Beyond the Canal
SAIS students get their hands dirty in Panama
By Jonathan Bartolozzi

A SAIS trip to Panama to build latrines, eat spam, and sleep with bats? If you haven’t heard about it already, it really did happen, and from its conception to the fundraising, it was 100% a student effort.

The planning began in the fall when, after a successful project with Habitat for Humanity in DC, the SAIS Volunteer Committee decided to go global. In December, having applied for a grant from the Alumni Association and finalized on Panama as the location for the service project, the wheels were already in motion. By the second week after winter break the group of 10 had been formed, tickets bought, logistics finalized, and funding secured thanks to the support of Dean Kunka, as well as the IDEV and IP programs. Chris Meyer, a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Panama, had set everything up, so from the time the group arrived at the airport in Panama City until they took off back to the US 10 days later, everything was to go as smooth as butter… or almost.

The first day “in country,” before heading out to the campo, the group took a walk around the capital to get a taste of urban life in Panama. As they say, “curiosity killed the cat,” and as a few of our classmates wandered into a “special” part of town, the Panamanian tourist police insisted on escorting everyone to safety; this group of SAISers is definitely not CIA material.

With the prospect of spending a week without electricity, and wanting to learn more about how some Panamanians spend their leisure time and disposable income on a weekend night, a few brave members of the group took their chances at a local disco. Alas, later in the night, although they thought they were getting gringo VIP service on the dance floor, they eventually fell victim to another escort service, this time out of club. The reason, according to the bouncer: “People are not used to your dancing style.” It was time to get out of the city.

The next morning they were off; headed east to the mysterious region of the Darien, where the Pan-American Highway is interrupted by thick rainforest. Destination: Nuevo Paraiso, a village made up of 35 Latino households. There isn’t electricity in Dante’s Paradise, and there wasn’t any in this one either; and there wasn’t any wine either because, being strictly Evangelical, it was a dry community.

The group slept in two cabins in their newly-purchased hammocks, protected by the village watchdog, Jumbo. For meals, they split up into five pairs and ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner with local families. The ingredients varied between macaroni, beans, plantains, eggs, and spam, but inevitably there would be rice, and everything except for the rice would be excessively fried and salted. On one occasion one of the hosts served beef, but it was so rubbery that an anonymous member of the group, unable to swallow it, kept it in the side of his mouth for half an hour until he returned to the cabins, where he was able to feed the half-chewed beef to Jumbo. Every meal turned into an interrogation, as the SAISers used their critical thinking skills to ask their hosts about everything from gender relations in the community, to the value of keeping pigeons as pets.

During the daytime, there was work to do. Carpentry and masonry skills are not part of a standard SAIS education, but they say practical skills are desirable in the job market, so the group was excited to get their hands dirty. The goal: the construction of three composting latrines. The team split up into three teams. Each team worked with the head of the household where the latrine was to be built. They didn’t know where to start, but a Peace Corps Volunteer was there to guide them. He explained to them that the three houses had been chosen using a lottery system, with the sole eligibility requirement for inclusion in the lottery having been participation at two workshops, which had introduced the benefit and use of composting latrines.

Working side by side with the members of the community proved to be one of the highlights of the trip. Even the children were getting involved as they fetched water from the river and carried it to the working site on their horses. After a long day of work the group would head over to the river to bathe and collect water to be used in the morning. At night they would gather firewood under the moonlight and sit around the fire exchanging stories, or discussing development issues, sometimes joined by some curious locals.

By Friday morning each group had built a two-compartment, four-cement block high latrine box, and had begun casting the toilet seats. As agreed, the families would finish out the project, building stairs up to the seats and creating a wood and thatch enclosure. With a farewell gift of sugar cane moonshine safely on board, the group rode away on the same pickup that had brought them there; but it wasn’t time to go back to the capital just yet.

Instead, the group headed further into the Darién, this time to Arimae, an indigenous community, which was not dry, and already celebrating the Easter weekend. This manifested itself in the form of drunk men in the streets, and loud Latin music both as a lullaby at night and as an alarm clock at 6:30 a.m. Deforestation is a huge problem in the Darién and to learn more about it the team visited some plantations and some of the land owned by the indigenous community. A forest can be a dangerous place and an anonymous member of the group had a near-death experience after taking a bite from the forbidden nut, the cashew. Luckily for all, she survived the scare.

If you add to all that the experience of sleeping directly below copulating bats, it really sounds like an episode of “Lost.” But the trip served its purpose: it exposed everyone involved to the challenges of rural development, and built life-lasting friendships.

Jonathan Bartolozzi is a 2nd year MA candidate in International Development