Dengue

Dengue Fever sounds very evil.  Like something you can only catch on a ship deck after stepping on a harpoon that just speared some rare piranha on the Congo River.  Forewarning, Denuge is not spawned in the depths of the darkest ocean corridors, but it is nasty enough to put me through a week of near agony, and a good story.

Its Saturday night.  I'm asleep on a piece of foam mattress.  Its not cold outside.  In fact up on the hill (I like calling where I live the hill) its always temperate.  But this night, in my 15 square feet of sleeping space, it may as well have been a New England winter.  I suddenly awake, freezing, shivering, giving myself a giant bearhug due to the lack of a blanket or reasonable bedsheet.  My first thought was the flu.  Naturally, right?  It came on sudden, I didn't have to take my temperature to know my fever surpassed triple digits, and every part of my back felt that exhausting ache that never subsides even if you were sitting on clouds.  So in my sleepy stupor, I bundled up in my only jacket, attempted to construct a makeshift pillow, and tossed and turn the rest of the night hoping I'd a bit by morning.

I didn't

I get up Sunday, and go make an attempt at being social.  Pointless.  Two hours later, I'm back in my room, not sleeping, but waiting, like a house cat that doesn't trust the family dog.  So as I do my best to try to close my eyes and doze off, the uniqueness of Quebrada Eusebio came out in full force to assist in making my illness as notorious as possible.

Two ways.

1. My sleeping arrangement is a piece of yellow foam that breaks and disintegrates daily on top of 2x4s (or maybe 2x3s , measurements aren't taken around here).  Normally its fine, I sleep comfortably.  But this day every part of my body that came in contact with that bed felt like it was be welded to the wood (I know you can't weld wood).  The relief of then moving to a new position was oh so brief as new parts of the body were welcomed to the seething discomfort.  I imagine this is what arthritis feels like, so I feel for all that have dealt with it, even Joe Dimaggio.

2.  My host family is LOUD. Not only do their voices fall somewhere between tenor and alto (not a tone Pavoratti was known for) it is as if they speak like everyone is walking around with busted hearing aids.  Normally its slightly annoying, and a bit disrespectful (especially at 2AM).  But with Dengue its downright ruthless.  Every splitting sound traveled to my ears, pierced my ear drums, and stuck in my head like a screw that has split.  Needless to say I had a headache that had no intentions of leaving (just like the piece of mucus in the Mucinex commercial).  But with 4-11 year old kids running around completely oblivious to my condition and deaf to their parents yells (MORE Yelling!).  Granted I could have tried to quiet some people down, but I was already running on empty to even think about fighting that battle.

When everyone caught on to how I was feeling it was now Sunday night dinner.  That day I laid on my bed for 9 hours and slept for maybe 30 minutes.  When I stumbled in to dinner and put forth a meager effort to spoon down my rice (no forks around here) everyone knew something was going down.  No one really knew what to do, nor did I.  I was given a headache remedy that I remember stung my eyes more from drippage than assuaged my headache.  After this I promptly went to bed to lie through the night, though I did manage 2 hours of sleep because...

Should always be in your collection

To this point Miles Davis has become my best doctor.  Normally I listen to music as I fall asleep.  And usually I can listen to anything without hindrance of sleeping patterns.  But with Dengue I learned two good lessons.  Pick an album on the smooth side, with slick rhythm and no surprises.  In a Silent Way is masterful for this (and just masterful in general).  But where there is white there is also black, and I found it that same night.  For some reason I cannot listen to the same album two times in a row (unless I'm driving, like I've got that to worry about now) so I scrolled through all my jazz until I came to an album I haven't listened to in awhile.  Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch! is excellent, but the only similarity it has with In a Silent Way is Tony Williams on drums.  Experimental jazz is like duck hunt.  Just as you focus on the ducks that come across your 19 inch 1993 Zenith TV, experimental jazz has you anticipating the next bar of music, as unsure as the artist what he is gonna create with his instrument.  Except with Dengue, duck hunt turns into fending of angry mongeese (I think that's right) sans your plastic Nintendo gun.  I just laid there helpless.  I still must have had some glimmer of hope of finally sleeping, cause I listened to the whole album.  In hindsight that was pretty stupid.

Listen to it if you've been eating an apple daily

Monday was a big repeat of Sunday, except now I knew I was gonna be heading to Panama to get checked out.

Tuesday comes.  All of Monday I was dreading my forthcoming exhausting departure from site.  Two hours of hiking, 90 minutes of chiva (back of a pickup truck) riding, and six hours on a bus isn't even fun when healthy.  So as I began my hiking in summer humidity, with my jacket, I left.  After sweating through two shirts, got rained on in the chiva, and waited for two hours for a Panama City bus.  I was finally on my way.

The bus comes.  I get on, and I feel like things are finally starting to look up.  I wasn't shivering much anymore, and I met a friend on the bus.  Sometimes speaking English can feel like popping Tylonel.  BOY but was I mistaken.  An hour into the ride, the shivering starts up.  I put my jacket on like a blanket.  I was still cold but lacked the energy to put the jacket on the correct way (this was probably a combo with laziness, like finally getting around to writing this).  But perhaps the worst part of the illness now came into full effect.

Dengue makes one extremely sensitive to light.  In site without power and barely moving my head, my body was not ready or exposed to what came next.  As hard as I tried to close my eyes and block out light, each passing street light brought with it a sharp pain.  Street lights, moving cars, signs, and cell phone lights played games with my eyes all ride, as I sat with extreme chills, and the crying of a five year old in the aisle next to me.  The eye pain is the distinguishing part of Dengue, making it different from the flu.  In the city, I would usually have to close my eyes before I turned my head to look at my next space.

I finally got off the bus, ready to kiss the pavement.  The humidity felt like a wool blanket on my body as I embarked towards my hotel.  I get to my room and immediately commence to take my first hot shower in two months.  Of course as luck would have it, the hot water was out.  I struggled through a cold shower, and as I was about to step out the heavens may as well have opened up.  The hot water arrives and touches every piece of pain I had experienced the past 3 and a half days.  I don't know why but I immediately thought of Tom Hanks crying after losing Wilson, and Tim Robbins lifting his hands in the air in triumph after breaking out of Shawshank.  Opposite emotions, but I only felt like Robbins.  After twenty minutes of warmth, I stepped out and finally went to sleep.  I sweated out my sheets real nice, but I slept so I didn't care.

The next day I was finally diagnosed with Dengue.  So I stayed cooped up in my hotel resting watching reruns of Friends, Scrubs, Seinfeld, and Will & Grace (sorry Dana but it is such an annoying show).  After ten days all my symptoms were gone.  All the chills, eye pain, back pain, leg pain was kicked out the door without a second look.

I never would have expected to get Dengue.  Maybe because it sounds Swahili, maybe its because I don't have really have mosquitoes in my site, or maybe because complacency hits you when you least expect.

I'm going with the latter.

In retrospect I learned two things, the Peace Corps gives you mosquito nets and bug spray for a reason.  And these items serve no purpose if you don't use them.  

Rundown

So since I've been in my site for 3 months, its probably worth not updating everyone on my progress, but introducing you to it.  Quebrada Eusebio, Darien, Panama is home to a whopping 54 people (my presence has inflated the population by 2% and the average height by about 15%).  The school has 9 kids, the church has held mass 1 time in the past 3 months, and their might be more pigs and piglets than people.

In essence its tiny.  An hour and half walk through undulated rocky and muddy road will get you to population 1000 Cucunati; the equivalent of a Wild West ghost town that somehow never became fully deserted.  But tiny does not correlate to insignificant.  People in Eusebio get stuff done.  70% of houses already have running water, everyone uses a latrine, people know how to mend broken PVC, fix tools with pieces of tree bark, and construct a latter out of a single tree branch in under 10 minutes.  You may wonder than, why do they need a Peace Corps volunteer focused on environmental health issues?  Believe me, in my numerous hours of isolated thinking, I have wondered that a plenty.  But improvement can always be made.  There has never been in a point in American innovation where the greatest minds became truly satisfied and plateaued.  Thus me and my gente have no reason to plateau as well, even if everything on the surface seems fine.  30% of houses still need an aqueduct, how can we minimize lost time from broken pipes, the water committee hasn't met in a year, the water committee isn't even recognized by the Health Ministry, funds for water are rarely collected, and kids STILL don't like to wash their hands.

In a town of 54, it may seem microscopic in the grand scheme, but I am a big believer of chained reaction.  Especially here in Eusebio, a town, basically founded by my host father, has the ability to flex its muscles and show off their newfound efficiency.  Before long neighboring hamlets (I think this is a word for super small towns) catch on, ideas are shared, and criticisms are voiced.  My role is kind of like BASF's model- "we don't make the products you know, we make the products you know better."  So that's where I stand, I'm not creating water, not finding sources, and laying pipe (for the most part), I'm maximizing this processes' efficiency, so it can hopefully run smoothly, and be easily replicated.

Check out my Facebook page for photos at site so far too!

37 Things I Have Learned About Panama

1. In a country the size of South Carolina it’s crazy to imagine how Panama became such a melting pot.  Similar to the US, Panama experienced its initial migration, its immigration, and its continuous rocky slope relationship with the indigenous people.  Chriqiui, Ngobe, Bocas del Toro, Colon, Panama, and Darien are so different its almost equivalent of crossing the Mason-Dixon Line and all of a sudden winding up in Jamaica.

2. Panama is hot.  So hot in fact, that its better to wear a shirt to bed so there is a layer of protection between your skin and scratchy sheets. 

3. But, Panama has mountains, BIG mountains.  This also means that Panama actually has cool temperatures.  (This is my number 1 want in a site).

Peña Blanca

4. During my Spanish proficiency test, there were noises and sounds coming out of my mouth I had no idea existed as I searched my mind for words I obviously didn’t know.

5. In general, fancy restaurants enjoy leaving a piece of parsley on your dish for extra style points.  In Panama, parsley is replaced by rice.  It’s the only guarantee of the meal.  If pasta is being served, there will be rice.  If yucca (potatoes) is being served, there will be rice.  For some reason, if there is not rice on your plate the dog got to it before you.

6. I still hate bananas but I love fried plantains.

7. Living with a host family has brought me back to being 15 years old.  My first thought after dark has now become, “will I get home before my curfew?”

8. However, living with a host family is great.  I’m not treated like the white kid sleeping in the back room.  But rather, I’m strangely adopted as the grandkid.  I’ve have so many Panamanian aunts, uncles, and cousins, I’m embarrassed to say that I only remember a third of their names.

9. Talking to other volunteers, we have passed the point of wondering who the subject of the conversation was when someone mentions “her mother.”  Week 1-3 it was a tossup between US and Panamanian families.  Now mother simply means “Panamian mother.”  I never truly entered the confusion stage.  Living with a grandmother and grandfather, its easy for me to spew out abuelo y abuela.

10. Thanks to Collin for planting the seed to this observation.  The concept of walking down to the corner store for a soda and a snack was so foreign in the US, it seemed laughable to be given an allowance for the tiendas.  Now I dig the opportunity to hop down to the bodega for a coke and a pack of strawberry wafer cookies.

11. Panamanians are NOT transient.  I would be willing to bet the degrees of separation in Santa Rita (host town) is 5.  Kevin Bacon can’t even compete with that.

12. The Ngobe have mastered the poker face.

There is an equal chance, based on their expressions, that these people either came from a wedding or a funeral.  However their even-keeled mentality has allowed them to survive in some of the most arduous landscape.  Every step a Ngobe takes seems so methodically chosen to use the least amount of energy, and never have a bead of sweat appear on their.  But being 5’ and having a center of gravity below the surface of the Earth would definitely help you glide across the land instead of sauntering across it.  I have mad respect for the Ngobes.

13. Ngobes also stitch satchel bags that put European man purses to shame

14. I never realized how entertained I could be by chickens.

15. Though only chickens like this with baller haircuts are worthy of nicknames.  Mr. Dapper Dan

16. Mangy dogs roam everywhere.

17. Dogs belong to the house rather than the family.  If someone were to move tomorrow, dogs would idly sit by stupefied, but not follow.  And like clockwork, I guarantee that the new family moving in would straight up accept the dog’s existence like they were part of the deed.

18. Animals are not allowed in the house.  There are thousands of awesome ways to get animals to stop being pesky around your feet, and get out of the doorway.  My favorites include QUITA, VAYA, USAAA, 

Incomprehensible Spanish sentences, or my favorite: the old lady shoo.  The long drone of the SHHHHOOOOOO naturally becomes more effective with age as the perfect tone is ascertained and replicated through years and years of practice.  For some reason ALL men or women under the age of 55 cannot master this.

19. In the US pedestrians desperately search and fail for a taxi.  In Panama taxi drivers desperately search and fail for passengers.

20. Travel by chiva (AKA pickup truck) seems like a slapstick concept stripped out of a Mel Brooks comedy.  But in Ngobe Comarca land it’s the only way to get around.  Fortunately for me, gringos aren’t allowed to hang off the back, but that still won’t protect me from getting smashed by the 230 lb. man chilling on top of the truck bed.

Same Concept, Different Country

21. Every chiva and busito (think transportation for the family with 8 homeschooled kids) driver knows everyone.  Driving from the Darien to Panama City, our chauffeur honked and pointed at no less than 70% of pedestrians and vehicles in the Darien Province.

22. Speaking of the Darien, the indigenous Embara people are the exact opposite of the Ngobe, bubbly and gregarious.

23. Embara girls seem to have taken pages out of Greg Popovich’s coaching bible.  Defense and passing were the name to the game.  Their style absolutely put to shame that of any Panamian man attempting to take 4 steps with the ball sans dribbling.

24. Embara woman wear vibrantly pattern skirts that are supposedly rooted deep in Embara culture.  Thus, it makes me wonder how they developed such a good relationship with Japan, whom the Embara have now “apparently commissioned” to manufacture all their garments.

25. I had no idea who Prince Royce was before coming to Panama.  Now I have no idea why he never became famous in the US due to his immaculate branding and promotion to hide the minimal talent he might actually possess.

26. Tree fruit tastes 100x better than grocery fruit.

27. The roads leading in and out of Panama City are laughably inefficient.  So inefficient that vendors confidently set up shop on the side of the major roads to sell drinks to people waiting in traffic jams.  People also sell peppers too??

28.  Fishing in Panama consists of sardine bait, twine, a soda bottle, and a hook.  The results don’t lie either, 35 fish caught by 6 people in 6 hours is nothing to sneeze at.  I can only imagine Cabela's being stacked with Coke, A&W, and Sprite bottles to keep up with the times.

29.  Mother’s Day in Panama is a national holiday (December 8).  Tradition states that the mother cooks for everyone and does all the chores, while everyone else sits around.  Good thing the banks are closed to celebrate such variation in lifestyle.

30.  Panamanians are big fans of self-depreciation.  They’ll go out of their way to call themselves fat and ugly (and others for that matter).  Now if they only understood sarcasm, they’d love Louis CK.

31. I’d estimate that 60% of indigenous men own and wear either a Juan Carlos Navarro hat or t-shirt (2014 Presidential candidate).  They don’t see it as spreading the good word, but rather as a free item of clothing.  This proves the universal fact that everyone loves a free t-shirt.

32. Instead of pointing with a finger to guide someone’s vision to a certain spot, Panamanians curl up their lips and jerk their head to deliver a coordinate.  Usually I’m more confused after the question than before.

33. Crocs have magical powers.  Kids gracefully run, stop on a dime, turn, backpedal, juke, and kick in crocs better than I do in a pair of sneakers.

34.  If I grew up in Panama, I would think that only two soccer teams existed outside of Panama: FC Barcelona, and Real Madrid.

35. It costs 90 cents to take an hour and a half bus ride from Panama City to Santa Rita.  I’m pretty sure the toll to cross from NJ to PA on I-78 was just bumped up to a dollar.

36. Guaybera shirts are awesome and the ultimate formal attire cop-out.  The presence of 2 bottom pockets around the belt prevents a person from tucking it in.  Thus you can wear it to church, to the beach, or to meet the pope and not be out of place in any situation.

37. My first month plus in Panama has been great, and more than anything I have learned that all people really want the same things: safety, shelter, family, water, food, a sense of worth.  You strip everything else away, and you can still live an immensely happy and productive life.  Under the thatched roof of a Ngobe house, or the zinc roof of an Embara house, exist people.  People just like you, me, people in Europe, Africa, Asia, just wanting to essentially be happy and comfortable.  More or less I think these people have figured out what their happiness is.  They just need that something extra to make it permanent (as do I and everyone else).  The next two years will all be give and take with my new community as we both build each other up to truly achieve what we want in life; that comfortable happiness.

Stay tuned….