Throwing Machetes with Boys

In Spanish, if you are working with a machete it directly translates as throwing a machete. It is also, for the vast majority of purposes, a strictly male chore.

My first few months in site, I had to learn the rules. I did laundry, learned how to cook, talked to the women, stitched their artesan crafts, and followed as many of the typical gender norms as I could, short of taking a husband and having lots of babies. I always had an unsettled concern though that when the time came to build latrines the guys were not going to take a woman seriously. In December, I started breaking the 'rules'. Now my community was going to see how I play the game.

I am sure you are anxiously awaiting to hear how throwing machetes plays into this, so I will start there even though chronologically it wasn't first. My friend Ben was having trouble getting his house built. We had been in site nearly 6 months and he still lived with his host family. Each family in his community was supposed to contribute 10 penca leaves to make his thatched roof, but many hadn't. Through his own sheer determination and the occasional help of 1-2 other guys in town, the structure of the house was finally completed, there was just this large gaping skylight in the roof. So I went to his site to visit and see if I could out any peer pressure on the community to get things moving.

He took me on a tour of town and I met lots of people who were relatives or friends with people from my community. Already knowing the language it wasn't like going to a new place at all, and I felt at home right away. I told everyone I met that I was there to help finish Ben's house, and finally on Wednesday morning when I told this guy I was just going to wander out into the jungle looking for penca leaves by myself, he agreed to take us. I was even entrusted with my own machete. (my community tries not to let me wield a machete when we go into the monte)

We went out and cut down 56 penca leaves and tied them up into bundles to haul back. Leaves can be very deceptive. A leaf weighs nothing. But suddenly you get 10-15 or 20-25 of them together and they weigh a lot! Cutting them down was nothing, hauling them back was the real work. After lunch we went back to work to tie the leaves to the roof. Magically more leaves showed up from Ben's counterpart and by the end of the day we had all but finished.

I think I offended Ben's host mom when I did not cook for him because she was shocked when we got back from the monte looking for lunch and was decidedly cooler towards me from then on. Because clearly, the fact I came to visit his site means that I must be "Ben's woman" (or so they referred to me when they asked him later where I'd gone) and she was therefore appalled I was not cooking for him. Take note fellas, I am apparently going to be a terrible wife. Don't say you weren't warned!

When I got back to site I told everyone how I had gone to the monte and helped build a house. This was also the same day that the chiva wasn't running and I couldn't afford a  $15 taxi so I hiked the 40 minute chiva ride...which is 2.5 hours on foot. The stories about me spread like wildfire that day- eveyone was highly impressed I hiked it alone and did so in such good time.

One morning I heard a lot of commotion on the other side of town. Guys shouting, a big crash, lots of general movement. Wandering across the community I found a group of 20 some men tearing down a church they never used to build another classroom. I plopped down on a log and spent the morning watching the construction process. To my community, I am an 'arcitecta' so I wondered if anyone would ever put two and two together to ask me to join in. They did not. They did however invite me to eat lunch with them. Hot chicken soup and rice. I am pretty sure I will never really understand Panamanians. After lunch I went home, changed into pants and boots, grabbed my hammer, and came back. When I asked if I could help, half of them laughed at me, and the other half just shrugged and said, 'Usted que sabe' which more or less means 'if you want'. For the first couple hours I didn't do much. Hand off nails, move boards around, get told to look out or be careful about 100 times. I could be 15' away when they started up the saw with 6 guys between the saw and I and they would specifically warn me to look out. At least they're looking out for me, I suppose. Being the tool lackey didn't bother me much because no matter what gender you are or what country you are in, the new kid on the job site always gets the crappy jobs until they trust you with tools. Also, the only saw we had was a chain saw they freehanded and it was a bajillion degrees in the sun, so not doing serious labor was not something to complain about.

I had asked some pointed questions and made a few suggestions but again, being the new kid, and a woman to boot, I got shut down repeatedly but there was one thing I could not ignore. Knowing directly asking would get me nowhere, I grabbed the level, and set it on a crossbeam of the floor walking through a huddle of guys to do so. They saw me stand back to look at it, and asked me what I was doing. I told them it didn't quite seem level to me. The bubble was in fact as far to the right as the level would allow it to go... After much grumbling, discussion, some yelling back and forth and I am pretty sure the Embera equivalent of 'I told you so' got thrown around for a few minutes, we set to work releveling the floor. I had the level and instructed the guys whose side needed to go higher or lower. When all was said and done, we fixed the floor that thad been up to 10" off from one side to the other in various places.

The miracle of the day was not actually having a level floor, although that was pretty impressive considering where we started. The miracle happened about halfway through when one of the guys sitting in the shade (not one working, mind you) yelled out to another guy to come over and check my work, to make sure I was leveling the string correctly. His response? 'No, Amber knows what she's doing.' No one objected to his response and we kept working without any other interruptions. I had them. More than that, I knew I had them, and just in the nick of time.

December 8th is Mother's Day in Panama. Are you thinking flowers, breakfast in bed, and macaroni necklaces? Not quite. The men go drink the day away in the cantina. I had already been having a rough day, just not really feeling the jungle volunteer lifestyle. I jumped on the chance to go play soccer with the girls, anything to make me feel like I was doing something. I even scored THREE goals. Yea, most of my teammates were 8 years old, but they were also non-american which automatically makes them really good at soccer. We were tied, 5-5. And then the barfight left the cantina and ended up in the middle of the soccer field. Game over.

We went home. I grabbed my soap to go bathe in the river, and got catcalled by a drunk guy who knows better. I was mad. Fed up with the gender roles and all I wanted was to call another PCV and rant about it. But my phone was charging in the cantina. Socially, in my community, women do not drink. Ever. They don't even enter the cantina. An Embera woman would have waited until the cantina was empty the next day, but this gringa was not ok with men's drinking habits dictating her life. Since all the fighters had cleared out and had been drug home by their wives, I marched over to the cantina, and walked right in. Immediately I had the entire cantina's attention. I asked the owner for my phone and while he tried to figure out which was mine I tried to ignore the huddle of guys around me trying to get me to drink with them. I told them to back off and immediately had a 1' bubble all around me. I got my phone and left. When I walked out, there was a row of women who had gathered to see what I was doing. One of their sober husbands called me over and asked if I had gone in to fight with the boys. I told him yea, for my phone. He asked if I won and I held it up, and he laughed. His wife gave me a wink and a free soda from their store.

When I got back home the President of my health committee was waiting for me to tell me they had all of the materials to make up the community contribution of the latrine project, so we could start building. My 4 families were finally ready. I was finally ready. As for the rest of them?

Tina Fey said it best in Bossypants:

'My unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this...Do your thing and don't care if they like it.'