Santa Marta

We went to Santa Marta this week (the 8th through the 12th) and it was another awesome experience. I feel that I already sort of had a home stay at the Shaman but this experience was so different since we were able to stay with different families for almost a week and create bonds with them. There were two to three people at each house and the family that I stayed with was really great and welcomed me and Andrea so warmly. My parents were Samuel and Marisol and they had four kids, Elvin, Anyda, Rosemary, and Samuelito (little Samuel). The house was two bedrooms with a kitchen and an open eating area that was covered but didn’t have walls. They had a bucket shower which was outside and bathroom was a latrine so it was outside too. Andrea and I talked about how we were surprised at how little water we used when we showered. There was a bucket of water and we had a bowl to use and we thought that there wasn’t going to be enough water but we realized that we didn’t need much water to get clean. It made me realize how much water we waste in the US since we just let the water run. The house is close to the center of town which was right next door at the Grandma’s house. I felt like they represented a power family in the community. Although the Dad identified himself as just a farmer, he was more important to the community than that. One of the highlights of the trip was getting to know the principal, Isla, and one of the teachers at the school, Medium. Medium told us that Samuel was like a “jefé” or leader of the town. He has the ability to talk to anyone about anything and she said that even people who don’t talk to anyone will go talk to him. Although Medium only spoke Spanish, I understood about 90% of what she said. I was able to talk to her about the Panama school system, the current president, and the country itself. I learned so much from her and she really got me thinking about the structural differences between Panama and the United States.
From getting to know Medium the first night, I was able to go into the school on the volunteer day and teach a class of freshmen English. It was really nerve racking since I didn’t have any lesson plan or book to go off of and since I’ve never taught English before, it was especially hard to do and also difficult because I’m not fluent in Spanish. I feel like I would be much more comfortable and I could actually do a much better job if I some time to prepare and talk to the education majors who are on this trip so I didn’t just go into the room and start counting in Spanish. My Spanish has improved with this Santa Marta trip since I was forced to use it every day with my family to communicate important things like food and when we had to leave to do things. While we were there the class hiked three hours up a mountain to where Panama’s former president Omar Torrejo’s plane crashed. Aside from meeting Medium, my favorite part was hiking to the waterfall. We hiked down there and had a nice day swimming in the waterfalls and I felt so accomplished that I could swim against the current to make it under the fall. It was so beautiful and one of those cliché tropical moments that I’m glad I got to experience.
The night after the waterfall the town put on a party\dance for us. They did traditional Panamanian music and they made a rule that I think was for their own entertainment because we weren’t allowed to dance with each other, it had to be one Panamanian and one Gringo. Joey got chosen to participate in their traditional dance and from me making friends with the two teachers, Chad and Marc got asked to dance too! The next day was another fun day. Our dad had been bringing dirt into the house which wasn’t that big of a deal since it was dirt floors anyway, but Andrea and I thought it was just for the floor or something. The actual purpose for it was for just to help build a mud wall. The whole group came over to our house and sifted through the dirt to take out all the rocks and then they took a hose and made mud. The only way to mix the mud properly was with our feet so we got to play in the mud for a few hours. Then they added straw to be mixed in to add to the structure of the bricks and after we mixed that in we had to start making bricks and putting the wall together. Although it was hard and messy work, I had a lot of fun and I think I should be able to put building a mud wall on my resume =)