The other day, my host sister celebrated her 23rd birthday. It was fairly quiet for the day, but in the evening, I got home from my classes to a porch full of friends and relations (of my family). I have no idea how a lot of them are related to my family.*
Anyway, she turned 23, and it was a fun evening with a cake, ice cream, music, chatting (not so much from me), and dancing with 2 of my nieces, ages 3ish and 5ish (more of this from me). Sometime over the evening, I was thinking about the term “cumpleaños”, which sort of translates loosely to ‘completed years’, and what that reflected, in comparison to the english ‘birthday’. I rather like the ‘cumpleaños’ because it feels more like a celebration and acknowledgment of progress, rather than being a signifier of an event which happened, but is a static moment.
On a more sombre** note, I figured I’d address what you may have noticed in the news, or maybe through a slight rise in the price of plantains. Starting last Monday, Jan 30th, some of the indigenous people the Ngobe were protesting a variety of issues, a key point being a mining project planned for their area, getting into how deep into the earth land rights carry. Anyway, there are protests every so often, and usually last a few hours, to a few days. Sometimes they block the highway (the one, the only, the Pan-American Highway, which runs from inside Panama up through Central America).
In this case, protesting groups were in Chiriqui, near where I had my volunteer site visit, as well as several other provinces, blocking the highway and in some cases, there were violent confrontations between the police and the protesters. The protests were brought to my attention because to get back to Panama City and Santa Rita, I had to catch a bus on the Pan-American Highway in a town called San Felix, which just happened to be a key point for these protests. So, I caught an early bus to avoid getting caught in the action (both to be able to make the trip, and because Peace Corps has a pretty strict policy of volunteers not taking political sides, to the extent of not even being at locations of political action, to avoid the perception of having taken a side). I was easily early enough to avoid the protests, but still got to see the bus and vans of police at the cruce (intersection) at San Felix. Police in Panama are indubitably more military than US policemen, at least in terms of arms/appearance. (Tangentially, there are security guards that look to seriously mean business outside of all of the banks, and a lot of buses have what look to be bits of bullets in their windshields.)
This particular protest ended up lasting for over a week, and 90 some volunteers were moved out of their sites into hotels in the larger cities, some coming all the way into Panama City. My family watched the progress on the news, as the president of Costa Rica put pressure on Panama’s Martinelli (the Pan-American Highway being the main artery for land transport through Central America, thus the protests blocking the highway disrupting commerce beyond Panama’s borders), and eventually the government and the leaders of the protesters agreed to talk, with a Catholic priest as a mediator. Or something like that. At any rate, the volunteers who were evacuated finally got to go home to their sites, and it seems like all is well for now.
If you heard about this, you probably know more than I do, since I’m piecing my information together from primarily Spanish sources and who knows what nuances or details I’ve missed, but that’s the gist. Always interesting to see what can happen in the world, no? This could be a very interesting 2 years! Also, I’m roughly half-way through training, which seems utterly insane.
*Side note, my family is relatively unique in Santa Rita in that it isn’t immediately related to all of the other families in town...I think. I was walking with my host sister on the first day and it seemed everyone we met was a cousin...but when family comes over, they always seem to be coming from other towns. There are a few of us who aren’t related- mostly those of us who live away from the center of town.
** Curious etymology-ish observation- I just realized that ‘sombre’ is like the Spanish ‘sombra’ which means ‘shadow’, which makes sense because it means a more serious, or darker tone.
P.S. I'm posting this several days after writing it (on the 10th, I think), and it seems like we only have a little bit more training- this week (Friday we get our sites!!), next week is Carnaval and the beginning of Tech Week, then we have a week of site visits, a final week in Ciudad del Saber, swearing in, and then we're off!
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