I'm learning a lot here in Panamá: a new language, a new culture, how to navigate weird public transportation, all of the ways to ask if there is meat in my food, and many insanely valuable life skills. One thing I haven't quite figured out though, is the delicate balance to strike in order to manage my life here.
In my past life, meaning about a decade ago, I was a gymnast. In a much more recent past life, I coached gymnasts. I excelled at bars and floor, and I could throw a mean vault, but beam was my worst event hands down. My siblings can attest to this: the one competition of mine they came to I botched a beam routine with a solid score of 4.0 and a participation ribbon: I slipped straight off the four-inch-wide, leather-wrapped, chalk covered apparatus every time I picked up a foot. If I climb on a beam nowadays, I can get away with some leaps, turns, relevé work, and a cartwheel or handstand-dismount on a good day. The lack of balance in my life has persisted, even many years later, and manifested in ways both literal and figurative. Here in Panamá, I'm getting a crash course in balance all over again; somehow, falling out of sync here hurts more than splitting a beam.
HEALTH & INTEGRATION
Being someone who works really hard to maintain a healthy lifestyle is proving to be unpopular in Panamá. My community (like much of Panamá) loves fried food, mayonnaise, raspadura (refined cane sugar), queso blanco, and not exercising. Being "The Gringita" who does headstands, goes walking just because, does crunches and squats on the front porch, and who won't eat animal products or fried food for breakfast isn't the easiest thing to be. I cycle between being extremely firm with my community about taking care of myself and maintaining my healthy habits, and succumbing to the cultural norms.
The days when I give in, I get restless and paranoid quickly: sitting on the porch all day socializing while drinking chicha, eating hojaldres, and munching on store-bought white crackers makes me miserable, and I swear I can feel my gut churning in disapproval.
The days that I refuse to participate in being stagnant and filling myself with white flour and processed sugars are the days I feel distant from my community, and find myself lonely and very much The Gringa. As they point at me while I exercise and curiously peer over my shoulder while I chop up fresh veggies in the kitchen, I feel myself creating a larger cultural gap between the people I need to learn to live with.
I would be lying if I didn't admit that it's confusing for both parties involved: my community doesn't understand why some days I care so much about what I'm eating and how much I exercised, and why other days I don't seem to be interested at all. I myself don't understand the inability to find a compromise, and the persistence to be either one extreme or the other. Much like my frequent fluctuations between gym-rat-green-smoothie Hannah and give-me-the-six-pack-and-pizza Hannah at home, I'm finding it even harder to navigate a middle ground with healthy lifestyle habits here in Panamá.
SOCIAL LIFE & PERSONAL TIME
I don't really even have a social life here in Panamá, if we're being honest. The closest thing I have to friends in my community are an older couple that shares a lot of my perspectives, all of the school children aged 4-11, and the mom of the kid I tutor in English. However, my job here until the end of summer is to make friends. Anyone who knows me well, though, knows that I'm not a fan of forcing relationships and that I thrive on my own; therefore, this part of my Peace Corps service is proving to be extremely difficult.
Being an outgoing introvert is a weird combination as is, but throw in a seemingly impossible mission to befriend hundreds of Panamanians and it's a recipe for disaster. During training, things worked out well because I was just trying to get along with Mabel and the other Peace Corps volunteers, and there was plenty of time to spend alone to reflect, recharge, and gather myself. By the end of PST, I had become really deliberate about taking this time for myself.
In site, it's a pretty different story, though. I really do want to make friends and integrate, but I'm finding I need way more time to myself nowadays to be able to do that. It's a paradox in a way: the more time I spend getting to know my community, the more time I need to spend alone recovering from it, therefore preventing me from spending more time with my community. I use the word recovering somewhat literally, as after many hours of speaking Spanish, navigating cultural differences, and trying to remember every detail about conversations I'm having with people, I need to rest. It can be exhausting.
It's also super hard not to feel guilty for taking time to myself, when it's such a critical time to be out and about in my community getting to know everyone. A lot of it's in my head, but I feel judged and misunderstood when I'm spending time alone to journal, read, listen to music, make phone calls home, or shoot some film. It's hard to know when enough is enough when it comes to my personal time that I take for myself, and when it comes to time I spend out of the house getting to know people. I can easily wear myself down with too much of either.
SHARING & WITHHOLDING PERSONAL BELIEFS
I'm a pretty stubborn individual when it comes to my beliefs, and in the United States I typically don't hesitate to openly and unapologetically share them, explain them, or defend them. I'm ridiculously proud and it serves me well at home. Here in Panamá though, I'm finding that even as a cis-straight female, I'm having to hide and censor parts of my identity from my community. Unfortunately, I'm learning what to keep to myself through a lot of trial and error.
For instance, when I openly and politely shared with an Evangelical pastor that I wasn't a missionary, wasn't Catholic or Evangelical, and didn't believe in God, I was left on the side of the road to walk over a mile back to my community in pouring rain.
When I shared with my host family that I strongly supported the causes of the LGBTQ+ community, I was met with a lot of questions that ultimately created some tension between myself and my Catholic family, although they claim to not care about sexual orientation.
One thing I'm definitely not is a liar, and I'm not even that great at "bending the truth." Therefore, when these things come up, I tend to lean toward being honest. I figure it's easy to just be honest and do my best to explain myself, than try and maintain lies and exaggerations. However, it is proving to be a painful process to divulge my personal beliefs to people who openly disrespect them. While I don't regret sharing anything about myself with my community (as I want to share my genuine self with them), there are some things I truly believe may have needed more time, more care, and better articulation.
Feeling out when it’s “safe” to be truly honest and open has been tricky, and furthermore articulating the things I believe in with my second language has created some barriers as well. Navigating getting to know people in an honest but culturally sensitive and respectful way is proving to have a lot of painful fallout, but is also full of rewards. I’m happy to say it’s getting better the longer I’m around.
PANAMÁ & THE UNITED STATES
How is it that anyone can maintain a life at home, 4,000 miles away, via phone calls, emails, social media, and care packages/letters? Before leaving for service, it seemed so romantic to talk to my best friends for the first time in weeks, or to receive a letter at the local post office; while it’s still awfully lovely when it happens, it’s not terribly fun.
I remember having a stern conversation with myself about a month before leaving for Panamá about over-romanticizing Peace Corps. At that point, it was much less a dream and very much a reality, despite still waiting for final clearance. I told myself to cut it out and get serious about my expectations and my ability to deal with things like isolation, lack of variety, and distance. Even with some intense reflection and mental preparation, nothing could have prepared me for managing my life at home while building a whole life here. I know I’ve talked about it in other posts, but it truly is like being two people, and it’s nearly impossible to find a balance between the two.
The equation to figure out how much time I should spend maintaining relationships at home and building new ones here doesn’t exist. The formula for how many hours I can spend talking on the phone before I get homesick or feel guilty contains too many variables. The budget for visits, shipping packages, mailing letters, and buying time on the internet is miniscule. It’s a challenge I thought I was up for, but I’m finding it to be the hardest thing about being in Panamá.
Additionally, I often ask myself how much of my life from the States I really want here. I’m here to learn, to grow, to be exposed and to be immersed. I’m here to work with a community of people who asked for my help. Do I not owe it to myself and to them to buy into this experience 100% and just be here? Is this not what I signed up for? If it were as simple as answering those questions, then yes. But it’s not.
My heart aches for home: for lakes; for friends; for soft soil sewn with Echinacea, Canada Goldenrod, and New England Aster; for candle-lit baths; for feeling infinite; for dance classes and the women who loved and lifted me.
My heart is open to Panamá: to love from strangers, to new words and languages, to stories from distant indigenous ancestors, to sewing seeds alongside new friends, to feeling strong when I dip my toes into new rivers.
I just don’t know how to make my heart be okay with feeling all of that at the same time.
BUDGET & TREAT YO' SELF
In case you hadn’t realized this: Peace Corps volunteers are on a budget. I’m okay with being transparent about that fact, because I’ve always taken pride in my budgeting skills and financial independence (working in a credit union did in fact teach me a few things, despite me being very bored and sad for a year and a half). The specific budget depends on what country volunteers serve in and what their community is like, but no matter where in the world PCVs are, we receive enough money to pay for our costs of living, and a small discretionary allowance. It includes food, communication, housing and utilities, transportation, clothing, and a vacation allowance.
My first three months here, I was a budgeting master. I was putting money away in savings like crazy to go toward furnishing and fixing up my future house, traveling and vacation, and emergencies. When month four started, though, I became pretty awful at budgeting and overspent my allowance within ten days of receiving it. Why? How? Because of that awful phrase Parks & Rec ruined and enriched my life with: “Treat yo’self!” Unlike Donna and Tom, though, I don’t have a disposable income, I live in the campo in Panamá, and I’m an emotional wreck. It’s a bad combination, especially when you only live an hour from Boquete with its eco-hostels, organic grocery stores, craft beer, and delicious restaurants.
I’ve never been a person who believed in the idea of “retail therapy,” or shopping and filling my life with new things to make myself feel better. When I had the inclination to indulge in this kind of coping, though, I would raid my local thrift stores and come home with $20 of second-hand skirts, heels, and flannel in hand, and probably a bag of tacos from Tacos El Cuñado or Taquería San Jose. Here though, with limited options for cheering myself up, I’ve turned to retail therapy quite frequently. Having a new thing brings me insane pleasure, simply because it’s something to break up the monotony of day-to-day life in the campo. Whether it’s new hot sauce, new spices to cook with, books, music, clothes…whatever. I love things! It’s very unlike me.
After making such luxurious purchases, I often feel rather ashamed or regretful, because I’ve got a budget to keep and a standard of living to abide by; but then I tell myself it’s okay because I deserve treats! Then I realize that’s ridiculous: I don’t deserve rewards for living like other people live every day. They don’t get prizes for living their lives, why should I get a prize for living their lives? And then I tell myself it’s all okay because I’m adjusting and integrating and it’s hard work! And then I remember the kind of to-do lists I’d smash out in the States on a daily basis and realize I’m not doing much of anything here at the moment, so that’s insane. The cycle of thoughts that occur in relation to my splurges are pretty ridiculous, somehow justified, and very confusing.
While I’m getting the hang of the new budgeting now that I’m in site, I’m keeping a meticulous spreadsheet of my spending habits and trying to remember that I am indeed adjusting to some new standards and expectations here, and that it’s okay to mess up a little bit while I’m living with my host family and not paying rent. I’ve already made two adjustments to how my allowance is broken up to better reflect my personal needs, and I’m working on setting better goals and limits for my spending, too.
Finding the balance between treating myself and being a responsible and reasonable human is harder to navigate here than it ever was at home, and learning when I actually need to/deserve to treat myself is going to play a big part in figuring this one out, because right now I feel like I deserve treats everyday for not throwing in the towel and coming home (because I really want to, often, but I’ll be damned if that happens). I also think reassessing what kinds of rewards or treats are appropriate for my budget and my experience here is worth examining.
OVERALL
I don’t think I actually believe in finding a “balance” for any of these things. When I was in college and Professor Eric Snyder taught me the idea of balance in nature was total shit in ecosystem ecology, I kind of gave up on it overall and then forgave myself for sucking at beam.
It’s great to aim for being balanced, but I think it’s more important to realize that a balance is realistically just the average of many fluctuations, big and small. It’s the middle, where things even out after a lot of time practicing to make those fluctuations smaller. It’s really a beautiful thing, in my opinion – laced with some soft statistics, systems-thinking dynamics, and philosophy – to define balance in this way.
Whether it’s your transition into crow pose, your level 4 balance beam routine, or your professional and personal experiences in life, you can’t really expect there to not be days where things just suck or are miraculously amazing for no measurable reason. No matter how intentional, mindful, and deliberate we are, there will be always be a thousand and one lurking variables to throw us off. It’s how we manage those variables, the fluctuations, that matters. So be kind to yourself, and I’ll be kind to myself, and we’ll figure it out in due time.
This gorgeous valley is only 20 minutes from my doorstep; learning to love my home and finding places to decompress are both huge parts of my settling-in process.
Señor Fabio is my personal tour guide of all things nature; he knows every tree, every stream, the years specific trees were planted, and he has a giant vivero at his house.