Mountains Speak: Volunteer Visits

We each spent 4 days staying with a active volunteer in the Los Santos region of Panama. We were not together for the visits and had two vastly different experiences. Both were great and packed full of lessons learned. The best part was taking a nice breather away from our training community and group (though we love them both, it is always nice to take a break).

Sean
This weekend I visited the small community of Cucula, which is located about 1.5 hours west of Guarare in the Azuero peninsula. I had a blast haningin out with the current volunteer, and getting to know the community. The volunteer told me when I got to the site that we were going to partake in a Junta de Embara (sp?). This entails building a house from mud and grass, and I knew that it was a really big deal when they butchered a cow. And yes, we watched the whole thing.

The next day the Junta began by watering down two large mounds of soil. All the men mashed up the mud by marching through it in rows of 10 or so. Once the mud was soft, grass was added to the mix, which was then sectioned off into lumps using our feet. The mud was then thrown onto the skeleton of a building to form mud walls. After about five hours of stomping through the mud and packing it into walls, a new house was formed, and in the process I got to know some of the local people, who were all super friendly. Later that day we played some softball, and just hung out with the locals. It was a great first experience in a volunteer community, and I really enjoyed getting a first hand encounter with the culture. Pictures to come soon.

Sarah
All of us in the TEA group travelled in pairs to our site. I went with another female trainee in the same language level as me (intermediate) to visit a 2nd year TEA volunteer who is just weeks away from the end of her service. Her site is in Pedasi, but she lives in a smaller town called Limon, about a 45 minute walk from her site. Pedais is a larger town with a sizeable permanent gringo population and many gringo visitors during high tourism seasons (Jan, Feb, Mar, July, August)...it was definitely different from Sean´s 80 to 100 person community only a few hours away!
My volunteer primairly works in her local high school (of about 900 students), but our visit was over the weekend so we didn´t get a first hand look at her work. We did get to help her with her World Map Project, hers is a 7 x 14 foot map on the outside of one of the school buildings. Most is completed but we helped paint. I stuck with Antartica because there was less of a chance for making mistakes!

As much as Sean´s visit was about hard work, mine was abuot relaxing and enjoying the beauty of Panama. We headed out to Isla Iguana, the hot tourism spot near Pedasi, for a day of snorkeling, walking along a small island and enjoying the sun. Isla Iguana is BEAUTIFUL, white sand beaches and beautiful turqouis water you can see through. We were literally the only people to the island all day since it is not during the hout tourism months and we had absolutely perfect weather. My guidebook claimed the island had a lot of trash on it, but nothing could be further from the truth. Honestly, the write up in the book almost talked me out of going and I would have been devestated to have missed something so awesome.

Our volunteer also taught us how to make brownies from pure cacao, I am excited to make a batch for our host family. It was also a treat to control my own food intake for the four days and we had a blast making delicious, unfried, food all weekend long. Being a touristy spot also had perks of smoothie stands and lots of fresh fruit.