit a few weeks ago, I swear, they made sure to roll out the red carpet and show me the royal treatment in regards to bathing and accessibility to water.  You know of course that when anyone uses the words I swear, that they have no idea if what they are saying is really true and that they are simply hoping that you just nod along and show some sympathy by believing the poor bastard, but that’s another issue I don’t have the time to go into right now.  There was water, transparent or translucent, I forget which one means what, but you know, clear as crystal.  Trans is another one of those words that you can guess has roots in Latin, but when I think of the word transvestite, I get a little confused as to what the meaning of the word actually is.  Maybe it means obvious or apparent to the eye.  Whatever.  But every night before I went to sleep for three nights, I took a nice freezing shower from the water that came from the mountains that I can’t really see in the distance from a source that is at best, questionable. 

The water has a milky taste to it, but it doesn’t taste like milk.  Instead it tastes more like old plastic or something along the lines of that.  I try to keep my mouth shut during the entire shower by puckering up my lips, but I always fail and the water somehow navigates its way into my mouth like it’s Christopher Columbus or Magellan or someone like that. 

The first night here, I noticed that the water was slightly murky, but I didn’t pay much attention because sometimes it’s better to ignore reality than to face it; especially when you have no choice, but to live with it.  At least if I ignore it, I can create my own story to please my paranoia, which is what I have all the time here regarding sanitation that gives me sanity.  It’s still cold as ice, but I have learned the beauty of mind over matter at a Tony Robbins’ seminar several years ago by walking on burning coal and now, I swear I am prepared for just about anything the world throws at me.  Well, that’s not completely accurate (remember the I swear indicator).  I can handle the cold just fine; the heat is what I can’t deal with.  Here, I am always a little afraid that my face is melting off and I have no idea if it is true because I haven’t looked in the mirror since I got here.  I sometimes wonder if I am still handsome, because I know that’s what all of you were just thinking to yourself – I wonder if Ray is still the handsome guy he was before he left for the Peace Corps in Panama.

The second night was nothing special, a lot like the first, but throughout the day, I noticed tiny pieces of who-knows-what shoot out of the faucet into my cupped hands as I was trying to wash my hands and face from the mid-day sweat that seems to be on a daily menstrual cycle on my face.  What a gross thought.  But the days following are where the inspiration for this post is coming from.

Skip day three because I didn’t want to take a shower that day.  Day four.  I wake up and as groggy as I usually am, I take my toothbrush out of it’s plastic blue case, paste the toothpaste on the beast, and walk towards the sink in the kitchen (the sink in the bathroom doesn’t work).  My eye boogers love to clump together in the morning, and what was a morning ritual in the States no longer exist as I am afraid of getting bacteria in my eyes by rubbing them.  So far, I have seen seven people with pink eye (conjunctivitis) in my town and I am not trying to get it in any way at all, so I do my best to rub only with clean surfaces on my body and clothes (which are as rare as diamonds in a leather shoe).  I brush my teeth and as I rinse my mouth, I notice that the water in my hands is brown.  I make sure I don’t freak out and just spit everything out in my mouth, which at this point almost doesn’t matter because my mouth has been fully rinsed.  The family that I am living with saw the horror film written all over my face and ask me if I am going to make a movie, I swear.  They looked at me dumbfounded like I was some sort of moron and asked me what was wrong, and I explained to them that brown water was not a good sign.  They agreed and told me about the many problems that their town experienced with the cleanliness of the water and the pressure from the pipes.  I listened intently.  From that point on, water was the foremost thing on my mind and every time I returned home throughout the day, I made sure to see if the water was clean, and it was brown as poop.  It literally looked like watered down coffee with cream was coming out of the pipes. 

[Hold while I throw up for a minute… I want some Godiva.]

I return home the same night and ask if the water is clean.  They tell me that it is going to be dirty for two months, which naturally led me to curse everything that my eyes were able to lay its sights on under my breath with a neutral expression on my face.  I even cursed a sofa.  Who curses a sofa?  Apparently, I do.  I remember specifically saying as I exhaled, damn sofa.  So what do you do in this sort of situation?  You simply wait until the very latest moment in the night before you have to go to sleep wishing to Tinkerbelle and the Fairy Godmother that the water will at least appear to be trans-something, you know, crystal clear.  Well, I should’ve prayed to God because He actually exists and listens to prayers, even though this one was a little on the ridiculous end of the spectrum.  The water was no longer a watered down coffee tan, but a Kona Mud Pie brown.  I didn’t have a choice, but to shove myself in the shower stall and take the shower in the liquid poop streaming from the sad excuse for a showerhead the curved plastic pipe acted as.  I don’t have a showerhead, and the shower stall is stained with some nasty colors of brown, yellow, and red.  I think that the red comes as a combination of the brown and yellow.  But the curved pipe shoots water directly into mouth level so if I keep my mouth open, I am bound to injest the friendly critters and diseases that decide to take a ride on the faucet express.  I do my best all the time to tuck my lips into my mouth and let only my mustache area and chin area get exposed – not that I can even grow facial hair as I haven´t shaved for a week now and my stache is barely showing any promise of a few blades of grass growing in.  My face is infertile and I think of it as a blessing.  I don´t want to be like those hairy white guys that look like Santa Clause after a few days without shaving.  Now that is a cesspool of germs waiting to grow.  I wouldn´t be surprised if I found a bird in one of their beards.  But I usually fail with keep my mouth shut and as soon as a few droplets make their way in, I do my best to spit it out with the same intensity as the dirty water entered.

I was always known to take fast showers in the States as I did my best to do my part in water conservation.  I think each of my showers lasted about 2 minutes from start to finish and I was still cleaner than 99.99999999999999% (you get the picture) of people who take showers or considered themselves as expert shower takers.  It’s all about systems and I had mine down pat and could probably sell it on eBay for a quick buck or two (I live on $7 a day of disposable income, but I’ll write about it another day.  At this moment, we are on the topic of water, sanity and sanitation, a very crucial topic).

My icy shower probably lasted a minute, but it was a full minute filled with violent scrubbing and rubbing.  I almost felt violated, like I was in a gang fight and someone reached for my thing.  Did you ever notice that no one ever comes up with a better name for a guy’s thing?  At best it is a thing, at other times, it gets emasculated and is called the peepee or the weewee, or worst of all, Mr. Happy (I am guilty of all three, plus about 40 more).  From now on, it will simply be referred to as the Bat, manly and universally understandable.  After the shower, I still felt dirty.  It’s a horrible feeling to go to bed scratching yourself everywhere because you don’t feel like washing yourself did the job.  I took out a white shirt and tried to wipe my face, but no trace of dirt was to be found.  Best guess is that my towel wiped it off, worst case is that the nasty water entered my pores and is now a breeding ground for some undiscovered disease that Osmosis Jones will have to create a sequel to kill (Osmosis Jones is movie that is half cartoon and half real life about health.  Don’t watch it).  The day was over and I was looking forward to falling asleep, which I did after I scratched off about 50 hairs from my head to create a pseudo mural on my miniature collapsible pillow.

Day five.  I don’t even bother brushing my teeth this morning because I can see the tint of dark brown in the water.  Everything I said about loving the rain I retract because the rain is the source of all my pain and paranoia.   Water is liquid gold and if anyone doesn’t appreciate it, I swear I will rip out their teeth and implant them into the bottom of their feet to endure through the realization that they shouldn’t take such simple luxuries for granted.  Of course this is just my emotional distress screaming.  But all day I hope and wish that it didn’t rain.  I know that I have to take a shower because my menstrual sweat hit me at the same time of day it had been hitting me the days prior. 

When I returned home, I asked if the water was clean, to which I received a resounding yes. The reality was that it was a clear cream, but I didn’t care and I shouted for joy as I was about to take the shower of my life.  In economics, they call my excitement Shock and Relief.  First, what they do is jack up the prices of, let’s say, gasoline so high that if it was $2.50 the month before and the price went up to $4, we would be happy with $3.50, celebrating the $.50 drop like we won the lottery, when in reality, it’s still a dollar more than the month before this.  I was used to taking heavenly showers in a clean bathtub with suede bath curtains, and here I am now, celebrating the idea freezing cold, clear water in a disgusting shower stall.  But as with most things in my Peace Corps experience, that’s all it was, an idea.  I should’ve known better than to be happy for myself because the moment I turned the knob to let the cold water blast my face and begin the festivities, all I heard was a gargling noise and no water.  The pressure wasn’t strong enough to reach my house and here I was standing in the dirty, rusted, stained shower stall butt naked and befuddled at the luck I was facing.  Was this really happening?

I called out and got an answer through the cracked door to use the water in the bucket.  I looked to the left, then to the right to see a brown bucket full of murky water.  No way in hell, I thought to myself as I was not about to was in water worse than any other I had seen.  Plus, it had been still for quite some time now and I hate still water – that’s how I got dengue.  I stood there for a good 5 minutes seriously contemplating my options.  On the one hand, I could put my clothes back on and operate on hopes and dreams of clean water in the morning, but the chances of that were slim as I could hear the patter of the rain on the roof above my head.  The other option was to use the water in the bucket and 1) hope that it wouldn’t make me sick and 2) hope that it would be enough to wash me fully. The only thing worse that being somewhat dirty is being soapy as you go to bed, maybe. 

Then, at the moment I was about to put my clothes back on – as there was no way in the world I would use the nasty still water to wash up – drip, drip, drip.  Then, splatter, splatter, splatter.  Water is coming out, even though it was the smallest stream of water yet, I had water!  I quickly took advantage of the tiny stream of water and I remembered once laughing at a scene in the movie, Kung Fu Hustle where a moronic looking kid was bathing hunched under a faucet not much different than mine.  Oh, how humor changes when you are on the receiving end of things.  I chuckled to myself and then had another profound thought.  The stream was angled just enough to make me feel like I was being peed on by a cold-blooded animal.  A ridiculous thought really, but it was an honest thought in a pathetic moment.  I mean, if you saw the way I looked under this tiny urine sized stream, you would laugh your gluts off.  But I finished my shower and here I am writing.

Before I go to bed, I want to just say that a bug hit me on the forehead and it was green.  I want to say it looked like a sand fly, but we will see if I get Leishmeniasis (spelling?) – a skin eating virus.