"Very good con papas"

After having a packed schedule every day for the past three months until now, I didn’t know what to do with myself when I arrived at Cerro Punta in the heart of the agricultural highlands of Panama without any schedule at all. I’m here working with a local group of farmers called GORACE (Grupo Orgánico de Agricultores Cerropunteños) on my independent project about the organic certification process and how it can be improved. My host family is adorable; Don Roger and his wife Nella have already insisted I am like their daughter. I have already noticed my Spanish ability increasing just by talking with them for the past few days. Although their house is not exactly the quaint farmhouse I’d originally imagined for my ISP, it has a gorgeous view and the softest bed I have ever slept in.

Also they have a goat, whose name I forget right now, but it responds to its name with a "maaa."

Yesterday I spent two hours chatting with Don Roger after breakfast about everything from politics to technology in the usual fashion of conversations with elderly people nostalgic for the past and concerned for the future. He is a character and I love how animated he gets when he tells stories. While his mumbling is sometimes tricky to understand, I think I got the gist of the first story he told me over dinner. It’s about gringos who try to order food at a Panamanian restaurant without knowing what the food is called. All they know is that someone told them the food is “very good” so they order “Very good con papas.” Or something like that. I’m definitely missing a key part to that story, but now he repeats the phrase whenever we eat, depending on what we eat: “very good con patacones,” “very good con huevos,” etc. It always makes me smile, despite not understanding the story completely simply because he gets such a kick out of it.

I still cannot seem to escape the typical Panamanian idea that fried food is good food and ate Spam for the first time yesterday, but at least I get lots of fresh vegetables too. My favorite dish so far is “la pizza cerropunteño” which has peppers, onions, carrots, celery, and cheese! I also discovered the delicacy that is “papallitas,” which is like a syrupy kind of fruit that tastes something like a mixture of thick jam and honey.

The town of Cerro Punta is very quaint and filled with mini-supers and suppliers of agrochemicals and farming equipment. Thankfully I was able to find two different places with internet that I can rely on, although one of them smells faintly of fish for some reason so I’ll use that one as a last resort. I honestly still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that I’m living here with a family completely on my own. There are other students in towns nearby so hopefully we can visit each other sometime, but it’s nice to have my own schedule and to be staying with an elderly couple who treat every day like a quiet Sunday. I am thrilled to watch the news again, something that I did a bit in the city but didn’t’ have access to during our travels. Without internet in the house, I feel more attached to the TV to keep me informed of what is going on in the rest of the country and the world. I was especially shocked and saddened to hear about the attack in Boston. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. There has been nonstop coverage about it here in Panama; Panamanian news has lately been focusing on international news almost exclusively between the attack in Boston and the election in Venezuela.

I am finally able to understand television announcers, which is a very exciting accomplishment. My next goal is to understand the characters who speak a mile a minute in telenovelas, like those in “El Man es German.” That show quickly became my favorite possibly because it is reminiscent of old Disney channel shows due to the sheer goofiness and younger characters compared to other telenovelas.

Today I had my first adventure here trying to meet my adviser in the next town over. Due to an unfortunate series of events, I missed the bus stop and ended up in the middle of nowhere halfway between two towns. Needless to say I was frustrated with myself and the bus attendant who knew clearly where I wanted to get off but didn’t say a word when I missed my stop, but you can’t stay too mad for too long when you’re walking with a view like this:

Thankfully, after 15 minutes of walking, a wonderfully helpful couple in a pick-up stopped to help me and they kindly brought me to the bus stop I needed, explaining that the restaurant that was supposed to mark my stop was recently closed and knocked down. After dozens of other cars (including that stupid bus that let me miss my stop) simply passed me by or just gave me “piropos” (one was even in the form of a bark shouted from a passing truck), the kindness of that elderly couple was just what I needed to replenish my faith in humanity.

So naturally, after my successful meeting with my adviser I treated myself to some “fresas con crema” for lunch, which was fantastic. Quite the successful adventure.

The quick re-cap of our journeys post-Naso is that we visited a fair trade banana plantation in Changinola, where I realized that even fair trade standards are not perfect and therefore I will never buy a regular Chiquita banana ever again, and then we toured a sustainable cacao farm where I learned that cacao fruit is alien-like but absolutely delicious.

After Changinola, we crossed the border to Costa Rica via the sketchiest wooden, rotting bridge I’ve ever crossed on foot while carrying all of my belongings on my back.

In Costa Rica we stayed in homestays for a few days in a rural farming area and it was like a mini-vacation. We had coffee three times a day, swam in the most gorgeous river I’ve ever seen, took an afternoon siesta, watched dubbed movies at night,  and played dominoes with our host dad before going to bed around 9pm. He was quite the storyteller and welcomed us to his house with various stories of how people have threatened him so they can cut down the forest on his land to sell the wood, so I was a little concerned that we might be poisoned while we were there by some bitter neighbor, but other than that, it was like paradise.

Then we toured EARTH University and wow! It was as if someone decided to take my dream university and make it reality. They teach all sorts of sustainable farming and development courses with students from all over the world and I fell in love with it. I am even considering applying for an internship there after graduation from Villanova to study sustainable agriculture and development. Here are some photos of their organic garden and the campus, which were both absolutely gorgeous.

After Costa Rica, we took a tiny plane back to Panama City where we had a few days to prepare ourselves for our ISP. One of those days we took a day trip to Barro Colorado Island, where there is another Smithsonian research station and we finally got to go on a nature hike where we actually saw wild animals, including lots of adorable agouties! And I am still in awe of this 300 year old tree!

TodayI get to meet all the other farmers in GORACE and I’m excited and nervous and just hope I can get to the meeting location without getting lost this time!