Santa Fe

We just finished a series of seminars in a town called Santa Fe. We did 3 days of Leadership and Project Management, 3 days of accounting, marketing, and contracts, and 3 days of farm planning market analysis, quality control, etc. There were 2 weeks between each 3 day chunk. The last afternoon we had a little closing ceremony where we presnted gifts to the people who had helped make it happen. Lee was asked to paint bateas and a gourd instrument. As usual, everyone was very impressed with his work.

The first picture is of the hostel where the Peace Corps facilitators stayed each week. We also used a rancho on the property as the classroom.

The second set is the coffee made by the coffee beneficio in Santa Fe.

The final one is a gourd that has a ridged part and comes with a fork-like thing with long skinny tines that you rub across the ridged part for rhythm. The band is called Conjunto Folklorico Benjamin Rodriguez. They played at a culture night that we had the first week and the afternoon of the closing ceremony. Some of them had made their own instruments. In the background of this picture you can see how they do their floors sometimes. That is just cement but on the top layer they make it smooth and add colors. I have seen green, red, and yellow.

This is Lee dancing the cumbia at the closing ceremony. Dancing and music are a big part of the culture here in Panama. If you had lived in Panama for a year you would dance the cumbia too. Everyone just moves in a circle dancing with the man on the inside and the lady on the outside so she will have room to swing her skirt like the lady on the far left. Every couple of minutes the music changes up and then it is time to spin and revolve around your partner. Then it settles back to shuffling in a circle. Lee is also wearing the awesome baseball hats that we had made for the seminar. It has the Peace Corps logo and a logo that Lee created for the agribusiness program.