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

*It's another soapbox post, you've been warned.* Read this..."What my Bike has Taught me About White Privilege" http://alittlemoresauce.wordpress.com/2014/08/20/what-my-bike-has-taught-me-about-white-privilege/ Then watch this... "Jon Stewart Destroys Fox News for its Mike Brown Coverage" http://www.ryot.org/jon-stewart-destroys-fox-news-for-its-mike-brown-coverage/796717 I loved the bicycle article because it creates a nonthreatening analogy of what it is like to be the minority, highlighting what kinds of things the majority never even consider. My experience in Panama has really driven that home, because much of the things he says about being a bicyclist on the streets of Lansing could be said about being a woman on the streets of Panama. Jon Stewart's video gives you a crash course on what is going on Ferguson, and his strong opinions on it. Since I was in America when this hit the fan, I saw many news reports covering it and he...

After 836 days in the jungle of Panama, (yea, I counted) the lost wanderer returned to the heartland of America, my hometown of Omaha, NE. I was expecting it to be really weird and foreign. I was expecting it to be like going to a brand new country. Therefore, it was definitely more familiar than I expected...but it was still kinda weird. I felt like a tourist in my own city, which while at first was strange, I also enjoyed because I observed and learned a lot about my home town and former life before Peace Corps. It goes without saying that the best part of my trip was seeing my family friends for the first time in years, but I am going to repeat it just so everyone knows how important they are to me. Thank you so much to my family and friends to made time to see me last week! The people were the best, however the food was a close second. Some of my old favorites aren't anymore (diet coke and french fries are meh) but other things I never appreciated before were an amazing surpr...

I haven’t really talked about what my job as Sanitation Coordinator is. I coordinate sanitation, obviously. But what that means is that any Peace Corps Volunteer that wants to do a latrine project works with me to help make their project as sustainable, effective, and self-sufficient as possible. I share with them resources and best practices I have learned from my personal experience and the experiences of others, and together we try to make the process better in a multitude of different ways. This job is personal to me, because it plays on what I learned in Playona. It also works to address a huge global development issue of sustainability and capacity-building. What does that mean? “Handouts are bad.” Most people have heard that. They have heard that giving people free things is counterproductive and does not actually help them. Hand-washing is important, and most people have heard that too. But like hand-washing, just because they know something is bad doesn’t mean they ac...

***Before I say anything, I would just like to state for the record that I am a publicly declared World Cup fan poser. I have never cared about futbol in any context before I came to Panama, and I can neither confirm nor deny that my fandom will continue after my PC Service.*** The World Cup is a big deal to everyone in the world who does not live in America. According to some of my social media updates, I guess maybe even America got somewhat into it this year. If you are a devoted US soccer fan, I don't want to offend you, but American fans are posers compared to Panamanian fans. Before you get all worked up about that statement, take a deep breath. It is maybe not a bad thing you don't take it quite this seriously, nor is it bad that you just don't have to make these kinds of sacrifices to be a fan. In America, it is just easier. For a couple of those true soccer fans out there, I am sure that if you were put in the middle of the jungle or on an island in the middle...

Hey friends. I try not to use my blog to soapbox, because having political agendas and liberal/conservative propaganda shoved down your throat is what your Facebook news feed is for. So I'm warning you, this post is about environmentalism, climate change, and proof that these threats are not abstract concepts you should be moderately concerned about in the way that you worry your diet coke's might give you cancer. It's real, I've seen it. I also don't have any solutions to the following problems, I just need to rant about them for a bit. Here goes... Deforestation is big and scary. The Azuero peninsula is a legit-for-reals victim of deforestation. A hundred years or so ago, it was as dense of a jungle as the Darien. Now, it reminds me of Nebraska, mid September. Brown, fields, and still ridiculously hot. It's too late for the Azuero, no really. It's all farmland. There's very little jungle left. But the Darien, now there is still a lot primary rain...

One of the first things I was able to participate in after moving to the west side of the country was the National Healthy Women's Artisan Seminar put on by the Gender and Development program within Peace Corps Panama. A little over a year ago I wrote a blog about the dramatic saga that took place in my community while trying to get 2 women from Playona to travel across the country to attend this seminar. Claudia made it, Eugenia did not. (Here's the link to the full story: http://amnaylor.blogspot.com/2013/08/winning-losing-and-living-somewhere-in.html ) This year, I did not have women to send to the seminar, but I was invited to be a facilitator for the week. No Embera ladies made it, but there were 25 rural latino and indigenous Ngabe-Bugle women. The Ngabe Bugle are a large indigenous group on the west side of Panama that culturally are the opposite of Embera. They are quiet, reserved, and shy. They are incredibly conservative and have strict gender roles. They are also v...

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...