The Reign is Here and it´s still Coming

I had some wonderful visitors here in from the states a couple weeks back, namely my Aunt Joanne, cousin Mallory, and her stepmom Susan, oh, and can´t forget Susan´s unborn child who was 5 or 6 months old at the time. We had a wonderful time spending Holy Week in Panama City in a bed and breakfast that was very different from my usual atmosphere in Wacuco, but it was very nice all the same. We were able to see some traditional Panamanian dance, check out the canal, Casco Viejo, this place called ¨El Valle¨ (The Valley) which is a beautiful old extinct volcano with lush green forest all around, and Tocumen which was my home when I first arrived to Panama. We had a great time and I was even able to see things in Panamá that I have never seen before. The picture above and below were both taken in ¨El Valle.¨ Behind us in the picture below there are some ancient drawing on this huge boulder that have yet to be interpreted. We speculated that maybe it is just some old vandalism, but that kind of talk could get us thrown in jail or maybe just damage tourism there in El Valle. Who knows?

Yes, rainy season is upon us here in Panamá, which is both good and bad at the same time. Good, because now we have plenty of water to drink and bad because the rain and mud is much harder to build roads and plant crops in.

We recently got a contract from the government to build 20km of road into this area called Congo which starts from the Pan-American highway and goes towards the River Congo. This area has many Teak plantations, farms and livestock operations and in the future it is hoped to extend the road all the way to the ocean so it can be used by tourists. We have been working on it for over a month now and have made a good amount of progress, but due to the rain, we are having to slow down and be careful not to damage our equipment and just do what we can right now. Recently, I have been learning to drive a tractor so we can get the fields ready to plant corn. It is coming along quite well and I seem to be getting hang of it. It is actually quite enjoyable thinking that I am taking part in the food cycle here, instead of just being a consumer and opening up the fridge. It definitely has made me more appreciative of farmers and the amount of work it takes to produce a crop. It is something we very easily take for granted. I have also been working with a couple mechanics to fix one of our tractors that has been off the ground for some time now. And since the mechanics books are all in English, I have the lucky job of translating the information to the mechanics so we take it apart, fix it and put it back together correctly. I have been learning a lot just by working with my Panamanian friends here and tearing apart and rebuilding a countless number of machines. Last week we finished rebuilding an engine for a road grader that was mixing oil and water inside the cylinders. That took a good week and a half, but now it is up and running well. Above is the current project of the farm tractor that we are tearing apart. Right now it is in three large pieces and we are awaiting to buy replacement parts if we can find them here in Panama. The guy with me there is Cheeto, a local mechanic who knows a ton about heavy machinery and trucks, and does work for the foundation from time to time.