Zoe's Volunteer Peace Corps @itwasthisorthemilitary - Tumblr Blog

August 5, 2024

I am seeking legal action against the Peace Corps. MiAmbiente is the Panamanian government organization directly responsible for identifying which communities the Peace Corps should consider for volunteers. This article clearly outlines that Miambiente has known about the use of banned chemicals in my site since 2022. For reference, the Peace Corps is not allowed to let us live in a house within 100 meters of a cantina/bar due to the safety concerns of drunk locals, however, there is absolutely no consideration or testing of environmental hazards in potential sites. I have opened a case with the Office of the Inspector General in Washington. As per usual, it's just easier to update y'all in a post like this, than trying to explain it 20 different times one on one.

The farmer looks down from the top of the slope. The dark-skinned and bulky man is dressed in gray overalls and a wide-brimmed hat. This is

July 2, 2024

Obviously I’ve been MIA. I know you’re all concerned and that’s why you’re reaching out. But it’s not a good use of my time or energy to try to explain to you what I’m going through, to just end up more frustrated that you’ll never be able to understand. I know it comes from a place of love, but when I’m this stressed and exhausted, I’m not going to spend my free time recanting the same chain of events to 10 different people for words of sympathy that don’t do anything for me other than make me more upset. You all knew I was leaving for 2 years and that contact would be limited, please don’t take my absence personally. There’s no way I could explain the nuances of what I’m going through to make you even subtly understand what it’s like, and frankly I’m too exhausted to bother.

I am being relocated to a different part of the country. I have more questions than answers.

Hope you’re all doing well, here are some more photos from even more time spent in the city.

June 9, 2024

Still in Panama (I’m losing it🙃)

I can now navigate my way through this part of the city within like a 3 mile radius of my hotel.

I force myself to leave the hotel every day to walk around. I try new restaurants and cafes, and have found a few favorites that I’m now repeating. To my surprise I’ve actually been eating at a Panamanian place for dinner a few nights this week. In a city where i can get almost anything, this place is just that good.

I’ve told everyone in my cohort that I’m stuck here so when Anthony came into the city for an appointment, he invited me out with him and his boyfriend for the night. My group is Group 90, but Group 88 has been in Panama City this week for a Mid-Service Review that happens 1 year into service. I met them all at the office the other day and they invited me to hang out with them while they were here. That was awesome, I got to meet everyone and we all went out to a few bars and the social interaction was much needed. Tomorrow a girl in my cohort is also coming to the city for an appointment so I’ll get dinner with her.

My face is much better and back to normal, my legs are persistent in not getting better. Next appointment is on the 12th. Feels like I’ve been at this hotel for a month. Done a lot of reading and spent a lot of time with Hannah’s HBO account.

May 31, 2024

I’m in Panama City until at least Monday. They’re not sure what’s causing the allergic reactions. They’ve ruled out plants, insects, or food. A man in my community called my boss to offer his theory that I may be reacting to the chemicals they spray on the Pineapple fields here. Because of the rainy season, that fertilizer is just leeching into everything. My skin breaks if i rub it weird or take of my pants too quickly.

I’m miserable, I’m in pain, I’m on a lot of drugs. This blog post is so that you stop bothering me because I really don’t want to talk about it.

Options are:

This most recent round of steroids will work?

Washington will suggest I see a different specialist.

The team will decide to move my site to a different region to see if that works.

Medical leave to the US to be treated there and then return.

No decisions will be made until at least Monday and we see how i respond to this most recent treatment. Please leave me alone.

So Saturday I woke up and before Sophie and Sam came over I went to my new house and put my new sheets on my new bed, and hung my bug net. Because I knew that the last thing I'd want to do after moving everything was then have to make my bed and struggle to hang the bug net in the dark. And there's no question of me sleeping WITHOUT my bug net.

Then I went and collected oranges to offer my friends as payment for helping me out because cooking for them was kinda out of the question because I have one plate and no food.

Then Toño and I changed the oil in the generator that he's leaving at my house.

So then Sophie and her guide showed up, and a little later Sam came to and we got all my shit to the new house. They all hung out while I got myself organized. Sam went up on the roof to install my solar panel.

It was my first time seeing Sophie since Ave Maria so that was really nice, and Sam is my bestie. For the most part we talked books all day because the three of us have just been swapping back and forth books.

After Sophie and her guide left I walked with Sam to the next two over, he has like a 2 1/2 walk from my town back to his so I walked for like 30 minutes with him to show him this really cool abandoned government building near the river. We spent a good amount of time trying to find a way inside and then headed our separate ways. For my first dinner I made boiled plantains (Sophie brought me plantains as a housewarming gift) with some spicy seasoning. Followed by a bottle of warm champagne that Sam brought me as a house warming gift. Had to toast to the new house.

The plantains tasted wonderfully and the champagne went straight to my head because the only things I ate had been oranges and a boiled plantain.

The two of them really hyped me up about my new place. It's 2 rooms: a bedroom and a kitchen area. And I am really lucky because Toño is leaving me with a bedframe, table, two chairs, washing machine, generator (for the washing machine), and helped me hook up my gas tank for the stove.

Sophie is having issues finding a rental option because there's a lot of drama in her town and her family keeps telling her she can't rent every option because the owners are bad people.

Sam doesn't have a rental option...and has been told he might have to build his own?

I'm feeling much more settled, and now that I have space to myself I will seek out social interaction more because it's not being forced upon me. Sunday night at like 8 pm (a little tipsy and pitch black) I walked back up to Elena's house to say thank you for her hospitality. When I tell you that I REALLY didn't want to, I mean it. But she goes to school in the city all day every Saturday so I didn't see her at all when I was moving things and even though she knew I was moving, I couldn't leave without saying anything. So I trudged up the hill and thanked her for her generosity. Then I went and slept in my brand new bed with brand new sheets and was terrified the entire time. The thing about a wooden shack is it's a lot easier for bugs to get in than a cement house, and as we've seen, the cement doesn't deter much anyways. I woke up at every noise and slept terribly. But it's a new space and I'm just not used to it.

The biggest issue is there is absolutely NO Signal at my new house. Obviously it's not the end of the world, it's just the one perk of living at Elena's that was so good was I could scroll Instagram from my bed. But Elena also lived on top of a pointy hill and my new house is in the shadow of that hill. Maybe I maintain a relationship with her just enough for some hammock/Instagram time.

Then Sunday morning I went to Penonome. I am technically supposed to be heading to chorrera to buy more shit that I need for my house (clothes hangers, duct tape, more dishware) but instead I'm heading to the capitol provincial city of the neighboring province, Cocle. Because conveniently, Penonome is halfway between Carlo and I. We've had this little date planned to see the new Planet of the Apes movie and get a hotel room for some time before I knew I was moving. But I'll never say no to AC/Electricity for a night (or seeing Carlo I suppose)

May 22nd, 2024

Oh hey, hello. Are yall concerned? Or pissed off that I’ve been dodging your calls and texts because I don’t like talking about rough times until I’ve figured it out for myself 🙃 This makes me laugh because my therapist reads my blog (Hi Francesca!) and sometimes i sit and think to myself hmmm what would Francesca say about______. Someone asked me “why are you doing this if you’re not enjoying it” and i started laughing hysterically. Never did I think this was all gonna be easy peasy, can’t quit just when things get rough. For example, do i enjoy hiking? No it fucking sucks like 80% of the time, and then you get back to the car and you’re like omg that was amazing i love hiking✨⛰️

Moral of the story: I’m not enjoying myself but if I were living in Massachusetts crippled by financial anxiety would i be enjoying myself there? Absolutely not. Grass is always greener.

ANYWAYS

•Rainy season likes to outdo itself everyday by somehow raining harder than the day before.

•My boss came yesterday to my town to have a chat with my host mom about my health situation. Essentially by process of elimination the rash is stress induced eczema most likely caused by such a drastic change in diet. Entonces, i have to eat wicked strict for the next month to get myself back to a baseline. This is Perfecto para mi porque the Peace Corps decided that it’s unrealistic to ask my host mom to adhere to my new dietary restrictions so oops! Looks like i HAVE to move out 😈. She was pissed it was great, she didn’t believe that I hadn’t orchestrated this whole thing (smart lady, I totally did). Now that I’ve gotten what I wanted, I’m super stressed about what this means. Living alone?? How/where/what the fuck am i doing? So supposedly I’m moving Saturday into my two room wooden shack, but it’s MY two room wooden shack. So TODAY I’m in Chorrera buying a new mattress, a stove, and the connector thing for the stove to the gas tank. This has been stressful because how the hell do I bring a mattress back to my town…no clue. But apparently the Chiva driver is going to help me. I’m just gonna act stupid and confused (it’s not hard) and hope someone helps me. I also bought, one plate, one bowl, silverware, a mug, a paddle, a pot, and a roll of toilet paper. It’ll take a while getting settled into the new house because I can only buy as much as I can carry back on the chiva. So on Saturday Sam is gonna head to my town to help me move everything and then it’ll take some time to get settled. Anxious about everyone asking questions about why i moved early and if i hate Elena. I have to handle it delicately so the official story is that my health situation is complicated and i need to be able to control it on my own.

•So far in the month of May I’ve read 12 books. Most of them weren’t good! But these two were very good. Shoutout to everyone who has in one way or another gotten me books😘

Rainy season is no joke. Solar panels are so useful when you haven’t seen the sun all week.

Photo Post

I got attacked by a vicious dog, named Rocky

The trifecta! First a scorpion, second a tailless whip scorpion, now…this fucker.

This betrayal of my best friend whom I’m spend 6-8 hours with everyday.

And a really pretty bandana I bought.

May 17, 2024

Losing it! I’m losing it.

Skin issues are not getting better. So I’m back in Panama City. It’s getting harder to enjoy the AC/Bed/Shower/Electricity when I’m feeling so physically depleted. So I went back to the dermatologist, and then met with the peace corps doctors, and then met with my sector team.

Consensus is it’s most likely stress induced excema triggered by such an extreme diet. Everything i eat is fried. And i haven’t seen a vegetable in a month.

Relationship with my host mom is strained. I’ve attempted conversations about cooking for myself and needing to eat healthier. She just thinks I’m worried about getting fat. She keeps telling me that my rash is because I’m refusing to eat her food. It’s very petty and not enjoyable and not helping the “stress” aspect of the stress induced skin problems. She told me the reason my rash got worse is because i ate pineapple for breakfast instead of her fried plantains. At this point i don’t care about maintaining a relationship with her so she continues to cook meals for me, I continue to refuse to eat them, then she yells at me for wasting food after. Regardless that I’ve told her I won’t eat it.

Super fun!

So after my meeting with the sector team, we agreed that I will be moving out ASAP into my own place so I can cook for myself. I will head back to my community tomorrow, and Francisco will come on Monday to talk to my mom about why I am moving out early, and help me get settled in my rental option.

It’s going to be a headache and a half getting into the rental option, I have no idea how or where to buy the things I will need to buy but I think this is best case scenario. I told the team that I could not live with her for two more months at the sacrifice of my physical health. That for a job that doesn’t pay me, I’m already sacrificing so much and my physical health won’t be one of those things. Not living life but I’ve done everything in my power to advocate for myself so we will see what comes next.

Losing my mind sitting in a hotel room willing the rash to go down so today I played tourist and walked around Panama City. Visited the Museum of Contemporary Art, took myself back to Casco Viejo, and have only ate salads and Açaí bowls since I’ve been here.

These spot the difference games are getting really hard. Also that’s the exact face I made.

And my friends :)

Some nature

May 11, 2024

Just shy of 3 months since I left Boston.

All of the volunteers in Panama Oeste have to start taking preventative malaria pills because it's getting more and more prolific in this region. This morning I got the 5 AM chiva into Chorrera to pick up my new pills. But today was with a surprise! Liv and I had been planning a super sneaky suprrise for Samuel. Sam's birthday is next week so Liv came up with a lovely little lie on why she HAD to come to Panama Oeste this weekend from Chiriqui. She boarded the midnight bus and met me at 6:15 this morning. We had a breakfast date as we waited for Sam to meet me in Chorrera. Sam and I had a routine day in Chorrera planned, new medications, wifi, cafe, ice, electricity. It was adorable seeing his face when he saw Liv was here. So I got to see two of my favorite people, I am very happy. They are currently on a little date while I do some work on my laptop in the cafe. Rumors that I might get to see Caitlin today are in the air as well, not getting my hopes up, and it's hard to communicate with her because of signal, but hopefully she's also making her way in for the new medication.

Skin has fully cleared up. Things at site are...simply what they are. As before, its less day to day and more an hour to hour frame of reference. Sometimes I feel optimistic, sometimes I feel miserable, almost always I feel exhausted. I typically do alright with the bugs, but scorpions are a different story. After my shower on Thursday night I saw about a 4" scorpion on my wall. I panicked and then smacked it with a frying pan. It wasn't enought to kill him so he fell to the floor and scurried under my shelf. Ain't no way I was about to look under that shelf. So then I kinda panicked. Why am I putting myself through this? I could be living somewhere where the odds of scoprions being in my pillow case is much closer to 0%. Also, I don't have electricity so all of this was unfolding with me holding a small, solar paneled lamp. I proceeded to completely strip my bed; sheets, pillowcases, taking the mattress off the frame, re-tucking in the bug net. The bed was safe. After I had reassembled my bed, the fucker crawled out from under the shelf. I proceeded to crunch him into a pulp with my $12 steel toed boots. He is still sitting there on the floor, I can't bear to move it, and I hope it serves as a warning to any other scoprions that find themselves in my room.

I found out that the director/teacher of the school wants me to paint a mural on one of the walls of the school. Probably either a painting of the world or the country, not sure yet. But I am headed to school on Monday to discuss more.

I also got a traditional pair of cutarras from a man in my town who makes them. I visited him on like my second day at site and he took measurements of my feet. Yesterday, he texted and said they were ready. I really love them and they fit perfectly. Not realllllly sure when I will wear them because with all the rain they're not the most practical.

Hola to everyone who is still reading this, love you <3

May 5, 2024

A real cohesive blog post? Y’all should be so lucky.

Today is Election Day! I’m kinda sad that it’s here because I find politics to be really easy to talk about especially when I have literally nothing else to say. It always fills time and I can pretend to care fairly successfully. I guess I’m going to have to switch gears to talk about how they feel about who gets elected. Things are TENSE tho. Panama has this really cool thing where there’s a dry law between May 4th-5th. It’s illegal to sell or consume alcohol around the election. A very progressive idea and I’m here for it.

Standfast phase is the Peace Corps period of travel restrictions around times of ~uncertainty~ Unfortunately? Fortunately? I am spending stand fast in Panamá city because the foot rash has spread to my face!!!! My feet look so much better and it never got infected which is lovely. But now it’s all over my lips. I was dumbfounded when i woke up with it yesterday. But then i remembered that on Friday i was teaching Millie how to whistle with blades of grass and maybe until I get this skin thing figured out I should refrain from putting plants in my mouth…

So the Peace Corps made me come into the city yesterday because they didn’t want me waiting until Monday when it could get worse, and traveling today would have been impossible.

Things are tense with election in the air. People standing up one by one on public transport declaring who they’re voting for and why. Most businesses are closed today so it’s eerily quiet, I kinda hate it.

So yes, until the 7th or 8th I’m staying in a Holiday Inn at the Panama Canal. It’s insane because yesterday I woke up in the jungle with a bug net and no electricity and now I’m watching the Hunger Games (Juegos del Hambre) in a hotel room. This is what I mean about emotional whiplash, nothing is consistent ever.

I feel cheap, like I’m not cut out to be at site. Especially for such an extended period of time at a hotel. I’m beating myself up for enjoying the electricity, AC, and shower. Trying to remind myself that it’s not a crime to say that I enjoy the break. I just wish when I left site it was because I wanted to/to go do something that I want to do. Not because I’m being told I have to. The alternative is the stomach issues that are holding other volunteers hostage in the latrines. Would you rather have blisters on your lips or puking into a Latrine? Grass is always greener.

My mom here sucks! It’s only three months and she’s not outright hostile. She just kinda sucks. I miss Sughedys so much, I can’t wait to visit Los Mortales and see them. Really just wanted a hug yesterday but not from anybody in my town. Every house I pasear to, I’m like damn…wish i lived here, y’all are way cooler than my mom.

Millie is great though! We’re figuring each other out and she does feel like my sister. We’re the only people that we really hang out with day in and day out and we drive each other insane. We get in arguments or tell each other no and then an hour or so later we’re eating oranges in a tree.

Using my few days in the land of power to download as many books to my kindle as possible (thank you Hannah and Dana 😘). Walked along the canal today near the Miraflores Locks (there are so many flowers to see, aptly named).

Highlights at site:

I really don’t mind the no electricity.

I like how dark it is when the sun sets and there are just hundreds of fireflies.

I spend 10-12 hours a day outside, usually in a hammock or barefoot.

My “bare minimum” for expectations in life if drastically shifting lower and lower.

I’m devouring books like the world is ending.

May 2nd

Two full weeks at site. We're all going through it. Makes it easier knowing everyone else is struggling too. Hard not feeling like an adult. Realizing that crying because I'm not getting treated like an adult is only going to further them treating me like a child. Feet are much better.

Today was good. Millie walked me to the river. The whole day it was just the two of us. We gossipped, skipped rocks, swam, she braided my hair, and had an 8th grade style photo shoot all day. No one else showed up and it was amazing to just not be looked at or perceived all day.

Most days, I'm just waiting for the day to end and it's an appropriate time for me to lock myself away in my room. I'm leaving my room later and later every morning.

I'm looking forward to my plans on May 19th...but if that's all that's getting me through the day, what happens on May 20th when I have nothing to look forward to?

Emo post! It's not all bad, it's just hard and I'm tired and I miss electricity. All will be fine.

Dena and I have agreed to share our highlights everyday to combat the rabbit hole of complaints.

Yesterday: my mom let me help her plant some Ahi with obono (natural fertilizer) she had made. Nice to work with my hands/prove I am competent.

Today: they trusted me to gather ingredients for dinner.

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Zoe's Volunteer Peace Corps