Friday
A visit ends and an adventure begins. Zhena and Stani were dropped off at Bocas Marine Tours where they would continue their journey, travelling to Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica. A couple of warm embraces, a kiss and they were gone.
I killed an hour, then boated over to the RipTide, a large wooden shrimping boat from Key West that has been repurposed as a floating restaurant and bar to meet with the volunteers of the Floating Doctors. This weekend's clinic was held in Playa Verde, a small community on the mainland on a peninsula in Chiriqui Grande. I had been invited to tag along as an observer and to assist in the transport of the volunteers working this clinic.
Shortly after ten, a water taxi and Dr. Ben LaBrot arrived by water and the volunteers by taxi. The boats were loaded with medical equipment, drugs and backpacks with the volunteer's ???
Ben gassed up and we headed south south east toward Crawl Cay on our way to Playa Verde, a small Gnobe village on a peninsula on the mainland. After a brief stop we ??? on the weather, deciding whether to take the direct route on the windward side of Isla Popa or burn some gas taking the slightly longer trip on the windward side. We decided to take the direct route. We headed out at a bearing of 300. I trailed behind the water taxi and Ben's boat. About four miles off shore my engine sputtered to a halt. The gas here is atrocious. I walked astern and twisted the drain on my water separator and the engine wound up, unfortunately in gear. Skye quickly pulled it back to neutral and the engine died. I drained the separator again and while attempting to reprime the engine Ben came back to check on us just as we got the engine going again.
At full throttle we attempted to catch up with the water taxi that had not slowed down during our troubles, leaving Ben in our wake. A few miles later I turned around to check on Ben to find that he was nowhere in sight. We pulled out my binoculars and scanned the horizon but he was nowhere to be seen. We drifted. Now what? No boats within radio range, cell phones out of range and the water taxi distant.
We managed to wave down the water taxi and get them to stop and return with us on a search. Nearing Popa Paradise we were within a cell telephone coverage area and managed to raise Ben on the phone. He too had experienced gas problems and was idling back to town for service. He instructed us to carry on.
The seas were calm and a blue slate color that blended seamlessly with the drizzly skies. We rounded a point and beached the boats on a blackish sandy beach. Scores of villagers came to greet us. As we were staying overnight they insisted on pulling my boat up onto the beach. A log was procured and the heavy boat rolled up, with the stern above the high tide line.
The volunteers, prepared for providing their own sleeping accommodations quickly hung their camping hammocks from beams of a large ???. My situation was a bit more problematic. The only hammock I had was a large cotton hammock. I removed some mooring lines from my boat and provided boundless amusement for a woman as I tied up and tested my hammock repeatedly.
The village was clean, with just a smattering of windblown litter. Houses on stilts were scattered from the water front to the top of a hill and beyond. Workers were finishing off a new school building, this one built with concrete framing, filling in the walls with adobe bricks that had been made by the matrons of the town. The national government had provided training on how to make bricks.
I ascended to the top of the hill and gloried in a verdant view punctuated by large coconut palms that graced the shore, the water extending to the horizon. More houses ???
Back down to the beach I ran into Tommy, who is rehabilitating the Southern Wind ???. We walked along the shore to a bridge that spanned a narrow river. A local offered to show us around. We ascended a hill using steps that had been cut out of the red clay with machetes. Excited boys ages five to nine accompanied us. The youths took great pleasure in reviewing snapshots we took.
We killed time until dinner. Dinner was prepared in large aluminum pots over a stove constructed of a large wooden frame filled with sand. Pots were placed on cement blocks and heated over a wood fire. We had rice and beans complemented by lobster and conch. Lobster is out of season.
We hung out the beach, gazed at the stars and swam in the phosphoresent water and retired
early.
Saturday
Breakfast of fried flour ??? and coffee. The coffee was prepared "cowboy style" with the ground coffee added to a pot of boiling water. The water was heated in a large pot cooked over wood on an elevated sand filled frame.
The consulting area preparation was effected in earnest. Desks were moved from the small wooden shack that served as a kindergarten room for 32 youths to the Palapa. A couple of tables served to house the forty pounds of drugs that would be dispensed.
Three large desks, simple structures of flat boards best described as small picnic benches with affixed seating, but only one sitting bench were placed with served the providers. desks tables consulting under metal roofed concrete slab that formerly served as soccer field. Kid playing baseball throwing a ball up in the air and throwing with a stick.
Presently Dr. Ben arrived and draw a crowd. His boat was pulled ashore and the clinic quickly began. In contrast to the scores of people waiting for medical attention on Wednesday people there were but a few waiting at a time. There was never a long line, but there was never an empty provider desk. Ben consulted by himself. Jen enlisted the aid of ??? ???'s of the Red Cross.
Skye was the receiving person, pulling prior records and completing a form based on a patient interview. The patient was then seen by Ben, Jen or ??? a gastoenterologist.
Common ailments included stomach distress, most often likely caused by improper sanitation or bad water.
I met a particularly interesting individual when he was asked to show us his calf which was severely damaged by a snake bite in Costa Rica. Many Ngobe are seasonal workers at coffee plantations, picking coffee beans. This gentleman was declared a deaf mute (not by a member of the Floating Doctors) I said, "He's not deaf, he is hearing and understanding everything you say." He looked at me, gave me a big grin and a thumbs up. He understood my English. Later he talked to me in Spanish. After we went for a swim he walked down a hill and greeted us wearing a security guard outfit and a realistic plastic pistol in holster which he brandished at the Peace Corp worker. Several of the health providers thought it was a real gun and that he was actually a security officer.
A kindergarten is in the process of being constructed. This is unlike any school building I have seen in Panama. Windows in Panamanian schools are cinder blocks with decorative openings that are small enough to afford security but allow air and light to pass. The building as built of cement block and stuccoed over with concrete.
This building had well oversized concrete beams and cross beams and the walls were made of adobe bricks made by the same women who were cooking our meals. The windows were aluminum framed glass sliding windows. There were sufficient bricks piled in front of the building to finish off the wall.
I had often wondered why no one had taught the Ngobe to make adobe bricks.approached Jorge and asked him to work with me to ask the women if they would be interested in continuing to make bricks and sell them. They were enthusiastic. Evan was concerned that the distribution of the money might cause dissent, but I suggested that they just tally up the amount produced per person and pay by the piece. Later they were overheard to be discussing it and one of the ladies said that if they were going to sell them to the gringos, they would have to be of the highest quality. Really all they had to do to improve the quality is increase the amount of dried grass to about 10% of the mixture. One brick, not yet dried, that I picked up had but three strands of grass in it.
Information
Welfare
Some of the women get 100 dollars every two months. 15 women get the benefits. They go get the money from no bukori.Education
Three buildings accommodate 97 students first to sixth grade. Three teachers one from Changuinola, one from Santiago Veraguas and one from Almirante live on site and visit their families on every three weeks.Two other teachers. One from San Martin Veraguas. Every 15 days she goes for one day. Other teacher is from Changuinola with married a member of the group. Her husband teaches kindergarten.
At the school women cook for the kids 18 women rotate. They get food on weekdays when school is in session. School is out December 13 to last week of February. The school consumes 184 pounds of beans and 345 pounds of rice each month.
Crops
Plant dachi yucca yanpi
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