Thirteenth Month on Site

Hello!

Here´s some details from life here in Panama.

Sarah and I are preparing to paint a world map with the students by scraping paint and sandpapering the wall. Hopefully this will be the most physically demanding part of the job and we can get started painting in the next couple weeks.

One community I am working with decided it could better collect the water quota by walking house to house on the same date each month. We collected a lot more than usual and people are remembering the date. Although it´s only 25 cents a month, the money does help a lot in maintaining the aquaduct system.

We just had a huge community workday, with almost 100 volunteers out of the 300 adults present. We cleaned up around the school, cut all the grass in the common area with machetes, , and dug three holes for garbage. Afterwards, we shared lots of rice and soup. One guy looked at me with a huge smile on his face and said, ¨This is my fourth helping, and they said I can come back for more!¨. One of the few people who can eat with greater joy and in greater quantity than me!

The next day we joined six teachers and six students in collecting money for breast cancer research by stopping cars on the Pan American Highway. The police didn´t come to help slow traffic down, so we stopped cars who were turning onto the side road. Pictures are on the link on the right.

The other highlight was joining our school´s band at the district foundation anniversary festival. Eight bands, hundreds of people joined together for marching, speeches, poetry, music, and a dance. We even got to dress up in our matching outfits!

All the photos are updated and Boja has a new blog up as well, so be sure to check those out.

Thanks for reading!

Kevin