New Pictures Added 8/21/2007 Click Here

EL REGRESO

Tomorrow is my last day of class! I will be returning to St. Louis on Saturday. Gracias a Dios! (At first I couldn't figure out why these people were always saying “Thanks, good by”) Unless something unexpected happens that you might find interesting (hopefully not), this blog will go dormant with this post, as promised. I do encourage you, however, to check back over the next couple of weeks if you are interested in seeing more pictures. I will indicate when they are all uploaded on the link to the Flica website.

This journey has been more wonderful than I ever dreamed possible. My thanks go out to all of the people who made it so memorable. Thanks to all of the staff and teachers at ILISA for their great teaching methods, their encouragement and most especially for their untiring patience with me. Also, thanks to Raul Ortega, my driver, who put up with my stupid questions each morning just so I could practice my Spanish. Thanks to the Acosta family, who made me feel part of their family from the moment I got here. The accommodations could not have been better, the food was unbelievably good and their thoughtfulness unequaled. Especially my thanks go out to the Samuido family who literally drove hundreds of miles and spent days of their precious time showing me all over this beautiful country of theirs. They would not let me pay for anything and held back nothing. Tito has many brothers and he made me feel as if I were one of them. Also thanks, to Crista, Rick and the children, who filled in for me while I was gone. And finally, thanks to Liz, my wonderful wife, who has put up with my eccentricities for over 40 years and took this one in stride as she always does.

LA FINCA – PART 3

This is a beautiful country and there are many good people here. The climate is very nice, even in the rainy season; the food, the beer and the coffee are all excellent. But, the one over riding problem is that there is an enormous amount of poverty in Panama. You see it in the streets of Panama City, Colon, David and throughout the countryside. It is endemic. To be sure, there is wealth in Panama and there is a middle class. I am living with a middle class family. But that is all dwarfed by the overwhelming majority of people who live what appears to me to be a subsistence life.

The two vaqueros who work for Javier each earn $6.00 per day for a full days work. They are father and son. The younger of the two worked all day barefoot. He was in the corral in close quarters with the livestock in his bare feet. If he got stepped on by a 400 pound cow, I'm not sure when his workers compensation coverage would kick in. I will not describe their house and their living conditions. I don't think I need to. Javier needs a lot of brush cut at his finca and he asked the father how long it would take him to clear it. Thirty-five days was the answer. “Fine”, says Javier “I'll pay you for forty.” That's $240.00 for at least 35 days of hacking brush and tall grass with a machete. Any takers? When we took the two of them home that evening, the Senora of the casa brought out a small, round loaf of warm cornbread for Javier. It's a good idea to keep your husband's boss happy.

LA FINCA – PART 2

After the mud had settled from the morning. We made our way to the Acosta family finca. The headquarters of the finca is a small thatched shelter at the corner of the property, nestled up against a sugar cane field for protection. Looking out form the shelter you can see the finca spread before you with about 50 acres of rolling pasture that then abruptly rises onto, perhaps another 50 acres of a small mountain. See the group of pictures titled “Finca”. There are about 30 head of cattle, two horses and a colt there and when we arrived they were all up on the mountain.

The first order of business was for the two hired hands to set off with Captain (Cappie), the dog, to round up the cattle. This is the very same dog who wakes me up almost every night about 3:00 AM with the loudest bark I have ever heard. Well, that day he redeemed himself in my eyes. He got half the heard off the mountain and into the corral near the thatched shelter so fast I could not believe it. It was truly a thing of beauty to see. The two vaqueros were on foot and they would call out to him, he would look, they would raise an arm and he would go in that direction and contain the cattle and move them toward the corral. Most of the time he did not need any instructions, he would see where the cattle needed to be turned and do it himself. If the cattle were not moving to his satisfaction he would bite them on the back of the leg and that was sufficient encouragement for them move faster. He would range back and forth from one side of the heard to the other, barking the entire time, biting when necessary and loving his work.

While all of this was going on, Javier was sitting back at the headquarters talking to his friends, who had begun to arrive. Javier always seems to be surrounded buy friends and family during his free time. They are constantly in and out of the house and apparently the finca also. The gentleman farmer was preparing identification tags to put into the ears of the cattle while he talked in Spanish about a lot of things with his friends that I did not understand. In the corral the two vaqueros were getting the first four cattle to be tagged into a chute. Once Javier was ready, he strolled over to the chute with his friends and the vaqueros began to restrain the head of the first cow to be tagged. It was not an easy task, but once it was done Javier reached into the chute, took the cows ear and speared the tag through it with a small instrument that is similar looking to a large pair of channel grips. The process was repeated over and over until the first half of the heard had been tagged. It was brutal, hot, dirty work for the two vaqueros to get the cows into the chute and restrain them and the process took two or three hours. Even Javier was not immune to the rigors of the work. At one point his arm was in an unfortunate location at the rear end of a cow while he was putting a tag in the ear of another. To his credit, he never so much as flinched as the back of his arm was covered with...cow manure. Once the first half of the heard was tagged and placed in a separate chamber of the corral, I had the pleasure of watching Cappie work the second half of the heard into the corral for tagging. Another two or three hours and the work was complete and all of the cattle were released.

While all of this was going on Cha Che was cooking a meal over an open fire under the shelter. I have to tell you once again, there is no bad food in Panama. This was a gourmet meal of some kind of spiced rice and chicken (from scratch, not out of a box) along with sweet plantas that were almost like dessert if they were eaten last; and of course cervezas for the adults and what ever for the ninos.

Soon the sun began to move behind the mountain and the gentleman farmer and his friends broke camp and turned toward Panama City.

The relationship between the vaqueros and Javier is an interesting story. Perhaps I'll have time to tell it before the week is up.

LA FINCA – PART 1

One of the reasons collective farms were such a dismal failure in the Soviet Union, apart from the fact that the system itself was fatally flawed, was that they had no reliable system of farm to market roads. Even if they produced a bumper crop of whatever, it was often impossible to get the produce or commodities to market because the roads were so terrible. One of the reasons farms in the United States are so successful is our system of farm to market roads which most of us take for granted, or even worse have never even thought about. We can get our produce to market, or if the farmer needs a part for his tractor, he can easily get to the John Deer dealer and back in, at the most, a couple of hours.

Well, we left for the Acosta family finca (you probably know the Mexican name – rancho) this morning with a hired truck carrying some large items that Javier could not get into his pick-up. The truck continued on when the family stopped for breakfast along the way. Later,when we turned off the paved road onto the dirt road along which the various fincas in the region are found, it became obvious right away what an adventure this was going to be. This is the rainy season in Panama.

The family was in two vehicles, a 4 wheel drive SUV and a 4 wheel drive pick-up. The hired truck, which had gone ahead, was not 4 wheel drive. What it was, was stuck up to its rear axle about 2 ½ miles up the dirt (mud) road. When we got there, the driver and two men, a father son team, whom Javier had hired for the day to help with the cattle, were all three busy trying with no success to get the truck unstuck. Javier tried to pull the truck out of the mud with his pick-up and almost got it stuck before he gave up. In the process, however, the truck managed to tear up its differential by shifting back and forth from reverse to forward. Part of the payload on the truck was about 30 large bags of caleche, or broken up rock and concrete, for the very purpose of putting in the road in the worse places to prevent the vehicles from getting stuck. While Javier went off to arrange for one of his neighbors to pull the truck out with a tractor, we all began to spread caleche in the ruts behind the truck so the tractor could easily get close. By this time other neighbors from up the road, who had a vested interest in getting the road cleared, came out to help.

As we were all working there, the thought occurred to me that the farmers and ranchers in Panama have made a terrible trade off . They pay no, nada, zero taxes. Now even if they did, there is no guarantee that the money would go to a FM road system or anything else to benefit them, but it sure might give them some leverage with the lawmakers. Right now how successful could any lobbying effort be. They have already cut their deal; no taxes. So, they spend half their day working on the non productive activity of trying to get a truck out of the mud, and in the process they beat up their vehicles by slipping, sliding and dragging bottom for miles.

I mentioned this to Javier as the tractor and the truck disappeared around a curve in the distance. He gave me that ever present Javier smile, swept of his arm through the air in a grand gesture and said, “But my friend, this is how we live.”

Old Panama City

Today I went to Old Panama City which very much reminded me of the New Orleans French Quarter. When the French pushed the Spanish out they built this city a very short distance away from where the Spanish had first settled. The present day residence of the President of Panama is in the Old City as well as some of the government buildings. I have a lot more pictures than I can up load from here but I put a few on the picture site, so be sure to check them out. Also, my guide took me to Noriega's house. There are a couple of pictures of that also. There are a wide range of emotions among Panamanians regarding his up coming release, but my informal poll of taxi drivers, teachers and the Acosta family members tells me that most don't like him because he profited from the drug trade, had many people killed and let his men fight to the death and then when he saw the gig was up surrendered to the Americans. The American government has the best of both worlds in releasing him. We are no longer the bad guys by keeping him in prison and we sure won't have to wory about him in the future because the Panamanian government doesn't want him out and about making trouble so they are going to at least keep him under house arrest for the next 20 years (Maximum jail term in Panama -No death penalty) for the murder of several people.

CRISIS IN AMERICA LATINA!!!

This morning while I was having breakfast, I had my usual attempt at conversation with Julia. After a few minutes of small talk about the weather, the breakfast and little Jemena, Julia looked at me very seriously and began to tell me that she had told Javier and Cha Che (this very morning) that she was not coming back next week. You have to understand that that is a very complex conversation for me to have with anyone in Spanish, much less at 7:15 AM on a Friday morning; and with someone who talks the language a mile a minute. I was not sure that I had understood her, so I asked her as best as I could in Spanish---”Are you telling me that today is your last day to work here?” With her deadpan look she stared at me and said “Si”. And the English are supposed to be the masters of understatement.
Well, today is payday in Panama and it's impossible to get a taxi in the afternoon because they are all busy taking half the city to the bars, discos and karaoke (not an editorial, just fact reporting), so Javier picked me up at the school after my classes today. I wanted to make sure that I understood properly and so I asked Javier, in English, (What a relief to speak English) if I had understood Julia properly. He said yes, that she had told them only this morning that she would not be back next week. BRAVO!!!! What rapture!!!! I had actually understood her!!!! I could not contain my joy! Javier looked at me with disdain and said something is Spanish that this time I did not understand, literally, but got the general meaning form his look. I quickly explained to him that I understood the gravity of the situation for the family. Julia does all of the domestic chores in this house. She cooks, cleans, does the washing, is adult supervision for the children when their parents are not here, and, oh yes, brings coffee to my room every day about 30 minutes after I get back form school. This is going to be a major hardship on all of us.
Javier said that Cha Che is very upset because she has no idea how they are going to manage starting on Monday. I asked if it was the custom in Panama to give such short notice. He said that this is not short notice. Most house maids normally just don't show up if they decide to quit. Julia apparently was being very considerate by giving them the weekend to prepare. I asked, “Do you have any idea why she is quitting?” He said that she had not given them any reason. He said that they had asked if the money was insufficient and she said no.
Okay.......here's what I think. Julia goes home to be with her husband and daughter on the weekends. It is apparently a long way away because Javier said that the bus ride costs her $20.00 each way, which is part of her compensation. It has to be a long ride, because things in Panama are very cheep. So...I asked Javier, “Is Julia pregnant?” The silence was so long that I was not sure if he had heard me. Julia has 43 years as we say in Spanish. From the day I first saw her 3 weeks ago, I thought that she was pregnant, but did not think it was any of my business to ask. She looked especially pregnant to me this morning. For a third trimester, that's a long ride twice every week in a Panamanian bus. Javier said that thought had not crossed his mind and Cha Che had not said anything about the possibility either. I wanted to say, “Javier, it looks to me like she is either very pregnant or has a very fast growing tumor.” but I didn't.
There may be more on this later but probbly not.