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Pedregal, Provincia de Chiriqui – 11/12/2011 – 11/28/2011

Upon arrival in David, I knew that I was to find a coordinator that worked for SIT’s summer program in Panama and she would show me to a homestay family. Then I was to call my ISP advisor and get started! Well, little did I know how lucky I had been. The coordinator was very kind and spoke slowly for me. I live now with Senora Ruby, a sweet but spritely Grandma of two grandsons who are over all the time. She runs a catering business out of her home and has employees to clean the house and help with the cooking as well as do the landscaping. My room is spacious, clean, comfortable, the walls are the same color as my room at home and there are hangings with Christian sayings on them. Senora Ruby, I can now understand almost perfectly. She tells me stories about all the students that she has had from Switzerland, Denmark, the United States and Jamaica. Her daughter also studied abroad in Norway for a year. She has been taking in students since then and has a wealth of experiences to share. She runs a tight ship, cooking all the time, magnificent cakes and savory salads and meats. She is safety conscious to make my own mother proud, follows the rules and disapproves of it when people litter or are unkempt. We get along great! She has really taken me under her wing and made me feel comfortable in her house, with her family and with her friends. This is definitely the most ‘homey’ feeling I have had in Panama and I really appreciate it.

As far as my work in Pedregal has gone, it was definitely a struggle at first to get to know the people there and how they go about their work, I got left behind on shore a couple of times and embarrassed several times due to my lack of understanding of Spanish. Finally, I began to fall into a rhythm of data collection, going out with one particularly trustworthy fisherman and his two workers. The process of artisanal fishing in Pedregal is to find a good spot and sneak up on the biting lisa with the motor on low, then jump in the water with one end of the net while the boat speeds away in a circle. The net falls out with the other boy throwing the heavier end as it reels out. At the end you drop the net and move into the circle to hit the water with a big weight and make lots of noise to push the fish into the net. Then they pull in the net and take the fish out of it and do it again somewhere else. Soon we had a system down so that I could keep track of the coordinates of where we were, how many fish of each species came in each time the net was dropped and get the length of each fish. They helped me all along by calling out the names of each fish and handing me the catch one by one to measure!

On the last day when they told me how the fishermen in Boca Chica (where we had visited) have a different system than those in Pedregal (a little up the coast) I thought to myself – yes I know that now, it would have been helpful to know that when I planned a study that required the methods of the fishermen in Boca Chica to be carried out here in Pedregal. Just the same, living and learning, changing the methods of my study as necessary to utilize the opportunity that I have here. Again, I could not have been luckier in that the fishermen that I came to know the best were all good people that were honest and kind to me when they really didn’t have to be. I am sure that I was in the way at times and I know I was frustrated when I couldn’t understand what they were saying but they always made sure that I had food for lunch and a life jacket and even a hat to keep the sun and salt out of my eyes when I forgot my own. I am thankful for their company these past two weeks.

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STRI Barro Colorado Island – 11/9/2011

Our last group activity was the trip to one of the other large research stations in Panama belonging to STRI. This one is on Barro Colorado Island a natural laboratory where many botanists, anthropologists, molecular biologists, ecologists etc have had a lot of fun! We learned all about some of the projects that are being worked on there and then went for a tour on one of the trails. Along the way we saw a hormiguero (anteater), mono aullador (howler monkey) and mono araña (spider monkey)!!!

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Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Bocas del Toro – 11/01/2011 – 11/07/2011

This part of the trip was really wonderful. We stayed in a small dormitory for scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute which had big beautiful clean rooms and a nice kitchen and lounge area. We had a professor who is a well-recognized expert on coral reefs and currently works in the STRI administration who was also hilarious. This is how my days went: wake up and go for a run next to the Carribbean, come back for breakfast with an incredible cook who came right there to the kitchen in the dormitory, spend about 2-3 hours in lecture with Dr. Mate who had the nicest powerpoints (coffee allowed), get dressed for snorkeling and board the boats, a glass-bottomed boat and one other research vessel belonging to STRI, snorkel for an hour then have lunch on the boats packed by the cook, snorkel more and collect samples, go back to the dock, shower, change and dissect the samples to discover every living thing in there and use the microscope if you want! It was such a perfect set-up! One day, my group even found a baby octopus in our sample! The first two-days we compared the biodiversity of alive and dead coral and the third day we measured the biomass of plant matter in seagrass beds. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and we soon had to pack up and get back to the city to start our ISPs!

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Cost Rica – 10/27/2011 – 11/01/2011

Getting to Costa Rica was pretty much the way that you might imagine it. There were heavily armed guards everywhere. There was a number of people moving about who clearly had their own agendas whom the guards cared nothing about, plus groups of gringos like us, who they cared a little (read: a lot) more about. We showed our passports when asked and then set off walking across a huge bridge and the other side was Costa Rica. Magically, there was a bus waiting for us on the other side! Two and a half hours later we arrived at our destination, Universidad EARTH. Having no idea what to expect, we were nonetheless surprised by the place. The entrance was grand and large and surrounded by perfectly manicured landscaping. The driveway was a trek and when we passed under a set of huge machinery with signs all over it we felt as though we were entering a highly protected military base when in actuality it was just the device to carry the harvested banana bunches to the processing facility. The actual buildings were probably the most impressive/interesting I have seen. They were big, clean, nice, color-coordinated and empty! It turns out that this is a university like any other in that students come and get a four year degree however there are several things that were pointed out to us that are different; 1) the only major option is agroeconomy 2) much like a vocational-agriculture school in the states, there is a working farm on the property 3) there is a huge emphasis on international influence and collaboration so the majority of the students are not from Costa Rica and many speak Spanish, English and their own language (Swahili, Danish etc). There was also example agriculture systems spread out on the grounds that clearly illustrated how you could cover all your needs. For example, there was a pig pen containing animals being raised for slaughter, whose manure was treated with a special mix of microbes cultured from the forest floor and worked through by earthworms to produce fertilizer, which was used to support the family style garden, a polyculture arrangement with all the vegetables a family could need! The only thing that was bizarre to us was that these facilities were used by a mere 400 students, 100 of which were not there because they were doing their internships for the last year, and the staff outnumbered the students almost 7:1! Still, the cafeteria was a hopping place at meal times and we really enjoyed meeting the students that go to school there and participating in the workshops that they gave. All the students must run their own small group business and make money at it during their second year. We learned about many of these projects as well. For example, one group of students ran a garden full of medicinal plants and crops that were grown sustainably by utilizing waste materials such as rice hulls or charcoal for substrate instead of dirt (this works if you add your own mix of nutrient rich fertilizer – which they gave us the recipe for – not telling!!). They actually provided the cafeteria with lettuce!

All in all, I really appreciated visiting this place, if not for all that we learned, definitely for the monkeys! The first afternoon that I was there I went for a run but didn’t end up going very far because I noticed a tiny white face peaking out at me from the branches near the road. It was a troop of cariblancas or White-faced Capuchin monkeys! There were about 5 including one mother with a tiny baby on her back, and they were pretty close to me! The dominant animal came forward and shook branches at me and barked at me as well before we parted ways again.

Finally, in Costa Rica we had a one night homestay which we were afraid would be too much like a one-night stand! We felt bad about a group of us gringos coming in and crashing for only a night and not having time to build any relationship with the family. However, we needn’t have worried, out homestay Mom was very kind and clearly accustomed to this set-up. She took us for a walk around her property which included two small fish ponds full of Tilapia that she kept for food and a small shelter for two pigs complete with the biodigestor being built by her son to take care of the manure! It was the same technology as EARTH had. When asked how they knew how to make it, she responded, “The whole world knows!”. In the night time we did a 1000 piece puzzle of Texas together that a past student had brought and it was quite relaxing.

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Naso Teribe, La Provincia de Bocas del Toro – 10/24/2011 – 10/27/2011

The Naso are an indigenous tribe with a unique lifestyle, culture, land and language and we had a great time with them. What was most interesting for me was their unique language which is very unlike Spanish. They happily taught us many things in Naso and showed us the book of their history. I was able to read and undestand the Spanish version and really appreciate the Naso for what it was – the transition of an ancient indigenous people’s method of communication from a spoken to a written language. I also got to play with the children!!

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El Dorado, La Ciudad de Panama, Panama – 10/21/2011 – 10/24/2011

For these few days we were in the city, relaxing, regrouping, repacking before our second field trip to the interior. When Val and I arrived at Cata’s house, I nearly cried over being reunited with my running shoes and then promptly left to use up all those nice red blood cells I stored up while in tierras altas, the highlands of Chiriqui. I returned, soaking wet with sweat mind you, to find Cata’s son, an international 5-lingual (that’s not how you say that) lawyer returned from France after 7 long years away from Panama, sitting on her porch in a suit and tie that probably cost more than my whole wardrobe of backpacking gear. She fixed a dinner like the last supper for his homecoming and Val and I got to enjoy it right along with them before being relegated to the corner when the rest of the family arrived and started the party. At night, I had the opportunity to discuss, in English, a large part of his work with one of the more famous international environmental law cases dealing with Chevron company and a large number of victims in Ecuador. His company was stimulating, sophisticated and short but enjoyable. The rest of this time passed unremarkably and we are off to the interior otra vez!