Posted by: Nitin Sharma
I did my Peace Corps service in a tiny community 20 minutes outside of Los Pozos, Herrera. I arrived on October 13th, 2009 and have called it my second home ever since. I arrived to my host family’s house in the middle of a torrential downpour. Two young ladies came with an umbrella to bring me from the car to the house. The oldest one is stoic and poised, ever ready to help those around her, just like her mother. The younger one, a troublemaker after my own heart, has an infections giggle and is constantly scolded for being a tomboy. “Ladies don’t run!” her mother always says as she’s halfway down the path to the school yard to play baseball with her friends.
My community, like so many others, is a gem in the mountainside of Panama. The canal, the Caribbean resorts, the rainforest get-aways: that’s the tourist’s Panama- a façade put on by the government and tourism agency to give people what they want to see. But the true Panama lies in the campo, the countryside, with the people who farm and fish and labor for hours in the broiling sun. The true Panama is with the women who get up at 4:45 a.m. to pound corn into masa to make fresh tortillas for their husbands before work, it is with the men who work nine hours a day, six days a week to bring food home for their families, and it is with the children who trek to school over back roads and cow paths, rain or shine, to go to a school that does not offer them a proper education or a bright future. The heart of Panama is with the campesinos.
My community is made up of subsistence farmers. The cycle is always the same: plant rice in April, care for it all through the rainy season, harvest in September or October, plant corn and beans until it’s time to plant rice again. Men and women have traditional roles: the men work in the fields while the women cook, clean, and raise the children. There are no strangers in a community like mine. In the developed world, we can go years without even knowing our neighbors. Not in the campo. Panamanians like to pasear, to go house to house visiting with family and friendss. They talk about benign things like the weather (which in a country like Panama doesn’t change from day to day), the crops, and their families. If you pasear enough, you may get some good bochinche (gossip) on your neighbors. More than likely, while visiting, you will be fed. A lot. Campesinos are generous people, especially when it comes to food. Whether you are good friends or you just met, expect to eat when you visit a campesino.
During my service I lived in a rancho, a house with mud walls and a roof made of palm fronds. I loved my house, with its leaky roof, termite and bat infestation, dirt floors, and windowless walls. I showered outside, washed my clothes by hand, and cooked over firewood. I thought I was living the high-life when, after my service, I moved into a brick house with a tin roof. There were still bats and dirt floors and the roof still leaked, but I had windows! Now I live in Chitre, the capital city of Herrera. I have tiled floors, a shower indoors and a toilet that flushes (also indoors!), a sink, a washing machine, and a refrigerator. I don’t know my neighbors, I can’t go into the back yard and pick my breakfast of avocados or mangos, and no one comes to pasear. There are perks to living in the city, but I miss the campo and the people every day. I think about all the tourists who pass through Panama, visiting the Mira Flores Locks of the Canal, or Boquete, or Pedasi, or any of the other towns built on tourism, and I feel bad for them. They are missing out on the real Panama.
