All the Comforts of Home

One afternoon, I was sitting in my jam-packed chiva, which is a pick-up truck with seats and a metal cage built-in the bed of the truck, heading back to the Comarca. As you may imagine, cramming 15-20 Ngäbe men, women and children into the bed of a pick-up truck hardly sounds like a positive feature of Peace Corps travel. But, this day I was in a good mood and ready to get home. We were crammed in like sardines and slowly chugging up the mountain toward Chichica. When we took the first turn over the ridge and the beauty of the mountains surrounded us, I felt calm and contented.

I was so relieved to leave the heat, concrete, and general bulla (noise) of the rest of Panama behind in exchange for all of the comforts, however strange, of home. Things that used to drive me nuts about the campo, countryside, have now sunk into my being and become a part of my new self in this new home, however impermanent and foreign it may be.

For instance, there exists a man whose name is actually Freudland who, whenever he sees me (clearly having forgotten all the other times he’s talked to me) asks whether I think Osama Bin Laden was really killed or whether it is a cover-up. To which I respond, ‘only God knows Freudland,’ copping out of the question with the go-to manufactured Panamanian response for uncertainty: Solo Dios sabe.

At first, whenever someone pulled that line on me, I felt uncomfortable because my natural American inclination was to believe that everything had an answer and that the person could supply it if they wanted to. Now, whenever I ask ‘why?’ and someone responds that ‘only God knows,’ I am reassured of just how small I am and how little the answer really matters despite the best efforts of my endlessly analytical mind.

I can’t say that I’ve become less curious and have stopped asking questions, but rather now have a greater respect for the humbleness of just not knowing and not caring. I now readily accept campo logic, that is, when someone from the countryside tells you something as if it was a tried and true scientific fact. The more you try to fight campo logic with scientific logic, the more you will lose.

When someone tells you that you will get pasmo, or air in your body, if you bathe right after sweating your first instinct will be to wonder, ‘and what’s the big deal if I get air in my body?’ After several months of this, you will just stop bathing right after you sweat because, despite not being sure what the real problem is, you will be tired of the warnings and disapproval from your host mom and will slowly modify your behavior. At some point, it will actually penetrate your once sound and scientific reasoning and you’ll find yourself warning friends that they too should refrain from bathing while sweaty. When they ask why, you will respond with the infallible, ‘my host mom said so.’ They will blink several times and contemplate the virtues of its truth, and inevitably decide to refrain from their bath until after they have stopped sweating, recalling that someone in their site also warned them of this.

I actually find myself believing that an old witch lives in the creek and sings at night during the full moon.

Business as usual can include hanging out with a local family on their porch watching people walk by. One day, I became alarmed by drops that kept falling from a tree. It is summer time, so I couldn’t figure out what it was. After about ten little spats of this followed by me looking perplexedly up at the tree, gramps speaks up and nonchalantly points out “Bugs; they are peeing.” Oh sure, what else would it be? Finally, I zero-ed in on the source: locust-sized bugs that blend in with the trunk, lifting their leg and peeing.

I love the slowness and ease of campo life. After living here awhile, I no longer scream and shrill when a bug is on me (maybe sometimes), I can house a bowl of rice like it is nobody’s business, I’m used to sweating profusely, I sleep through the roosters crowing, and I can bathe with only a gallon of water. All this probably sounds really uncomfortable to you, right? That’s the point: all the comforts of the campo are below the surface, in the interactions with neighbors, in the beauty of our surroundings, in the sense of living in a simpler place that acts in some ways like its 1912, not 2012. It’s all a part of Peace Corps tricks to engender people with respect for the past and to help us realize that it wasn’t really all that bad back then.

Thanks to www.happinessplunge.com for the pictures.