Na degite be nuedi (whattup! ...in Kuna)

Exhibiting one of the most vibrant indigenous cultures in Latin America, the Kuna are an interesting bunch. Most of them live in the amazing San Blas comarca- a semi-autonomous archipelago of nearly 400 idyllic islands - after winning a revolt against the Republic of Panama in 1925. Other Kunas headed to the main-land and carved out niches in and around Panama City.


They have done a great job maintaining their traditions, but the funny thing is, even though they average about 5' in height, basketball is one of their favorite sports. After being the first person cut from the 10th grade b-ball team, I can finally redeem myself and show the world my skills, so I'm trying out for the team. I hope to one day open up a pack of Kuna basketball cards and find me featured as the giant 5'8" starting center - "the great white hope."

For some unknown reason, the Kunas also have the highest rate of albinism. And, no joke, lovingly refer to their albino brethren as "moon children." Finally, I'll meet somebody pastier than me.

I've heard that although many Kunas rely on tourism and selling their handicrafts for income, they are pretty inclusive and tend to be wary of outsiders. That's surprising, since they really were inviting when a local non-profit organization recently placed me in a Kuna village to teach English to about 15 bright-eyed Kuna kids. Check out my tiny group below.

I started the job a few weeks ago and have been taking the hour-long trip on the local painted cheese wagons to the Arraijan community (funny side note - local legend says the town got its name from a mangling of English. When the U.S. controlled the canal, Americans were asked where for directions to this place, they'd say you'd find it on the right hand side of the road. So, "on the right hand " stuck, but in a garbled form of "ar -rai - jan.)"



The kids range in age from 5 to 15 years old who all attend class together.

It's a very humble but functional setup - one tiny classroom in what I think used to be the dining room of a Kuna home, as seen on top right in this picture.



On the first day, after we played a couple get-to-know-you games, I started teaching them some animals in English. I was showing them a flashcard of an elephant and asked them what kind of animal it was. One kid started yelling "monkey! monkey!" I thought I might have to put this kid in the "special" class until I realized he was pointing to our new student that dropped on by.




Out of the blue, this monkey showed up between the stone wall and the tin roof and hung out with us for a bit. Not surprisingly, "monkey" was about the only word they learned.

Habitat Para la Humanidad

An Australian friend put me in touch with Rigoberto, the director of the Habitat for Humanity branch in Panama.

We sat down and talked all about the program - a fantastic international foundation that provides housing and financing for people with little means to purchase their own home. What I really like about it is that from the first conversation with the recipient families, the foundation makes it clear that they will have a significant role in building the house and will be making monthly payments to repay the cost of the home, which comes out to about $40 a month here in Panama.

I went on a site visit to Chillibre a few months ago, just about an hour or so outside of the capital. This tiny town of 1500 Panamanians doesn’t have much economic opportunity. Most have limited skills and no full time employment, and it's evident by the conditions in which they live.

Most of their houses are made of tin and wood. Some even had walls made of plastic tarp. The tin roofs are often held on by rocks that roll around in the heavy winds. In fact, one roof came completely off during our visit.

Habitat for Humanity finds good families who are deserving and in need of housing assistance. They provide the financing, materials and construction for the houses. The families work to help build their homes – in turn, providing a stronger feeling of ownership.

We visited some families who recently moved into their new homes. Check out these kids - they couldn’t be happier.

The foundation is run by a handful of devoted employees. Because of the limited man power, they rely on many volunteers to lend a helping hand. That’s where I come in.

We talked about the program and its needs - both immediate and long term. It turns out, there's not much difference between the two.

Rigoberto explained that he knows how to make houses and find the workers, but has no idea to get the good word out about the program, and since it relies on financial help from the whole community, it's imperative that people know about the good work that's being done.

Since I have some great public relations experience under my belt, I agreed to put together a strategic communications plan that I presented last week. Rigoberto loved it and passed it on to his boss, who invited me to present it to the universities with them.

We met with U Latina last week, who agreed to be an integral part in the PR and marketing using much of my communications plan as the backbone of the campaign. I'm pretty excited to be along for the ride from the very beginning - but honored to know that I'm playing such a big role.


Here's a pic of Rigoberto getting a copy of the communications plan.

...love is blind

A group of optometry students and doctors came down from Chicago to hand out free glasses and perform eye surgeries on the less fortunate for four days in a hospital in the outskirts of town, in Juan Diez. The program, called VOSH, is pretty big in the States and does some great work.

I was drafted to help translate eyeglass prescriptions and hand out some of the glasses. It was amazing how many people came out for the free glasses. People actually camped out starting at midnight the night before to get the chance to be fitted with a new pair of peepers. What were these guys thinking? I mean, I'd camp out for days for some Britney Spears tickets, but glasses? I guess we all have our priorities... For most of the poor in Panama, who make around 10 bucks a day, glasses are definitely a luxury worth waiting around for.

Having no experience at all in optometry, I had no idea how to read prescriptions but gave it the old college try. I remember my first patient: she was an old grandmother of about 60, who wanted something to make her look sexy for her husband. I told her if those fat-rimmed coke-bottle tri-focals don’t do the trick, nothing else will. With a feeling of new-found sexiness and thick pink Elton John-esque spectacles, she strutted happily back to her man.

The VOSH crew also did about 10 operations per day, mainly on cataracts. Well, about a month after the event, I was in an old 1984 cab with a cabbie who started rambling on about the University of Illinois. Being used to cabbies whose conversations are a string of semi-coherent gibberish, I wasn’t the least bit surprised when the cabbie jumped from talking about chicken soup to the fighting Illinois mid-sentence. What I didn’t realize was that the fighting Illinois he referred to were a group of docs from the VOSH clinic who fought off his cataract a month earlier.

As I yanked my arm back into the cab while he swerved to deftly avoid a road sign, I told him they might have operated on the wrong eye. He said he was practically blind before the operation, but now he can distinguish shapes and colors – which more than qualified him to keep driving a cab.

Youth league soccer

Here's a very cool program my Rotarian friend Mory has put on for many years. It's a youth soccer league that's run and hosted by Rotary. Individual Rotary clubs throughout the country sponsor their town's home team in hopes of getting them to the finals in Panama City.

Here's my buddy Andy raising the roof with him team sponsored by the Chorerra Rotary club. His club takes care of all the costs and furnishes them with uniforms. I went with him to hand out their new yellow unis - the kids were ecstatic when they got them.

Sometimes I get the celebrity treatment - a few weekends ago, I was invited to kick out the opening ball for the soccer finals. My kick was pretty weak- I wished I had asked for a practice shot.

God vs. Axel Rose

At the beginning of March, a bunch of hooligans from the Rotaract club of Chicago came down to do some service projects and get their Spanish on...they succeeded on both ends by hooking up with the local Rotaracters here in Panama.

Rotaract is basically the young 'uns version of the Rotary club - it employs the similar idea of camaraderie with a sharp focus on serving others with less resources. So, under a thinly veiled excuse of wanting to help out, the Chicago club ventured south in search of a respite from a cold winter. It was quite a sacrifice...

They actually accomplished a lot of work while soaking up every drop of culture anybody can in a week. I was pretty impressed with the quality and quantity of service projects the Panamanians lined up, and I tagged along when I could.

Although they visited orphanages, toured the country and did some manual labor, my favorite was the activities day at the juvenile correction center on the outskirts of town. Most of the kids we hung out with could tell you how long they'd been in lock down to the day and even the hour. Conversely, they knew exactly how long it would be before they got out. What surprised me was how the majority of them had been turned around by Scripture - the center seems to immerse them in Bible teachings -any one of them could rattle off a verse in their sleep.

We hosted some games and even played a little music. This one guy grabbed his guitar so I could teach him some Guns N Roses - I think I really made some headway with this kid. So you'd better watch out, God - you've got some competition in the correctional department, and his name is Axel Rose.



We also picked up some bats and played some softball - if there was a Juvy softball league, these guys would take it hands down - what a bunch of ringers!



It was a great week with both the Panamanian and Chicago Rotaract guys who really made me feel welcome. I was even invited to attend the club's 30th anniversary dinner, and of course, we were looking mighty dapper.



The local Panamanians proved to be great hosts, but showed the Chicago punks no mercy. It was a non-stop crash course in all that Panama can offer. I think the Chy-towners still might be recovering from their unforgettable week. Pero me importa una....

Panama's Cup

In addition to everything else that's going on down here, I managed to cram in some sailing lessons. I haven't figured out open up the sail yet, but I better learn soon - the test is next week.



I snapped this shot of a family of sting rays when I was on my first run in the water.



When Em and Hannah were in town, the guys at Panama Sailing school took us out for a sunset cruise and let me drive.

Rotary Speeches

As part of the requirements of an Ambassadorial Scholar, I routinely visit Rotary Clubs where I give speeches to help bridge the societal gap by bringing some Floridian flavor and American culture. I also educate the members and discuss the benefits of the scholarship program. Most Rotarians here don't know much about it since there hasn't been scholar here for a while, making my job a little more difficult but very worthwhile.



Here's a little info on the program: "Since 1947 nearly 37,000 men and women from 100 nations have studied abroad under its auspices. Today it is the world's largest privately funded international scholarships program. Nearly 800 scholarships were awarded for study in 2005-06. Through grants totaling approximately US$500 million, recipients from some 70 countries studied in more than 70 nations. " www.rotary.org



Out of the 12 Rotary Clubs throughout the country, so far I've given speeches at 7 of them with my host counselor Franz lending a hand to coordinate them. I remember my first one - the nerves were definitely a little frayed. Here I was giving a 20-minute speech in Spanish, complete with jokes I hadn't really tested in front of a bunch of well-respected Panamanians. Melba was such a sweetheart in helping translate and prepare my presentation. Surprisingly, the speech went really well, and these Rotarians couldn't have been a better audience. Whether or not they liked them, they laughed at all my jokes as if on cue. It was a great vote of confidence that paved the way for many other club visits.

Every time I've visited a club, I've been welcomed with open arms and a very receptive audience. I normally get a great free meal (always a plus for a starving student) and people truly interested in what I have to say. Generous hospitality seems to know no borders with Rotarians.

There's one part in my speech where I get the club to sing the Gator fight song. In the middle of leading the chorus at one meeting, I noticed a guy who adamantly refused to sing. I asked him to join in. He said since he went to Ohio State, and since his boys are going there now and any grandchildren will undoubtedly be attending that fine institution, there was no way in hell he'd be singing "Go Gators!" I said he'd just signed himself up for a solo.






On my out of town trips, the Rotarians have really hooked me up with my lodgings and treated me like royalty. I recently headed to the Caribbean side of the canal, to the port town of Colon to address their club. After the speech, Eduardo the president gave me a tour of the town and said he had a surprise for me: I'd be staying in the VIP guest house of the free trade zone's president (Panama's free trade zone is the 2nd largest in the world after Hong Kong's). It was a huge house overlooking the canal with great views from every window. The kicker was that Noriega stayed there right before the invasion in 1989.

I think Noriega might have even sat in this sofa.



On another trip to la Chorrera, my buddy Andy put me up in his beautiful and expansive mountain villa. Life is good when you're a Rotary Scholar...

Carnival!!!

For the 4 days preceding Ash Wednesday in February, Panama decides there are better things to deal with than the trappings of work, school and the heavy burden of daily bathing - it's a wonderful mash of 4 days strung into one long hazy remembrance, synonymous as much for its debauchery as for its elaborate floats and colorful costumes.



Granted, it's not nearly as sinful as Mardis Gras or Brazil's larger Carnival, but its unifying nature stops Panama in its tracks - nothing progresses during this extended weekend, except for the continuous lines for 50 cent beer, and of course, the subsequent lines for the port-o-johns. Because it's a thousand degrees outside, every city and little town has a "mojadero" - the wettening. Basically a big water truck soaks the crowd from head to toe for a few hours during the day to keep cool.

Panama prides itself on the fact that Carnival is celebrated in every corner of the country with the zest and zeal of a kid getting his driver's license for the first time - it's heavy on the gas always - t0 break when only entirely necessary. As I've found out, that break usually comes at dawn when the street cleaners sweep aside the previous night's contempt for responsible consumption...and the 8 tons of confetti that the younger crowd felt obliged to throw at any unsuspecting passersby.

I learned early on that Carnival should be treated as a warzone. The 2 or 3 mile strip that was blocked off on the major cross town highway made way for one long parade route and about a thousand hotdog and beer stands. Upon entering the strip, I was immediately pounded by a fist full of confetti from a girl who couldn't have been more than a ripe old age of 12 -I'm not sure how she perfected her aim, but the confetti all found its way into my mouth, eyes and ears. In responding to her act of utter defiance, I put up a good chase until old age and fatigue gave in. This cycle repeated itself easily a dozen times a day...until I bought my own bags of confetti. They never saw me coming - many a twelve-year-old was punished by the stealthy confetti-wielding gringo....until they learned that by ganging up on me, they could concentrate their efforts and inflict maximum confetti damage. It was an ugly scene!

After that got tiring, flirting with the parade queens seemed to be the sport of choice, especially after some Panamanians taught me the local cat call - CHI CHI!!!






















The night activities proved to be just as fun. Em and Hannah were here for the first night and caught the 50,000 or so people packed in tight for a live salsa show.



This is a view of the concert area and parade route from afar.

Zipline over the Canal

Here's me riding a zip line across a lake in the canal. It would have been great if the harness weren't extra small.

Pics from Casco Viejo - old town

One of my favorites places in the city: Casco Viejo. It's where the capital was moved in the 17th century after Captain Morgan razed the original village down the shoreline.