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Group 72 Training


February 2013

In February the new group of Peace Corps trainees (group 72) arrived in Panamá.  GROUP 72 will have volunteers serving in the Community Environmental Conservation (CEC) and Teaching English (TE) sectors.  The first week the trainees are here, they are brought to a site that is supposed to be “typical” for their sector.  This year the CEC volunteers visited me, in Piedras Gordas, Coclé.
The trainees first time out of Panamá City was when they arrived to my site with four current volunteers, the CEC Head of Training, the CEC Director, Peace Corps Panamá Director of Programming and Training, and The Director of Parque Nacional Omar Torrijos.  The group was welcomed by my host father Ernesto Pérez who gave them a tour of his beautiful garden.  Ernesto has an incredibly eatible and diverse garden, he has mangos, coffee, cacao, tomatoes, cucumbers, oranges, lemons, starfruit, beans, atoe, bananas, plantains and yucca to name a few.  He also has two ponds (one with tilapia and one with red carp), 12 dogs, 4 cats, a pig, god knows how many roosters and hens, two parakeets, a rabbit, two conejo pinata’os, and a gallo del monte.  Afterwards we walked to the tree nursery next to my house.  Ernesto is the founder of the Cooperativa Nazareno (the Nazareth Co-op), he spoke about the history of the cooperativa and it’s environmental ethos.  We then took a tour of my house and volunteers had the opportunity to ask te quesions that every trainee is eager to learn the answers to, and that every volunteer has heard at least 20 times.
After the tour around my neighborhood we went and visited Beto’s organic farm.  The visitors really seemed to enjoy Beto’s farm.  It is spectacular, and he is always proud to show off his newest endeavors.  Currently he is cultivating earth worms, making various organic fertilizers and pesticides, building and planting rice patties, and grafting orange, lemon and avacado trees.
Following the farm we headed up to the school.  At the school we watched fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Sonia Esquivel and her community members teach my community members how to make artisan crafts out of recycled materials.  We then ate a traditional Panamanian lunch (fried chicken, salad, rice, beans and fresh orange juice) that was prepared by members of our waste managment group.  While waiting for the aftertoon performance we discussed working/teaching in Panamanian schools, and I showed the visitors a magic circle that we built at the school to recycle organic waste and provide fresh vegetables for school lunches.
To end the day Yarineth (my host sister and the president of our waste management group) gave each visitor a hand woven sombero pin, and we watched the school’s cultural group perform typical Panamanian songs and dances.
Pulling everything off took a bit of organizing, but the people in my community are usually on top of their game.  They made everything run smoothly, and always make me look better than I deserve.















 Towards the end Pre-Service Training there is Tech Week, a hands on training week that is held in a current volunteer’s site.  Tech Week is designed to provide the practical training that trainees have long desired after sitting through hours of sessions dedicated to theory.  Group 72’s Tech Week was held in fellow CEC volunteer Laura Lynch’s community, Nuevo Paraíso.  I was asked to help design and facilitate their Tech Week sessions, and I presented a session on working in Panamanian schools and teaching environmental classes.  During Tech Week the trainees learned about and taught environmental classes, worked in the school garden to fix the beds, harvest the yucca, build a seed bed, and make organic fertilizers.  They also led a community clean up, taught the 8th graders about waste management, and made artisan products out of recycible materials. After the session ended for the day we hiked up into the surrounding hills, went swimming in the nearby river, and played soccer with the neighborhood kids. 

Although I was working all week, it felt like a vacation.  I always enjoy visiting other volunteers’ communities, it was nice to spend time with my bosses and my friends that were also giving training sessions, and it is fun to hang out with the trainees and see how much they changed in a in just a few weeks.





            

           























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