"Do not go where the path may lead..."

So moving from the border of Colombia to nearly the border of Costa Rica has been challenging and awesome. Challenging because it was unexpected, unwanted, and unasked for, and awesome because it has great people, more conveniences, and a really cool job. Most of May and June were spent trying to get my bearings, from figuring out where to get groceries to how to get the internet to work, to figuring out the new bus routes. Then there was my job, getting a job description written, coming up with some goals, and establishing not only a work plan, but a reporting method for it. I visited several regional meetings to get to know the PCVs in other regions of the country better (I knew almost no one outside of my training group unless they lived in the Darien, we were very geographically isolated). Panamanian elections happened and Varela won, a surprise I think. He was the third party candidate, but with a campaign video like this, and election day on May the Fourth, we should have pro...

I have the best teachers in the world. In Playona, that is. I mean, I had some great teachers throughout my life, but in my Embera community, these teachers are top notch. They show up to class and care about whether or not their students know how to read. They are concerned about the well-being of the community. They volunteered to help chaperone when I took 16 kids to an ultimate frisbee tournament out of town so I didn't have to coach and supervise my team of 12 year olds alone. (Thank God!) They also put together a presentation for my goodbye party, in Spanish, a despedida. I had been out of site since March 19th, with the exception of 3 terrible hours on April 9th when I removed all of my belongings and Peace Corps Staff announced to my community members our removal. By the time May 15th came around, I was dying to go back. The first thing I noticed upon arrival that morning was the wall-sized butcher paper mural in the town meeting hall that said, "Thank you Licda. A...

On Monday March 16th, I had tried to hold a work day. We were over halfway through building the last 6 latrines. Only 2 people showed, of the 36 workers there should have been and over the last several weeks I had been running into this problem consistently. Nearing the end, families were getting tired. It had been several months of hard manual labor. That afternoon I called an emergency mandatory meeting and had a chat with all of the project families. I asked them who the project belonged to, and we again talked about how this was not Amber's latrine project, that this was Playona's project. The health committee started this project before me and they would continue it after me. I clarified that the project was not about who has spent more hours working for who, but about improving the health of their children, their families, their neighbors and friends. We reflected on the trainings where we learned that the issue of child malnutrition and illness was a serious life-th...