The one with pictures of our clinics

Floating Doctors clinic in pictures:

Group of girls we met while conducting a public health survey, they are 3 of 12

Intake Bea taking vitals and history

Line for clinic is already out the door at 8am

Norteño, a Ngobe village

Peace Corps interpreter superheros!

Promted to Intaker #3

Next you'll be calling me Dr. Bea

The one with photographic evidence that I'm in paradise

My new site in Pictures: 

Kabob man on a Bocas street

Bocas is an eclectic mix of abandoned buildings and new flashy tourist places which makes for an interesting vibe.

The one about my job

Good morning from rainy Bocas del Toro!

This is a long update with logistical information about my work and job soooo read on if interested, if not, look at the pictures and have a very Happy Thanksgiving!!!!! I am thankful for all of you and sending turkey stuffed hugs to all of you. Insider tip from someone who’s already celebrated Thanksgiving this year – try making your mashed potatoes with skinned purple potatoes for a nice lavender color and richer/more vibrant flavor (or maybe that’s the whipping cream we added?). Happy cooking :)

It’s been a wild ride of three weeks and I’m finally sitting down to send y’all an update. These past few weeks have been a crazy mix of interpreting at multi-day roving health clinics in indigenous communities during for doctors working for my partner organization (Floating Doctors), trying to find permanent housing, getting the lay of the land in my new territory, moving every few days from one place to another (between dirty warehouse studio apartments, a half-constructed compound on a deserted island, a nice hotel called the Cosmic Crab, and hammocks hung underneath stiled houses in rural villages I haven’t spent more than four days in any one place since the end of October) and deciphering what my job here will be. I’ll cut to the chase, here is what you need to know about where I am and what I’m doing!

This is the partner organization I work with: Floating Doctors.

Floating Doctors’ mission is to reduce the short-term burden of disease and poor health in resource-limited populations through a network of ongoing health care mobile teams, and create long-term reductions through community development projects, education, and local capacity building. This means that they bring a roving medical clinic staffed by doctors, interpreters, nurses and clinic managers to 22 indigenous communities in the Bocas area (think small tiny communities with houses on stilts over the water in various mangrove islands). My job the past month has been to join them on these clinics to see what they do and how they operate, however, my job will be to create a sustainability approach to the work they conduct.

These are my responsibilities: Developing a curriculum for a Community Health Worker (CHW) Training (months 1-3) to be implemented in Ngobe-Bugle communities (months 4-10).

I first need to coordinate with Floating Doctors (hence attending all the clinics) to create specific project design, then draw up project timeline with deliverables for review by Floating Doctors utilizing existing educational resources, and then create detailed curriculum of the training course with take-home documents for trainees, and then create assessment tools, assessment plan and reinforcement plan. In addition to all that, I’ll recruit participants from target communities, coordinate the implementation of the training sessions and assess the effectiveness of the training strategy and I’ve got a year to do it with the help of 2 other Peace Corps Response volunteers, Katie (who lives with me) and Evan (who lives in the communities we will work in).  

This is the indigenous community we work with: Ngobe-Bugle.

Basically Panama is one of the only countries left respecting indigenous populations and granting them full autonomy over their regions. There are four main groups in Panama and the one in Bocas area is known as Ngobe-Bugle. They mostly live in stilted huts near the river and have their own area/land protected in a similar fashion to Native American reservations in the States. Personality wise, they start having children young and have many of them, women wear long gowns called naguas decorated with sewn-on geometric designs, carry their stuff in bright handmade shoulder bags made of natural fibers and known as kra, are generally reserved and timid people who are generally short and stocky. It’s a fascinating culture that deserves a post of its own so I’ll save that for another day, stay tuned.

This is where I currently sleep: A half-constructed compound in Isla San Cristobal

However, there is currently not many amenities and no reliable transportation on/off this particular island and the entire Floating Doctors staff will be gone for the months of December and January while five Panamanian men do construction on the compound sooooo Katie and I are currently looking for permanent housing situation on the main island Isla Colón.

This is where I hope to sleep by Thanksgiving: A cute tiny green house on Isla Colón

There are various islands here in the Bocas region, the main operations of Floating Doctors were on Isla Colón before they bought the land on Isla San Cristobal and it’s where most of the action happens. Katie and I have found a wonderful family who are renting a little green house in a cute neighborhood. Their family lives on basically ¼ of the entire block, so we’ll be taken care of both socially and for security purposes. They’ve been great to us so far, more to come on them too!

This is what I do for fun:

Go to the numerous beaches in the Bocas area and swim! I have also been reading plenty and would gladly take book recommendations. I have been playing lots of trivia with Katie who is my personal encyclopedia.

This is who I spent most (read: all) of my time with: Katie

Katie Long – The one and only, the world’s best Returned Peace Corps Volunteer who served from 2005-07 in Honduras (which closed as a Peace Corps Post in 2013). She is from and lives in Baltimore and works in an urban park as the programs coordinator and Latino outreach. She is a homeowner, improv specialist, laugh expert, dog-owner to a cute lil thing called Louie, and game/trivia fanatic. We get along great and she is definitely my support throughout this weird and crazy transition. Katie plays the ukulele and we’ve already performed at the senior citizen home Floating Doctors works at once and are currently preparing our next concert series.

This is what I’m doing for Thanksgiving: Mixed culture Thanksgiving!

Katie and I are spending it at the compound and the Ngobe kitchen workers led by the British dentist kitchen boss will be making the FD crew a Thanksgiving feast (yes, we see the irony). Soooo Katie and I will be hosting a talent show and performing a parody song to Under the Sea explaining Thanksgiving history for the European doctors who make a majority of the Floating Doctors crew right now (will send recording) and our contribution will be a pumpkin pie dessert dip with ginger cookies (a Long family recipe) then thank our lucky stars that we’re moved and settled in – a beautiful thing to be thankful for!

In other being thankful updates, it’s yet another Thanksgiving away from home and I must say how truly thankful I am that we were able to celebrate Thanksgiving in October with my family before I left, love you guys, thanks for being weird. Wishing you all amazing Thanksgivings full of family, love, turkey and wine! Get (cranberry) saucy!

Xoxox,

Bea

The one about going to Panama!

Greetings from sunny Panama! In case you were concerned, let it be known that I made it!

After three and a half wonderful weeks of vacation at home with the family, I made it to Panama! A lot of people have asked me how “re-integration” was, but I don’t have a good answer, because for me it was never really re-entry, I knew I was just touching down for a brief visit with the family and then off on a new project, job, place, adventure. I loved being home and I was nervous that I would get there and say, “WTF am I doing, I don’t want to go abroad again.” I got to see Henry as a real teenage driving (with a permit), winning races left and right, and doing big kid homework I couldn't even help with. I had wine nights with my momma and bike rides with pops. I spent time with friends (mostly over good food) and time alone in the outdoors. It was perfect. I got to "re-set." So now, as I sit here on the porch of a beautiful hostel in my new home of Bocas del Toro, I am exactly where I am meant to be!

I am on this crazy ride with the other three response volunteers who are wonderful: 1) Evan is a Panama Peace Corps veteran who has been our cultural guide. 2) Then there’s Shannon, a returned volunteer from Paraguay who is a HIV/AIDS specialist living in the nearest big town. 3) And I live with Katie (who's been my savior/guiding light/buddy/pal/roommate/friend/confidant/trivia master), a returned volunteer from Honduras (before it was shut down in 2012) whom I’ll be working with directly to develop modules for a community health worker training for a medical organization called Floating Doctors. We’re a motley crew, but we’ll work together in the best of ways!

So spark notes of my last few weeks: I landed in Panama City. If you all want to travel to a safe/beautiful/nice Latin American capital city – this is the one for you. I love it! It’s just a vibe thing because of course I can’t know every corner of the city in the four days I’ve been here, but it is such a fun and beautiful place to be. There’s a remarkable bike/running path along the coast of the sea where we’ve walked to get fresh ceviche, see Casco Viejo (the colonial part of the city that used to be a World Heritage site until the president built a highway around it), stroll and people watch. And we’ve been eating delicious food that I definitely don’t appreciate enough because I’m still on America mode. I’ve met a handful of wonderful regular two-year Peace Corps Volunteers who all stay at one hostel in the city and shared a beer or two over stories from the "comarca" or indigenous autonomous territories (more to come on that). And then, I swore in as a Peace Corps Response Volunteer and now I’m in my site in the northeast. Whirlwind!

Now that I’m here in my new site on the main island of Bocas del Toro (Isla Colón), it’s all sinking in. I currently live in a warehouse where the organization I work with, Floating Doctors (a roving medical clinic providing services to hard-to-reach indigenous communities), has studio apartments and a bunch of long-term volunteers living in them. However, they’ve been building a compound on another island (Isla San Cristobál) for the past year and it’ll be done this week. Soooo move in day is supposedly this Friday. We’ll see, but apparently the boss is hopeful. ¡A ver! Regardless, we move off this touristy island soon and then I’ll live on a remote isolated island (with internet, whaaa) and a bunch of other staff members. But then, all the staff (not me) get six weeks off for December-January so Katie and I will be living on the remote island compound alone – how cool is that? We’re looking into buying a kayak or two and then of course we’ll need to stock up on board/card games. 

Once we get the hang of the islands and how clinics are run and the organization functions, we will get started on developing a community health worker training for these local indigenous communities. More work updates to come as they happen, but for now, we’re just soaking it all up and enjoying the island life. So much more to tell you, but my internet spot for the day is closing! I’ll send another update soon, along with more information about Panama in general (Panama celebrates 4 independence days and one of those days was today so most things are closed all week) but until then, know that I’m alive, well and happy! 

XO,

Bea