Getting Down to Business

So, going back to my "Bad News" entry, we made the jump from Panama City to Isla Colon in Bocas del Toro early Tuesday morning. We arrived in town and immediately went to our usual hardware vendor, Maderas Richards. It is run by a Chinese expat, Richard, and his wife, Lilly. He charges exorbitant prices, offers goods of dubious quality, is of little use in terms of answering questions and sure as hell does not deliver out to the islands. As it turns out, there are plenty of other games in town when it comes to hardware, especially, large volume water storage tanks. But in any event, this has been our source so we started filling our list of items including PVC plumbing, hardware, corrugated sheet metal (aka "zinc"), bags of cement (6), hand-filled bags of sand (30), a few extraneous tools, and most importantly, the two 40 gallon (down from 55 gallon) drums we would use (in horizontal position) for our chlorinating tanks. First problem: Richard was too busy to get our order together that afternoon but would have everything ready by Wednesday morning. So our first dilemma was whether to head out to Isla Popa with only a partial supply wagon and come back the next day for the rest, or to make arrangements to stay in Bocas overnight and head to the island on Wednesday fully equipped. A quick meeting decided in favor of heading to Isla Popa and send a small detachment back by boat on Wednesday to pick up the remaining supplies.

While this was playing out a few of us also went to the supermarket to pick up our food supplies: 60 lbs of white rice, 30 lbs of red frijoles, crackers, peanut butter, jelly, nutella, a few loaves of bread, and Mike's fave, a packet of pre-toasted bread. The latter makes a pretty quick and tasty lunch-snack so it's a pretty decent idea. Plus the toasted bread doesn't mold. We also picked up four cases of 1 liter water bottles. We had gone through about 8 cases of 3.8 liter bottles last year but I figured we were one person and one day less, and on a smaller project, so we would not need as much water. I also figured we could always filter and chlorinate our own supply as Tim, Chip and I had brought hand pump-filters with us. Unfortunately, I was right and we would. One small casualty of the years interlude was the closing of Lilly's Waterfront Restaurant, our traditional hangout while waiting between airport and boat rides (this is not Lilly of Maderas Richards Lilly). Aside from good chow and a comfortable dockside, it was the single source of the legendary "Killing Me Mon" sauce. So sad, but it will linger long in my taste bud memory. Fortunately, Bocas must grow peppers like Trump grows hair so it was easy to find a new  replacement.

In the six days we were on the island, my crew and I plowed through a bottle and a half of this stuff. I was really surprised at their appetite for hot and spicy sauce for the nightly beans and rice. This was one of my first indicators of the excellent quality of the team.

We finished out shopping, hired a water taxi and headed out across the bay for Isla Popa. We arrived there early Tuesday afternoon and were greeted by Ambrosio at the dock. He scolded me (fairly enough) for not having called him on Monday to let him know we were traveling and let me know how anxious he had been about our whereabouts. I felt pretty sheepish about it but I also felt somehow good about the genuine affection that has developed between us. We unloaded the boat and were escorted to our new lodgings (see previous entries) where we settled in, placing our mattresses and stringing mosquito netting. The white rows of white square net-tents in the students room reminded me of the photos of old fashioned malaria wards. As we were doing this, Ambrosio just waited, watching our every move, taking it all in. It was a bit unnerving as I felt a pressure to converse with him but also had to see to my own setting up as well as help with any questions from the team. It took  me a while to figure out his interest in watching us set up, and this scenario would repeat itself many time in the days to come, with Ambrosio as well as others from the community. Eventually I would come to figure it out.

We finished unloading and settling and left with Ambrosio to make our reconnaissance of the pavilion. We encountered two pieces of bad news, the first being the sorry state of disrepair of the system. The second was the very sad news of the death of the eldest son of our dear friend Ramon. Ramon and I had grown quite close last year. We are the same age. Ramon's father had settled the Isla Popa II community as a missionary over 50 years ago among the Ngobe people of Bocas del Toro. Whether it is official or not, he is the de-facto elder of the community and is highly respected. He is also kind, warm, intelligent and very helpful with mechanical things. Apparently his son had been working in Panama City as a waiter (I believe) and they had not heard from him since before Christmas. After an undue period of silence they sent family over who discovered that he had been struck and killed in a hit-and-run accident. His body was kept in a morgue until they arrived to identify it. He was brought home to the island and the day of our arrival coincided with the day of his funeral services at the community sepulcher on the northern part of the island. As a father of young adult children, I could only imagine his grief. I wanted to talk to him but also realized that, at least in that moment, it was not the right time. I would have to wait. Sadly, his family needs prevented him from participating in this part of the project though he and I would meet briefly twice during the week.

The team headed up to El Rancho (the pavilion) and continued the assessment, taking measurements, evaluating options and making design adjustments for the new system,  assessing problems in the old and positing possible repairs and solutions. We eventually wrapped up and broke off for dinner. Over dinner we decided Mike and I would head back to Bocas on Wednesday morning to pick up the balance of the supplies as we needed Mike for his list of stuff and me for Spanish translation (that said, Mike's fluency is much better than he admits and I am not all that necessary when he is present). We contracted with Constructors Panama to provide a long boat for transportation for all of this. By the time dinner was over we realized how far behind the proverbial eight ball we were and were a bit discouraged. We were also dead-ass tired and ready for sleep so we trooped back down the hill to the Swamp and settled in for at least a decent nights sleep before we really started to work.

Or so I thought.