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.” |
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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