The past two weeks, the rain has been brutal; school has been canceled and parts of the Interamericana highway have fallen off due to landslides. I was really bummed that the Días de Patrias were canceled; I was really looking forward to seeing the students march through the town to honor Panama’s Independence Day. I’ve been feeling pretty isolated which is never fun. To “stay busy,” I’ve been helping out in a pre-school. The kids are super cute yet super exhausting. The pre-school is only two hours in the morning and it just wipes me out. I don’t know what they’re saying and they don’t know what I’m saying but at least we can build block towers together.
I’ve been having to alter my perspective on what productivity means to me. In college, that meant waking up at 5:30am to practice, go to class, practice again, then study until I went to bed. Now, talking to someone new is big for me or helping a student in the infoplaza for a couple hours. When I say this to myself, I want to scream and sometimes I do. I call my family and friends a lot; but mostly, I feel like I’m spinning my wheels in my head.
Unfortunately, this is part of the process. It’s pretty common for volunteers to hit a low around the three month mark in their communities. I’ve been slowly meeting community members and learning their ideas to improve the town. I met with a group that is very motivated to clean up the trash in the park. Just a matter of when and how things will happen is very stressful and anxiety inducing for me. Part of me reminds myself that this is an opportunity to enjoy the slow life and take it all in while the other part is freaking out and itching to do anything.
These are my growing pains. I can’t control what others think of me but I can do everything in my abilities to show up. I’m still very new to my community. Most people don’t know who I am and I understand if they’re skeptical of why I’m here. My friend, Rylie, told me that maybe things are happening under the surface where I can’t see. Perhaps, I’m slowly gaining the confianza (confidence / trust) of people whether I know it or not.
The silver lining, to me, is that I really enjoy talking with my host-mom. We have some common jokes whether we laugh about how fat Peluche is or that I’ll be cooking coconut water and patacones (fried plantains) for dinner. I’m not confident in my Spanish but with my host-family, I feel free to fail over my grammatical errors again and again. They even hosted a Peace Corps volunteer 30 years ago so they understand that my Spanish is rocky.
Before the rain came, the school had a science fair for their chemistry class. The projects impressed me a ton. I wanted to ask so many questions but I did not know the scientific vocabulary. To see the students passionate about their work and understanding the science behind what’s going on was really exciting.
