This last week was a big week, for one really huge reason: I learned where I’m going to live for the next two years of my life.
I finally know the name of the community that I will be privileged to call home in just 12 days. It’s full of new people, a new house, and a new host family (who I will learn to love as much as I love Mabel). My new community of 700 people has never had a Peace Corps Volunteer before; I’ll be the first.
It’s also full of coffee and is part of the lowland region of an active stratovolcano.
I’m moving to the mountains (lowlands) of Chiriquí, about an hour from David, sandwiched between Boquete and Volcán Baru, only two hours from the border of Costa Rica. I could not be happier - I’m not even there yet and my heart already feels so full. Just the thought of arriving in my community on April 27 brings me so much joy. I imagine it will feel like walking into my dorm and onto campus for the first time when I went to college: tentative, anxious, timid, but ultimately relieved to finally know what home looks like, and full of love for a place I have yet to learn.
With 12 days until arrival in site, I’m reflecting a bit on the last 8 weeks of my life here in Panamá. During a training session on Friday in the office, we talked about community integration. What does it mean to be integrated? While the presentation was quite humorous and full of memes from the @JadedCorps instagram, it definitely made me think about what’s transpired during my time here. At some point, Panamá stopped feeling like a weird version of a study abroad trip and started to feel like a place I could call home for a while. So, what happened?
I found my voice.
I’m not sure when it happened, and sometimes I’m not sure how it happened, but I can speak Spanish now. After 8 weeks of language classes, conversations with Mabel and her family, listening to songs sang in Spanish, and studying vocabulary lists every night, I can speak Spanish. I had an interview with a PC Spanish teacher about 3 weeks ago and found out that I had increased 2 levels: from beginner medium to intermediate medium. That’s a huge amount of progress in just 8 weeks! I have another language interview tomorrow to determine my final language level before heading to site (I’m hopeful I’ll fall into intermediate high this time, crushing one more level while I’m in training). Finally being able to express myself has had an enormously positive impact on my attitude, mental health, and confidence. I thought it would never happen; but I swear, one day I just woke up and I understood.
I let myself love people.
I love my Mama Mabel, and I’ve always been fine with the fact that I was going to love her, despite only living in her home for 9 weeks before taking off for site. It’s the kind of heartbreak you let happen, because it’s too good to avoid. I needed to love her to learn to love Panamá, even if it meant a lot of upcoming tears when I say goodbye and pack up my things, leaving the extremely safe haven of her bright yellow house. I wasn’t so keen, though, on letting myself love anyone else here just yet. That changed last week while I was sitting among a group of women from my host community, gossiping and cracking jokes and complimenting each other’s hair and clothes. I realized that I loved them, too, and I let myself drown in that feeling the entire four hours we spent sitting on the porch with them. I let myself feel love when they made me a separate vegan meal for lunch. I let myself love them when they asked about my exercise routine and my family in the United States. And yes, I’m leaving this wonderful community of women in 12 days, and it’s going to royally suck, but I think I’m lucky as hell to have people I’m going to miss.
I stopped trying to fit a mold.
My first few weeks in Panamá I was absolutely torn up trying to be Peace Corps-Hannah instead of Hannah. At some point, though, I realized that the only reason Peace Corps-Hannah existed was because of Hannah; I didn’t get here being anyone but myself. So here’s what I did: I turned my filter off, let my guard down, allowed my sarcasm to surface, and stopped being so scared of everything I would do wrong here (because I’m going to do a lot of things wrong here, it’s inevitable). I just started being Hannah again, who enjoys bad humor and loves to cook and works out so she can eat extra garlic bread at dinner and expresses her opinions kindly but unapologetically. It’s done wonders for my mental and physical health here, but somewhat more importantly, for my relationships. My friendships here with other PCVs and with Panamanians really excelled once I started being my genuine self again; I’m happy to say that I think people like me.
I rode the bus by myself.
It sounds dumb, but something about riding public transportation by yourself in the foreign country you’re settling into has a strange way of making you feel right at home. I hopped on a Diablo Rojo this weekend to ride into La Chorrera (the provincial capitol of Panama Oeste), and being on that big noisy bus amongst the Panamanians, exact fare in hand without having to ask for the millionth time how much it cost and where my stop was, felt like belonging.
I got my feet wet.
Literally, soaked. On Thursday this past week, I attended La Feria de Piña (Pineapple Festival) with Mabel and two other PCVs in my group (Isabel and Kiera). Imagine Traverse City’s Cherry Festival but with pineapples and reggaeton instead of cherries and country singers. On this particular evening, the very first night of the Pineapple Festival, rainy season in Panamá decided to start. As soon as we arrived, the downpour began, and persisted throughout the entire evening. Running between tents through giant puddles and thick heavy raindrops for snacks and buying crafts and talking to agency representatives from MiAmbiente and MIDA made the night a beautifully hilarious experience. We were all drenched in a matter of minutes, but smiles all around.
Mabel laughed at us as we slid through the mud in our Chacos (and then later plunged our feet into buckets of rainwater to relieve ourselves from ant bites). We sought out shelter under vendors’ tents, and were invited into some to dry off; one Panamanian woman in particular offering us napkins and chatting with us about our experience in Panama for quite some time and complimenting our Spanish, before wishing us luck in site with a peck on the cheek as we ventured out into the rain again.
We strolled through a beautiful organic garden as rain sprinkled the leaves and breathed life into the parched landscape, and I named off plants growing there (in Spanish): yuca, frijoles, pepino, zapollo, platanos….
A man from Cesar’n Panadería gifted us loaves of bread as we stood in his tent, and debated what piece of cake to share between the four of us. He didn’t know us, but he knew Mabel and was excited that we were at the Fair, so we came home with baguettes, cinnamon raisin bread, and something resembling asiago cheese bread. As we snacked on our massive slice of chocolate cake together under a plastic tent in a rainstorm, I looked at Mabel with her arms full of bread loaves and a few cake crumbs on her bright pink Tommy Hilfiger polo shirt, and felt so insanely content.
At the end of the evening we all piled into Mabel’s car, clothes dripping wet and feet covered in mud, and drove back to our host community. It felt like being a kid again, and loading up into my mom’s station wagon after a rainy day at the Detroit Zoo, wanting the a/c on for the humidity but it freezing you to your saturated core. Nostalgia washed over me the entire evening, and nothing felt unfamiliar.
Overall, I’m learning that “community integration” is a process made up of many small beautiful moments.
They compile during your time in country until you find yourself an honorary member of someone’s family, or a neighbor-kid’s favorite confidant, or saying “I’m going home” for the first time you return to site from a long trip to the City or to the States. Sure, community integration is a phrase that can have a very pragmatic and straightforward definition tied to it, but that’s not what it’s ever going to mean to me. There’s too much room in my heart for beautiful little moments to accept any dictionary definition.
After all, who would ever want to define the first night you sleep through the roosters crowing or the first time you understand your host mom’s sarcasm, or even the first time you make it to the right bus stop to buy groceries, as anything other than wonderful little miracles?
Best,
Hanamá