Harold Hibbert, President of the Pro Mejoras de Almirante is seeking technological support for recycling from a sanitation engineer and two small dump trucks. Almirante lacks basic garbage infrastructure. This community organization is seeking outside help to turn their town into an attractive destination and place to live. Please share this video with as many people as possible. Use twitter, facebook, and other platforms, including emails. Thank you.
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On Aug. 2, 2016, I left the Colegio Secundario de Almirante (Almirante High School) to meet Harold Hibbert, the president of the Comité Pro-Mejoras de Almirante. It was the start of my fourth week as a participant in Panama Teacher Match; a program funded by the US Embassy in Panama and implemented by the non-profit organization, Partners of the Americas, based in Washington, D.C. The program supports the work of Panama Bilingüe, a national initiative enacted by the President of Panama, Juan Carlos Varela, to improve English teaching nationwide though extensive teacher training. I was confident Harold would meet me as planned. The previous Thursday I had been taking a coffee break between classes in the teacher’s lounge when another teacher announced that a “señor” wished to speak to me. I shook hands with a tall, 63-year-old, English-speaking black man. He said his daughter had told him that I was in Almirante as a representative of the U.S. Embassy in Panama. He wanted me to seek help from the embassy for a recycling program to reduce the problem of garbage in Almirante’s streets. I told him that I did not have influence inside of the embassy, but would like to accompany him on tour of the garbage in Almirante, and to videotape an interview that I would share with as many people as possible, including the embassy. Most of my interview of Harold was conducted in English. Almirante is home to the descendants of Afro-Caribbean workers from the English–speaking Antilles, primarily Jamaica. His request coincided with my overwhelming response to the suffering of the inhabitants of Almirante, a small, banana port (pop 12, 430) facing the Caribbean. Every night, neighbors burned their garbage, including plastics, on the street where I was staying with a local teacher. At the height of the rainy season, piles of garbage mixed with standing water throughout the city -- in the streets, ditches and culverts, residential yards, and outside stores. Garbage rotted alongside food preparation. One and two-room shacks stood on stilts over standing water filled with mosquito larvae and scattered trash. The afternoon I spent with Harold changed my perspective completely. I learned that people burned and buried garbage in an attempt to keep the city clean despite the government’s failure to provide a garbage disposal infrastructure. My guide, Harold, representing a local service organization, understood the problem and knew what was needed to solve it. Harold was waiting for me at the bottom of the high school’s driveway. He gave me a gift of two small cinnamon buns wrapped in plastic and labeled with his business contact information. He sells empanadas, pastries, coffee and soda to survive and support his family. A taxi driver took us to meet Leila Wenham, secretary of the Pro-mejoras de Almirante. Because Harold does not like to use the internet, future communication between use will go through Leila, an accountant for a local business. Leila confirmed that Almirante’s garbage collection system was private and informal. A man collects the garbage once a week and takes it out to a spot along the highway to Changuinola, a neighboring town. Residents pay him $6 a month for this service. People also bury or burn garbage in their small back yards. “We, the Comité Pro-mejoras, have bright ideas, and a heart full of emotions and creativity,” Leila said as Harold and I left on our tour. “We want good things for this town. We invite you and others to come to Almirante, it is a beautiful paradise, and we want you to discover the beauty of this place and to witness the beauty of its people.” Her invitation contrasted sharply with the description of Almirante in Moon Handbooks Panama by William Friar, “You’d have to be bananas to choose to stay in the small, ramshackle banana port town of Almirante.” Harold, his daughter Yenniffer, 17, and I began our tour behind one of town’s the small grocery stores owned by Chinese immigrants, where garbage overflowed from a metal cage. Harold said the residents of Almirante don’t like to see the garbage pile up there. “You pass by here, and there is an ugly stench,” Harold said. “If you come back in a few days it will frighten and repulse you. There are a few men who earn their living picking up garbage in their pickups. But that is not what we want. Not only the grocery store puts their garbage here, anyone can drop it off here, and in a few days there will be a mountain of it. We want to create a system to prevent this. If we owned some trucks we could do some better work, at least keep the town clean. We have a place to take the garbage (a dump), we need a system to get it there.” Harold, president of the Pro-Mejoras Committee, said they have a plan and are seeking technical support and training for recycling and funding for two dump trucks. “We are trying to make a difference,” he said. So, one thing is sure, we have heard of recycling, but we don’t have the knowledge of what it is and how it is supposed to be done. Understand, we don’t have the knowledge; we don’t have any kind of experience of what is recycling. What we would like is to have someone that can give us some real instruction about how it is to be done, in what way it can be done. That way we can … (divide) … the garbage, understand, plastic maybe this side, cans the next way, organic rubbish in a different spot….try to change the place, and that is what we would like to do. (With recycling) we would have less garbage and we would find things that we could do with the garbage, we can earn some change (cash). Also, I think that if we are recycling we can have someone doing some more work (employment). “In the meantime, we would like to have a way to get the garbage out of the town ...You have people selling different things (food) and the garbage is right there. … (We need) a small truck that can turn over the garbage, not a large one, two or three small trucks so that we can just take the garbage out of the city and take it to a different place, where it won’t cause damage, that is what we are looking for. That is what our government cannot give to us, I don’t know why, we cannot get it. We are trying to see if we can get help from somewhere else, so that we can make this town look different. Understand, clean.” Harold finished our tour of Almirante with a closer look at the water and housing. We stood over a bridge where we could see the oil stained water. Algae lies on top of motor oil and mosquito larvae. The ocean water that flows throughout the port city, much of it under the homes of its poorest residents, is dark with opaque filth. Wooden shacks built on stilts over tide water abound in Almirante. Their roofs are rusty metal and the walls have glassless window openings without screens to shield against insects or animals. The Chiquita banana company built the homes to house their employees, selling them for a symbolic price of around $100 to former employees when the company left Panama. Panama still ships some bananas out of Almirante, but the industry has mostly died as a result of a fungus that affects their quality. Harold has eight children. All of them have an education; the older children include a nutritionist, a criminologist, and a member of the military. The younger children are still in school, one of whom wishes to be a lawyer and the others still undecided. Yenniffer hopes to complete a bachelor’s degree in criminology. Harold studied accounting for a few years before settling on his small empanada (meat or cheese pies) business. “I learned from my parents how to make a few pastries and breads,” he said. “I found it difficult to work for other people because there is not much honesty among employers here. I always fought for my rights, and I had a lot of conflict with my bosses because of this. I decided to start selling empanadas. Now I sell bread, sodas, even coffee every morning so that my children can get ahead. I am slowly building a good house, little by little. Every day I work and save and add a little more to the house. But it doesn’t interest me to only improve my own home, the town where I live should change for the better as well. The children need a different future. He said he wants to the town to change, too. “My daily fight (struggle) is to have a change in this little town before I dismiss from it,” he said. “My family is gone. Most of the people from here they grow and they just go, there is nothing here, understand. There is a lot of future here. It’s just that it needs someone to prepare that future. I just teach my children they are not supposed to finish school and look for life someone else, they must try and build life here. That is what I am trying to do; change this situation with those couple of people that think just like me, change the situation of this place. It’s a nice place, like old Leila tell you, no? A beautiful place. It just needs a little work, that’s all.” Three men passed me on the beach. I was sitting in the shade when they returned back up the same way. I heard the shortest say, “sh_t.” I asked them if they were being bit by the sand fleas. It was that one word that made me ask if they were Americans. Here is their story.
In 1989 they left Panama with their mother to live with their stepfather. Two of the brothers were born in Bocas. The youngest was their father’s biological child, and he was born in Panama City. Their father was a veteran of the United State Military and worked in the Canal Zone and served in the military. He was living in California when he met their mother. She was a teacher. She worked for many years as an English teacher in Panama. She also worked in the interior, where she had to undergo hardships and live in difficult situations with her sons. When they she left Panama to marry their step father, they moved to Boston where she had some sisters. There she became a Spanish teacher. She was also certified in Special Education and mathematics. She eventually earned her master’s degree and worked as a vice-principal in Boston public schools. The oldest brother is retired military. He served for 15 years in the wars in Iraq. Their father, also a veteran supported his family as plumber. The second son has several businesses in Boston and the youngest is now working in Panama City as a supervisor of a call center. The brothers also are dismayed by the cost of food in a country where people earn between 1 and 4 dollars an hour. The youngest is paid three dollars and fifty cents as a supervisor of an American call center in Panama City. Beginning call center employees inside of the United States are paid at least 12.50 an hour. Their father was born in Almirante. His family owned the land where the high school currently stands. He didn’t like farm work, and that is why he moved away. They still own land in Bastimentos, and the brothers plan on visiting their small Finca tomorrow with their father. This was a poetic end to my stay in Bocas del Toro. I have learned so much from the many people who have shared their stories with me. I felt that the fact that this family had left Panama to live in the US is a loss of human capital from Panama. A loss of their mother’s teaching vocation and energy, and the loss of the potential of her three sons. The cost of systemic racism is poverty for the whole country, and the loss of human capital and energy. I was able to videotape all three men, and their story will make it into the video and letter plan on writing on Harold Hibbert’s behalf. I have at least 90 minutes of video and many pictures to use to make a convincing case for the need for sanitation infrastructure in Almirante. It is going to take a lot of work, and I am going to need the help of people who know more about technology than I do. I need to upgrade my computer, and I also need to find a good video editor program for this project. August 3, 2016
Tuesday I left work to wait for Harold Hibbert. I was confident he would meet me as planned. The purpose of our meeting was to tour the city of Almirante and take pictures of garbage and interview Harold about the consequences of the lack of sanitation infrastructure in Almirante. Harold has eight children, the oldest four are grown. His children work in the medical field, the military and in business throughout Panama. All of his children have completed University educations. Harold himself had two years of higher education in accounting. His youngest daughter is a junior at Almirante High School (quinto año). She accompanied us on our tour of the city. Harold has found working for others to be corrupt and frustrating. In response has his own small business. He bakes empanadas and sweet breads which he sells in local stores. Harold met me at the gate of the school with a small package of “naked buns.” At least that is what I thought they were called. Later, he clarified that they were cinnamon buns. I had one for breakfast this morning while I waited for the “lancha” in the early morning light. Harold took me by taxi to meet the secretary of the community group he is president of. She works for a transportation firm in Almirante. I was able to interview her, in English about her vision for the town. (Much of my interview of Harold was also conducted in English. The black population of Almirante speaks an easy to understand form of Caribbean English, similar to what you would hear in Jamaica.) She would like to see more activities for the young people, including sports such as baseball or soccer and track. She believes Almirante is a beautiful place and that with proper sanitation, water and electrical supply it could be a welcoming and thriving community for its inhabitants and for visitors. We walked around town while I videotaped Harold. He has been working his whole life to improve the conditions in his own home, and the conditions for the members of his community. The original water system was created for the housing the Chiquita Banana Company built for its employees. At that time Almirante was much smaller. As it grew the water system was no longer adequate. It only reached some neighborhoods and others had to have water trucked into them. The water is still dirty and it still is turned off twice a day by the company that owns it. Water is a private utility in Panama. Residents pay monthly bill without much recourse if the service is inadequate. I took several staged pictures of Harold’s daughter and Harold and I next to the garbage collected on the side of the road. He suggested I come back later in the week so I could see the results of a week of dumping by local residents. Currently there is no real system for garbage collection. People pay a local man to take the garbage away, but often it falls out of the truck on its way out of town. Harold would like to find support from outsiders, perhaps the US Embassy, to set up a recycling system in Almirante of plastics, paper and food. Currently people either bury their garbage, burn it or leave it on the side of the road. Harold would also like to obtain two dump trucks the city of Almirante could use to take the garbage to a designated dump outside of Almirante. We also took pictures of people preparing food next to open drains filled with garbage, sewage, and dog poop. Algae lays on top of motor oil and mosquito larvae. The ocean water that flows throughout the port city, much of it under the homes of its poorest residents, is so dark with filth that you couldn’t see through it with a flood light. I asked Harold about the film of oil on top of the water. There are small earthquakes in Almirante, and a decade ago a larger one. The oil tanks and other toxic waste left behind by Chiquita Banana surface when they are disturbed. Throughout Almirante are wooden shacks built on stilts above swamp water or tide water. The roofs are rusty metal and the walls lack window glass, instead they are ventilated by window openings without screen or protection from insects or animals. These homes were housing for Chiquita Banana employees which were sold for a symbolic price, perhaps 100 dollars to the employees when the company left Panama. There are still some bananas produced in Panama and shipped out of Almirante, but the industry has mostly died as a result of a fungus which attacks the export quality banana. Today while I ate my “naked bun” in the open air lunch room at the Almirante High School I had a peaceful view of the surrounding jungle. It truly is beautiful, with coconut trees, papaya, lush green bushes and banana. There is a neat trail leading into the mountains. It is what remains of the railroad which used to carry bananas to the port. July 30, 2016
Raul Houlstan: Lawyer, Teacher, Historian and Poet I finished writing and working on school work about five today. There wasn’t time to safely go to the beach, nor did I feel like eating out. I decided to ride my bike to town and buy a bracelet to replace the one Iost yesterday, sometime during the work day. There is a small art dealership on main road that always seems to be closed. It was open, so I went inside. Raul Houlstan, the proprietor, and I started talking immediately. He was born in Bocas in 1952. As a young man he moved to Mexico to study Political Science at UNAM. He left because of political difficulties after he won a position a councilman in Bocas. While he was in Mexico he met his wife, whose artwork I fell in love with today. I might spend some money I don’t have to buy a piece. He was in Mexico at the same time as Jorge Chojolán and for similar reasons. My life seems to be taking me through the same path from different directions with Mexico City as its nexus. ENGLISH in PANAMA When Raul returned to Panama he wasn’t finished studying law. He didn’t have the money to finish, so he decided to work as a “profesor” of history at a local school. This was in 1975 or 76. A law was passed in 1972, during the dictatorship, which made Spanish the official language of Panama and forbade the use of English in schools. The local black students spoke English in their homes. Raul used English with students because it seemed natural to use the language of their fathers. The director of the school heard him ask a student to “take out a piece paper.” Raul received an official letter telling him he was breaking the law to use English in the classroom. He was young and didn’t have any children or need the money to feed them, so he took the letter to the principal and told him he was quitting. The principal begged him to stay, pleading that it would take four months to find another history teacher. Students using the High Five and Soccer Drill structures to practice asking and answering questions about the price of clothing.
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Kelly TurnerI participated in Panama Teacher Match 2016, a program funded by the US Embassy in Panama and implemented by the non-profit organization, Partners of the Americas, based in Washington, D.C. The program supports the work of Panama Bilingüe, a national initiative enacted by the President of Panama, Juan Carlos Varela, to improve English teaching nationwide though extensive teacher training. Archives
September 2016
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