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During our 10 week Peace Corps training we stayed with Junior and Margareta in the small town of Santa Clara in the township of Arriajan (there are several towns named Santa Clara in the country).    We finally made it back here to see the lovely people we got to know in 2009.

Junior, as everyone calls him, is around 60 and worked for the Panama Canal for decades handling the lines used to secure the ships traversing the canal.  He retired two years ago.  They have since visited Bocas Del Toro for the first time, and in addition went to Nicaragua.  They also bought a small pickup truck.  He is farming a small plot and sells some of his excess produce.  He has had conflicts with some of the other local producers who complain that he is selling at a low price.  He says that people here are of limited means and should not have to pay such high prices.

Margareta hosts a teacher as Peace Corps has not used this community for the past two years, although they are returning next year.  She continues to sew and showed us some of her creative work.  There was a workshop for the locals, and they were graduating the day we were there.  They’d been making small shopping bags with straps decorated.

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The internet has arrived in Santa Clara using 3g dongle (usb port connection) technology.  A grandson now has hundreds of Facebook friends.  We’ll be able to stay in touch.

They took us to lunch.  The local representative now has a small restaurant in front of his house.  We sat in the shade of the 90 degree (31C) heat with 90% humidity and enjoyed a very good fish plate with rice.  The fish was deep fried, of course.  Panamanians deep fry almost everything, eat tons of white rice and have a both a very high sugar diet and lots of diabetes and obesity.  Small wonder.  Lunch for 6 cost $14.

Margareta and Junior have worked with Peace Corps for more than 10 years.  They have hosted mostly couples and a few single.  We are the first ones ever to return.  We were very grateful for the way they treated us when we were there.  Margareta is a very good cook, and knew we would not want to eat so much deep fried food, so we got a lighter diet.

We stayed a few hours then mounted the ancient school bus for the hot trip back to the capital, where we hopped on one of the new buses heading to Via España.  It was nice to be in the air conditioning.

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There are not a great many museums in Panama.  We went to the Contemporary Art Museum, from which most of these photos come.   I have labeled the photos so you know where they were taken.

The art museum is in a small building not far from Panama Viejo.  It is pretty small with just three galleries.  I liked a lot of the paintings and some of the photos too.  One of the guys there went around with us- as did the woman at the Afro-Antilles museum.  We got to see some paintings from the previous exhibition.  He also walked with us halfway to the Afro-Antilles museum.  I am not sure we would have found it otherwise.  As he left he said we are now friends forever.  It is just $3.00 to get in.  They are moving to a new building on the causeway, I think it is.  Looks like a lovely building in a lovely spot.

At the  Afro-Antilles museum the woman and only other person there beside us offered to take us through the exhibit.  It is a short walk to the building from the Museum in a rather chaotic and crowded area which is not for the faint of heart.  The metro will have an exit just outside the entrance, which at the moment is inaccessible.

A woman offered to take us around.  She recounted some of the facts of the Afro-Antilleans in the construction of the canal.  As I recall they were the most numerous group  at 18,000 while Panamanians among the least at a mere 500!   She interviewed some of those who lived through that period, including her grandmother.   They told her that Panamanians heard that you had to submit to a rectal exam before you were hired and they did not understand that it had anything to do with the prostate!  I can not imagine that the US government would have required a rectal exam on 45,000 mostly young workers.

September 5, 2013

During the Peace Corps training period, volunteers in Panama stay with a host family.  We returned to Santa Clara in the area known as Ariajan, just outside the capitol.

This small community has seen many groups of volunteers over the past 10 years.  There have not been any the past two years but the community will again host volunteers later this year or early next.

You get there on Diablos Rojos, Red Devils, used (often very used) schools buses purchased from the US.   In the capital the government purchased a fleet of modern buses to replace he Diablos Rojos, but the suburbs still employ these old buses.   There is very little leg room, they are noisy, they spew mountains of diesel smoke into the air, and are not air conditioned.

The family lives near the Catholic Church, which has been greatly enlarged despite the shortage of priests;  the one who serves here can not come on Sunday so comes on Saturday instead.   Their house has 2 bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen, and a covered parking area for the newly acquired car.  The floor of the room we occupied now has tiles and the door has been cut to length.   The bathroom still has only cold (or should I say cool) water.

Our hosts seem quite healthy and more prosperous.  Since Juniors retirement as a cable handler on the canal two years ago they have traveled to Bocas del Toro and Nicaragua.  They bought some land, or have begun to farm some they already had.  They harvest bananas, plantains, and various tubers you’ve probably never heard of.  Otoi, nami, and some other one neither of us can spell, perhaps gnampi.  All starchy.  Panamanians eat very starchy diets, supplemented by gobs of sugar and deep fried everything.

To be continued…