Don't be just a tourist

"Please be careful." My dad said before we hung up on Skype. It was in reference to my up coming Cuba trip. "Of course!" I replied, "What could I get up to? I'll be staying at a resort." 

He just gave me a knowing look and repeated, "Be careful."

About 20 minutes later, in between texting with Tara about bikini's, cameras, sunscreen, departure times, if I should bring the crib board, I threw in "Wanna be a legal mule for medical supplies?"

As it happened, a mere 5 minutes after talking to my dad I found something on the internet called Not Just Tourists. A non-profit organization that has three ways to support other countries around the world when you're traveling. Their website seemed legit and it linked me to a Not Just Tourist-Toronto branch, and within a few moments I was calling to see if I could volunteer on such short notice, my flight left in just a few days. They assured me they would try to get a suitcase together that I could pick up when I stopped in Toronto the day before my Cuba departure.

Great!

Or so I thought... until I told my partner. In a very happy-go-lucky tone I said something like, "I decided to volunteer to take medical supplies to Cuba. Yeah, I'm just going to pick up a suitcase when I land in Toronto and then drop it off somewhere in Cuba..." 
"You're what?"
"The website has pictures."

To which Dan was the voice of reason and brought up some really good points that hadn't even crossed my mind. The main ones were:

1. Cuba doesn't mess around, especially when it comes to drugs (further research after this talk found that association with drugs in Cuba is a crime punishable by death) Who is packing this suitcase?

2. I had no idea where I was going to pick up the mystery case (something I really didn't see as a problem, I knew it would be downtown and I knew I'd know before I landed in Toronto)

3. I had no idea where I was going to drop off the suitcase. To which my retort was "... the city I'm dropping it off in is called Moron." (You can't search for streets in Google maps of Cuba and there is no street view.)

4. I didn't know anyone personally who had done this before. 

I'll address #4 first, this made me see a whole other way of thinking that gave me even more conviction to follow through. Other people probably thought this way, my friends probably felt this way, and now having done it I want to encourage everyone I know to give it a try.

The address of the pick up was figured out quickly and I was explicitly told to unpack and repack the suitcase so I'd know all the contents. When I got to Tara's that evening we looked at the goods. Everything checked out, there were bandages, vitamins, syringes, pretty much a closet full of supplies.
Not knowing exactly where I would be going to drop the supplies off didn't phase me. I had four addresses of drop off clinics in a town nearby the resort Tara and I would be staying at. 

Fast forward to the Cuban customs. I was nervous, all the warnings people had given me rang in my mind, I had my paperwork handy just in case. But no one asked, no one cared, I had zero problems and easily grabbed my bag and left the airport. 

Fast forward to Moron trip, we grabbed a cab and headed to the hospital.

Hospital in Moron, Cuba

Walking with receptionist

Waiting with cockroaches in the hall

my eyes are closed but the logo is there

Now... as much as I'd like to I'm not going to sugarcoat this. We got there and looking at the outside of the hospital I thought I was making a huge mistake. The place looked great from the outside and I thought I was about to offend someone with my "gift" (I was told explicitly NOT to call it a donation and practiced saying 'Regalo' in my head over and over.) So we got inside and immediately knew we were doing the right thing. This looked more like a converted middle school than a hospital. We were taken down many corridors and eventually were asked to wait in a hall for the director. It was then I realized I wish I hadn't spoken Spanish. Wishing that I had just played dumb and handed over the suitcase and walked away. After waiting for a while, getting hot and bothered, and squeamish for watching so many people pass by a giant cockroach flailing its legs while laying on it's back as if it were a normal thing, we were finally let into the room. The director explained (in Spanish) that he was not allowed to take the gift. It had to be given to a different organization who would distribute it fairly.
My spoiled Canadian self expected him to boot up his computer, connect to the internet and give me the address, directions, and phone number for this other location. But when internet is $6/hour that was not happening. He called his reception, who then called back with a phone number. Then he called that number and surprise... no one answered. No one had another number, or address, or directions.
I was getting annoyed by this point, I wanted to do a good thing and there seemed to be some hoops to jump through. There was a lot of back and forth until I finally got into my thick skull that this man could lose his job for accepting these supplies, which moments ago the receptionist seemed so excited about. So we up and left. With the bag. There were three other clinics on my list that I had gotten from the organization.

I'm going to jump ahead through the minutia, we found the other clinic, we dropped off the supplies, and were not too worse for wear.Apparently there was a doctor coming in later that day for a clinic that only happened at certain times, the lady in pink was the receptionist. If it wasn't for the logo on the door and some randomly placed chairs slightly representing a waiting room, I would have thought it was someone's house.

It's something I would do again but give myself more time.

The Seductively Sleepy Islands of Bocas del Toro, Panama by Peter Stevenson

I just read this really great article about the town of Bocas (where I'm staying currently) the surrounding archipelago, and even Casa Cayuco (where I just finished my house-sit) by Peter Stevenson, featured this month in Conde Nast Traveler.

The Bliss of the Bocas 
The Seductively Sleepy Islands of Bocas del Toro, Panama  
Columbus landed there. Graham Greene made it on his third try. Now our man in Panama, Peter Stevenson, falls under the laid-back spell of the islands of the Bocas del Toro. Welcome to the Caribbean that time forgot

I stepped blinking into the Panamanian sunshine outside the tiny airport in the Bocas del Toro archipelago and had to blink again. I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. In the front yard of a house across the street from the airport exit was the charred fuselage of a small plane very much like the one I had just taken from Panama City. Apparently no one—neither the airport officials, nor the airlines, nor the resort developers hoping to turn the islands of the Bocas del Toro into a Caribbean idyll—had thought to ask the owners of the house to dispose of the wreck. I looked back at the fuselage and thought, At least move it out of view. Or throw a tarp over it—maybe one saying something like welcome to panama.

Read full article here...

The Unexpected Visitor Revealed

So the 'someone' from my last post is my mom! After she got caught up on the important things, like how I hardly ever wear shoes, now have tattoos, and has met the new beau, we had lots of beer and wine, and lots of scrabble playing. Our combined score is just under 600 but "those were interrupted by lots of catching up and basically practice games" says my mom.

She's a very excited-about-everything vacationer, from being a die hard fan of the Casa granola, which is a staple for my breakfasts, to becoming the next spokesperson for great mattresses and fitted mosquito nets. I'm happy to see her relaxing on the dock and settling in nicely with the bugs. The occasional bursts of "GHA! What was that?" remind me of my first nights of jungle life (see Does the jungle love me?) and how easily I live here now.

We've talked about my early influences of Panama, and maybe I hadn't remembered, but a lot of family things may have set me up to come to Panama. My grandparents visited Panama with their children almost forty years ago and I grew up with a wall hanging of about 30 Panamanian molas sewn into a quilt. My mother also wrote a short story about why she speaks Spanish but not Polish, and contributes it to her early influences of coming to Panama (hopefully she'll let me share it here).

I also reminded her of the very influential reason I needed to come to Panama, to live with monkeys. My all time absolute favorite book as a kid (Amelia Erhart picture book biography, a close second) was There were monkeys in my kitchen, Written by Sheree Finch, Illustrations by Marc Mongeau. Over and over I begged my mother to read this book to me. I think of it often when I hear the monkeys swinging from trees, and although there are no monkeys directly in my kitchen they are right outside and always hanging around...
Maybe someplace with elephants will be next...

Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal

I was so elated to close the back cover of this book. I finished a book in Spanish!!!! If you look at my copy, page one is almost completely covered in yellow highlighter. The gruelling process of understanding the first page probably took the same amount of time as reading the whole last chapter. Which was very exciting. To be able to flip though a book and really see your progress is very satisfying.

This is now my favourite way of language learning and probably the cheapest and most effective I've encountered. (I've tried many methods) The most time consuming and annoying part was translating each word on three or four translation engines and how a meaning could change drastically depending on the word before or after. Though I'm sure the frustration helped me remember vocabulary.

Cost breakdown:
Book 7€
Yellow marker for 1€
Basic Notebook 2€
__________________
Total cost 10€ + the occasional coffee

As I read through I would make highlights of all the words I didn't know. I mentioned that while I was resting my feet in Almuñecar. The next step after writing the new word in my notebook and finding the translation, I wrote out new sentences for the new word. The fun part was meeting a cousin, who wanted to improve his English, on the beach or for a coffee and correcting each others new sentences. Then sentences became paragraphs and very odd short stories. Using words incorrectly and saying something vulgar or nonsensical by accident became the easiest vocabulary to remember after the laughter subsided.

I was sad to stop the writing and correcting process when I left Spain but I still continued the highlights until the last chapters where I was able to read through with fluidity.

I've bought the second Harry Potter in French. Since I have read these books in English and there are movies to quickly refresh my memory it was a lot easier to follow the story than something that would have been completely new.

Who knows what language Harry Potter three will be in...