A Photo Summary

So I know I should be done with this blog, but my friends just put up pictures that capture the moment so much better than some of mine did.. so this last (I promise) post is just dedicated to pictures and captions throughout the week in no particular order. Enjoy!

Sidenote- Patricia and her son called me yesterday, so looks like chances of staying in touch are good!

Working on an accounting sheet template for our small business owner

Group photo in front the completely non-visible Panama Canal. I'm front and second to left.

Anddd another group photo in front of our travel bus

One of our large group meetings 

Happiness at its best

Gifts of Flower Crowns and Beaded Earrings, Solomon's got nothing on me

Women in traditional dance wear for special occasions

Young girls in their Paruma skirts

BEST MOMENT OF MY LIFE. Running into the forest into the rain. 

Attempting to learn how to make a flower crown

Showing the little kid the selfies he took of himself

My group with Luis and his wife, the small business owners we worked with

Being happy is what we do best

My group during our financial literacy workshop

Asian invasion in a Panamanian bakery. Minus my friend Alec who didn't get the memo.

Bus Bonding

In front of the Panama Canal Museum

<== Our open air dining hall 

And our open air meeting house where all the magic happened

Day 7: January 9, 2013

I don't know if this was so much a day in Panama as it was a blur of final airport goodbyes and travel logistics. Goodbyes are always my least favorite part of trips- I'd much rather walk away as if it were any other day, because the friendships that count are the ones that you can pick right back up where you left off no matter how long you've been apart. 

As we touched back down to America, the view from the plane was beautiful. I don't know when I'll get to go back to Panama, only that there's no way I'm not returning. In a country where time seems to stand still, I almost hope things will always stay the same as they were when I visited. Of course that's completely unreasonable and selfish, because the Piriati Embera community will continue growing and changing at their own pace. But it's nice to know that there's one more place in the world now where I know I can find a friend. Cheers to Global Brigades, new adventures, new friendships, new perspectives, and one hell of a trip!

Day 6: January 8, 2014

 

This is going to be a long post, so prepare yourselves. My final day in Panama was also my favorite. I woke up to a gorgeous sunrise through the fog.

While I was sitting on the fence taking pictures (which is considerably more difficult than it looks since the fence is semi-unstable), the Panamanian bus driver from another university nearly scared me off the fence when he offered to take my picture since I thought I was alone.

A front view photo of the entrance to the church compound we stayed in.

The main event for the day was a big cultural performance to celebrate the end of our week. Below, one of the women was making a flower crown to put on her head. The little boy next to her I later spent much of the day with.

  

Ms. Shirley, our trip advisor, was the first to receive a flower crown, which looked absolutely beautiful. It was after this that one of the woman looked at me, and placed Ms. Shirley's flower crown on my head. She told me it looked beautiful, and before I knew it she had grabbed my hand and taken me away from the group to pick flowers so that I could have my own. While we collected flowers, I told her about my family and life in the U.S (my spanish had improved considerably by the end of the week). By the time we returned to the group, we were fast friends.






Here I am with Patricia, her son, and my completed flower crown.

 After everyone had eaten a delicious lunch of chicken and rice that the women of the village had prepared for us, Isaac, a leader in the community, kicked off the cultural event.














Among the performances were traditional dances performed by the women. During the last dance they performed, the invited all of us to get up and dance with them. By this time, the kids had stolen my phone away and were taking pictures for me.

These three little girls had been sneaking looks at me and giggling all throughout the performance, so I kept making funny faces at them. One finally came over to talk to me and told me I was pretty- talk about a way to win a girl's heart over. 

When the cultural performances were over, the women brought out their crafts (beaded jewelry, wood carvings, woven baskets, etc) for sale. Although I bought a good number of things for my friends back home, I didn't get quite as much shopping time as I wanted because the kids were busy fighting for camera time or hugs (or photo- bombing as per the picture on the bottom left).
























On the part of us Americans, our contribution to the celebration was a huge Barney pinata for the kids. When the pinata finally broke, it was mass chaos in the happiest, craziest, best sense of the word.

        While the pinata craziness was subsiding, my friend Rebecca pulled me aside and said Patricia wanted us to walk her back to her house. When we got to her home, we got to meet her entire family, including her husband and her many sons. Out of nowhere, Patricia presented Rebecca and I both with gifts of parumas, which honestly made me want to cry a little bit. The piriati women sell each paruma for a good amount by their standard, and considering I hadn't met the woman before that day, it's hard for me to grasp just how bit and beautiful of a heart Patricia has. We exchanged contact info, and I promised to stay in touch. I miss her already.

Then of course came the hardest part of the trip- saying goodbye to all the amazing people I met:

Gonzo-also a translator, and definitely the person
that gave me the most grief all week 

 Dani and Joel, 2 of our translators 

.

Posing with Eloida, the woman who's home I visited

My friends Amy, Rebecca, and I with our Parumas

Keving OG (Original Gangster), our trip coordinator

And of course, it was equally hard to say bye to all the kids. When they said "see you tomorrow", how are you supposed to explain that you're not coming back? If there's one thing I didn't want the Piriati people thinking, it's that we walked in their lives for one week and walked out again just as easily.  

Maybe it's fitting that the sunset on our last night there was the most spectacular. Because we were leaving for the airport at 3 am, I didn't bother going to bed that night. Sometimes there are just a lot more important things than sleep.

Day 5: January 7, 2014

On Day 5, we set aside the financial literacy workshops in favor of having a free discussion where we could answer any questions the community members might have. Here's the group I talked with on the left.

Then comes one of my absolutely favorite parts of the trip. It started pouring rain, and I immediately ran off into the forest to see what it would look like. It was another one of those moments that I can't describe, and which the camera on my phone couldn't capture at all.


I returned back to my group although I wanted to stay longer, because I didn't want the trip coordinator to freak out (he had already had enough worrying over me, the poor guy). But before long I got antsy waiting under a roof, so I grabbed Joel, one of our interpretors, and headed back into the woods. I was soaked to the skin, but very, very happy.  His phone was taking way better pictures than mine, so I'll put some of those up whenever he gets to sending me the pictures.


Can't really explain why I love the rain so much, but rain was one of the biggest things I missed about home when I moved out to Los Angeles. There was definitely a few times when I was caught out in pelting showers in the North Carolina woods, and being out in the Panama forest with water running reminded me of those days, only ten times cooler.


On the bottom is a photo of a little frog friend I found along the way -->

When I got back from the forest with Joel, the rest of my group was playing cards and waiting out the showers. Before long, it was sunny again. Since I had some time to kill, I stretched out to sun-dry and take a nap. I woke up to the faces on the left staring at me from the wall. Naturally, the only thing to do was to take selfies with all of them.

When the rain showers were over for good, we walked back over to Luis' shop. Luis wasn't there, but we gave his wife some more deliverables, including simple inventory logs, accounting sheets, and templates for recording sales. Some of our other suggestions also included product bundling and creating savings goals. At the end of the day, Luis's wife showed us some of her craft-work, which included the basket pictured below.

 Besides the multitude of chickens running around the village, there were also a good number of pigs. Some were seriously huge, and you can't help but wonder how many people an animal that big could feed.









Before I left that day, I fit in some selfie time with Saul, one of my favorite kids on the trip.

And of course, no trip would be complete without our fearless trip leader falling asleep on the bus ride home and being drawn on. Too bad we found out later that he was faking asleep and completely knew what we were up too. Sorry?