Panama...first recounting

--- warning - since I got ditched somehow by my family this morning instead of going to mass, I had a bit of time on my hands and this got rather long ---

Dad gently reminded me yesterday that I have yet to post any updates on the current trip to Panama.

I confess this is due to one part laziness, one part general apathetic fugue, and one part inconvenience. Laziness should need no explanation, and inconvenience can be summed up with "lack of internet at home" + "la Semana Santa in a Catholic country" (which could be roughly translated as "nothing is open"). The general apathetic fugue comes in from the fact that nothing has been open and my free time has been, well, fairly non-dramatic.

But I suppose some of you aren't looking for the dramatic, but what's happened, generally and specifically, over the course of the last week. OK, I'll oblige.

I arrived on Sunday night after an awfully long day of flying having had to get to the airport at...ah...well, "early". When I arrived I was transported to a previous time (em...2006, specifically) by the smell of burning trash hanging in the air. It was abysmally hot and
humid - especially given that it was 9:00 at night. Oh, and my driver wasn't there. I was supposed to be met by a driver to take me to my new living quarters, he was to be holding a sign with perhaps my name, or maybe the name of the school. They said I should just look for
either.

He eventually showed up - after only abut 45 minutes. I figured I would give him an hour before I called someone - I had re-entered Latin America, after all, and Gringo punctuality doesn't generally rank high on the totem pole of social norms.

We had a nice chat coming from the airport to my family's house. Panamanian Spanish is not too difficult to understand, at least not generally, and with a few exceptions I was able to understand the chatter and make myself understood - this, actually, was pretty phenomenal. Among the tidbits of information I acquired from my taxi ride: it's holy week, nothing is going to be open. The school ("ILERI") is very good. May 1st again nothing will be open for May Day (a big deal in Latin America...and other places as well, I suppose). There will be a big party on international workers day. Then on May 3rd (the day after Sky gets here) there will be national presidential elections (nothing will be open), followed by nothing being open on May 4th in order to appropriately celebrate whichever party's victory. Big party. Reggaeton was actually invented in Panama, not in Puerto Rico - to verify this you simply have to ask any Panamaño, apparently. The political candidates make a lot of promises, but nothing is going to change. That won't stop us from having a big party, though.

It was a nice way to flex some much disused Spanish language, crack through the recent French I'd been studying (which is still a problem at times - especially with articles), etc.

We after some 20 minutes or so, we arrived at my host mother's house. It's a nice, smallish house on a hill in a neighborhood called Altos de El Dorado (hills/heights of El Dorado), which is a nice, unexceptional suburban sort of district on the western side of the city. I was shown to my room - which is, rather, a small apartment located at the rear of the house, on the second floor. I have my own "suite", which includes a sitting room, a bathroom, and a bedroom. The sitting room doesn't have a fan or anything, though, so I don't spend much time over there. It's very nice, if a bit separate feeling from the family. I was kind of hoping to be a bit more 'in the middle' of things so that I would be overhearing family chatter and the like. Ah, well. It's nice to have privacy and such.

Lucy is a retired midwife who lives with her daughter, Lizzy, her ___, Luiz (I haven't pinned down that relationship), and I think she provides resident care for an elderly man, but I don't know who he is or what the deal is there, and I haven't figure out how to ask politely. She's very nice, probably in her 70s, and not the most talkative but will chat with me while I eat dinner or breakfast or the like. She has been to the states a few times, has a sister in Pennsylvania, etc. Luiz drives a taxi for a cab company in the city, Lizzy does...well, I'm not sure, but I know she is in classes some evenings. They have one other boarder, who I've only encountered once, named Luna, who is a volunteer from Korea. She will spend a total of 2 years here, she volunteers at a kindergarten. I gather that this is quite common, and there are a lot of volunteers in Panama from Asia, especially Korea, but I haven't figured out how this works just yet.

Let's see...Monday morning I got dropped off at the school by Luiz, met the director of the school, and they threw me into an exam to see where I would fall. I felt...well, "OK" about my abilities, and ended up on the 'advanced intermediate' track (imagine!) and spent the day working with one of the instructors, Raquel. It went fine, we went over the imperfect tense a bit, practiced talking, etc. They close up shop at lunch, so another student and I - Kinji, a doctor from California - went to find some lunch at a cafeteria a little ways away. It was pretty good - the platos tipicos generally include Creole fish or roasted chicken, mashed potatoes or patacones (which I've always called tostones, but they're both smashed fried plantains) and some kind of uninspiring veggie. I will admit that, thusfar, the plato tipico in Honduras was much more yummi. Mmm. And I haven't yet seen any pupusas or the like, which is disappointing - I really liked those. The food so far seems to be...hmm...just fine, if unexciting. As I understand another student friend, it's very similar to Jamaican food, only without the heat. Bummer!

In any case, lunch went fine, back to school for a little practice of medical spanish, which was also fine if uneventful. Returned to the house at midafternoon, not a lot going on, so I tried to wander around a bit, watched some telenovelas, eventually had dinner (which is a re-heated version of what the family had for lunch), and went to bed. End of day one! No drama, but nothing blowing me away either.

I'm going to forgo the play-by-play now, and instead focus on the recap. Tuesday I went with the instructor and another student, Akilah (med student from Georgia), to a clinic in a sleepy town called Paraiso, in the former canal zone. I pretty much was just introduced to the administrator and the doctor (so that I could come back again later) and then we left. I'll talk more about the clinic once I have a better sense of the place.

Tuesday afternoon we visited the much vaunted "Panama Canal Locks at Miraflores". This was neat, but really nothing that exciting. The Poe Lock at the Soo Locks is bigger, the lakers are bigger ships in general than the Panamax, and so...well, it was neat but really not that wild. I guess maybe I'm spoiled on locks and ships given my previous exposures? It's neat to see the Panamax fully loaded with containers transiting the locks, but it didn't really wow me.

On Wednesday I tried to get to the clinic early enough to be carried along to a distant health post in indigenous territory, but traffic put a distinct crimp in that plan. Food - Oooh - also on Wednesday I had bacalao at the tiny restaurant in Paraiso. That was tasty.

Thursday nothing happened. Food - I had Sancocho at school, which is a traditional Panamanian dish. It's actually just chicken soup. Really. There's very little different about it, except that the chicken is in big chunks and there's no veggies to speak of involved. Well, there's ñame, but I don't know if you would consider it a vegetable. It was ok-tasty. Salty, though.

Friday was Good Friday, and nothing was open. Three of us students (there are currently six students at the school. All yankees, unfortunately) decided to head out to The Causeway during the day to stroll and take pictures. Normally, the Causeway is sort of "The Strip" of Panama City, apparently. It's the place to go to see and be seen, it has a lot of restaurants and bars, American restaurant chains, moorage for your boats, etc. Nothing was open though, so we just strolled along and took some photos, chatted about how it was going so far. Of note - it is ILLEGAL to sell alcohol in Panama on Good Friday. In the grocery store, the aisles with the beer and booze had great big Xs on them made of masking tape and signs everywhere saying IT'S PROHIBITED. That was kind of interesting. After we returned from the Causeway...ah...nothing happened, actually. I studied up on my spanish.

Yesterday, Saturday, we tried to get out a bit again, and we took a ferry to the nearby island of Taboga, a small island in the bay of Panama. It features a very small town on one side, a couple of small beaches, and a few hotels and laid back restaurants. We decided on Taboga because our teachers said it wouldn't be too crazy on the holiday - everybody goes to other beaches instead. The ferry ride was nice, although the humidity is such that you can't get good shots of the skyline or anything. The beach was perfectly acceptable, we did have to shell out to rent an umbrella for the day from the jovens who are in charge of such things. It was not an especially carribean experience, but then we are on the Pacific side, after all. The water was cool and refreshing, the beach was functional (not crystal white carribean but more like Park Point). It was a fine way to waste away a Saturday. It reminded me a lot of the Ile de Goree outside of Dakar - very relaxed, bright colonial architecture, people visiting the beach from the city on the weekends. It was very pleasant.

Some notes:

Panama City is quite large. There are a lot of places I've yet to get to see, which include the downtown and the Old City, which I'm quite looking forward to. The closest city I can compare it to is probably Buenos Aires, though it seems not as large. However, it's certainly more developed-world feeling than the other developing world capitals I've been to. I gather it has about 1.5 million of the country's 3 million inhabitants. There are plenty of sky-scrapers on the skyline.

The part of the city I live in is remarkably clean and appears quite safe, although I have been told a couple of times not be out on my own on foot after nine in the evening. I'm not quite sure why but so far haven't pushed it. Houses have water, which we drink FROM THE TAP - which is exciting and new, and, admittedly, a little disconcerting at first - but nobody has a hot water tap. The city, at least, is quite modern in its amenities and expectations; for instance, people stop at
red lights. Heck, there ARE red lights.

Panama uses the dollar as its currency, and US coins as well, although they mint Balboas which are the exact same size as US coins so supplement the change system. US quarters and Panamanian quartos, for example, are used interchangeably. Dollar based currency at least in
the city results in things being more expensive than I was expecting. Taxi ride to the causeway (15 minutes) is about $5, lunch in the city is $6-7, etc.

There is no effective public transportation system in the city. The system is a combination of taxis, diablos rojos, and sacas. The taxis aren't always interested in going where you want to go (e.g., I flag down a taxi with no rider, say I want to go to Bethania, he shakes his head and drives on. What the? This happened to me three times the other day - I had three taxis decline to take me somewhere, without even haggling on the price. Strange). Diablos Rojos are big old US school buses painted fantastic colors that ply the streets. By all accounts they're quite dangerous, but I think that's mostly bluster. Certainly, they don't drive especially well. I've yet to summon the courage to take one, based largely on the fact that the only way you know where they're going is by the sign on the window, and you have to understand the relationship between and know the names of all the various neighborhoods if you want to get from one place to another. It's on my to-do list for next week. Saca's are the way to go, except that they are only inter-city (I take a Saca to Paraiso, for example). They're also big old US school buses, but are much less gaudily festooned, and behave much more acceptably (OK, they are also undoubtedly less fun). It also only costs about $0.35 to ride the Saca the 45 minutes to Paraiso, which is nice.

The lifestyle in my household compares to Argentina unfavorably from my perspective. For example, the other day I returned home and Lucy, Luiz, and Lizy, were all in their respective rooms, all with the TV on, all watching the SAME THING, but by themselves. Granted, I'm not ever home for lunch - which is as I understand it the 'family' time of the day - but there seems to be very little group social interaction in the household. I have picked up on much the same from the other students about their host families. I think I'm a little disappointed that there's no late nights sitting on the patio drinking wine and hanging out with each other, but to each their own, right?

Anywhoo, that's it for my first week. I'm hoping this next week to get out and about a bit more and see some more of the city as well as learn more about Panamanian life and culture. I understand that Panama has some of the most intact native communities of the entire Americas,
for instance. I'm planning this afternoon on going for a walk through the Metropolitan National Park, which is supposed to have a lot of wildlife.

In general? I'm enjoying myself, and the place is 'normal' enough to not be a reach for me to be able to relax and feel like I can make progress on my language skills, which is why I'm here right now, after all. If anyone has any questions, feel free to comment on my blog - I decided to give another go at keeping it up.

Take care all. Keep an eye on skype if you want to chat sometime!

--
Taj Lloyd Munson

phone: +1 206 925-3273
skype: tajmunson