Soloy, Distrito de Besiko, Comarca de Ngöbe-Buglé

Alex and I have been living in Soloy for about a week and a half now. We are actually living in the town of Gevay, but most people call this area Soloy, which is the neighboring town. Both of these little towns are in the District of Besiko, within the Ngöbe-Buglé comarca, which is basically the Panamanian equivalent of a reservation. We are enjoying ourselves so far, although there are many challenges as well.

Some background about the Ngöbe-Buglé: the government didn`t grant the Ngöbe-Buglé their comarca until the late 1980`s (whereas, another indigenous group, the Kuna, received their comarca status in the 1930`s I believe). Although the comarca is supposed to be Ngöbe-Buglé land, the goverment passed a law to maintain control over tourism and natural resources, therefore stripping the Ngöbe-Buglé of much of their supposed autonomy. A major problem is copper mining, whereby the Panamanian government allows foreign mining companies into the comarca to pretty much destroy the environment and remove all profitable natural resources. There is also very little government assistance here for things that are provided to all other Panamanians. In Gevay and Soloy there are some schools, but further into the comarca, the area is deemed too remote to send certified teachers, so many of the children have only an intermittent education when they are able to find a volunteer teacher willing to live there and work for almost nothing.

While we are here, we are taking part in a number of volunteer projects, the main one being our English classes. We teach children for an hour each morning and adults for two hours each evening. Our students are very enthusiastic about learning English- for the adults, it can help them find better seasonal jobs outside of the comarca, and for the children, it will help them in their English classes in school. We hope, anyway. Until you try teaching English, you don`t really realize how little you know about grammar rules. We both know how things should sound, or if something is incorrect, but it is a lot more difficult to explain why something is wrong or describe different verb tenses that combine two Spanish verb tenses. But I think that we are helping them, as the last English teacher didn`t speak any Spanish so she couldn`t answer questions or translate confusing material to make it more clear. The children`s class is starting to exhaust us though. Luckily Alex`s cousin, Brandy, decided to join us here for two weeks, so having an additional teacher for the 25+ kids that show up each day is helpful. Unfortunately, it is hard to keep their attention all the time, and they also come to class 45 minutes early and some stay for up to an hour afterwards, stretching the hour-long class into nearly 3 hours of us trying to keep order.

Other projects we are working on:

Alex is working in the botanical garden that has recently been set up in Soloy. It is a project with many goals: attracting eco-tourism to the region, preserving native plant life, and identifying and cataloging plants and trees in the comarca.

I am also working on charlas (chats) with the women`s group, on topics relating to health and nutrition. The diet here is primarily white rice, beans, chicken, and some fruits and vegetables, so today I talked about the importance of a more varied diet that includes whole grains, dairy and more fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately there are many obstacles to healthy eating in Soloy. The majority of the people here live on around $100 per year, so they do not have extra money to spend on healthier foods for their families. The closest grocery store is in David, which is a three hour (longer in the rainy season) bus ride away that costs $3.30 each way. Almost no one has electricity, so there are no refridgerators for products that most be kept cold, like milk and yogurt. So, as you can imagine, planning for the talk was difficult, and I`m not sure if it was very helpful. We are trying to work out ways to obtain these foods at a lower cost, such as planting vegetable gardens or requesting the stores here to start stocking more nutritious brown rice instead of just white. It is also hard because I also don`t want to impose Western ways of thinking and doing things on people who have persevered through a Spanish conquest and then continuing discrimination by the Panamanian government.

Alex and I are also trying to help Medo, the volunteer organization, find grants and craft grant proposals. There are number of people interested in volunteering here, but Medo has only one room with a bunk bed where volunteers can stay. They are hoping to raise funds to build their own volunteer center, with more rooms for volunteers to stay and where the English classes can be held inside where there are less distractions. Currently, we are staying in the Development Center, which rents the room and allows us to hold the English classes on the porch outside. It is a cement building with solar electricity, so we are some of the lucky few in this area with lights at night and a refridgerator. We are also lucky to share the Development Center with a number of interesting roommates, including a family of bats, toads, HUGE spiders, HUGE cockroaches (imagine the size of your hand- except, believe me, until you see it yourself you can`t really imagine it), and geckos. It makes for very exciting evenings, with the bats swooping around our heads and the toads popping up out of nowhere.

So this is what we have been up to lately. I will write more later, but for now I am off to go bathe- in the river.