4 weeks in Cocobolo

The day after flying back to Panama City I went back up to Cocobolo and ended up staying for about 4 weeks. We just got back to the city today and it's quite the shock after spending 4 weeks in the field. I've been keeping busy working with my farmers, teaching English, and working on our farm. In the four months that I've been here our demonstration farm on the reserve has really developed. We're constantly expanding the number of beds and have been experimenting with new crops. We've been eating a lot of arugula recently which is a really welcome change from most of the carbs we eat. Hopefully we'll have summer squash, zuchinni, and mustard greens to compliment our never ending harvests of culantro, spring onion, and yucca. We've started to collect saplings for reforestation projects and will hopefully build a cage for iguanas when we come back up. The eggs are still incubating but should hatch sometime end of May/beginning of June so we've got to be ready. Other random projects include building a clay oven. We've got the base made and have been working on the structure of the oven using vines which we'll then cover in clay. We're looking forward to pizzas, foccacias, and smoky breads in the future.

In the last couple weeks they finished construction on the first health post for the community (I got to paint the lettering!) so there is lots of excitement in the village.

Everyone is now awaiting for it's inauguration so there's an excuse for a party. We actually did go to a party in the village up river recently. It was a day of rodeo followed by a night of dancing to 'tipico' music (the music of Panama's countryside). The three of us stuck out like crazy in the see of beautifully bronzed Panamanians and were probably asked to dance by every guy in the village. It was quite the experience and walking home through the mountains in the dark at 1 am for one and a half hours sure left us exhausted when we got home.

One of the volunteers, Roslyn, actually left last week after finishing her planned 4 months so it's just been Sabine and I up at the reserve along with Jose Luis who works on the farm, Joel who does everything and lives across the river and Iglesias, the field manager, who comes up weekly from the city. It's been a really fun environment and we've been spending a lot of evenings with Joel's family across the river chatting and watching Columbian dramas. They have a generator and tons of pirated DVDs. Not only do we get to watch TV but they also always send us home with buckets of fruit from their farm.


Looks like I'll be in the city now for a week and then back up to Cocobolo for 3 weeks or so. I'm flying back to the US for 3 weeks on June 16th so I'm getting really excited for that. We just met CREA's new projects manager, she came up this week to the reserve, and also just found out that we'll have two new volunteers starting NEXT week. One guy's coming from Canada to stay up on the reserve with us and the other guy is French and is going to work primarily in the office but also come up to Cocobolo part of the time. Should be interesting in the next few weeks with all these changes.

Costa Rica/Bocas Vacation

I had a fun week-long vacation the week of April the 13th, spending my required 72 hours in Costa Rica and then heading back over the border to the Bocas del Toro archipelago in Panama for 3 nights. I had no problems crossing the border to Costa Rica luckily, although the 11 hour bus ride to get there definitely wasn't fun. Once getting stamped out of Panama at the tiny immigrations window, I walked across the rickety old train bridge separating the two countries and got stamped into Costa Rica. You can watch all of the locals just walking back and forth between the two countries to go to school, conduct business, etc with apparently no acknowledgment that they're crossing a border.


From there I hopped a bus 2 hours up the Caribbean coast to the Rasta beach side town of Puerto Viejo. I met two girls (French and Italian) who were headed the same direction and we ended up finding a hostel together and hanging out for the next couple of days. They are both working in really rural indigenous communities in Costa Rica and were trying to make the most of their vacation from work. The hostel was huge and located right on the beach, so I didn't leave much except for trips to the internet café in town and to buy the paper in the morning. Two guys (British and Australian) who my new friends had met in Bocas del Toro in Panama the days before, ended up joining us and we spent one night cook up a really impressive barbecue. They left the next day for San Jose, Costa Rica and I spent one more night before leaving early the next morning to cross the border again. Back on the Panama side I found a ride to the water taxi port for the islands and thought I was golden. Of course little did we know that the retirees would be protesting on the bridge that leads to the water taxi and would have it blocked off for 5 hours. I ended up hanging out with our driver and a German guy while we were waiting for the bridge to open and had all sorts of hilarious conversations. When I finally made it to Isla Colon I was exhausted but so excited because I was staying with my host family from study abroad when I studied mangroves. I was welcomed into their home like I had never left and spent 3 packed days visiting people and enjoying the beach and biking around the island. I stopped by the Smithsonian research station where I did my mangrove study and went out on the water with my project adviser as their boat hand as he and another scientist I know did some diving for lobster larvae. It was a really great visit, too short, but I got to spend some good bonding time with my host family there and hope I get to go back and visit them soon. As a treat, I capped of my vacation week by flying back to Panama City..one hour on a plane definitely beats 12 hours on a bus.

Summa Summa Time!

Summer has arrived full force in the Mamoni River valley the last couple of weeks. It's been 90s or so everyday with clear blue skies. I've been working with my farmers every week in their plots and we've definitely been making progress; new plots of organic tomatoes, peppers, spring onion, cilantro, parsley and cucumbers. Most of the crops look really good, but we found that some grow better on different farmer's plots than others. I've spent many a morning in the cow pastures loading up our truck full of cow manure (dried!) to make organic fertilizer and we've had some success with pest repellents made from hot peppers (from our farm), garlic, ginger, oregano, onion, and vinegar.

I've started teaching English classes two afternoons a week to the teens and adults in La Zahina (the village) who are interested. My classes can range from 2 to 10 students, anywhere from 13 to 53 years old or so. One of the other volunteers, Roz, is teaching the little kids. It's been fun and definitely challenging to accommodate so many different learning levels.

We took a two-day trip out to Santa Fe, Veraguas where our field manager, Iglesias, is from the other week. Santa Fe is in the mountains about 5 hrs or so from the border with Costa Rica. We got to meet his parents and brother and tour their farm and different crops and animals. We were totally wowed by his mom's orchid garden and all the different varieties. There is a co-op of orchid enthusiasts in Santa Fe who compete in orchid competitions in Panama. She has a wall displaying her blue ribbons from competitions that she's very proud of. Iglesias and his parents took us on a walk to a beautiful waterfall and we stumbled upon a folkloric music festival in town and got to see violin and guitar competitions. The villagers were determined to get the 'gringas' eg. White girls to dance but we resisted making complete fools of ourselves. Our only night there we went out to meet some of Iglesias's friends and to see the cock fights. It was an interesting experience for sure; it was amusing to watch the Panamanian guys groom and croon to their roosters getting them ready to fight.

Back in on our reserve, Cocobolo, we found 46 iguana eggs that had been laid in our worm compost. We constructed an incubator to keep them safe, basically just a big hole in the ground filled with sand and a few precautions to prevent anything from eating the eggs, and are hoping they'll hatch sometime in the next two months. In the meantime we're going to start building cages to hold the critters when they hatch.



I'm am currently in La Guiara, a little fishing town on the Caribbean coast, with Sabine, Roz and a dermatologist they met in the city through having a series of skin problems here. He invited all three of us to his beach house for the four-day "Semana santa" (holy week) holiday and we've just been absolutely spoiled on the beach with great food and our own boat. We went snorkeling yesterday and he cooked us a delicious paella filled with seafood. Unfortunately, we're packing up and heading to the city now. It looks like I either have to leave tonight or tomorrow early morning and go to Costa Rica for 3 days since my tourist visa is ending and I don't have everything together to apply for my volunteer visa. The immigration laws keep changing every couple of months here so it's impossible to figure out what's required and what the law is. I've heard so many different requirements from different lawyers it's ridiculous.

Until next time, Ari

Waiting for summer

After Carnival we went back up to the country side to our reserve (Cocobolo) and spent a day recovering. Summer (aka the dry season) in Panama, is supposed to be from January till April. In the city it’s definitely summer; 90 degrees, hot and sunny every day….however where we are up in the mountains the storm systems keep coming from the Caribbean and dumping rain on us. It’s literally been raining for 5-7 days straight followed by 2 dry days and then more rain. It’s been pretty cold (relatively), we bundle up at night, and all of the paths are pure mud. The worst part is definitely the mold problem…everything we own is growing mold; books, clothes, cash, and passport.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with my farmers in the village, going to their plots, drawing maps with GPS coordinates, weeding, starting seed beds etc. We’re slowing trying to transition our farmers away from chemicals and promote organic alternatives for pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. So far we’ve had a good reception although progress definitely takes a long time in Panama. We had a few visitors from the US with us for a couple days. Jeni from California came for a week and taught us about compost tea, mulching and other organic techniques. She’s asked me to champion a school garden in the community with the kids and she brought letters from kids in CA who are also doing a school garden. We’re hoping to get a pen pal project of sorts going where the kids write letters back and forth. We also have Erik from Washington State visiting for 6 weeks or so to complete a social impact study for our project with the ultimate goal being to evaluate the market potential for the carbon found in the Cocobolo Nature Reserve. It’s a complicated process since it’s still very new and hasn’t been done yet for a private reserve like Cocobolo but sounds like it could be a great way to find a new source of funding for projects that protect the rainforest.

This past Wednesday we took 5 of our farmers on a tour to an organic farm on the other side of the canal so they could see a rural farmer like themselves who has been really successful with organic agriculture. I think they were definitely impressed because the farm’s soil was so dry it was hard as a rock but everything was growing beautifully. We talked with the farmer for a while and then got a tour of his farm checking out his different organic fertilizers and soil conservation methods. One of the more impressive aspects of his farm was his use of trees interspersed with crops and using plants with strong odors as barriers to pests. I think it was a successful field trip in the sense that the farmers saw how well this man had done in an area with very poor soil and they heard first hand from one of their own how to make it work.

I’m headed back to Cocobolo tomorrow for another 2 weeks or so. I’m going to start teaching English to adults in La Zahina 2 afternoons a week and Sabine and Roslyn are going to teach the kids 2 afternoons a week. I’ve also figured out where I’m going to set up the iguana farm(s), so we’re going to start doing some seriously planning and material buying as soon as possible. New pictures from March and from the field trip with the farmers are online so check them out (link is on the right). I’d love to hear news from all of you so drop me a note sometime!

apriorgrosch@gmail.com

Carnival in detail….

It’s hard to put into words the ridiculousness that is Carnival. I scored a great deal though for myself and Roslyn, one of the volunteers I’m working with. My host sister from study abroad and her friends rented a house in Las Tablas...aka party central. We were able to get a ride there with three die hard carnivalers and learned all of the appropriate songs on the long drive there. Las Tablas is famous for the on going battle between Calle Arriba (‘Up Street’) and Calle Abajo (‘Down Street’). The normally tranquil town is turned into a heated contest between the two streets to see who can sing louder, play louder music, and who has the best floats and queens. The prepare for the four days of carnival all year long in secret and try to out do each other with more elaborate floats and more beautiful queens. Each street has it’s own songbook that makes fun of the other street and their queen and since we were traveling with people who live and die Calle Abajo we learned all the songs along the way. The queens are chosen at birth and prepare all their lives to be the queen when they’re eighteen.

We stayed outside of the main town in a little village called El Sesteadero and squeezed somewhere around 25 people into one tiny house. People slept in the living room, on the porch, and more often not at all. We spent the days in the ‘culecos’ which consist of crazy street parties with music and fire hoses and the nights watching the parades or out dancing. It was an exhausting 4 days but totally worth it. One of my friends from study abroad who is working in Panama as well came for a day and got to experience carnival in Las Tablas.

The last night of carnival everyone came out in their best traditional clothes, including the famous pollera dresses. These dresses are intricately woven and have a single large pom pom on the front and back. Most polleras are in the thousands of dollars and are highly prized family possessions. We jumped into the procession of polleras and drums in El Sesteadero and paraded around the village watching fireworks. Las Tablas ended carnival with the queens dressed in polleras and a firework battle between the two streets that lasted until 6 am or so when we got up to go back to the city. Definitely check out my pictures online of carnival…the floats are incredible!!

http://picasaweb.google.com/ariadne.panama/Carnival#

I survived Carnival...

This post is going to be short because we're about to head back into the bush for 3 weeks. The past 5 days have been a ridiculous experience in Las Tablas...carnival central in Panama. I'm waiting for pictures from some of the friends we stayed with since I didn't want to bring my camera out. We were basically pelted with fire hoses during the day at these huge outdoor parties and then danced the night away into the wee hours.

So I'm off again but will have more posts and pictures when I'm back mid-March.

It's good to be back in Panama

Hmmmmm.....Where to begin....I came back to the city on Friday after 3 weeks in the bush and immediately went to get a roast beef sandwich with cheese (both of which we don't have due to lack of refrigeration) and a batido (a fruit milkshake of sorts). I was welcomed back by one of my friends from study abroad who has been in Panama since Sept working with an organic farming group we met during our program. We had a fun evening out along the causeway that parallels the canal. This weekend was pretty eventful with me getting my wallet stolen at the mall on Valentine's Day and getting prepared for Carnival next weekend. More to come on that at a later time.

My return to the village 3 weeks ago was really heartwarming. I was welcomed back as the "maestra" (teacher) and asked when I would start teaching English again. Hopefully we'll get into a routine soon so I can plan classes but the first 3 weeks were a little chaotic since we had a group of 10 high schoolers with 2 teachers come from Connecticut. Their week up in the reserve was jam packed with mist netting to catch birds, stream microbiology, and different social activities. The other volunteers and I took one group to the village to visit different farmer's plots and walked them all over hill and dale. Probably 8 miles or so through the mountains and rivers so they were pretty exhausted at the end and could commiserate with the tough life of a farmer. One day we took the entire group to the village and we repainted the school and the students played around with village kids and then everyone jumped into the river to cool off. The last full day they were there we walked into the forest to catch some more birds and then went on an adventurous hike to a series of waterfalls on the reserve. Everyone came back either soaked or covered in mud due to the trail or falling into the stream on accident

When the group left, only Roslyn (volunteer from Pittsburgh) and I stayed up at the field station. For the next three days it was incredible never-ending downpours and vicious wind. We barricaded ourselves in the kitchen with blankets and tea and waited out the storm. Finally, last Saturday the skies cleared and we were able to cross the river and walk to the village to watch our team play baseball against a rival village. It was a very exciting game (we won!!), although our team's pitcher took a line drive in the face and had to go back to civilization and to the hospital to get his jaw checked out, but he's ok. This was the second game we'd been to and it just so happens that they have lost the other games we've missed, so now we're considered the lucky fans and are required to attend future games.

This past week we met with different farmers in the area who are a part of our project to convert the valley to sustainable organic farming. I have 3 farmers that I'm responsible for...helping with projects, providing technical information, and just generally being involved in what they're doing. Unfortunately all of my farmer's plots are way up in the mountains and it's quite the climb to get there. One way our farmers benefit from the project is that we have a contract with one of the grocery stores in Panama City to buy their "culantro" (variation on cilantro) directly for a decent fixed price year round. In addition we're thinking of starting a CSA (community sponsored agriculture) where city folk can pay a monthly fee directly to a farmer to have a box of fresh, in season vegetables delivered every two weeks or so. Other than that, I'm working on the logistics for the iguana farm in terms of location and ownership. Starting next week after carnival we'll actually be able to start putting things into motion.

This week I'll be working with my farmers and around our farm. I'm giving a presentation to the village on Wednesday about where I come from, what our lives are like and my family. I'm excited to wow them with pictures of snow and frozen seas.

Check out the new pictures I've posted (there are 3 albums) and I'll have more next week after Carnival!

http://picasaweb.google.com/ariadne.panama