April 8

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The rainy season is begining.... Today huge black clouds rolled across the sky and fat drops of water spewed forth, for about 10 minutes... and then everything was still and hot again. The rainy season in Panama is dangerous... Flash floods, diease, bugs, etc.. I watched on TV, that 10 people of died of Dengue in Brazille. The Dengue virus or :breakbone feaver: is a nasty diease carried by mosquitoes. As is Malaria and yellow fevor.. The rainy season gives these insects watery birthing centers... and they breed, multiple, and kill. That being said, I booked my flight home for May 3.

I spent that last week up in the mountains planting coffee. There are over 10,000 coffee babies which we placed into little bags for later transplant. I stayed with a family of 7, in a two bedroom house. It was cozy to say the least and we experience frequent blackouts of electricity. On Tuesday, I took a bus to the top of the mountain, north of Penanome, where I met my foster family. I shared the bus with a couple of people and also a severed cow head. The head sat in the back of the bus in a seat across from me. Its tongue was slightly out and its eyes glazed over. I couldnt stop staring at it and its lack of hygiene.. At the stop before mine, a man grabbed the head along with some questionable buckets and raced off the bus. one third of the bus raced off with him. They sat by the side of the road while the man handed out dead fish and pieces of stripped cow meat.. I waited for the bus driver to reload and I swore never to eat meat again.

For the days I was there, I assisted the Peace Corp. My group, SHI, works very closely with the Peace Corp. I worked with a young man, who had worked in Paraguay for the last 4 years. After talking with him for a short while, we discovered that we shared mutual friends from the University of Florida... El mundo es muy pequena... He shared his philosophy with me..

He explained the need to :save the world: was a univeral truth. That Americans talked about it alot, but very few did much about it. That even the most very poor rural countries understood the need for a cleaner environment and wanted to do something about it. However, he explained, it was hard to ask a starving farmer with 10 kids, not to participate in slash and burn agriculture, when that farmer knew it worked and that he could make a living from it.

What SHI and the Peace Corp are doing, is giving the conservation of rainforest an economic advantage. Giving farmers hearty seeds, shovels, and assitance in exchange for saving some trees and using sustainable practices, makes them happy. They feel the economic impact imediately, then we show them love, we educate them, we educate their children, and eventually change the entire cultures feelings toward the earth. It is easier here, where you can see the beauty of nature first hand, everyday. The temptation of money, greed, and overconsumption is not that high... these people have never really had that much... nor have their neighbors.. The coffee production promises to feed their families, not buy everybody a new "Hummer".

I was happy to arrive home today. I have no plans for the weekend. I will probably hitch a ride down to the local beach... Next weekend I will help construct a house... Until then,,, hasta luego..

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Photos

Iguanas taste good
An Iguana farm, where people eat the meat and eggs of this reptile.