A Video of My New Life in Panama

You will all be jealous of the "opulencia" of my new home and life in Panama. I'm sorry, but I just have to gloat:

About My Humble Abode


Monday Morning, September 5th, 2011. A small earthquake shimmied me awake at 6:30 am. Natures’ call to get up and check out the clear morning-blue sky with a rapturous pink thundercloud off in the distance. The hummingbirds are busy and *Alexi is cooking rice in the fogon.

I finished my woven rag rug yesterday afternoon. It looks so great I couldn’t bring myself to put it on the floor. Mister helped me pound together a simple loom on Friday and I strung it up and started in with some scrap material I had been accumulating. I’ve been accumulating a lot of junk these past several months…coffee sticks and rocks to carve, bunches of dried mints and rosemary ( for something not yet imagined), old pieces of metal and knife blades from the fogon project, thick copper wire from the electric project, and the material scraps from a quilting class a friend teaches in Volcan. She does wonderful work with the local ladies. You can check out their projects at this Facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Volcan-Quilters-Las-Hermanas-de-Acolchado-de-Volcan/144391535625110> You can block and copy this, or just put Volcan Quilters in the search box.

So I have lots of stuff. And almost no place to put anything.
The “house” is a simple Panamanian house; the original part was built approximately 100 years ago (or fifteen…I am not an archeologist) and the kitchen and indoor bathroom added five or so years ago. It is a cement block and wood house; cement block up to about three feet, then clapboard up to the rafters. It is topped off with a tin roof. This makes for some interesting conversations (screaming) in the heavy seasonal rains. There is a small front porch that leads into what I like to refer to as my Living Room Hall. Off of this interesting room (which measures five or so feet by twelve feet, are two “bedrooms”. One bedroom is barely five feet by seven, the other, the Master Bedroom, is large enough for a queen-size bed shoved between two small bed-side stands, and THANK GOODNESS for flat-screen TV’s because this is stationed nicely against the far wall, one and a half foot from the end of the bed. We have room to navigate sideways which is better than not at all. Back in the Living Room Hall, you step down to the Dining Room Den which is open to the kitchen and adjacent to the bathroom. Not much interesting about the kitchen and bathroom except the flush toilet. A little clarification on that in a minute.

The entire house features a polished (waxed) cement floor. I swept, mopped and waxed the all 300 square feet of floors one time and we spent the next week trying to avoid hip fractures. A freak windstorm hit last week and the various bird nests in the rafters (all empty I hope) blew everywhere and I was put-upon to finally sweep and mop again. No waxing though, way too dangerous.

We have wonderful, excellent cold water to the house. It comes from high in the mountains and is untainted by chemicals, livestock by-products or any other contaminants. What it does have is lots of air in it so the toilet and kitchen sink blast and blow hard streams of cold, fizzy water. If you visit and use the toilet, you may want to flush while you are still sitting. It kind of breaks up the day and is refreshing. And wear a raincoat if you are kind enough to wash a few dishes. As for the shower…Mister is in there screaming as I type. Poor Mister.

We purchased two wooden rocking chairs for the front porch. That always makes it feel like home. Aside from the rockers, and a bed, the rest of the furniture is homey-made. The kitchen table, stools and benches are hatched from scrap wood, and delightfully painted by me in odd color combinations. I have thoughtfully decorated the walls with flat-panel wood carvings and set about home-made baskets. Tastefully Tacky, if I had to name the style.

Outside, Mister and I have put in eight different types of choleus, four types of hibiscus, four varieties of fuscia, a few locally common heliconia and an apricot tree a neighbor gave us. There is a chiote (type of squash) vine, rosemary, three types of mint not including a patch of stevia, and various pepper and some pre-existing ratty rose bushes. The entire farm is in coffee with plantain and banana plants here and there. The trees include a type of oak, pine, cedar, orange (one sour orange tree) and two grapefruit...a few unidentified trees that the parrots flock to. Down at the river we have a large parcel of mora berries (a large blackberry). I haven’t seen the mora berries yet as that would involve a considerable walk.

My domestic gardening has not been very successful. The corn drooped at a foot high and died. Insects ate all the cucumber and tomato vines. I left a starter tray of jalapenos seedlings out in the yard and a torrential rain beat them all to death. Sometimes I think of leaving Mister out in the yard, but that’s just on rare occasions. However, the snow peas did quite well as did the arugala. When we have an internet provider other than Fred Flintstone, I will have the opportunity to research safe pesticides and fungicides online. Until then we will enjoy pea and arugala salads.

So that’s about it. Thank you for taking a tour of my humble home…stead.

*about Alexi later…

A New Home In Panama Part Two

(not spell-checked, no excuse, I know)


Skipping forward five months…

So, we have electric now, and what a joy...not so much for the lights but for the freezer for food and for charging the computer and cell phones. We had our first Hoo-Rahs sitting one night in the outdoor kitchen, using the Dremel and sander under electric lights. I have the cordless drill battery charging and look forward to finding something to drill holes into sometime soon. The same night we marveled over the yellow, bug-light light bulbs on the front porch and danced to some music by Iron and Wine. It really is a group and not a metaphor for punching a wine cork out of a bottle with a three inch nail or screwdriver. Actually, this works in the absence of a cork screw.

The drawback with the new electric is that I can now see everything in the house considering I have only a few wood shutters that kept things looking dark and "rustic". Now they look dreary and cobwebbed. This can be a drawback. I will give the place a good dusting and cleaning, then go to low-watt bulbs and relax.

Enjoyment for me is my morning coffee with a waltz-around in my nightshirt and work boots to see what seeds have not spouted and which plants have succumbed to insects and excessive rain. I never know. Amazingly, a rotten potato I threw out the back door has taken root and I may have a small batch in a few months if the grubs don't find them first. The squash has done extremely well, but unfortunately most of the vines crept up around the coffee plants, strangling a few and I had to agree to have the vines ripped out. The sacrifices I make are immense.

We realized that we slept better than we have in a month..that is… since the electric was turned on. It has dawned on us that we had semi-carbon monoxide poisoning from repeated evenings watching Avatar over, and over and over again, the DVD being powered by the generator. Avatar not being my choice...but someone else in my household. This is why it is a good thing to be able to see the outside from inside between wall boards. Great hedge against a silent carbon-monoxide death. Air circulation is a good thing for stupid people. Trust me.

A video of our progress to be uploaded soon.

A New Home In Panama Part Two


Skipping forward five months…

So, we have electric now, and what a joy...not so much for the lights but for the freezer for food and for charging the computer and cell phones. We had our first Hoo-Rahs sitting one night in the outdoor kitchen, using the Dremel and sander under electric lights. I have the cordless drill battery charging and look forward to finding something to drill holes into sometime soon. The same night we marveled over the yellow, bug-light light bulbs on the front porch and danced to some music by Iron and Wine. It really is a group and not a metaphor for punching a wine cork out of a bottle with a three inch nail or screwdriver. Actually, this works in the absence of a cork screw.



The drawback with the new electric is that I can now see everything in the house considering I have only a few wood shutters that kept things looking dark and "rustic". Now they look dreary and cobwebbed. This can be a drawback. I will give the place a good dusting and cleaning, then go to low-watt bulbs and relax.

Enjoyment for me is my morning coffee with a waltz-around in my nightshirt and work boots to see what seeds have not spouted and which plants have succumbed to insects and excessive rain. I never know. Amazingly, a rotten potato I threw out the back door has taken root and I may have a small batch in a few months if the grubs don't find them first. The squash has done extremely well, but unfortunately most of the vines crept up around the coffee plants, strangling a few and I had to agree to have the vines ripped out. The sacrifices I make are immense.

We realized that we slept better than we have in a month..that is… since the electric was turned on. It has dawned on us that we had semi-carbon monoxide poisoning from repeated evenings watching Avatar over, and over and over again, the DVD being powered by the generator. Avatar not being my choice...but someone else in my household. This is why it is a good thing to be able to see the outside from inside between wall boards. Great hedge against a silent carbon-monoxide death. Air circulation is a good thing for stupid people. Trust me.

A video of our progress to be uploaded soon.


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A New Home In Panama Part One

It was hard to leave Chile, and somehow, I will always have a part of me there. But, that’s another story, too long and difficult to write about, or think about, for that matter. Ever onward…

After Mister’s three surgeries in the US, we came back to our old stomping grounds in the Western Highlands of Panama. A place so lovely and rustic and cool that driving up the 250-plus curves towards La Amistad, it felt like a home-coming. I clunked right back into my old life without a stutter. Mister had found an old coffee farm while I was back in the US taking care of my mother. He called me one night.

“I found a place,” he said.

“Really?!?!?!” I absently replied. I had heard this five times since I had been back dealing with home services for my mother, medical appointments, Division of Blind Services, transportation services, painting and sorting out details, watching Home and Garden TV and Oprah. This was the tenth place he had “found”.

“This is it,” he rattled. “I bought it. And, it has a house on it!”

WooHoo! Hhmmmm. Ok. Well. After our long and varied adventures, I, in no kind words, had told him as we left Chile, that I, “am not going to keep starting over”. I thought he understood. As it turns out, I meant I was in no mood for living like a pioneer. He thought I meant I didn’t want to camp again. The “house” aka/place turned out to be something in between.

We began camping/pioneering. There was no electric, but to his credit, there was good water, an indoor flush toilet and cold shower. And eight acres of coffee, bananas, and fruit trees. The floor of the house is cement, and the windows were cut-out holes with wood shutters. A blank slate, I conceded. Mister was ecstatic over the acreage of coffee, however had not thought through was that would involve when it comes to care and upkeep. Creating a livable space from the house would be my domain. As it turned out, so would figuring out the business of the rest of the eight acres. Have I ever mentioned he makes me wonderful coffee every morning? See…there are trade-offs after all.

We hauled in a bed and our clothes. I bought a small generator to run a little washer. After the first week we painted the outside of the house because I could not bear to look at the four odd shades of pink. There was no point painting the inside because it was so dark. I did sweep the walls and knock down the old bird’s nests. Sparing the tedious details, we made the place habitable. We bought kerosene lanterns and beans and rice. We put two rocking chairs on the front porch and started life in Panama.

The Kaleidoscoope of our Lives

The Kaleidoscope of our Lives
Little pinpoints, glimpses of memories
Distorted, enhanced, gone or imagined, different now
For better or for worse

A flash of familiar
Dancing with color or aromas
"I know that person," he says to me, "but I don't know who they are."
I whisper in his ear

A flash. He turns the kaleidoscope
Little pinpoints, glimpses of memories
Distorted, enhanced, gone or imagined, different now
In sickness and in health

We sit in front of the fire and
I remind him, assure him
In sickness and in health
For better or for worse

"Do I like brussel sprouts," he asks?
"You do" I tell him, but today he thinks he doesn't.
"How do I know you aren't just saying that. I can't remember"
"You used to like them," I tell him and he looks sad. Then angry.

Tomorrow he might walk to the river.
He might sit for hours listening to the river sing.
He wonders who he is now and says to me,"I used to be smart."
"You are still smart," I say and he sighs.
"What do we have to do today," he asks?
Nothing. Nothing at all I tell him.

A flash. He turns the kaleidoscope
Little pinpoints, glimpses of memories
Distorted, enhanced, gone or imagined, different now
In sickness and in health

And we might walk up, away from the river towards home.
We might sit in front of the fire.
I will tell him how much I love him and
He says, "I don't know why".

"I wish I could remember," he says.
"It's okay," I tell him. "You remember me."
"Yeah. But I don't remember me," he says.
I take his hand. '
Til death do us apart.

A flash. He turns the kaleidoscope
Little pinpoints, glimpses of memories
Distorted, enhanced, gone or imagined, different now
In sickness and in health
Til death do us apart.

It's our kaleidoscope. Ours.

Wishing I was home...a rant

We left Patagonia for a trip home arriving April 3rd...a beautiful wedding for our daughter, catching up with all of our children and some medical tests. It is June now, two operations later for my brave and strong hubby, and a couple more coming up.

We have had a wonderful time with our children, but being back is disorienting and I am having a difficult time being here as is Greg though it is a good thing we came and necessary to stay until he is all fixed up. The hardest thing is the frenzy and pace. People have NO TIME to live a normal life. I suppose they think this is normal...racing to work, racing to the store, flash meals, buying food and items to save time so they work harder to pay for those things. The TV's blaring "BE AFRAID", the political vitriol, people afraid of crime, children who can't safely play in their neighborhoods. It's craziness. The cost of prescription medicines and medical care...the US should be ashamed!

I see so many people just hanging by a thread, trying to keep a roof over their head and food on the table. At the same time I see things thrown in the trash that is so wasteful I could scream. I long for my simple life. Though it was difficult at times, it felt good and clean and right. I see people who could grow food in their back yards, make good bread, make better food cheaper than they can buy, but many simply don't have the time. It's sad really.

Every fad that comes along, for even small children, sweeps the country and everyone HAS to have whatever the new product is. People talking on cell phones while they are driving, shopping, walking. My god, how did we ever live when our phones were wired to a wall in our homes? Two hundred channels on the TV. Supreme Court decisions that defy all legal logic and wisdom. You can carry a gun on the metro in Atlanta and in Arizona you'd better carry papers showing you are a United States Citizen. The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and that whole debacle makes me ill. Angry aggressive drivers!

I don't belong here anymore. I feel like a foreigner now. I don't fit in and can't see myself being happy here for the long haul. Many folks assume that we left here because we didn't like the US. That was simply not so. We left for adventure and travel. What I have learned is that the US is run, OWNED by corporations and herded by media marketing. It feels like as long as the general population can be kept working and buying at a breakneck speed and a level of fear and misinformation is fed to them, nothing is going to change.

Remember the days when you spent the summers running wild as a kid? Coming home after playing all day only when your mother called you in for supper? Building a fort in the tree in your yard? Lugging a sack lunch to school and being able to work out your differences with a neighbor kid by tussling with them. Knowing how to get somewhere using a map. Walking to school by yourself. I know I sound like an old lady with my "those were the good old days" whine, but this visit has made me painfully aware of just how mired people are now, tied to a consumer hamster wheel, running faster and faster. One day they will fly off and crash.

Friends and family have suggested that I can find my preferred lifestyle here in the US, that I don't have to traipse off to some "god-awful, third-world country". The truth is, yes. If I were financially well-off, I could spend thousands of dollars to find a place in the country somewhere, build a little place where I could do all the things I love to do. But I can't afford to. And I can't afford our medicines or health care, or utility bills. There's alot I couldn't afford to do including spending time taking care of my husband when he's ill.

It's a shame really.

Laguna San Raphael...a last splash

This blog is screwed up and I can't seem to edit...anyway...what I meant to say in the beginning is about the recent horrific earthquake, and all those who are hurting. I feel badly that
Greg and I had already comitted to this trip to Laguna San Raphael, but here it is. ...A few photos of us on a small launch, our usual non-touristy adventure south on a launch to see the blue glacier.
a three-day adventure, all of it far more worth it than a typical Navimag tour. Later, I hope to post the phots of the fishing adventure and other stuff. All we wanted was the blue ice, and we got that and much more....Great trip with Alejandro and Renaldo.

So much has happened in Chile since I last posted. Both in the country in general, and in my life. Most importantly, the earthquake of February 27th...please go to the links I have on my blog for first-hand accounts of the horrendous quake, and also visit http://www.allchile.net/, where a community of ex-pats and folks interested in Chile has made a difference in the recent catastrophe.

Unfortunately, Greg and I had planned a trip to Laguna San Raphael some months ago, and we were time-pressed to make the journey. Here are some photos of the trip....

Begin with November, and hope Spring really arrives

Spring weather in this part of Patagonia has surprised me and confounded me. Just when DO you plant a garden here. People have gardens, I've seen them. But October and up through this week has been alternatively warm, sunny and breezy, then cold, relentlessly rainy and snow. Despite the weather, some things have sprouted though I suppose it will be hard to figure out how to survive on radishes and basil. Hmmm.

I am sitting on a walnut-brown rug in front of the wood stove (brown being my final choice for rugs and other home decoration for pioneer living) and wonder just how I can't remember this Spring weather, or why it still seems a bit "trying" to make a go here. I guess I still need to shed my "call a repairman" thinking. It started with the hydro-electric intake debacle which cannot be fixed, repairman or not, until the river recedes. So, out of electric, we purchased a generator and agonized through the whole wiring a 220V plug to the house and figuring out the Chinese-made generator with the Spanish manual. But we did it. Then, having had no electric for almost a month, the laundry had piled up a bit...but now we had the generator and it worked fabulously! It was a glorious day when we turned on the electric and started up the washer with the first of many filthy loads of laundry. What would you wash if you knew you could only wash one more load to last the next TWO weeks? Well, I didn't know, and I washed stupid stuff...dish towels and socks, a small load. The washer quit agitating, and that was that.

We pulled off the back, looked. Looked some more. Lots of little gadgets encased in nifty plastic boxes, stuff, doo-dads and whatchamacallits. We made a few trips to town and inquiries for washing machine repair and got blank stares, wry looks and out-right laughter. In Futa? Jajajajajaja (Spanish for Hahahaha).

In the meantime, we are enjoying a few hours each night of electric. Greg watches Deadwood on DVD, I make dinner and read or crochet. I bake bread. Then, I notice that there is a sooty film creeping up the wall behind the propane stove, and it finds it's way onto my lovely loaves of bread. Thinking that something has fallen down under the bottom plate, I finally decide to take it apart and investigate. The entire inside of the stove is layered in soot and under the bottom plate I find a quarter inch of caked on hard, black powder. But there are no food particles or spilled grease so it is a puzzle to me how all this black soot got in my stove. I spend four hours cleaning, scrubbing rinsing and drying out the stove and put it back together (not to mention cleaning the wall. Just as I am done, I decide to shake out and clean off the mat beneath the stove. I pull it back and find a partially burned portion of the wood floor. Thankfully, we had a large sheet of sheet rock under the house and we cut it to size and install it under the stove. But what caused this??

See, I have no clue. We went to town to get on the internet to look for answers (also no gas stove repairman in the area). My first ten hits on Google are alarming! If your gas oven produces soot, the most likely (and this is the alarming part) that your oven is producing potentially deadly carbon monoxide gas. Stop! the first site says, "and call a certified repairman". Another site graciously goes on to tell me the three most common causes and solutions but also urges me to call a "certified repairman". So, it is by the grace of the internet that I am still here, writing this. We will take the stove outside, try the most likely solution, and knowing that bright yellow flames are the warning sign, not move the stove back in to use until we have fixed it, or gotten a new one.

I hope you enjoy the pictures of recent snows in my neck of the woods.

(Snowed all day November 6)

New Clothes

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 (So cold in the house this morning that my computer touch pad is having trouble recognizing my finger as something other than a cold piece of clay...I will start a fire before I start in...)

Have you ever stopped by someone's house and caught someone in their "ratty" clothes...the once white t-shirt now stained, torn and gray with "Bart's Air-Conditioning Service" screen-printed on the back? Tatty gray sweatpants cut off just below the knees and little balls of white fuzz all over them. And you wonder if this person either never throws away anything, or do they dig through the Goodwill Car Wash rag bag for things to wear? It's one thing to be frugal, and comfortable, but it's another thing to be a plain slob. But my neighbor Nono has never chastised me for my choice of clothes, and I love her for that. She did stop by last week with a message from town for us, wearing jeans and a t-shirt with paint on them. To her credit she had actually been doing some painting that day in town at her daughter's house. I looked down at my sweatpants (described above) and realized that my ensemble looked much worse than hers and all I had done all day was make bread and build a fire in the wood stove.

My husband was always a classy dresser. Tailored suits, button-down shirts, and silk ties for work. Even for home and in casual settings, and fishing off the beach, he always looked like he walked out of advertisement for an upscale men's clothing store. He wore clothes so well he actually did some modeling at one time. This was a guy who would put on his Tommy Bahama shorts, a nice shirt and deck shoes to take out the trash. After all these years of traveling, and two years now in Patagonia, I have corrupted him.

Yesterday, as I sat downstairs watching the sky lighten, drinking lukewarm instant coffee (using hot water from the tap because the gas tank for the stove ran out and I and still hobbling from the broken foot and can't drag in the other one from outside) I heard him stirring upstairs. A few minutes later, he comes down the stairs in long johns, tri-colored wool socks and a sweatshirt that looks like it came from the prop room of a horror movie. He slipped on his rubber boots and went out to get wood and change the propane tank. To dress for the day, he pulled on a pair of bluejeans now washed to a faded baby blue, splashed with old varnish and a color of paint I can't place, and went to the neighbors to get a tank of gasoline we have stored there.

We "refresh" our clothing supply every year when we go visit family but this year we are well past the one-year point and it shows. We do each have one set of "goin' to town" clothes but even those are showing signs of wear and tear. Gone are the days when my husband would dismiss a t-shirt because it had a small stain somewhere on the sleeve, or toss a shirt because he thought the cuff was frayed. Gone are the days when he would reject something even though I would point out that no one would know the bottom button on a shirt was missing because he would tuck in his shirt anyway..."I would know", he would say.

It is time, though, to retire some of our clothing. Things that are so hideously worn and stained from our days camping and building and painting and varnishing, torn from pushing through brush, caught on nail heads, or threadbare from volcanic ash that I wouldn't even cut them up to use as car wash rags. Then we will traipse into one of the Ropa Americana stores and start again. This time I will steer towards clothing in the black color scheme.

Mahjong stats: Games played- Games legally won- 200