Comments from Azuero

The newest comment is at the top, so if you want to read in chronological order go all the way to the bottom and work your way up.

November is called 'la mes de la patria', for some reason Panama ended up with it's patriotic holidays crammed into one 25 day period starting on the 3^rdof November and ending on the 28^th of November. The patriotic holidays take place on the 3^rd (Panama's separation from Columbia in 1903, the 4^th (Flag Day),10^th (Primer Grito de Independencia de La Villa de Los Santos, 1821); and the 28^th (Independence from Spain in 1821).

Aside from these patriotic holidays the festivities really start, out here in Azuero, with the Anniversary of the founding of Chitr� on the 19^th of October, proceeding through November with the patriotic festivities, and continue in December with Mothers day on the 8^th and then Christmas and New Years. The rainy season is usually drawing to its close in November or December and so the feeling is one of celebration and an anticipation of summer and all that comes with it. (Like Carnavales). It's an interesting time of year and often it's hard to get any work done because of the numerous days off. Still, I'm not complaining.

Some holidays are similar in many different places, although the big Christmas celebration here takes place on Christmas eve, at least in tone, it's not that much different than Christmas celebrated in a lot of other places. The emphasis is on family and friends and food and drink and the spiritual meaning of the day. NewYears is like New Years just about anywhere else I've seen. The patriotic festivals usually entail a parade and though it may be a little more raucous than most gringos are used to, hey, it's still a new country, there's room here for everybody to march in the parade if they want to.

Being a gringo however, means there are some holidays I grew up with that are not celebrated here. The two most notable are the 4^th of July, and Thanksgiving. The fourth can be celebrated much like anywhere else, barbecue, friends, talk and fireworks. None of that is too hard and if you can hook up with another gringo to celebrate, all the better. Each year builds another memory.

For me, the hardest holiday to explain, and to celebrate has been Thanksgiving. There is no festival like it here, and although I can explain the idea behind the day and people can understand the idea of the traditions, the fact is it is hard to come up with the traditional items here. Before anyone writes me explaining that all sorts of things are available in Panama City, I know that. But I don't live in the city, I live over 250 kilometers west of the city in one of the most traditional (Panamanian) places in the country. In the nine years I have been out here I have seen exactly two small bottles of McCormicks Sage in a store. That was five years ago and all of my attempts to get the store to re-stock this item have been futile. Fortunately, a couple of years ago a friend of mine brought down a couple of pounds of sage and I still have a good supply. But that's not the only thing, Thanksgiving not being a holiday here means that Turkeys don't become available in the supermarket until just before Christmas.

Then there is the pie problem. Out here there are none. Not only are there no pies but if you want to make one you have to start from the crust up. There are no pre-made frozen crusts available, no cans of pie filling (or if there are, the price is horrible). I don't eat a lot of sweet things, but there are times when the smell of a fresh baked pie is important to recall the long line of holidays that have incurred in front of the present one. Sometimes innovation and resourcefulness are the only means to preserve a tradition.

During my first few years here I found the last week of November to be a little depressing. Besides the fact that Thanksgiving day here is not a holiday, and so is almost always a work day and there seemed to be no way to celebrate with even a few of the traditional foods. Thanksgiving means eating, and eating good stuff that you can't seem to get any other time. It took me a while to figure out how to resolve this.

I now think of Thanksgiving as sort of a portable holiday, since it is practically impossible to celebrate on the last Thursday of November, I just move it. Usually on the last Sunday of the month I will make a few traditional foods (without the turkey), and kind of fake it. This has the added benefit of an afternoon NFL game on TVN. I can usually assuage the deprived spirit without too much trouble. Then on Christmas day, while most of the rest of the family is sleeping in, recovering from the excesses of the night before, I will fix a traditional meal. A week or two before Christmas is when it finally becomes possible to buy a frozen turkey and so the number one guest at the fiesta is purchased as soon as possible and prepared that day. This has been the rule for the last few years, and I was surprised how well the idea has caught on with my family here. Last year it went over so well that we did it again on New Year's Day. I'm looking forward to it again this year.

Innovating in Azuero.

Leo

• It's a quiet night in Pes�, seated out here in my rancho, tummy full and a little beer to aid my digestion and thinking. Only the sounds of bugs and frogs and toads; and the night. Out here in this part of Azuero it has been raining less than in the previous weeks. Today there was a very light rain in Chitr� and it looks like it was here in Pes� as well. As usual, after any sort of precipitation the air gets very still. Tonight seems sort of soft and jungly.

• I am re-reading the Tolkien series from the Hobbit to the Return of the King. I have read these innumerable times in the past, but left my old (the Ballantine) copies behind when I came here. Recently a very good person brought me a new set. I have not been buried in them, I have been savouring them. Some of us were meant to live in Middle Earth and just barely missed the chance. Now we live in obscure parts of the world. Sometimes I think I will expand this rancho and make it into an imitation of a Viking Great Hall, complete with barrels of mead and lithesome wenches. But on the other hand, that might meet with some objections and to tell the truth, I have probably been spending way too much time watching and listening to the Viking Kittens.

• As I sit and write this I am engaged in a little bit of mosquito control. I have a nice stogy from Cigars Joyas de Panam� (in La Pintada) lit. This is one of the little 'Coronitas', but it guarantees a pleasurable hour of rolling that heavy smoke around and blowing it out in big puffs and clouds. These burn so nicely that the ash doesn't want to fall off. I remember reading something a long time ago (I think it came from the old cult novel, 'Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me') about cigars rolled in Cuba between the shapely thighs of a lovely se�orita. These cigars weren't! They were rolled in a little hand operated machine, one at a time, and they are very good. They don't need any implication of the fairer sex to be enjoyable. As a matter of fact, this cigar may be why the fairer sex here has decided not to join me tonight out here under my new tin roof, asking endless questions and making pointless conversation. I love her a lot, but maybe I should buy a few more of these.

• I had a doctors appointment today. This was under the auspices of the Caja de Seguro Social. That means it took up the whole day, mostly spent waiting for a twenty minute visit with the doctor. I have been on a diet and today demonstrated how effective it has been. My cholesterol has increased by ten and my weight is up a pound over where it was two months ago. Maybe I should concentrate less on this, it sure wouldn't be any worse than I am doing with all the intent I've been putting into it. Throw out the chicken breasts and seafood and go back to the pork and bloody beef. Maybe the water out here is fattening, I will have to drink less of that.

• I now have okra producing. I may be the only person in Herrera with okra. Here it is called '�aju', but no one really knows what to do with it. About the only way I have heard people talk about it here is that in the past it was used to make a sort of coffee.

  What I have growing is some kind of local variety. The plants are short, they have only grown about two feet tall, but are producing like crazy. And on top of that it grows extremely fast. Last Sunday Margaret and I went out and picked the first batch leaving only pods that were an inch or less in length. Yesterday she went out after school and picked again and there were pods that had grown over five inches in the four days since Sunday. I hope those will be good for seeds, I am learning everything the hard way it seems, and I don't really want to take a chance with the next crop of okra.

  The family has been impressed by the various gumbos I have been turning out. I'm not sure if it's the okra or the rich taste the roux imparts on everything, but they have been asking for more. The next step will be the little hot pickled okra, they go so well with beer.

  Well, I guess that answers any question I had about my diet.

• This years birthday celebration in Chitr� was bigger than ever. It's interesting to share a birthday with another festival. It was entirely by accident that I have ended up working in a city that celebrates its birthday on the same day as I do. But if I had it all to do over again I would do it on purpose. For anyone thinking of expatriating, try and pick a spot to live that has a fiesta on your birthday, it counts for a lot.

  The festival in Chitr� was bigger than ever this year. The streets were packed and so the parade moved with exceptional slowness. It was great, arriving a little over two hours after the parade started it was easy to cut across a few blocks and catch up with the beginning.

  In my opinion, this is the best festival that happens in Chitr�. It is sort of like Carnaval, but without the silliness. And it is a very big deal, people spend the year getting ready to celebrate the founding of Chitr�. Founded in 1848, on the 19^th of October, Chitr� was 154 years old this year. By happy circumstances that was my birthday too, not the 1848 part, just the 19^th of October part.

• I've now had the chance to hear my voice on the radio for just over a week doing the taped punch advertising the change that will be coming over the station. Most folks that have heard it don't realize it is my voice, they say the Spanish is too good. I have heard people comment and say that it was really made by some of the folks at that station who were just fooling around trying to make a gringo sounding voice. I think that is kind of flattering. I was always a sort of shy person, but this has been an opportunity to let the ego out a little bit.

  Oh yeah, and even better yet, a local merchant that advertises on this station has started a new commercial for his store with a voice trying to copy mine. Of coarse he doesn't come close, and never could, but it seems sort of funny, and flattering.

Just living a life in Azuero.

Leo

• "Muy Pronto, implantaremos el cambio. �Esp�relo!" (The power voice, deep and a little guttural.) This is a riot! I came halfway around the world, and someone now wants to turn me into some sort of celebrity. I have never done anything like this before, I got lots of opportunities in the army to talk on the radio, but that was a little different. This is the first time I have been able to listen to myself. My voice has been snagged by a youth oriented radio station and they want to turn me into a sex symbol for the central provinces. My first question is how come this couldn't have happened about ten years ago, before artificial 'aids and stimulants' were necessary? Good grief! Ten years ago would have been perfect timing, I was still skinny too.

• Seven years ago I was just barely hanging on. I had come here with some money (not enough), a dream (very na�ve) and in love (there's the fuse on that explosive combination). Inside less than a year I was broke, disillusioned, and, well, basically trapped. Working for promises. I weighed less then anytime in my life since I was a teenager. My goals were reduced to trying to eat enough from one day to the next to keep from fainting. We lived by eating a lot of rice and eggs.

  I would hold my new daughter and sing those old celtic lullabies that my blind grandmother had sung to me, and wonder if Margaret would ever understand that she was my hope. I was so depressed that I am still amazed I survived that time.

  I look back on those days and honestly don't see how there was anything else I could do. It was better to have two dollars here, five dollars there, and the hope that a break would come and things would improve. A person can live on rice and eggs, but it's awful hard to live without hope. I worked hard, it felt good to put my mind and body into trying to make a dream a reality. The hard part was going back to the house at night, it left too much time to think.

  The first time I received what resembled a payday, was in the amount of thirty dollars. This was after more than six months. It was the most money I had seen at one time since the bad times had started. A few months later I was actually being paid seventy dollars a quincena (every 15 days). When the decimo tercer mes was paid that August, I was paid a whopping thirty dollars. (The decimo tercer mes is one of those anomalies here. It is an extra months salary, split into three parts and paid usually in August, December and April). Well, with thirty dollars extra, we felt like maybe things were headed in the right direction, if not moving a little slowly. We loaded everyone up in the old car and went to the beach. The next day I was a little angry at myself for splurging so much, but truthfully, what else would thirty dollars have done. Better to build a good memory, and have a little release and pretend that things were normal for a little while.

  I remember that day very well. We went to the beach at Guarare, and grilled hamburgers and drank beer and played in the sea. Margaret was about a year and a half old and we waded in the shallow water. She stuck her finger in a little hole in the sand and Wow! A hermit crab latched onto the intrusive digit and didn't want to let go. Margaret doesn't remember that, but I do, five minutes of trying to pry the little claws apart with her crying and screaming. What a memory!

• Well, things finally did improve, sometimes in a sort of curious way but things seem so much more promising now. I just hope it lasts.

• I want to write about my experience building this little rancho behind the house. But it is still a little close and I am having trouble putting it in perspective. One of the major problems with building anything here is how folks want to change your idea. I have lost track of the number of times I have heard someone explain that "this way is better, this is how it is done here and, coincidentally, this way is easier". Nowadays it just sort of wears me out to start hearing that stuff.

  The place is usable and certainly comfortable. There are a few things to correct and then the second phase of work to be done, but for now I am more or less content. The woman has started moving plants into and around and hanging off this thing. Soon it will just sort of blend into the background and be even more comfortable.

• Back to the 'bad times' for a minute. I am glad that is over, but I don't really blame anyone other than my own naivety. At the time there was just no other alternative. I was working for another American citizen, and during that time things weren't much better for him. Unfortunately, when things did improve, his attitude and manner seemed to revert to a sort of "I got mine, screw you" type of posture.

  He seemed to grow unhappier by the day, and was increasingly critical of 'these people', they being the folks that call this part of Panama home. I felt more and more like the Burt Lancaster character in the movie 'Ulzana's Raid'. Especially when he told the lieutenant that he (the lieutenant) didn't know these people at all (the Apache). But that he (Lancaster) knew these people very well, he was married to one.

  So it was with this fellow as he became more and more unhappy and frustrated and finally committed some rather serious errors and ended up losing his part of the company. I understand that he is now back in the states, I hope he stays there.

• Chitr� celebrates its 154th birthday this weekend. It was founded on the 19th of October, 1848. There is usually a rodeo, various dances at night and a big parade Sunday. This is really one of the premier fiestas of the year. It has always been one of my favorites. I might be a little prejudiced since the 19th of October is my birthday as well. It's really neat to have a whole city celebrating with me, and if I work that birthday angle right I can usually garner quite a few free beers from the participants. I realize that sounds kind of tacky, but what's more subtle than walking into a group of people and shouting out that it's my birthday too. I have the I.D. to prove it so what the heck.

  Oh yeah, now with the radio thing going on that ought to help a little too. I guess that it really is a little too tacky to start saying "that's me" when the punch comes on. Oh well, I'll have to think about that for awhile.

• Now just one last thought, I might of spent my time as a poor person, and certainly had my share of frustrations and fears and pain. But it sure doesn't seem to have affected my ego much. That seems to be pretty well intact, maybe growing even. Of coarse that's the result of having paid my dues so to speak. I do have to say, it is a real kick to listen to that thing on the radio. Who would have thought, seven years ago, how things would play out. It sure feels good at the moment. And muy pronto, it could get even better.

Leo

I am in the process of building a little 'galera' behind the house in Pes�. This will be a place to house the world's greatest barbecuer, and also equipped with a 'fugon de barro' to be able to boil 'yuca ' or prepare a 'paila' of 'arroz con pollo' over a wood fire. This will be a place, open to the breeze, to prepare those gourmet delights of Pes�. Slow wood smoked barbecue that melts away from the bones and maybe some crispy 'chicharones', fried in their own fat.

The company I work for is a small chemical plant. We fabricate a number of different household chemicals. We also operate a bleach plant that produces sodium hypochlorite solution. The company is actually owned by a large Panamanian corporation. The founder of the corporation passed on a couple of years ago. He was a very interesting individual who after he had made some money, seemed to enjoy spending it. When he would learn of a business for sale, if it caught his eye and he thought there was some potential in it, he would buy it. As a result of that, the corporation is very diversified.

I bring this up because one of the companies that form a part of this enterprise is one of the largest construction supply companies in the interior of Panama. Of coarse I am buying material for my construction project from them. Keeping the money in the family so to speak.

Among the materials I am buying is a yard of crushed rock and a yard of sand. These are to make concrete for the floor and also, to make mortar for the block wall in back. It's important that they not be mixed together while they are being delivered. When I made the order, I talked to the guy that schedules the deliveries and explained that to save everyone work, why didn't they load the truck with either the sand or the gravel at the end of the day and I would drive that truck home and deliver one of the materials myself. After all, I had used one of these little trucks for transportation for over a year when our company was added to this family of businesses. When I returned to the plant my boss was there and after explaining the plan to him he called the transportation chief and the plan was in action.

About four thirty in the afternoon the construction supply company called and said they were sending the loaded truck over with one of their drivers. My nephew happens to be the messenger for them and he was the driver who showed up with the truck He was hoping I would be ready to leave and he would have a ride to Pes�. He was out of luck; I had to wait for our bleach operator who had a batch still to finish up. My nephew decided he would rather head out early and took off on foot to catch a bus. The truck he had dropped off was a little Hyundai with a dump bed. Empty it probably weighs about two and a half tons and is licensed to carry about five tons. The truck is a fairly new addition to the fleet of vehicles, and I had never driven this particular one before. Last year when we had put in a new septic tank I had delivered material in the same way, but the truck I had used for that had been a Daihatsu. It was a fairly simple, straightforward little dump truck. This Hyundai was nice, but it never occurred to me until I had reached Pes�, that I had no idea how to raise the bed.

In the past, I have had the opportunity to operate a lot of different types of heavy equipment. Everything from those spiky, steel wheeled compactors, to back-hoes, to bulldozers, I felt fairly confident that I could figure out how to get this little dump truck to act like one. Every dump truck I have ever driven in my life has had a lever, in one place or another, that operated the hydraulics that raises the bed. Even the Daihatsu had a lever next to the steering wheel that dumped the load in back. I figured I would be able to understand the inner workings of this little Hyundai.

I got to the house a little after seven in the evening. Without a moon and under an overcast sky, the night was very dark. I felt around for the proper lever to pull, to dump my ton of crushed rock, but couldn't find it. No problem, I unpacked the other things I had brought home, the soda and a small supply of one of God's gifts to mankind, beer; then went in the house to get a flashlight. Collecting my one-dollar flashlight (a necessity if one lives where there are frequent power outages) I went out to look for the right lever to make this dump truck behave correctly.

Like I said, I have operated a lot of different types of equipment and this included various dump trucks. Although each truck had its peculiarities, they all had a simple class one lever located somewhere that operated the dump bed. This Hyundai was turning into a real puzzle, the only lever it had was the parking brake and the lever behind the cab to release the catch to be able to raise the cab. Neither of these functions interested me at the moment.

By this time I had help. Of coarse, it wasn't the kind of help I really wanted at the moment. About the second time my wife asked me why I hadn't found out how to operate this stupid truck before I left Chitr�, I sent her up the street in search of my nephew. After all, he had delivered the danged thing to start with so surely he knew how to straighten up its act. At that point I did the only sensible thing I could think of, I went in the house and started to cut up chicken and drink a beer.

I hadn't gotten very far in these endeavors when they both showed up. I left the things on the kitchen counter and went out to see what the magic trick was. Stupid me, my nephew didn't have a clue how this truck operated. After watching him fumble around the cab in the same manner I had done, I told him to get out of the way and I climbed back in. Now, with both of us sitting in the cab of this infernal machine we contemplated the options. We could see the hydraulic cylinder under the bed of the truck, but no amount of pushing buttons or pulling on things would make it work. Finally reaching the panic point I said I wanted to look for Andre, another person who works for the same construction supply company and often makes deliveries in this very truck. Mario, my nephew, knew where he lives and so we went over to the side of town by the road to Sabana Grande de Pes� to plead for help.

He wasn't home. What luck! There is a sort of basketball championship going on in Pes� this week, so we went over to the 'concha arriba' to see if he was there. After verifying that he was nowhere close to the game, we took a long shot and went by the house of one of his uncles. As we pulled up in front of the house he came out. Maybe things were starting to look up. We explained our predicament and expected to hear him say that you had to push this or pull that and everything would be solved and I could go home and dump my rock and get back to the chicken and beer that was now warming up where I had left them on the kitchen counter. Andre must spend a lot of the time on those deliveries sleeping because he had no idea how to make this machine from hell operate.

Well, now what? Thinking hard, quelling the rising feeling of shame and anger, I decided it was time to call my boss and get the phone number for the chief of transportation. It was now almost eight p.m. and I needed to get in touch with him before he left to go home. We drove about two blocks and I jumped out of the truck in front of the local Cable and Wireless office. Pulling out my five-dollar calling card I stuck it in the phone and punched in the million numbers needed to make the phone work. When I placed the call, a recorded voice came on and told me that my card had forty cents credit left, and then the call went through. I explained the situation and my boss said to hold on a minute, as I was waiting for him to come back with the number of my salvation the same recorded voice returned and said my card had expired. That was it. The line went dead.

We went back up the street to the little Chinese mini-super that was still open and I bought another card. Then I decided it would be better to try the phone call from the house. I probably need to explain that we have had Cable and Wireless block our phone so that it cannot make long distance calls. The reason is that after a few phone bills paying for calls made by remote family members to exotic locations like Panama City at fifteen cents a minute, we just figured we could do without talking to anyone outside of Pes�. However with my trusty calling card any calls could be charged to that card.

By now it was about ten minutes after eight and I figured my boss must have thought I had either hung up on him or maybe had some sort of seizure. I placed the call again and listened in frustration as the phone on the other end rang and rang and rang. Nothing. They had gone. I tried his cellular but could only leave a message; he didn't answer it either. Now I was totally on my own. I gave up. I told Mario that I would just take the hellish, hated truck back in the morning in total disgrace and humiliation, still loaded with my rock. Of coarse that would mean enduring years of cruel jokes about this gringo that couldn't figure out this simple-minded truck. What else could I do? In my mind I started to fabricate a story to try and ease my humiliation.

We walked out of the house, he picked up the bicycle he had stolen earlier in the evening to come to my aid and left. I climbed back in the cursed vehicle and backed it into the spot where I had so happily contemplated dumping a yard of crushed rock earlier in the evening. As I reached for the key to turn off the motor, the thought occurred to me that since this was a new truck, it probably had some sort of security device so one wouldn't accidentally dump stuff while driving down the road. Maybe you had to do two different things at the same time to make this thing work. I reached up and depressed a button on the dash that I had earlier thought was the button for the engine brake. I reached down and pulled out a handle that looked sort of like an emergency brake in an old Dodge and let the clutch out.

Wonder of wonders, the bed raised, the gravel dumped and I heard a chorus of heavenly angels singing Handels Messiah, the whole of creation was rejoicing. I dumped my damn rock then went into the house. I still had chicken to cut up, onions to chop, and beer to drink.

Feeling a little stupid in Azuero.

Leo