Peace Corps Blog Panama

All the Panamanian news, much of it totally unfit to print

One of the great things about trying to learn Spanish is that it´s given us an excuse to consume copious amount of Panamanian media, which is always entertaining, and even occasionally informative. So we thought we´d give you all a rundown of local newspaper and television reporting (we’re saving radio for later, because its awesomeness is so great that a full post will be required to do it justice).

As far as the papers go, you could read the serious reporting in La Prensa or La Estrella, but it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun as picking up one of the tabloids, which managed to be SHOCKED every day by the latest car crash or accidental death. The prevailing sentiment in the tabloid newsrooms seems to be that no piece of information could serve the public interest better than close up shots of dead bodies and mostly naked women. As evidence, please see the following picture of a front page from La Critica taken in the middle of Carnaval celebrations:

(Editor’s note: Publishing the above photo proved to be one of the toughest editorial decisions we’ve had to make here. After several hours of heated deliberations, we decided we would be on more solid ethical footing if we blurred the face on the dead body. We couldn’t see any reason not to publish the picture of the naked lady, though).

When we get frustrated trying to decipher Spanish headlines, though, there are several English language news outlets we can turn to as well. La Estrella, for example, publishes a daily English section called (cleverly) “The Star.”

For my money, though, if you’re looking for hard hitting, not-afraid-to-ask-the-tough-questions, not-gonna-be-a-mouthpiece-for-the-government or big business English reporting, you’d be well served to pick up a copy of the (free) weekly paper, the Panama Post:

And then there’s TV. We don’t get to watch it as much as we like since we don’t have electricity in our site, but everytime we’re on the road, we luxuriate in its greatness. Classic US reporter behavior (eye contact with interviewee, non-expressive face, acting interested in what´s going on, etc..) is notably absent. And, in fact, it often seems like the anchors and reporters take a ¨we´ll get to you in a minute,¨ attitude towards the audience. For example, pretty much every time we watch the morning news, a reporter or anchor will make a cell phone call or check his Blackberry on the air. Here, for example, is TVN morning anchor Lucy Molinar trying to get in touch with a source as they cover a protest against proposed construction of a cell phone tower in a neighborhood of Panama City:

But nothing -- NOTHING! -- surpasses the greatness of Casimiro, Telemetro´s morning news puppet. He shows up frequently on a show called, ¨Debate Abierto,¨ which resembles your standard dry McLaughlin Group-esque chat format...until Casimiro pops up to do some hilarious puppet banter with the anchor:

Does he increase credibility? Not with me frankly. But he certainly does make debate about light-rail proposals a li´l more vibrant.

Cast of characters: Dylbot

To date, we have had the pleasure to introduce you all to some very special specimens of humanity here through our Cast of Characters series. But perhaps no specimen has been more special – nor more human – than today´s subject: Dylbot, the NBA robot. (As you will see, nothing could be more appropriate than honoring him during the playoffs).

Dylbot (aka Dylan) was one of the first people we really got to know from our group, and from the get go you could tell that there was something serious working just below his quiet exterior. A quiet faith, perhaps? A desire to better the lives of those around him?

Nope. It turns out he’s just thinking about basketball. A lot.

My first clue that about 95 percent of Dylan´s bandwidth is dedicated to thinking about the NBA came over Thanksgiving. We were looking at shelf of books at our regional leader’s house when he lunged for (and subsequently foisted on me with religious conviction) something called “:07 Seconds or Less: My Season on the Bench with the Runnin’ and Gunnin’ Phoenix Suns.”* Mere hours later, we were walking down the street in the regional capital and came upon a display rack of white Miami Heat jerseys being advertised for $1.99. Despite the fact that they had patches of white film all over the back (apparently the result of an overheated press) and the name ¨O´Neil¨ on the back (which I assumed was a misspelling of Shaquille O´Neal´s last name) Dylbot was all over these things. Somehow I was able to resist their siren song.

Anyway, over the course of our next couple meetings, I decided to strike up conversation with Dylan about ¨the Association.¨ The English language does not possess the tools I need to describe how impressive and vast his knowledge of the game turns out to be. Julia and I started playing a parlor game in which we would prompt him with nothing more than a.) a random NBA franchise, and b.) a random year, and he would be off to the races with stories about single game rebounding records by point guards, or how you really couldn´t judge Bill Lambeer’s relatively low production during the ´90-´91 season because the Pistons didn’t have any other weapons through which to run the offense, blah blah blah.

This act became so awesome that we decided to do it front of a larger audience during the All Volunteer Conference talent show in April. We, and the audience, were not disappointed:

By this point, I was thoroughly converted to the Dylbot school of thought, and rushed back to Santiago to see if I could hop on the Dylbot bandwagon. I returned to the store we went to over Thanksgiving. And got: the very last $1.99 O´Neil jersey.

It occurred to me right away that the only appropriate way to show off our matching jerseys would be to have Dylbot come up to our site and hold a one-on-one tournament.

It was a fierce battle with a lot of physical contact. Here for instance, is a shot of me playing tough D by gently cupping Dylbot´s right buttock:

We weren´t really keeping score (and I can safely say that when Dylbot´s around everybody wins) but, just for grins, here´s an action shot that I think really sums things up.

Pretty safe to assume I dunked on him.

If you´d like to learn more about the people and places in this week´s post, please visit Dylbot´s blog!

* To Dylbot´s immense credit, it remains one of the most enlightening titles I have consumed here. Though Shawn Marion is saddled with a perhaps undeserved sense of persecution, he turns out to be an ultimately loveable character who served as the perfect foil to the cocksure and level-headed Steve Nash in Jack McCallum´s rich and vivid prose.

No matter how cute the babies are, we must eat them

There are some people out there – hippies, let’s call them – who argue that eating meat is wrong. That the lowly swine and cattle that God clearly put upon this earth for human consumption have every bit as much right to life as you and I do. You want to argue that we shouldn’t be eating little baby cows that have been penned up so they can’t move? Fine. I can hear you out on that. But that’s a topic for another post.

Our purpose today is simply and exclusively to build international consensus that it is completely moral to eat chicken. And, in fact, that if we don’t eat chicken, and a lot of it, we are going to be living in a very annoying world.

Like most United States of Americans, when we got here we had only a vague notion of where grocery store poultry came from. Boy, were we in for a shock: it turns out that before they get to the supermarket, chickens are actually birds, with feathers and beaks and everything! Gadzooks!

In Panama, however, the distance between farm and kitchen is about two and a half feet, so you become intimately acquainted with your dinner. From day one we’ve had several hens and chicks in the yard outside the house, a struttin’ and a peckin’ and what have you. They have a tendency to squawk when it isn’t really necessary, and the odor they emit is less than pleasant, but those guys don’t bother us as much as the roosters. Those guys are a-holes. Let’s take a look at this guy, who we’ll call MLA (Major League A-hole), as a case study:

For starters, there are his reproductive habits. Sex, the physical act of love, can be a beautiful thing in the hands of the right species, namely humans. MLA is not a human. If he were, his sexual technique would, at best, earn him a reputation as a selfish lover. More likely, it would land him in jail on several sexual assault charges. Sex as initiated by MLA is a revolting wrestling match in which the hen tries desperately to escape while the MLA pins her down, biting her neck while he ruts away, squawking all the while. Not to mention that he seems completely unashamed to do it right out in the open in front of everyone, children (both chicken and human) included. We’ll spare you the pictures.

But the hay rolling isn’t anything compared to the crowing. Take a look at the photo above one more time. See that look in his eyes? See how he sticks his neck out, throwing his whole weight into the production of what must be the most annoying noise in the world? He gets off on it – being loud and obnoxious. He’s practically ASKING to be eaten. And he does it: constantly. During the day, we can handle it. But when MLA, who sleeps on the porch ten feet away from our bedroom, starts in at 3:30 a.m., we have murderous dreams of coq a vin.

And, apparently, so did his owner Dominga (finally). I suppose we should have used the past tense when we wrote about MLA above. Because we ate him on Tuesday night:

Bucky Badger Bench

No doubt you all remember the terrible scandal that threatened to rip panablog, if not Panama, apart in January, when the unveiling of the Rock Chalk Hammock caused a large contingent of Wisconsinites (two) to protest that we had not similarly honored our undergraduate institution. The four months that have followed have been the darkest chapter in panablog history, with PANAMANIAC! fighting PANAMANIAC!, at least theoretically.

Well, today the period of panablog Reconstruction begins (and ends) as we proudly unveil: the Bucky Badger Bench:

Just look at it. Really drink it in. Constructed completely by hand, this one-of-a-kind item was forged of locally harvested materials using traditional methods. The pine was, (poorly, in hindsight, given all the knots) hand selected by me. The pigment was extracted from the fruit of the jagua tree in a process that looks something like this:

First you peel the fruit, and then grate it onto a permeable cloth. Wringing the cloth expresses a milky liquid, which, when cooked for thirty seconds to a minute, changes into a dark pigment perfect for creating a rustic Bucky. (This is the same pigment that the Embera use for body painting).

As a symbol of goodwill to the people of Wisconsin, we also involved the local childrens, who will no doubt grow up to tell their own offspring about the day they got to help paint a picture of an angry tijón while the gringos told them about the Badgers’ glorious victory over UCLA in the 1999 Rose Bowl of American Football:

Month Nine: Complete (or ´What would you say...you do here?´)

Self-importrait time!:

Boring!

If there’s a bright side to this latest edition of the Month X: Complete series it’s that, having run a few calculations, it turns out that nine months represents precisely one third of our service period.

This milestone provides an excellent opportunity for reflection. Looking back through the panablog archives (and if you haven’t done so recently, do yourself a favor and ask for a day off work so you can really dig in), we realized that out of 69 posts, precisely one of them mentioned actual, real work. And that many readers might be wanting to ask something along the lines of, “What would you say…you do here?”:

Anyway, we felt like this might be a good time to clear up any confusion about our workload: it doesn’t just seem like we haven’t had a lot to do. It’s actually that we haven’t had a lot to do.

This has been frustrating.

Originally, we had been assigned to our community to work with a cooperative that wanted to start a pine logging operation (the community is the in the middle of a pine reserve that the government planted in the 70s with the intent of it being harvest thirty years later):

However, about a month before we arrived in site, the president of the coop, who had been one of the most active community members in lobbying Peace Corps for volunteers, was forced out of his position over concerns about money management. The new president is a very lovely and motivated woman…who is not the least bit interested in our help.

So. Our main project is on indefinite hold. At first this was disappointing, but then we started to think that it might end up working out better for everyone considering that: neither of us know anything about logging. I assume that saws are involved. I have some vague idea that flannel shirts are the preferable attire. But that’s about it.

Anyway, we consequently shifted our focus to helping out at the school. But, since the school year for the entire nation got delayed for a month, we’ve been kind of...waiting. A lot.

The good news is that school has officially, actually started up, and we’ve started teaching English to the grade schoolers, and are planning a class on computers as soon as the solar-panel powered electric system for the two PCs the school just got is up and running. We´ll see... But the teaching English thing. We´ve definitely got that going.

Panamocracy in action

The election is over! Waiting for the results, frankly, was not suspenseful -- the vote was lopsided enough that officials could announce that Ricardo Martinelli had defeated Balbina Herrera just a couple of hours after the polls closed. I guess I had the feeling that it was all over when some Martinelli officials came to our site in a helicopter two days before the election:

If you´ve got money to send a helicopter to a community with 120 people in it, you´re a force to be reckoned with. (In the final count he got about 60 percent of the popular total, and she had about 39).

Results aside, getting to see the Panamanian voting process was really interesting. It was about as smooth and transparent a process as one could hope -- and they got the results out quickly and accurately, which is impressive in a country where electronic communication is limited.

The polls opened in our site at 7 a.m., and panablog was the first media outlet on the scene. I asked the policeman stationed at the polling location if I could take a picture of the people in line waiting to vote. He said I needed to go behind a fence about 30 feet away. This was the first time panablog had had its access restricted to anything since I was told not to take another picture of the gigantic hot dog display at the Super Xtra grocery store in Arraijan during training. Which leads me to believe that Panama takes its democracy at least as seriously as it takes its hot dogs. Which is pretty seriously.

Anyway, here´s what the polling location looked like from a distance:

We could very easily have stood up to look over the fence and zoomed in for a much better picture, but I felt like the chainlink would add a dramatic effect.

(Our facetious sense of persecution aside, the voting station was well monitored and run, and you could tell election officials had things under control).

At 4 p.m. the polls closed, and the vote counting began. The count was conducted completely by hand, and was done in a room at the school where they have a solar-powered light so the proceedings are visible to everyone who wants to look on:

The counting process goes something like this: an official removes each ballot from the box, and holds it up so that it is plainly visible to the represenatatives that each party send to each polling location. He calls out each vote, and then an offical tally keeper marks the vote on a big board. Each of the party representatives (there were six at our site, each from a different party) keeps his or her own count as well. At the end of the night, every person in the room has to sign off on the final vote tally, so there are about eight different checks. Pretty solid li´l system they´ve got worked out here.

Panamanian people to pick president

Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Oh, hey there, panafriends. You know, I was just chuckling to myself thinking about how much it must suck for you. Because while the fun of a presidential election ended in November up north, we´ve gotten to keep chuggin along on the campaign train, and won’t have to disembark until May 3, when Panamanians head to the polls to elect a new president.

When we arrived in Panama, there appeared to be four semi-viable candidates for the office: Panamanian political fixture Balbina Herrera; supermarket magnate Ricardo Martinelli; seco and rum magnate Juan Carlos Varela; and Panama City mayor Juan Carlos Navarro.

Herrera and Navarro were fighting for the nomination of the Partido Revolucionario Democratico (PRD), which currently holds power, while Martinelli and Varela were fighting to gain the support of the traditional opposition parties. Navarro lost the primary to Balbina just a few weeks after we got to the country, and despite rumors that he was planning to lower the cost of his company’s seco and rum to attract votes, Varela’s prospects soon dimmed as well.

So a race that had started out rich in Juan Carloses was suddenly left with none. This was very hard for fans of the name Juan Carlos. (Though things got a little better when Balbina added Navarro to her ticket, and Martinelli added Varela to his).

Balbina’s campaign slogan is “de corazon” (“from the heart”), and she often projects a motherly image. Here’s one of her most popular campaign posters:

You may notice that there’s a not-insignificant amount of decolletage on display. Pretty standard. Remember that mini-scandal that erupted when Hilary Clinton wore a blouse that suggested just a hint of cleavage? Wouldn’t have happened here. Martinelli, on the other hand, has been running a series of ads that feature him working construction – always by himself. Be it drilling down a roof…:

…pouring cement…:

…or stacking concrete blocks...:

...his message is clear: ¨I’m a roll-up-my-sleeves-and-get-the-job-done kind of guy who will make a strong president. And if you are working on an addition to your house, give me a call and I can probably help with that as well.¨

Balbina started out with a lead in the polls, but Martinelli, whose personal fortune is estimated at around $500 million, began outspending her by a factor of around six to one. Consequently, Martinelli’s support saw a huge uptick, and by February he was consistently polling around fifteen points ahead of Balbina.

The campaign has gotten a little bit nasty since then. During a Carneval celebration in the Azuero region in February, a Martinelli supporter threw a full can of beer at Balbina and hit her on the upper lip, leaving a gash that required about five stitches. As Balbina’s prospects have continued to flag, she´s started throwing around some pretty weighty accusations. Things like “Martinelli is crazy,” and “Martinelli is a murderer.” Neither of which, for what it´s worth, appear to be true.

Anyway, it´s been an experience watching democracy in action abroad. We´ll let you know how it turns out.

panablog´s great Bocas del Toro/Boquete road trip!

Ahoy, ‘hoy, panapals! You know what I feel like? Another one of panablog’s patented road trip reports. Whoop, whoop! Blue ribbon PANAMANIACS! will remember our friends Kristy and Goetsch from panablog’s even greater American road trip: part two. The experience of being featured in that post was so transformative for these two that they signed up for a trip down south based largely on the prospect of finding their way onto these hallowed pages yet again.

You know what Kristy and Goetsch? Dreams do come true.

Our journey began in the Bocas del Toro archipelago, a string of islands along the country’s western Caribbean shores renown for their tranquil beauty. With laid back and affordable hotels and bars built out over the water, the islands have a reputation for attracting the “backpacking” set – also known as “hippies.” Luckily, our frequently-practiced hippie-avoidance techniques (wearing polo shirts, talking loudly about “A VERY INTERSTING ARTICLE I READ IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL,” etc…) allowed us to keep mostly to ourselves.

On our first afternoon there, we headed over to Mondo Taitu, a hoppin’ hostel and bar where we met a guy named Daniel who was on the home stretch of a year-long trip around the world. He keeps a blog about it called “Daniel’s Trip Around the World” (danielstriparoundtheworld.blogspot.com). Although…looking at that Web address again, I’m wondering whether it was supposed to break down to “Daniel: Strip Around the World.” Come to think of it, he didn’t mention what he was doing in Los Angeles before he set off.

Maybe he was just, like, a really popular male stripper, and is, you know, stripping around the world. Hard to say.

Anydoodle, after a night in Bocastown, we scooted across the channel to explore Isla Bastimentos, where we landed at a charming li’l place called Hospedaje Jaguar.

It’s run by a guy who calls himself “The Jaguar.” In true jaguar fashion, he kept himself very well hidden. In fact, after showing us to our rooms, he disappeared, and there wasn’t any sign of management on the property until the next morning when we were checking out. This made for some hardcore chillaxin’:

Since we had the run of the place to ourselves, we figured it was a good opportunity to introduce Kristy and Goestch to a true Panamanian staple: the sugar cane liquor they call “seco.” We picked up four varieties of the stuff, and asked Kristy and Goetsch to share their thoughts:

Not a ringing endorsement, I suppose.

Anyway, after two nights in Bocas, it was time to move along, but not before exploring options for setting up shop there more permanently:

Even if you didn’t actually want to live there, wouldn’t it be worth $40,000 just to say you had your own island? I sure think so.

With our new real estate agent’s card tucked safely in our billfolds, we hopped on a bus and unloaded ourselves in Boquete, an idyllic mountain town in the province of Chiriqui that is currently experiencing a huge influx of American retirees. Boquete, like Cerro Punta, is located along the slopes of Volcan Baru, the country’s highest peak. And, like Cerro Punta, it boasts a natural habitat for the Resplendent Quetzal. Having walked away empty handed when we went searching for the bird in Cerro Punta, we decided to hit the trail again:

The operation was a: failure. I will be adding ¨Elusive¨ to ¨Resplendent¨ as a adjective for the Quetzal from this day forth.

Anyway, it was time to say goodbye to K and G far too soon, but we look forward to reconnecting with them for a wedding in the States in summer of 2010. That seems like a long time away. Bummer.

Cast of Characters: the sisters Jimenez

Hey panapeople, it´s time to expand your Panamanian social network with another Cast of Characters entry!

Today we´d like to introduce you to the sisters Jimenez, pictured above.

On the left there we´ve got Keyla.

And then next to her is Keysa.

And then moving down the line we´ve got Keyra and Keyna. Or maybe it´s Keyna and Keyra. I´ve always had trouble with those two.

Anyway, the parents Jimenez seem to have a predilection for the combination of ¨K¨ and ¨E¨ and ¨Y.¨ Or, as their grandfather Pablo pointed out to me one day, should I have failed to pick up on it myself, their names are ¨pura K.¨

Frankly, you´ve got to figure that the opportunities for confusion are boutiful for their parents. Certainly for us. The li´ler girls have been playing softball out in the schoolyard in the afternoons lately, and we try to be supportive, but I wonder if we end up doing more harm than good. When Keyra or Keyna come up to bat, we have a tendancy to get caught:

Keyna steps into batter´s box.

JAY: (yelling) YOU´VE GOT THIS ONE, KEYRA!

JULIA: (whispering) That´s Keyna.

JAY: KEYNA! I MEAN KEYNA! YOU´RE DOING GREAT, GIRL! KEEP YOUR HEAD IN THERE!

JULIA: Or maybe that is Keyra...

She swings and hits a grounder past the shortstop.

JAY: ATTAGIRL KEYblah...KEEP RUNNING! KAREN´S GOT NO ARM!

Panama : Panama : Panama :: Bad Company : Bad Company : Bad Company

You know, panafriends, today, I´d like to talk with you (not at you – panablog is a conversation, not a lecture) about Panama. Specifically the word, ¨Panama,¨ which we are told by several guidebooks is derived from a native language and means ¨an abundance of fish.¨

Its meaning in regards to a physical location, however, is considerably less clear. Sometimes when people say ¨Panama¨ they mean the country bordered by Colombia and Costa Rica. Sometimes they mean the province bordered by the provinces of Darien, Colon, Cocle and Herrera. Frequently they mean what we North Americans tend to refer to as ¨Panama City.¨ It can be quite confusing.

For example, when someone in our community says, ¨Hey, Jay and Julia! I´m going to Panama next week!¨ I usually start to say, ¨Hate to blow your mind, fella´, but you´re IN Panama.¨ And then I remember that the people who were born and raised here might actually know better than I do, so I shut up.

It reminds me of the problem I often have when discussing Bad Company. If you were to say to me, ¨I like Bad Company,¨ I would probably respond, ¨Well, duh. Who doesn´t? But are you referring specifically to the classic rock supergroup originally active from 1973 to 1982? Or to their self-titled 1974 debut album? Or to the ominous title track from said album, which is actually titled THE Bad Company, not just Bad Company, but I don´t know how well you like the band so I´m assuming you might not even know there was a difference. Because I would love to talk with you about Bad Company – LOVE TO – but I need to know exactly what we´re talking about here! Okay! Because I don´t want to start in on my routine about what a genius move it was to put Rock Steady after Can´t Get Enough on the album Bad Company when you want to talk about ex-King Crimson member Boz Burrell´s stellar bass work on the song The Bad Company! Because I would look like an idiot! Okay!¨

So it´s tough.

In other news, I´d like to give a huge pbSO! (panablog SHOUT OUT!) to Stu, brother of Snakin´, (whose dreadlock once adorned my upper lip) who has started a blog about his new life in Los Angeles. It´s called: Los Angeblog. And its naming convention is totally sweet.

Speaking of awesome blog names, if no Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua has started a blog called Nicarblogua, someone should really get on that.