Goodbye Iguana

I have returned to civilization. I was lucky enough to enjoy another week without electricity in Herrera Provence. My sixth week in Panama was technical training week. Seven other fellow patriots and I ventured in the back of a "Chiva", essentially a 4x4 truck with a box in the truck bed that can hold up to 9 people and that serves as a campo taxi. Well, it was pouring down rain that afternoon. Rain in Panama is ferocious, when you think you are hearing the most rain that clouds can possibly shower down upon you, a sheet of rain 10 times harder revs up, as if the sky were tempting your ability to imagine such a quantity of water resting above your head. We pushed up steep hills and cruised down even steeper ones until we reached our destination an hour from the nearest paved road. We arrived to a greeting party of mostly women and children. We played a game, at this point in my stay i think it would be appropriate to conclude that Panamanians love, I mean absolutely adore playing group games, its what they come to meetings for and its what they talk about after meetings. I think its hilarious. The games are fun and do make everyone laugh.

My host family were the grand jefes, big bosses, of the town. They owned the only tienda in town and lived in the metropolis, where the afternoon horse traffic is horrible and the cluster of 5 tree scrapers being a school, a church, a community center and well, maybe it was only 3 tree scrapers, scudded the view. Anyways, they were excellent people. I was fed well, except for the cow soup I was privey to the first night. So how did cow soup make it to the table? Well, from what I gathered a cow had fallen into a barbed wire fence and doubled over into a ditch where it died. The people of the town, not wanting to let the meat spoil, ran over to the cow and harvesyted all the meat. No electricity means no refridgerators which means everyone eats ditch dead cow soup until there is no more cow left. So I was the last person in my family to have the privledge of eating cow soup while drinking coffee with about 4 spoonfulls of cane sugar. The food was good though, I had corn tortillas with avacoado for breakfast, some kind of chicken beans and rice soup for lunch, and various meats and eggs and vegtables for dinner, always with a sweet cup of coffee.

Not much time left,

This week we planted rice in tanks cut into the ground. We also made an estufa lorena, which is a wood burning stove made of clay, sand, and horse manure that is more efficient and healthier than the three stones with a fire underneath that most people use now. We worked in the community garden, built raised seed beds for germinating seeds with the schools, and taught the kids about the desert and reforestation. ´We also toured and talked about iguana nurserys. A guy in town had about 50 iguanas in a cage that he was preparing to sell to people in the community. Friend iguana is a campo delicacy in Panama.

The last night we prepared a despidida for the community. A despidida is a farewell party. Us gringos wrote a song about everything we did in the town. I played guitar, in the traditional typico style. The entire town showed up, well over a hundred people were there. The song went off without a hitch, we danced and sang into the night under a single light bulb rigged up to a car battery.

I must be going now,

Marcos