It was a two hour hike up the mountain to her community. Cerro means hill, but I think that’s an understatement. My Coloradian (made that up) friends may contest, but it was a mountain by Wisconsin standards!
Aleah’s house made of bamboo and a thatched roof.
I personally think that the view out of your bathroom/latrine window is always a good indication of how beautiful of a place you live in. ;)
The traditional dress of the Ngobe women is the nagua. It’s amazing for a few reasons: 1. You never have to think about what you’re going to wear. 2. You never feel like you look fat even after eating two bowls of rice and 6 boiled green bananas. 3. What’s more hardcore than hiking through the mud and swinging your machete in the field while wearing a dress? Rumor has it the Embera in eastern Panama are crazy about basketball and wear neon miniskirts. It sounds straight out of the dreams of Bri Drake! Either way, my fashion potential is HIGH!
We hiked out to meet up with some other volunteers and visit a sweet waterfall. You probably know how much I “love” lakes, so you’ll be very impressed to know that I willingly headed into the pool, swam across and climbed behind the waterfall and jumped through it into the pool several times. It was like jumping in a pile of leaves – I couldn’t quit!
Overall it was a great experience to spend some time with another volunteer and pick her brain. I also learned how to make chocolate cake in a pot on the stove, how to press sugar cane, and the best way to open a coconut with a machete! AND that I don’t know anything about spiders…. I found a large one with hairy legs in my bag, so I appropriately freaked out. In the midst of it I may have said, “That’s the biggest spider I’ve ever seen”. When Aleah went to kill it with her machete she saw it and just started laughing. Not a good sign…
I need to know how to make a chocolate cake in a pot on a stove!
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We did it dutch oven style! Well we made a make shift concoction of flour, sugar, baking powder, freshly grated cacao, and smushed banana and put it in a little cast iron-ish pila(no idea if that is an english or spanish word). We put three rocks in a larger pot, filled with water to the top of the rocks, put the pila on the rocks, and steamed that puppy for 30 minutes before checking it! Mmmmm nom nom!
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