CocoVivo

The local school in Laguna de Tierra Oscura (Darkland Bay in English)
is directly across the water from CocoVivo. It takes just a few
minutes to get there via boat. You could even borrow a kayak from
CocoVivo and help yourself across the water for a visit. There is an
elementary school and a high school. The elementary schools serves 70
kids and has four teachers, while the high school serves just 20
students and has two teachers. When I visited, there was an abandoned
construction site behind the teacher-housing complex. Apparently an
effort to expand the school was put on hold when funding fell through.
For those of you interested in visiting CocoVivo for a longer period
of time, volunteering at the school to teach English (or another
subject of your expertise) would be a great opportunity to give back
to the local community. The pictures below are from a visit a few
months back. I met a bunch of sweet local kids who loved to pose for
the camera, and then giggle at the pictures of themselves on my
digital camera afterwards.

                       

Click here to download:

La_Escuela_en_Laguna_de_Tierra.zip (590 KB)

I was reading in my room (The Power of One – great book!) just before
sunset when I heard a huge commotion coming from the sea below. It
sounded like a downpour but with raindrops the size of coconuts.

I climbed down from the left to investigate, and found the water
alive. Hundreds of massive fish were jumping in and out of the water,
traveling in an enormous school and creating quite the racket.
Pelicans circled overhead hunting for dinner. I just stood on the
dock, watching the performance, realizing I was witnessing something
quite special. In over a month, this is the first time I’ve seen
anything like this.

The workers over at the caretaker house heard the commotion and came
rushing outside too. Ricardo grabbed some fishing line, jumped in his
boat, and drove right into the center of the chaos. A few minutes
later he was fighting to bring in a 15 pounder. Men passing by in
canoes recognized what was going on and stopped, throwing nets into
the water and pulling out their fishing lines. I’m pretty sure
everyone lucky enough to have come upon the traveling fish brigade had
a hefty pile of fresh catch by sunset.

Later on, after delivering some fish to his mother, Ricardo brought
his remaining catch over to the dock. I watched as took one fish and
cut the throat, pulling out the gills and stomach. He cut open the
stomach to see what the fish had been eating. It was pretty gory but
also really neat. We discovered a jellyfish in the stomach! Less for
me to dodge the next time I go swimming.

                             

Click here to download:

Startled_by_a_School_of_Enormo.zip (696 KB)

*This blog post was written by Rick in 2006 and I’m reposting it here as it gives great insight into the English you hear around Bocas. I referred to it in an earlier post as Wadiwadi because that’s what it sounds like when the locals tell you the name. It’s actually written as Guari Guari. Here’s the link to the original entry: http://www.outscape.net/bocas/archives/entries/dock_ants_and_turkles_-_bocas_english.html*

Any idea what a "dock ant" might be? As in "De dock ants dem ya eat de ud plenty."? Well, something that looks like an ant and walks around your dock and eats wood.  A termite!

This is just one example of the continuous joy of discovering more and more about one of my favorite languages -- The Bocas variety of Jamaican Creole English, locally known as Guari Guari. There are actually two varieties -- one is spoken exclusively on Isla Bastimentos, and the other everywhere else.

It's very simple english, with very little grammar, various spanish words mixed in, and some strange pronunciation exceptions. It is used mostly for everyday conversations and work -- Man Hing and Emiliano are amazingly efficient at using it to communicate work-related ideas. This ranges from an easily understandable "Go where de tree top com down and mash op de plants dem and clean dem and fix dem op." to a more context specific "Him supposed to reach" ("I think that board is long enough"). But as soon as things get more complicated (for example, when discussing how to fix the generator or how to enroll kids in school) they switch to spanish.

Vocabulary is very limited, but used in very ingenious ways... For example, the word "mash op" is used very frequently... partly because of a rather liberal definition of what it means, and partly, because, well, there is plenty of things that can get mashed op, such as wood taken to poorly maintained saw mills with incompetent operators, coral when driven or paddled over, sweet potatoes or boiled plantains, saplings when a giant tree falls on them, small trees in the nursery when leaves fall on them, recently planted tomatoes when the dogs play in them, etc. The spanish translation, interestingly, sounds a bit similar "machucar".

Another favorite word is "reach". It is used all the time, in different contexts; for example "She no reach?" or "I want to aks im when i reach dat side".

This takes us to some pronunciation peculiarities -- "ask" becomes "aks", but "school" stays "school". "tl" becomes "kl" as in "turkle" and "likle" (which then becomes "liki", as in "liki bos" = mini van").

After spending a while in Bocas, you catch yourself using some of the rather unusual vocabulary. For example, the word "molest" is incredibly useful... it is used to mean "to bother, to disrupt, to be in the way" etc. Pretty close to "stoeren" in german. English doesn't have a good translation, and it is a very useful word...

In the same category is "mind", as in "Mind you fall" or "dere have shoal, mind you mash op de coral". By the time you somebody says "Be careful not to slip and fall" it's usually too late…

One of my all time favorite quotes: "Dem aks plenty questions. Only ting que falta is dem aks you how you lie down wid you wife". Roberto was referring to a census team from the UN that came through the area a while back... Another good one: "How you umen?" "She plenty sick." "What happen?" "She have rocks in she liver." (gall stones - they eventually came out and she is fine now).

The dock ant example illustrates how closely tied the language is to the lifestyle and the environment... take, for example, the following definition of a chisel: "Dat ting you use when have hole in boat, knock wid hammer". De boats dem use have plenty soft part where com in wodah. To fix you mos take ot de soft ud dat spoil and den shov a timber in dere wid pegamento for fill de hole.

I woke up this morning and took my daily dip in the Caribbean – always
a treat. A few minutes after jumping into the water, Adelina (the cook
and housekeeper for CocoVivo) came toward me with a big smile on her
face, holding the wooden handle of a fishing spear with a long, slimy
creature on the end of it. Now Adelina’s English is understandable
most of the time. She speaks Wadiwadi, also known as island English,
which includes a lot of “hey man’s” and “don’t be touch dat der’s” and
seems to have Jamaican influence. This morning, however, she couldn’t
remember the word for octopus so she told me she had speared a snake.
A bit confused since it certainly didn’t look like a snake, I climbed
out of the water to study it closer. That’s when I saw the tentacles.
She had speared an octopus! I put my finger to the one of the suction
cups. Surprisingly strong! Adelina told me every now and then she sees
an octopus in the water near Ricardo’s house, and uses the fishing
spear to kill it. I asked if she planned to cook and eat the octopus
(expecting it to be a popular delicacy like in the United States) to
which she replied with a grossed out face, “No, no– I don’t eat dis! I
use it for da fish bait. It brings in da big ones.”

       

Click here to download:

Suction_Cups_Tentacles_and_Spe.zip (187 KB)

Last week at CocoVivo, I hopped into a boat with Rick, his friend
Maikao, and one of the guys living and working here, Colin. Thirty
minutes later, we arrived at the village of San Cristobal.

We went because Rick needed to speak with the village leader—the local
authority for the immediate area. Earlier in the week, Rick caught
thieves trying to steal $200 worth of building material off the roof
of Ricardo’s house (Ricardo is the Panamanian caretaker at CocoVivo)
while he was away in the hospital. Rick took off with some locals to
chase down the thieves, and discovered they had abandoned their boat
and were hiding among the mangroves in the water. He snapped a great
photo of the shocked thieves treading water in the dark. In the end,
of course, Ricardo got his stuff back.

So there we were in San Cristobal, delivering the photographic
evidence to the proper authorities. Like most places in the province
of Bocas del Toro, the village of San Cristobal was built on the
water. It is home to 800 people, half of them children. Considering
some of the poor Bocas communities I have seen so far—where water near
the docks is so dirty from sewage that a laceration on one’s leg would
most certainly get infected if submerged—I was blown away by how clean
and put together this place was. The people we met were all friendly
and helpful. The children playing in the streets looked clean and
healthy. The school had plenty of desks and books. Everyone seemed
generally happy. Despite a lack of money, somehow this village had
figured out a way to prosper.

I soon discovered the village leader was responsible for turning
things around in the past few years. He had been elected into power in
San Cristobal despite the fact that he was not from the area. Nor did
he have a family. Yet the locals certainly seemed to respect him, and
value his judgment. I wondered - why would the people of San Cristobal
want somebody from outside to come in and run their community?

The answer, I later discovered, was that the village leader’s external
roots allowed him to act as an unbiased third party in local disputes.
The locals liked him because without tight knit relationships to
certain people in the community, and without a family, he was not
tempted by bias to take sides on any issue. Running a village in this
way makes a lot sense, even though we typically observe leaders rising
from within the community. Comparing San Cristobal to other poor
Panamanian villages in Bocas, one has to question the extent to which
its unusual style of leadership accounts for its success. Just another
contemplative day in paradise…

                                                   

Click here to download:

Discovering_San_Cristobal_the_.zip (1628 KB)

repost from http://blog.freebooksapp.com

While the CocoVivo retreat in Bocas is remote, there is electricity provided by solar power and a decent wireless connection. So, it’s definitely possible to come here and get your work done. For the Internet, we currently have 384 kbit/s and we’re in the process of upgrading.

I love working on my computer down by the dock, especially when there’s a nice breeze as that means no chitra (no-see-ums/sandflies – my worst enemy here).

The view from the dock is unbeatable – boats often pass by with friendly waving Bocas residents and the sunset around six o’clock is out of this world.

I arrived at CocoVivo on September 25, and it is definitely one of the
most incredible places I have ever lived. Given I grew up in Alaska,
among striking mountains and natural beauty, that’s a pretty
significant statement. CocoVivo is actually a 55-acre farm bordering
the Caribbean Sea with some awesome housing accommodations, perfect
for adventure seekers looking for a change in lifestyle. Most of the
farm is a reforestation project. The owner, Rick, recently told me
that 20 different native hardwoods are being planted here everyday,
and that over 8,000 trees have been planted since the project started.
For energy, CocoVivo runs on solar power with a backup generator for
rainy days.

I’m staying in the house on the water (the other option being to stay
in the house on the hill). To get to my room, you walk down to the
water, along a long dock, and then climb up a ladder into a large loft
area, with a bed and a wooden sink and some shelving. There are no
walls, only wooden support beams for the thatched roof and views of
the Caribbean Sea and surrounding islands. When there is a strong wind
and the rain comes down diagonally, you can pull down tarps to protect
the room from getting wet. I woke up my first morning to the sound of
intense wind, pouring rain and water starting to get my mosquito net
(absolutely necessary for this place, because there are many bugs that
you do not want to sleep with) wet. Once the tarp walls came down
though, everything was fine. Staying on the water, I can literally
wake up and jump into the sea for a morning swim. It’s great. I’ve
also tried out snorkeling, the wakeboard, and the AquaSkipper– a
bizarre, challenging water workout device (more on this later).
There’s also the boats, the kayaks, water-skis, and more.

From a first impression point of view, what I love most about this
place (aside from its location) is how it is still in the development
phase, and that you can get involved in the direction it takes if you
choose. If you have a creative idea that would benefit the lifestyle
at CocoVivo, you have the means and resources here to implement it,
whether it’s a new recipe or something to be built. For example, one
of the guys staying here thought it would be nice if he could dip his
feet in the water while working down on the dock on his laptop. Soon
after, one of the Panamanian workers employed at CocoVivo attached a
simple, wooden desk-type structure to the end of the dock, so you can
dangle your feet in the ocean while working on the Internet.

One of my first adventures here was a hike through the rainforest with
Rick and his friend. When we got thirsty, Rick cut open a few coconuts
(coconut trees are in abundance here) and we drank coconut water – the
perfect way to rehydrate without having to bring along water. The
coolest part of the hike (in my Alaskan opinion) was the dense terrain
we had to fight our way through when we decided break new ground and
“walk alongside the water” to get back to the house. Rick led the way
with his machete, and cut out a path for us to follow. It reminded me
of home, and how my dad used to bring along a chainsaw to bushwhack
our way into my family’s cabin when the trail had not been used for a
while. I’ve been here less than a week and I’m already in love with
this place.

                 

Click here to download:

Blogging_on_the_Ocean_My_Arriv.zip (464 KB)

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