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I stayed in Panama for a total of 6 months in 2004 and 2005. The first trip was during the summer of 2004 with an organization called Amigos de las Americas, in which I was a volunteer in a small rural village called Vaquilla. The second trip was between January and March of 2005.

Volunteering in Panama

Jennifer Radcliffe
2005-11-12 11:40:56

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Arrival in Panama

I set out from Seattle at 12am on June 17, 2004 for Panama. It was a long and difficult night because Amigos scheduled me on an overnight flight first to Chicago, then to Miami, then finally to Panama City. Amigos volunteers started meeting up in the Miami airport; all of the Panama volunteers were pooled there at the same time in order to travel together to Panama. Some of the more social volunteers already started making friends and memorizing names in the airport; the atmosphere amongst the volunteers was excited and cheerful. We arrived in Panama City around 6pm the 17th, after 16 hours of travel. I was exhausted and thoroughly out of whack with the local time zone, but still infused with the excitement of meeting all the volunteers, who struck me as incredibly mature and sophisticated for their ages.

Upon arriving in Panama City, our supervisors rounded all 50 of us up onto a bus and took us to the Cangrejo district of the city, where we ate dinner in a tourist restaurant (cheese or chicken sandwiches and fried plantains) and got settled into our hotel for the night. I wanted desperately to make a phone call or use one of the internet cafes we walked past on the way to the restaurant to let Manoj know that I arrived ok, but we were under firm orders to stick together and not go anywhere without permission, which was not forthcoming. This rule was presumably to break our dependence on our families and orient us toward our present experience in Panama; however, being 26 years old and 10 years older than the majority of volunteers, it was a little strange being under such strict control. Little did I know that I would not get the opportunity to talk to Manoj for an entire month, until midterm. We spent the night in Panama and headed out the next day to the Province of Cocle, where we would spend the next 8 weeks.

For the first three days in Cocle, we stayed in a ...