Cows

It was a big day for Lee. He got to see where the magic happens. For those of you who do not know, when we were in the states he would go through a gallon of milk in 2 or 3 days sometimes. He loves it. We both got to help milk the cows. Olgin, Maggie´s counterpart, has a model farm and it was really nice to see such healthy, happy cows. Some of the ones in our site are pretty skinny... He said that they get about 2 liters a day from the cows in the dry season and around 4 per day in the rainy season.

World Map

Lee and I visited another volunteer´s site in the province of Herrera to make a map of the world on the wall of her school. The first picture shows Maggie(the other volunteer) and Lee.

Herrera is very different from Cocle´. It is almost completely deforested so it is a lot hotter and drier. Almost everyone there has cows and horses. It actually looks and feels more like Alabama. The people are very friendly. There are a lot more tall people there. There gritas are different but I think I earned some respect for attempting to do it their way. We got to see cantadoros singing decimas with the mejorana. There are too many Spanish words in that sentence that need explanations. Let´s just say that we got to hear some awesome Panamanian music. After the cantadoros there was a band that played typico, cumbias, etc.

The Canal

This is a cruise ship, along with about a hundred smaller boats, passing through the south end of the canal. You can see it better if you click on it to enlarge it. The huge ships can pass through one at a time but the little ones have to wait and go through with a big ship because it is not worth it to operate the locks for small ships. I read somewhere that some ships pay more than $100,000 to pass through the canal. I think it is based on weight.

The House

This is a video that Lee took of the house and the yard. The thatch-roof house is the kitchen and the other one is the bedroom/everything else. It is not a long video but it may make you motion sick. You will have to turn your head to the side at some point when the camera goes on its side.

Raspaduras

This is Señor Rosa stiring the pot of sugar cane juice to make raspaduras. They cook it for hours and then they pour it into a mold and let it dry. They usually make about 14 per batch. They use trapichas run by horses to press the sugar cane and get the juice out.

Arroz en Fangueo (Rice Tanks)

This is some of the work that we did with the rice tank. The last picture shows most of the people in our group(we are proud to have men, women, and children participating), which became official yesterday when we had a visit from one of the government agencies. Sometimes it is hard to work with the agencies and people have to make multiple visits to their offices and write multiple letters to get things done, but we were lucky enough to have them come to us after just one letter and one visit. We had 2 representatives from the regional office and the national coordinator for the agency and Peace Corps. Our regional coordinator from Peace Corps came too. We heard that some people from the agency were coming out to talk about our upcoming project with Iguanas and Conejos Pintados (painted rabbits). They talked about that and a lot of other projects, got the names of everyone in the group, and they gave them some tools and some materials to start a tree nursery. They were so proud to have the agency come out and tell them that they are doing a good job and that they are going to help them get other projects started too.

With the rice tank, we made the hole, leveled the dirt by adding water and mixing the mud as we went and by dragging a board across it, and then we transplanted the rice from the semillero. It was more complicated than that but that is the concise version. We will control the water level, periodically raising and lowering it over the growing cycle to maximize growth and minimize weeds. We are in the dry season now so no one else is planting rice. Most of the farmers are cutting down trees and everything else and burning it in preparation to plant rice when the rainy season starts again. Hopefully this will show them that they do not have to do that next year.

Feed Me!

This is a carnivorous, Little Shop of Horrors plant that we have in our yard. Okay, it´s not carnivorous but it looks like it could be. Really it is called Achiote. They dry it, harvest the seed, and mix it with oil to use for cooking. The kids helped us harvest it.