making a space

We made room for a garden the other day. I wanted to play with uncle dave's new camera and play with imovie, too. This segment is about 50 minutes worth at x20!

El Valle...

Our camera stopped working. Life goes on, but the blog has suffered a bit. We’ve been at my Aunt and Uncle’s house for about 10 days now. They live in a town called El Valle, located in the crater of the world’s second largest extinct volcano. Given our love for nature and scenic spaces, we’re pretty content. Some people connect with nature, some people don’t. We do. (If you missed the post about our epic hike, check it out here.)

In the background of our town lies “la India Dormida”, “the Sleeping Indian”. It’s scary how much this actually does look a sleeping lady. You can sorta tell in this picture. Even the tree line makes up her flowing hair perfectly.

Since we’ve been here, we found a guy named Thomas who has an organic farm. We went the other day to help out for a few hours, and we plan on doing that at least once a week. We get lots of joy and fulfillment out of doing things like that. Maybe it’s the being outside, or being next to living, vibrant vegetables. He’s got some really creative stuff going on and we’re hoping to learn more (along with practicing Spanish).

One of my goals this year is to become proficient in Spanish. The other day I was trying to buy a 5 gallon tank of water, which turned out to be a bigger ordeal than I originally thought. One of the lady’s eventually asked me my name – “tu nombre?”. The word for name in Spanish is very similar to the English word “number”. And so thinking she was asking me for my telephone number, I replied, “no se (I don’t know)." They all busted out laughing at the guy who doesn’t know his name, and I quickly realized it and revised my answer. Like I said in a former post, having to learn a new language is like starting all over in life. I don’t even know my name apparently.

So, not being fluent in Spanish is sometimes awkward and uncomfortable (think of me playing charades, making hand motions, pausing for 10 seconds with a strained look to think of that stupid word I can’t remember while a Panamanian stares back confused). But doing things that make us uncomfortable seems to be a good discipline in our lives so far.

The other day we went to visit a house that we’re going to help finish for a family that is having to leave their present one. My Aunt and Uncle frequently host groups that come to Panama to help build houses, provide medical care, or do other service type activities. This group will be here in a couple weeks, and I’m sure Lynea and I will be helping where we can.

Us with Patrick in front of the Catholic Church building.

Con tia Lisa

The whole process...

Joy has 2 coffee trees in her backyard that have never been used to make coffee before. I asked her if I could, and she was more than happy for me to try. Here's the whole process. And yes, this is my favorite post ever!

I picked the cherries off the tree. And because there were so few, I gathered some from the ground.

Each cherry has 2 halves. The cherry skin is on the right, the beans still encased with the slimy pulp are in the middle, and the dry "green" beens are on the left.

The cherry skin

Beans encased in the pulp had to be dried in the sun, and once dried I pulled off the dry casing individually.

The dry "green" coffee beans that have been de-pulped. Ready to be roasted!

The roasting process! I've been roasting coffee for a year and a half now. An easy (but not always consistent) way to do it is in a pan on the stove. Warning: open the windows cause they will be hot and smokin'!

The goal is to roast the beans evenly. This is much easier to accomplish with an air roaster, but when a flame is all you have, a flame is all you need. Just make sure to keep the beans moving around in the pan or they will have burn marks. And during this stage, imagine the coffee roasters of old, roasting coffee over their campfires, telling stories, and staring at the open sky while their flocks sleep.

All that work for this much coffee!

Just enough for one cup.

My nifty hand-grinder.

Meet the hand grinder.

And now, how shall I brew? It's Aeropress time! My favorite way to fully taste all the unique flavors of the coffee.

Meet the Aeropress. This little guy is the cheapest and easiest way to make an espresso style drink without lugging around a 25 pound machine.

And finally, yes! The tasting. Much better than I could've ever thought. I was waiting to be disappointed, knowing that I would still be proud to have done it all myself. But this coffee was the real deal! Smooth, sweet, almost honey-like, with some floral notes. Reminded me of some kind of sweet bread. As they say in Panama, "Tan rico!"

And to review:

1. Pick the coffee cherries

2. Remove the skin and let them dry in the sun

3. Remove the dried pulp

4. Roast the green coffee

5. Grind the roasted coffee

6. Brew in your favorite manner

7. Enjoy!

Parable of the water filters

I recently heard a story that a cultural anthropologist told about getting clean water in an area where there was none. As the story goes (the short version), a group of foreigners visiting a small village noticed how the women had to walk miles each day to get water from a dirty stream. As a result much time was wasted on this journey and most of the children died from water-born diseases, since the water was not clean anyway. The foreigners, knowing the easy solution, helped to dig a well in the village, said "you're welcome" and left feeling good. Consequently, the infant mortality rate dropped significantly, the children were healthier and the village grew much larger. Eventually, the population got to be so large that the land could not provide enough food for everyone. Many experienced starvation and the rest had to vacate the very land that had been in their family for centuries.

Not a very heart-warming story. Here's a few things I get out of it, in no particular order:

1. Our best intentions don't always work out.

2. It takes time and discernment to know what is best. We still might not get it right, but I think we're responsible for thinking of the short and long-term solutions.

3. We must exercise humility in all things.

4. If we have an idea, it might help to hook up with people that have tried similar things before or join people that are already doing something similar, in order to skip avoidable pitfalls.

What are some things you get out of the story?

Having said that, I think that everyone still deserves clean drinking water, and thinking too much into every situation might inhibit us from doing good where we can; leading to inaction. As the saying goes from Ecclesiastes:

Farmers who wait for perfect weather never plant. If they watch every cloud, they never harvest.

So, the medical group that came down last week also brought some nifty little water filters that you can read about here. They're easy to install and simple to maintain. I got to be the one to drive Dave and Ken around and help them deliver the filters to families that requested them.

As one of my co-teachers in India said: "Water is more precious than gold, for without it, we could not survive."

A couple of the organizations that uses these filters:

http://www.givecleanwater.org/

http://water.compassion.com/water-of-life-video/

We're stuck

Not that it's totally a bad thing. We get to spend more time with Joy and Yari here in Volcan, and we're having a good time. But we're almost out of gas and the town has no more at the gas stations because of the road blockages by the Ngobe Indians. It's actually a pretty good idea that they've cooked up: Block the major highway through Panama, which has many consequences for the entire country. It definitely has everyone's attention, and we wait to see the outcome.

We've just learned that the Indians are now on the main road in our town, so just in case phone lines and internet lines are cut (as the government did in other places to try and stop the Ngobe from organizing), we're doing good, and the protest seems fairly peaceful so far. We're all hoping that the Ngobe will be heard and that the government will have a fair solution. But for now, we can't go anywhere.

More online, here or here or here.

Protests and Finca Land

Yesterday we drove up the mountain a bit to Cerro Punta which is where the majority of the produce is grown in Panama. Just driving through made me think of ways we can get back there someday to work for a bit. There is food growing everywhere up there. Even on the side of the road! Beautiful. Notice how they farm on the side of the hills. Amazing.

Cerro Punta is in the Chiriqui region along with Volcan which is where we have been staying. We happen to be stuck here right now. Literally. Not a shabby place to to stuck though.

An indian group is mad at the government. The Ngäbe-Bugle indians have a right to their land. There's a law that says so. Except the government thinks it's ok to mine what's under that land as theirs. For example, iron, copper, gold, etc. This naturally ticked off the indians because it's their land.

So, they are protesting. This means that the Interamerican highway (the only main road that goes from Panama city all the way up to Mexico) is being blocked by burning tires and thousands of people. Fun. This road block is between Panama city and the Chiriqui region (which is where all the food is grown). This is resulting in thousands of people not being able to get home, the city running out of produce, and the Chiriqui region running out of gas (we have less than a 1/4 of a tank with non left in town). It's annoying, but we (and most of Panama) are in support of the Indians. They should have rights to their own land. Unfortunately, it means week long protests and road blocks. Please pray Martinelli (the president) will fix this soon. I'm glad we are stuck where all the food is, but I'm not glad for the rest of the country and the thousands of Costa Rican's stuck with no where to stay and limited resources.

This is also why we have the time today to add 5 new posts :)

A picnic in the jugla (hoon-gla)

Picnics are always great after a long week. Kyle, Yari, Jamie, and I packed our lunches, drove part way into the jungle, and then walked a bit to a beautiful lake. Jamie is 9 years old. Her mom was helping Joy at the house and her sister, Jesse, just had a c-section, so she tagged along with us. We had a blast.

This is the beautiful baby, Josiel. He is 10 days old. Kyle drove Jesse and her mom an hour down the mountain to the hospital when she needed to go and brought them home. He is thin, long, healthy, and perfect.

More Coffee

Yari's grandpa works on a finca de café, so we were able to go visit.

This is Yari. She is explaining that today we will go to the coffee farm owned by Michael Janson (a known coffee brand) with our friend Jamie. Then, we will go for a picnic lunch by a large lake in the jungle. (Picnic pictures in next post).

The actual coffee trees were off this site, but this is where they dry and roast the beans. The dark strip are the beans still in the cherries. The cherries are red on the tree but turn dark when drying.

A worker will come and rake the beans periodically and the cherry shell will eventually shed leaving the green bean.

Drying beans.

Need a workout? Open a coconut.

A coconut gave me a workout the other day. I was sweating by the end of the whole process. However, the taste of it is so worth the work!!! I know how to use dried coconut from a plasitc bag in smoothies, cookies, and friend rice. I know how to open a can of coconut milk to add to my curries and smoothies. I do NOT know what to do with a full, whole coconut. Although I ws successful opening one the other day, I know there has to be a better way. What I want to know is how do people out in the villages open one? I used a screw driver, hammer, machete, spoon, and a very strong husband. They may have machetes and strong men, but I know they don't have a screw driver or a hammer.

Those question may not be answered here, but hopefully you'll enjoy the info, pics, and videos.

Here's a site that lists the benefits of all the parts of the coconut:

http://facts.trendstoday.info/food-and-drink/the-many-uses-of-the-coconut

Joy and her husband found a coconut with roots on it at the beach. They dug it up and put it in the back yard...in a few years they'll have a coconut producing tree!

First, I got the water out with a screw driver and hammer.

Then I used my super strong husband and the machete to crack it open on the lines.

Then I had to pry the meat away from the shell. That's the real hard part.

Now it's ready to eat!!