Happy Fourth of July!
I am celebrating my American pride from Staff House where myself and the other supervisors are reeling from an incredibly busy 5 days of volunteer briefing. We still have a ton of work to do today (planning local volunteer training for example) and probably won’t by celebrating the holiday in true American glory. We received 60-some volunteers in the Panama City airport sunday night (/monday morning…). We also met up with our Panamanian youth volunteers and then gave everyone 3 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Do the math and you will figure out that the day before we made 180 PB&Js. Briefing the volunteers for their five weeks in the field was quite the experience. Let my preface by saying that I clocked a total of 16 cumulative hours of sleep from Sunday until Thursday. The days were fully bilingual because we had a group of volunteers that were from here in Panama and the US. We talked about health and safety, dengue, cultural sensitivity, chicken prevalence, curriculum, and how to facilitate campamentos, or daily camps that the volunteers run. The nine staff spent many an hour one night creating pairs of volunteers and then placing them into communities. The next day I answered questions about community placements for hours upon hours. It was so exciting having the opportunity to place live people into host families who were so excited to receive volunteers. Thursday morning we piled volunteers into busses and dropped them off at their families. The nerves and excitement were almost tangible in the humid air as we wove into the mountains. It was truly a once in a lifetime experience sending the volunteers off into their communities. I would announce “Villa del Carmen is up next!” and then we would hop out of the pick up truck. Bags would fly out of the bed of the truck and volunteers would take an especially long time to put them on their back as curious host families stood by. Then I would give them an (extended) long hug, wish them luck, and send them on their way. It has been quite an adventure and it is only just beginning!
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Lydia CollinsLydia is the Project Supervisor this summer for Amigos de las Americas in Panama. Archives
August 2014
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