Peace Corps Volunteers quickly learn that although two years seems like a long time to carry out a project, it is often not enough. This is especially true for Environmental Health Volunteers because we tend to undertake physical projects like building latrines and aqueducts. Most Peace Corps work is education, capacitation, and leadership based, and require little funding. Physical projects, however, do require funding, and that is the primary reason EH work tends to take longer.
A secondary reason for this delay is common to any PCV anywhere: sustainable development work is slow. This is true for a myriad of reasons. Just imagine yourself learning to do something you´ve never even heard of from someone speaking neither their nor your first language and you might have an idea why these things require a hefty dose of time and energy.
________________________________________________________________________________A secondary reason for this delay is common to any PCV anywhere: sustainable development work is slow. This is true for a myriad of reasons. Just imagine yourself learning to do something you´ve never even heard of from someone speaking neither their nor your first language and you might have an idea why these things require a hefty dose of time and energy.
Back in early 2011 I began visiting six communities within an hour hike from my hut. This was to introduce myself, make friends, share cultures, and hold a series of meetings to brainstorm potential ways to improve their lives.
After a few months one community emerged as both needing my help and willing to work within the PC framework to accomplish their goal of bringing a latrine project to their community. Quebrada Plata is the name of the community and their name -which translates as "money stream" - is sadly ironic; they live in the poorest district of the poorest province of Panama where many suffer from malnutrition, insufficient healthcare services, a lack of education, and nonexistent sanitation services.
After organizing a group to lead the project we held a series of meetings to discuss the project timeline, mutual expectations, and to finalize numbers. Finalizing the number of beneficiaries proved surprisingly difficult as many people wavered in their interest. We repeatedly postponed the cutoff date for individuals to join the project but eventually, in late September, we couldn´t wait any longer and set the final number at 46, which included the community school and meeting area.
I got to work writing the funding application which, when finished, made its way to the PC website where the project awaited donations. Luckily I know many generous people (including not a few followers of this blog) and found an NGO called Synergy willing to fund half the $4696 I hoped to raise.
By late February the money was raised and sitting in my account and after a series of lectures covering disease transmission pathways, latrine construction and maintenance, and healthy personal hygiene practices we at last set dates for the delivery of materials in early April. In doing so we checked the final item off our to-do list.
After getting a quote from Supercentro San Felix, the company who would be delivering the materials, I traveled two hours to David and got a bank managers check to actually buy the materials. The next morning, April 12th, I met the loaded delivery truck and we set off for the first drop off. To my pleasant surprise the "truck" was actually more of a tank: a ten-wheel WWII era Jeep. We packed it full of sand, rock, rebar, nails, and cement bags then putzed off down the road to our drop point. I sat straddling the stickshift between two very latino Panamanians. The windshield was flipped outward like old-school sunglasses because it was too cracked to see through. Through my sunglasses - which I wore because sand was kareening off the hood and stinging our faces - I could see that none of the gauges worked.
This didn´t matter though, because the driver, Eric, knew the truck like the back of his hand. Also, we were driving laughably slow as the truck was not capable of exceeding 40 km/hr. We hugged the shoulder and semi´s passed us like sports cars. It felt just like I imagined riding in a tank would.
When we finally got offroad in the Comarca the truck came to life powering up steep and muddy Comarca hills seemingly without effort. (It actually seemed to get stronger throughout the day, feeding off the workout like Strong Guy, the Marvel Comics superhero who absorbs kinetic energy to enhance his physical strength). To keep things sufficiently dangerous our friendly driver Eric incessantly honked the loudest horn I´ve ever heard at every child, woman, and person on the phone we passed. He paid more attention to scaring people in this way than dodging the large rocks and ruts in our path.
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Around noon we arrived the drop point and met the patiently-waiting residents of Quebrada Plata. We unloaded, divided the materials, then watched people haul one-hundred pound bags of cement over a mile to their homes. That´s just how things are done here. When you don´t have horsepower, you use manpower.
The following day was effectively the same and after two long days we were finally in a position to begin building concrete latrine floors. After a year and a half, it was really happening! As any PCV here will tell you, Panama has an exceptional ability to test one´s patience. This time consuming process reminds me of an Ethiopian proverb I once heard, "If one is not in a hurry, even an egg will start walking." Indeed.
