Please allow me to introduce Lydia (no, not the tattooed
lady) . This is Lydia THE FIRST WOMAN BUS DRIVER E V E R
on the Panama-Agua Fria and Darien routes. The first woman driver I have
ever seen in Peru or Panama for that matter. I give this lady a ton of credit
for breaking the bus driver gender barrier. She drives well and fast, takes no
shit from the male drivers (and they can dish it pretty good) and drives with a
big smile. I think she is pretty proud to be the first. And well she should be.
APPLAUSE PLEASE !!
It rained all last night, but the skies opened up blue for
the Global volunteers from Rutgers today. Nice to have no rain, but the sun
baked us in humidity that HAD to be over 100%. And the mud – not like any mud
you have ever seen. This stuff sticks to the bottom of the shoes and just keeps
accumulating thicker and thicker, like some kind of glue. Still, they troopered
on.
Our project was the rehabilitation of some 5 year old
composting toilets In Embera Puru – that picture post-card little village that
I love so much. The biggest problem was the same I have encountered before – it
is REALLY hard to open the access doors to clean out the compost. It took our
expert masons about 45 minutes of pounding to get them open. And they had big
chisels and mallets. The average Panamanian doesn’t even own a hammer (rocks
work just fine, thank you). So, opening the doors is out of their league
entirely. The compost that we then cleaned out was high quality stuff – nice
and fluffy and loaded with nutrients and aerating material.
 |
| Hard to open the access doors but good stuff inside !! |
We also checked all urinals to make sure that they were not
blocked and unblocked the few that were. And for good measure, added a bag of
sawdust for drying to poo part, a slick poster showing how to use and a fine
new plastic toilet seat, just like they have in
the US.
It was a good day’s work and they should be sleeping like a
log. I know I will.
Over the lunch break, I took the liberty of educating the
young Rutgers volunteers about some collegiate football history (first game
played in 1869 between Rutgers and Princeton). Then I told them the story of
one of the best college pranks ever, perpetrated upon Princeton by clever
Rutgers students on the occasion of the
centennial and last Princeton – Rutgers game. As I recall, it happened like
this:
A few days before the Centennial Game, Princeton awoke to
find a huge hole in the spot where one of the many Revolutionary War cannons
was supposed to be, with all the dirt from said hole piled next to it. There
are several of these cannons, buried bore end down in concrete, around the
central part of the campus.
As you might imagine , the campus was a buzz with talk of
the great theft (undoubtedly by Rutgers thugs). The engineers calculated how
the cannon might have been lifted from the hole and carried to a nearby truck.
The pre-law students fawned over the penalties for theft of antiquities. But,
most of us were just generally in awe of the magnitude of the prank. Gives the
brutes credit for that, at least. We fully expected the cannon would be
returned with great fanfare at halftime of the game.
But, the game came and went and no cannon. Princeton took
its annual beat-down with dignity and some thanks that this would be the LAST
game with Rutgers. But, where was that cannon? The NJ State Police got
involved, the respective administrations corresponded with no result.
It took a dog (god spelled backward) to solve the mystery. A
small dog (was it the famous Thurmond?) was digging on the pile of dirt, when
it’s owner noticed a black, shiny object in the dirt. IT WAS THE CANNON !! The
clever Rutgers lads (or was it an inside Nassau job?) had counted on the fact
that no one really knew the exact position of the big gun and had simply dug an
appropriately sized hole NEXT to the cannon.
I rate it as a brilliant prank.
I seem to have good luck when it comes to work days with
volunteers. Today was not one of them. We were all set up and ready for the
Rutgers group in Curti, when word came that they were stuck on the other side
of a parro (traffic stoppage on the PanAm – a strike – in Santa Fe). No
volunteers today. Such is life in the 3rd World.
No volunteers today, so I played with Leonardo’s puppy for a
while. Pups move so fast, it’s hard to get a good photo.
ALL HAIL THE NEW KING “Gorgeous George”. He is the new alpha
rooster in the area, replacing Black Bart. It was a bloody coup (or coop), as
Bart was had for last Sunday’s dinner by my neighbors.
Here is yet another way to wear a Panama hat . I call it the Ed Norton look. (Youngsters can Google “Honeymooners”)
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