January 31, 2015
I’m currently sitting on a bucket in my house watching the
sun shine and the rain fall at the same time. The weather has been bipolar all
day, which kind of puts a damper on activities requiring leaving the house. As
I sit here frequently zipping and un-zipping my sweater, let me tell you about
the month of January. Over half of the month was taken up by IST (In Service
Training) which consisted of trainings, meetings, field trips, beach visits,
catching up with friends, and (at least for me) an unexpected hospital visit.
The first week of IST was at a conference center located a
short walk from one of the many beautiful beaches on the Pacific Ocean side of
the country. This week the entire Group75 was together for trainings. It was
the first time I had seen the majority of my group since we swore in (in
August). The week of trainings was interrupted for me at least with a trip to
the hospital. Nothing that dramatic or interesting I’m afraid. I had been
having stomach pain after every time I ate since the middle of December. I went
to the doctor and received ten days of multiple drugs to fix the problem; my
stomach was producing too much acid which was causing inflammation and pain. I
was told to make sure I ate at the same time every day to help my stomach regulate
itself. One little problem. The pain came back after I stopped all the
medication they gave me. Now I’m not the type of person to let a little stomach
cramp interfere with daily activities, but this was not that type of pain. This
was debilitating. Every time I ate something I spent the next two hours or so
lying in bed in pain unable to do anything. So what did I do? I stopped eating.
And called my doctor. On day two of training I went to see specialist in the
city. He told me he wanted to put a camera down my throat to determine the
diagnosis. So the following day I checked myself in at the hospital (in
Spanish, which was a lot harder than I thought. Turns out I have very little to
no Spanish hospital vocab) for an endoscopy. I woke hours later, still very
drowsy from the sedative with a diagnosis of gastritis, 30 days’ worth of
medication, and copies of pictures from the procedure. In color. Back to
training (and eating) I went.
One of the discussions during a training we had was about
privilege. In particular, white privilege, but also other common types
noticeable in the US and in Panama; age, sex, gender, income, etc. One reason
for this discussion was because a lot of the time, people are unaware of their
privileges. Especially when everyone around you growing up has a lot of the
same privileges. Now that we are living in a developing country, our privileges
are a lot more noticeable to us. One question brought up was whether we (who
are privileged) should feel guilty or not. I sat back surprised as voice after
voice of my peers rang in a choir of the affirmative; they do feel guilty for
their privilege. I could not help but ask myself why (I do ask myself that a
lot in Panama, but that’s beside the point). Why do they feel guilty? Why
should you feel guilty over something you have no control over? I most
certainly do not feel guilty for the privileges I had growing up and the ones I
currently hold today. I could not voice this among the overwhelming number of
my peers who were so adamantly swayed the other way, but here I can more easily
explain myself. The majority, not all, but the majority of the privileges I
hold, I did not choose. I have white skin. I did not choose this, I was born
this way. I also did not choose the time, place, or into what family I would be
born into. All of the privileges I had growing up (food on the table, good
health care, a wonderful education) I also had no decision in, these privileges
were dependent on my parents and the decisions they made. Do not mistake my words
here to sound if I am placing blame or guilt on someone else. I am just stating
how I have had no say the majority of my privileges. No, I do not feel even an
ounce of guilt for the privileges I hold. I feel grateful. I feel blessed. I
feel like I have been given amazing opportunities. And I have chosen to take
those opportunities to support the majority of others whom are less privileged.
The following week I went to a small town with the 12 other
coffee SAS G75 volunteers for a week all about coffee. Coffee was talked about,
seen, touched, and of course drank.
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| Coffeeeeeeee |
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| Learning about worm compost |
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| Pruning coffee trees |
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| G75 coffee |
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| Our fearless leader |
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| Peeling the cherries |
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| An industrial cherry peeler |
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| Each one of those white sacks is filled with coffee beans |
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| Drying coffee |
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| Enjoying Santa Fe |
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| Giving a training on coffee pruning |
*All Photos in this post "Acidity" are photo credit Jacob Trusty. All Rights Reserved.
Good morning, how are you?
ReplyDeleteMy name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because through them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately, it is impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are very small countries with very few population, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this, I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Panama? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Panama in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
28902 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally, I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely
Emilio Fernandez