The peace corps panama director recently sent out an email to all peace corps panama volunteers announcing an essay contest. Three volunteers will win a hardy handshake from the country director and most importantly an extra vacation day! All we have to do is write a one page entry on a day in the life of a volunteer. My competition most likely are the teaching English volunteers as most of them have bachelors degrees in English Literature. Vacation days are a big deal in Peace Corps because we only get Panamanian holidays off. Which is pretty annoying because our communities and schools expect us to celebrate with them on holidays and not to take off to visit Kuna Yala. Ergo on Panamanian holidays Peace Corps volunteers are usually dancing alongside our community members instead of visiting one of Panama's plethora of vacation destinations. So I am entering this contest with one goal: to win an extra vacation day.
A day in the life of a volunteer. I woke up this morning at 6 am with "bachata" blasting out my window. My neighbors can't seem to get enough of Prince Royce's Spanglish version of "stand by me".I have a meeting at the municipal government's office this morning. I have recently started working in the city and I would like to share a brief presentation with representatives from the Municipal government, they are after all supposed to be one of my agency counterparts. The meeting is scheduled for 10 am. I have time to go to the copy center to print out a copy of my PowerPoint and print out business cards. I got to the municipal governments meeting room fifteen minutes early. Chitre residents pour into the building along with their agency counterparts. Secretaries walk from office to office. The president of the meeting has already arrived along with representative Via Real. It's 10:15 and the three other representatives, Gonzalez, Vergara, and Cedeno have yet to arrive. In Panama being late is the norm, Panamanians have even coined the term, "hora panamena," the 'Panamanian hour.' Regardless of how long I have been working here, the Panamanian hour is still frustrating. 5 minutes is okay. 15 your starting to push it. And thirty minutes later, walking in on the phone is unacceptable, especially for a governmental agency. But Panamanians seem to have so much more patience then I do. At 10:35 all of the representatives have arrived and the meeting begins. The meeting set up is incredibly formal. All of the representatives sit in a horse shoe shape formation, all are behind microphones, all with individual desks and fancy office chairs. The meeting begins will several formalities, "honorable representative Gonzalez? Present. Honorable representative Via Real? Present. Honorable president of the Advisory Committee? Present." The first resident of Chitre to share her project proposal with the committee is Francisca Quintero about a local cooperative in need of land to build their business. Her speech is long and heartfelt and also in Panamanian style full of brown nosing. She knows what she is doing. The committee passes a motion to approve the cooperatives project. The meeting continues with a letter from the mayor who was detained for the day with work in Panama City. More letters are read and approved. The representatives share projects from their districts, they argue, speak candidly, yell, laugh, and continue to do so for 2 hours. Finally the meeting is opened up to the public. At this point they realize that I wasn't included in the agenda. But there's a meeting next Wednesday, all I have to do is solicit time to speak. I have to write a formal letter to the president of the advisory council and next week they will let me know if I can speak during the meeting. Today I had a PowerPoint prepared, I had printed out pictures of the open dump, I had a letter of solicitation for 600.00 dollars from the municipal government to help fund my recycling pilot project. And in today's meeting they allowed me enough time to share my name before everyone stood up to leave. My next chance to speak may be the 11th or the 18th. I might wait for three hours yet again just to share my name, but I will be there trying to share my project. I left the municipal governments office today somewhat defeated. I went home ate chips and salsa with a Dr. Pepper and wrote out the solicitation letter formally asking to be part of the meetings agenda next week. I walked to the Internet cafe to print it out and walked to the office only to find that they had closed early today. So I walked over to the mayors office and set up a meeting directly with him for tomorrow afternoon. His approval for the 600 dollars may be all I need?
Hopefully I'll have better luck tomorrow. I will take the solicitation letter tomorrow and hope for a time slot in next weeks meeting.
One bright spot today: I got on the bus today and sat down next to a very cute old man. He told me as I sat down, "good afternoon my love," to which I naturally replied, 'good afternoon my heaven." He asked me where I was from and noticed my peace corps lanyard. He then told me about a volunteer that he had worked with in the 1970s. He told me that this volunteer had come back several times and is already old with grand kids. I was grateful to run into someone with such a positive opinion of peace corps on a day like today.
This was my experience today. I am currently enjoying an air conditioned cafe and three sweet pineapple empanadas. This evening I have an 'insanity' workout class at the gym I joined last week.
Thanks for reading,
Sonia
Sent from my iPad
