CHS would do well to hire you back and give you a raise. In my biased opinion they are idiots. I was actually translating at a medical clinic last week with Peace Corps friends and my friend Evan's dad (a High School environmental teacher) had brought two of his students with him to Panama to volunteer. I talked to both students for a bit and shared about the Belize trip you took us on in 2005, and about meeting a Peace Corps volunteer in her site. I told them that my AP Environmental Science teacher Mr. L changed the course of my life and I decided that I wanted to join the Peace Corps when I was 17 years old. Hopefully, I convinced them to join once they graduate from College, one wants to get a degree in Environmental Engineering, so he would be perfect for Peace Corps, he could work with water-line projects, or water filters, or solar panel well-pumps--all projects that are common here in Panama. I was also talking to him about the Master's International program where you can go to graduate school for a year at Michigan Tech or Florida (all of my engineering friends go there but there is a list of MI programs on the Peace Corps website) and then do Peace Corps for two years, conduct your research, and then return to defend your thesis. I have a number of friends that are doing their Master's during their service.
Thanks for the offer for letters of recommendation, I am actually thrilled to tell you that I have already been accepted to the Monterey Institute of International Studies, in Monterey, California. I actually only just submitted my application on January 15th and got on email from them with my admissions letter on January 24th. I was at the beach and my phone buzzed with an email notification and I screamed, "I got into Grad School!!!" All of the friends totally lost in and poured drinks and we all cheered. I am really excited about MIIS, which is an extension of Middlebury College in Vermont. It's also pretty cool that the current Peace Corps Panama country director got his MPA degree at MIIS.
I actually also applied to the University of Denver and am still waiting for the admission's committee at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies to get back to me.
I have so many impressions about the Peace Corps. My boyfriend recently got an email from a friend at home that is considering joining the Peace Corps and Nate and I were discussing how he should respond. He felt the need to start the email by saying that if you are going to join the Peace Corps, from the beginning, you should 'lower your expectations.' I don't entirely agree with lowering your expectations. I have been here for over 2 and a half years and I am still an optimist and I am still surprised when things don't work out. I do believe it would however be helpful to initially assume that your Peace Corps work will not have "tangible" results, it might, but more than likely the work that you are involved in will not be tangible or easy to measure.
I think the happiest volunteers are the volunteers with a good senses of humor. A friend recently hosted an inaugural ceremony for a beautiful brick oven that his community committee hopes to create a viable bread making business with. Nick thought selling pizza would be a great way to raise money for the committee. In the end though, no one bought the pizza, they just bought the dough. I don't think the event made very much money because Nick had spent so much on the pizza ingredients. But Nick was able to laugh about it and will be hosting another inaguration--his goodbye party as a final attempt to leave the committee with a little funding. He was able to brush off the initial disappointment and plan for another try. This type of thing happens a lot, cultural differences that you just have to shrug off and try again, and also sell Panamanians favorite bread with a side of their favorite dishes.
If any of your students decide to join the Peace Corps the best advice that I can give them is to bring their patience and sense of humor. And once they are in their communities (their sites where they will be working for two years) they need to find the 'rock-stars.' They need to find the people that want to work with them, those that are passionate and motivated. I found the rock-stars in my community and my service was made so much easier with their help. My friend Natalie used to always make fun of my Peace Corps philosophies but she told me in June that her favorite quote of mine is, "the more rockstars you find in site, the more fun you can have." Now it varies from Country to Country but Peace Corps pre-service training usually lasts about 8 weeks--this is where Peace Corps provides you with training for 2 months, its usually sector-specific training and intense language training. Then you swear in as a Peace Corps volunteer and you have three-months to integrate into your community. Peace Corps Panama really encourages volunteers to stay in their communities for the first three-months. Our program encourages that we just visit with families and get to know our community as well as we can. Our program doesn't assume that we will go in and have projects started within the first month. They really just want us to visit with families, work on our language skills, and get over our initial fear of casually walking into peoples homes (which is such a foreign concept in the US but so common in Panama, I can't tell you how often people came to my house right around lunch time.....)
Suffice it to say that in my community I found the rock stars, one of which was my host sister, Sara Gutierrez. She made my service. She was always there for me. I remember specifically one evening I was planning a movie night at the school. At that time the indigenous Ngobe's had been protesting against mining in their area and had closed down the Pan American highway for 2 days. I wanted to show my community members Avatar to do a little bit of environmental education and a little indoctrinating. I had ordered the pizza's from Dominoes hours earlier and the small community bus had picked them up. I had the projector set up, chairs, and Sara was just finishing with the pop-corn. And about 15 minutes before the movie night stared the power went out. I was alone at the school because Panamanians usually arrive about 45 minutes late. Sara called me immediately and told me not to worry, she was on her way. She just had to stop at the Kiosk for candles. She waited with me until the power came back on and we hosted the movie night together. That night was the first movie night but we must of hosted over 10 movies nights during my service. We also showed 'Even the Rain,' 'Motorcycle Diaries,' and 'Brave' to name a few. Sara was always there combatting traditional gender roles. I remember we were building a wall at the school for the recycling shed and I didn't have enough money in the budget to pay for sand, so she told me to come over to her house. When I got there she had already found 30 empty sacks and two shovels and told me we could get the sand from the river. As I struggled up the hill with an incredibly steep incline with one thirty pound bag of sand, Sara was carrying two. Sara actually is currently the president of the recycling committee and is working towards establishing a program similar to a municipal waste collection program in our community, currently ten houses are involved. During my time in site the two of us established recycling at the school every two weeks and got several community stores to send their recycling to the school as well. We also hosted a class for 18 women for 8 weeks to learn how to re-use materials to make products as a supplemental income. We also went to the US embassy in Panama City with 5 other women to teach the embassy workers children how to make simple things with recyclable materials. Sara and I worked really well together. She actually asked me to be her baby girls god-mother, and I actually baptized her daughter last June. When I was leaving site, Sara told me that she wouldn't be as close to my follow-up volunteer because it would just be too hard. I told her that was unacceptable, that she had to look out for my follow-up. I actually had dinner with Sara last week in the provincial capital and she said she wasn't able to stay away. That her and Carolina have a special relationship as well and I am so happy about that.
I would also advise that Peace Corps applicants apply to work with community economic development, environmental conservation, and environmental health. The education volunteers seem to struggle the most because they have to put up with a lot of bullshit. They don't have as much freedom and are usually assigned a community counterpart. Teaching english is hard--especially if it is your assigned job. It's more fun if teaching english is something you do one afternoon a week. Teaching math is are hard too---just a word to the wise--you will deal with a lot of formality and corruption if you are assigned to an education job. The happiest teaching english volunteers that I know in Panama are happy because that are also working with other things like teacher trainings, ultimate frisbee teams, recycling programs and environmental clubs, etc.
So my Peace Corps impressions in summary: The work that you do may not be tangible--but that's okay. You might be working with youth development teaching about self-esteem, self-image, over-coming traditional gender roles, etc.--but that work has an impact. Don't be discouraged if your not building an aqueduct or building composting latrines. Not everything in development work is tangible. Also, maintaining a sense of humor is very important. The country you are working in will sometimes kick your ass for no reason. Panama is difficult when I need it to be easy and easy when I am anticipating it to be difficult. Also, find the rock-stars which is a synonym for finding the hard/motivated workers that are going to work with you and that have your back---you need them more than they need you!! But the amount of projects that you can do will be based on their help.
I also forgot to mention what I am currently doing: I am working as a Peace Corps Response volunteer in Chitre, Panama which is the largest city in the Azuero Peninsula in Southern Panama. I am here for 9 months working directly with the Municipal government and the Ministry of Education. I am essentially trying to prove to the Municipal government that recycling is possible here once they provide the education and actually follow through with collecting it. Today their only method of dealing with trash is burning huge quantities of trash everyday. I wish I had a way to measure the dioxin levels of the local live-stock and food production to actually get their attention. At the moment I am woking in 4 schools, 3 elementary schools and 1 really large high school to teach about recycling and host recycling collection days at the schools every two weeks. One school last year actually made 995 dollars in two months selling their recyclables to the local recycling center, so one school did incredibly well. The high school however only made 9 dollars in two months. Behavioral change can be tough but I am lucky that one school is full of rock-star parents and teachers (the elementary school that did well). I will officially finish serving as a Peace Corps Response volunteer on May 24th, so I only have 4 more months to work and enjoy Panama before heading home to Claremont.
Thank you Mr. Lawrence.
I also wanted to include photos of the last couple weeks: in Los Santos, Herrera, Cocle, Chiriqui, and the Comarca Ngobe Bugle.
