Winning, Losing, and Living Somewhere In Between

In developing countries, it is no surprise to find women are considered secondary to men. Gender equality is something that even the bright and shiny USA hasn't mastered yet, so to find it here comes as no surprise to me. Or at least it shouldn't surprise me...and yet it still does.

 

I get catcalled, hissed at, stared at, and propositioned all the time. All the time. All. The. Time. I get men who doubt my knowledge and abilities in construction (and life in general) due to first my gender and then second my age. I cannot really trust any male Panamanian as a friend because in this country and culture, men and women just aren't friends. Before Panama, I never gave my gender a second thought when it came to my professional goals nor in planning my daily activites. Here, it is the first thing I think about. With 15 months in country, I have figured out ways to deal with all of this, ways to keep myself healthy and happy in this very different world. Even if that just means getting a box of wine and a bar of chocolate and complaining about it with other Volunteers. :-)

 

It isn't all bad. The fact that there are now five composting latrines in Playona when just a few months ago there was one means that I won the respect of some of the men in my community. Last December when they started building a classroom they rolled their eyes when I showed up to help, but last week when they built another classroom, they asked me to stop by and check it out. The fact that all of the muchachos in my community know better than to hit on me when I walk around town I count as winning.

 

There are days you win, there are days you lose, and there are days when you stand in Meteti waiting for the bus and get hit on 22 times between 6:55am and 7:40am. Or have a drunk man fall into the seat next to you on the bus, grab your boob, and then have no idea why you got him kicked off of the bus. Or have another drunk man pee on you in the canoe while you are headed down river. Some days you lose harder than others, I guess.

 

But the machismo problems I have to put up with are nothing compared to the struggles of Panamanian women, particularly the indigenous women. Remember that medical tour I did in February with the Kuna? I needed a translator to talk to the women because almost none of the women spoke Spanish. Think about what that means. School is taught in Spanish. The towns and cities in Panama where one can find any medical care, government agency or assistance program, internet cafe, or store, all speak Spanish. If a Kuna woman only speaks Kuna she is reliant on her husband for EVERYTHING outside of their little reservation. And that means he has the power to knowingly and unknowingly, filter everything she knows.

 

Embera women speak Spanish, thank goodness. It is at least the first battle. A woman came over to visit my house the other day and admired the plate I stitching. She then looked around, asked me if I had learned to cook, do laundry, wash dishes, haul water, make artisan crafts, wear parumas, and take care of a house. When I told her I had mastered all of those things, she replied, 'NOW you are ready to get yourself a man.' Add caring for children to that list and you have outlined the life of an Embera woman. It might be the year 2013, but women here are still homemakers, confined to the home and reliant on their husbands. I don't want to knock homemaking, it is a valuable job and a lot of hard work. But choosing homemaking and having no other option are two very different things. My women and girls often can't see their other options, or pregnancy makes that decision for them. At the end of the day, they still need their husband's permission to do anything.

            Case in point:

Once a year, Peace Corps Panama's Gender and Development program hosts a week long seminar for women that do artsesan crafts- stitching sombreros, sewing the Ngobe triangle patterns, making bags, plates, jewelry, vases, wood carvings, you name it. Panama is abundant with hand crafts. This seminar is a chance for women to travel across their country and meet women from other cultures. It helps fight against the strong racist stereotypes that exist between cultures in this country, and gives women a chance to take pride in their own culture. The women get to show off their skills, teach each other and learn from each other different crafts, and do presentations of their own cultures. The Peace Corps Volunteers facilitating the seminar teach women basic business practices and skills to better manage the sale of their goods, and they address women's health issues like family planning, HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, and nutrition. It is a once in a lifetime experience that the ladies never forget. They come back to their communities so jazzed, excited, and motivated that their enthusiasm is contagious.

 

I invited my host mom Eugenia, and a Colombian refugee woman named Claudia, both of them fabulous artesans and some of my closest friends in the community. I helped each one with her application, and excitedly shared the good news with them when they were both invited to attend. The seminar started on a Monday, but we are so far away here in the Darien that the women needed to start traveling on Sunday morning to arrive on time. However, I had a group of friends visiting me from the US that I needed to go to Panama to pick up on Saturday, so they had to do the first section of traveling without me, and then once in Panama, met up with Danielle to send them off the rest of the way.

 

I checked in with both women the Wednesday before hand, reviewed the travel plan, and both women said they were on board to go. Claudia told me she wanted to go, but she felt something kind of like scared, and her stomach felt funny, but that she couldn't stop smiling when she thought about going. I told her that was called being nervous and excited, and that it was perfectly normal.

 

Friday at about 6pm, Eugenia told me she couldn't go because she didn't have anyone to take care of her son. I talked to her for about an hour, in front of her husband, about how we had already talked about this, how she had several family members in the community and plenty of neighbors, not to mention her 9 year old son and husband who would all look after the 4 year old Feli. I knew she was just feeling scared and nervous, so we talked through every detail of the trip agsin, and I explained that she would never be traveling alone nor would she have to pay for anything. At the end of it all, she still said no.

 

It was almost dark, so I went to Claudia's to tell her that Eugenia wouldn't be going with her. Claudia panicked, and said she wouldn't go if she didn't know at least one person going with her, telling me her husband wouldn't give her permission to go alone. I told her to talk to him and think about it overnight, then I went home and freaked out. After weeks of planning and prep, neither of my women were going to go and they were going to miss one of the greatest opportunities of their lives. I talked to Danielle, and she encouraged me not to give up on them, and to go talk to both again in the morning before I left for the city.

 

At 6am, I went to Claudia's, my closing argument on the tip of my tongue. Before I could say a wprd, she told me that her husband Olbidio had convinced her to go. He told her that this was an amazing opportunity that she just couldn't miss. I was speechless and totally excited. I reviewed the travel plans with Claudia one more time, and gave her the money she needed to get to the seminar. Then I headed to Eugenia's to try one more time.

 

I met the whole family on the porch, my host dad Fernando, Eugenia, and my 15 year old, 9 year old, and 4 year old host brothers. I explained to Eugenia why I picked her for the seminar, not just because she is my friend, but because she is the best at what she does in my whole community. Her artesan crafts are the best quality of any of the women, and her designs are so beautiful. I told her I picked her because she is super hard working, smart, and creative. I told her about all the wonderful things she could learn and how it could benefit her family. At the end I told her that it wa her decision, and that I would not be upset with her if she still said no, but that I really wanted her to understand why she was chosen.

 

She said yes. I couldn't believe it. I reviewed the travel plans again, in front of Fernando to see if he had any objections to any of it, and then went back to my house to get her travel money. It was just before 7am, so I still had plenty of time to catch a boat to go get my friends. This was definitely shaping up to be the best day ever.

 

When I got back to my host family's house, something felt off. The house was silent, and only the boys were on the porch. The door to their room was shut. I asked the boys were their mom was, and she came around the corner from the kitchen. She was crying.

 

She told me Fernando said she couldn't go. When I asked why, she gave me a couple excuses, but nothing concrete. I asked where Fernando was and she gestured to their room. I called for him, and asked him to come out and explain to me why, that I just didn't understand, that maybe it was a language or a cultural thing that I needed him to explain to me, and if he would please come out and talk to me. He called out from within their room, "No tengo que explicarme a las mujeres."

 

It means, "I don't have to explain myself to women."

 

What do you reply to that?

 

I left my host mom's house and barely made it home before I started crying. I had never been so personally offended like that before, yes, but it was so much more than that. I was upset that of any man in my community to say something like that, the last one I expected it from was my host dad. I was upset with myself for getting my host mom's hopes up, for getting her excited about the seminar, only to have her get hurt and disappointed. I was upset for my host brothers, who watched this entire thing happen and I wondered what they would take away from it. I was upset with myself for not having seen this coming- I lived with them for 3 months, I still hang out with them regularly, why did this take me so completely by surprise?

 

Having a man tell me that I was not worthy of an explanation because I was a woman sucked. However, I know better. I know that he is just an uneducated man that feels powerless in this world because of his lack of wealth and opportunity and the one thing he feels like he has control over is his family. It doesn't make it right, it doesn't make it acceptable, but it has kept me from screaming every time I have gone over to visit since that day and he has acted like it never happened. Something changed within the dynamics of my host family and myself that day, but like any real family, we ignore the elephant in the room and continue with life as normal.

 

Whatever I go through in regards to gender discrimination in this country is temporary. I am only here for a short amount of time. I have years of education and I know that being a woman doesn't make me less of a person. I know better. But Eugenia doesn't know that. Celidet, Miliana, and Albamilia are growing up watching their mothers seek permission from their husbands and I just don't know if they realize they shouldn't have to, that they are just as good if not better than the boys.

 

Olbidio and Claudia give me hope. Since the seminar Claudia told me she wants to open an artesan hut of her own instead of waiting for the artesan group to someday get around to it. Olbidio didn't like the idea, she said, because he didn't want her to be too busy to be able to maintain their store. She got indignant when she told me he called himself the owner of their store, saying that since she ran half of it that made it a partnership, neither him nor her could claim sole ownership. She asked me to help her start the artsesan hut and I told her I liked the idea, but that I not want to get involved in something that would cause problems in her household. She laughed at me and said, "Oh, he's a jealous type, that's true, but I will get him to come around and change his mind. He's my husband, that's my job."

 

I laughed. It sounded just like something my own mother would say.