September - Our First Anniversary in Panama
Happy Anniversary! It does not seem like we have been in Panama for a year. Perhaps that is because I am used to four distinct seasons that mark the passage of time, but it doesn't seem like a year. And yet, it feels like we have settled in well enough to have been here for much longer than twelve months.
For our anniversary, the town of Boquete threw us a party - a Food Fest at the fairgrounds. There were food vendors, dancers, singers, strollers of note, and general merrymaking. Happy Anniversary!
Bang! Besides the fireworks to celebrate our first anniversary in Panama, I crashed the car into el portón/the gate last week while backing out. The bad news is that the gate is darn solid, and I ripped a ten-inch slice in the rear quarter panel - clean but very flinch-worthy. The good news is that I had to keep running my errands, and while I was gone, the neighborhood congregated to make everything better. Ameth fixed the gate, which had been knocked off its gear tract. Jorge called a relative in the bodyshop business in David and got us in for Tuesday, and this is Panama, so the rather extensive repairs will only be $500. Miguel found the heavy-duty exterior paint to paint a landing strip for easier take-offs and landings while backing up across that bridge and through the wrought-iron gate. Meanwhile, even with the landing strip, the backing-up is intimidating, so the electronic gate guy is providing an estimate for electrifying our second gate as a way for us to skip the backing out - the car relaxed as soon as she heard! We pick the car up on Monday, and only the new landing strip will tell the tale.
Culture Changes:
You might expect that moving to a different country, with a different language, different foods, new expectations, climate, on the verge of a different continent, all of these things might hit me "right in the zorch" or three, as my grampa used to say. Indeed. Watching these things for a year, I can add a few notes.
General Culture change: Real people in Panama make less than $4 an hour, and women usually earn less than $3, so paying $3 for a dozen eggs is a big deal. Paying $500 a month for rent for a family is a REALLY big deal, and you only get one bedroom if you are lucky. Owning a car is a big deal. Kleenex is a luxury. Kids get new toothbrushes for their birthday. I bought a kid a $1 popsicle from the ice cream vendor on the street, and the child practically melted in delight. The people who come to our gate and call "Buenas!" are selling garbage bags, candy suckers, or guandao beans from their yards because they don't have another way to raise enough money to live. The gentlemen delivering our $4.50 five-gallon bottled water containers only make $2.60 per hour. If not many people want deliveries, they don't work many hours that day carrying ten gallons of water over their shoulders down to people's doorways. We are not the real people here. We are the interlopers; the least we can do is try to make it possible for a few people to live better, a dollar or two at a time. We eat at the local fondas (Panamanian food), buy plants and treats from local vendors, and keep small bills and change for those who come to the gate. Smile, listen, and ask a question or two (Miguel asks better questions than I do).
Language in an ex-pat town: Have I learned Spanish yet? No. I know more words than I did when I came. I can put together a few short sentences. More of what happens around me makes sense.
On the other hand, I know enough to have a lot more questions about the details of what is passing by instead of just questioning the topic. Is this a benefit? I am not certain. Around home, I speak mostly English, partly because Valerie and Ed next door speak English and don't seem to be moving toward Spanish, and partly because it helps Ameth to learn English if I slow down and focus on helping him make the connections between what he knows and what is new in English; he is picking up English quickly! Ameth helps me with the part I struggle with most in Spanish - how to combine several words into a coherent sentence - the connecting words that make my sentence understandable.
In an ex-pat town like Boquete (approximately 30% of the population is English-speaking immigrants), there are a lot of Panamanians who speak English in stores and taxis and on the streets - it pays local storekeepers and staff to know enough English to get by, just as it pays us native English-speakers to learn enough Spanish to be polite. Most people are happy that I try to speak Spanish, I think because it lets them know that we will figure it out between us, and we usually do.
With apps like Google Translate, I could get by without knowing Spanish beyond polite generalities and being willing to pay the "gringo tax," where a $3 taxi trip costs English-speaking blondes $5, and a beer at the bar costs $5 instead of $2; you cannot ask questions that cannot be answered in English. Is the Gringo Tax a sure thing for non-Spanish speakers? No; the tax applies mainly to those who fit the Ugly American stereotype too closely, fail to treat Panamanians as having first rights to Paradise, and forget to smile like they mean it, or acknowledge that the Gringo Tax is seldom an unreasonable price for someone from the US to pay. That extra couple of dollars makes a huge difference in the life of a taxi driver, a waitress, or a bartender.
Women's issues: I thought we did this in the '60s and '70s! My biggest frustration is that women are not taken seriously in this culture, and this is not just Panama. I am often reminded of the 1960s and '70s, the marches, frustrations, and bra burnings (and arguments about only being able to burn bras I paid for, not ones Mom paid for). Listening to Luly (landlord) be interrupted by her husband, Jorge, though he has said many times that he is setting her up as the manager of the properties they own so that when he dies (twenty years her senior), she will be taken seriously. I get terribly frustrated with being interrupted and talked over, and I know that part of my situation is that I speak in English. Luly and I are passed by in favor of any men in the neighborhood when questions need to be answered, though she is the property owner. If I drive our car into the gas station, the attendant will go to the passenger side to ask Miguel what type of gas is needed and ask him for the credit card. Ameth and I went to the Do It Center for tools and paint that I wanted, and they wouldn't talk to me - they asked him what was needed, and he would ask me. When I gave them a list in Spanish, they addressed questions back to Ameth. I understand this is cultural, and I also appreciate that even Ameth does not want to be thought unseemly with the wife of a friend, even though I am twice his age - but DAMN IT! I already went through this feminism battle and have been fighting this for 50 years; I don't want to do this again, or even still!!!
Really, I feel so sorry for the women just starting this battle, especially the young women whose disappearances are not even acknowledged because "they probably ran away." I know from young women like Bertilda that being out alone after 6:30 p.m. is dangerous - men approach you, and you might not make it safely home, and the police don't take missing reports of young women seriously. Cell phones are pretty common, but having enough prepaid minutes to make a call, or data minutes available to have a tracker on for someone to follow up on you is not common. Femicide in these societies is barely acknowledged. I am safe - no one wants me, and respect for Grammas is pretty high. But I am grateful not to be 17, and I remember the same fears when I was in high school, back in the olden days of covered wagons, burning bras, dinosaurs, the Beatles, and Rolling Stones, but before cell phones with monthly plans and good connections.
Retirement and 24/7 marriage: You might remember that Miguel retired from Swedish on July 31, just six weeks before we departed on September 15 for Panama. He worked the second shift, leaving the house around 2:00 p.m. and returning around midnight. Up until 2016, I mainly worked traveling, on the road and during the day, so if I was home, it was in the evening when he was at work, or when I traveled, I came home weekends for a quick honeymoon before jetting away again (and he usually worked Saturdays). This worked very well for us. We had lots of time to ourselves, and when we got together, we honeymooned. We purposely removed reasons to argue about housekeeping, kept accounting separate, cleaned before the other arrived home, and generally worked to keep things smooth since we had little time together. Smooth sailing for many years. Even when I was laid off, I started a business, Mom got sick, my days were busy, and while we had more time together, the schedules didn't change much as he worked evenings, and I worked days - Sundays, we spent together.
On August 1, 2022, Miguel retired, but he and I were in a rush to get out of town with only 7 suitcases, and we didn't have time to get used to the idea that he now had days free. Suddenly, on September 16, we landed in Panama City, slept in, and started to realize that our life was changing.
And change, it has. We went from Sundays together to 24/7 together. We are doing impressively well considering the shift from maybe 2/7 to 24/7.
Miguel got to come home to a Central American country - culturally, women do the cooking, cleaning, and caregiving here; it was a jolt to my system that he could automatically fall back into that expectation, followed by a jolt to his system that I did not automatically fill that expectation.
Being left to my own devices does not necessarily mean that I am self-sufficient (yet), as I am not language-capable, even with Google Translate. I am used to being a boss - first, a manager-type, then a business owner, and I expect to be paid attention to when I speak with authority. Miguel is used to me talking, says my frequency is precisely on the outside edge of his hearing range, and he is officially hard of hearing with hearing aids he would rather not wear - so he anticipates what I will probably say and responds to that anticipation: Listening is a skill and one we haven't practiced together in some years. We are spending a lot of time practicing lately.
Cooking: My Gramma Dorothy used to say that everyone had 3,500 decent cooked meals in them, and she had used hers by the time she was 33, but Grampa Joe still had 3,473 of his left and no intention of getting any further down the list. I started cooking as soon as I could reach the buttons on the back of the stove at the age of eight (back when I was tall), and Mom used to measure my reach at least once a week. As soon as I could reach the back of the stove, she started work at my uncle's law firm and would call me each afternoon; "Fill the pot with water up to the number 8, and put it on the back burner. Punch the HI button, and I will call you in ten minutes", and off we would go to creating that night's casserole. By my calculations, I only had three decent meals left on my 3500 count by the time I reached 27, and there was a good chance of a miscount. This was not a big problem during my years of travel - hotels and restaurants saved me from using those three remaining meals for many years, and I am grateful. Now, here we are, retired, and Miguel has a high sensitivity to salt, which he uses as a reason for not eating out. Also, besides frying and microwaving eggs, Miguel is not a cook - perhaps a well-studied ignorance. BUT, my being a pretty good cook doesn't mean I like the requirement of cooking, just because a/the body demands to be fed and on a schedule, too! So far, in this retirement 24/7 marriage thing, I do way too much of it. Somewhere in me, I rebel so much against the idea of the repetition and the schedule and the "have to" of the whole cooking/eating thing that I don't want to eat the food I have already spent the past hour or two preparing; perhaps I am over-exposed, or maybe it is just a sixties anti-authoritarian rebellion left-over. And speaking of left-overs, I don't want to see the remainder of the food I prepared, either. Nor do I want to clear the table or do the dishes. Petulant retiree? Yes, but one in Paradise.
You can see why the hotel life suited me so well. If I didn't get so seasick, those people who retire to a cruise ship have a lifestyle that would be a good set-up for me: lots of change, no boredom, no dishes, no cooking, no left-overs, and someone makes the bed very prettily in the morning.
Good stuff? Yes. I enjoy Miguel's company. His perspective on the world differs from mine, which attracted me to him 40 years ago and still does. There are Gemini things we have in common, like that we are both introverts who do extroverted things, and we appreciate each other's strengths. I can step back and let him take the culture reins in facets here that I would not have done in Seattle, and he did the same in Seattle for 40 years. I value his willingness to talk and accept that my Spanish struggles are more understandable to him now that he is trying to become fluent in French. When I point out my frustrations with being interrupted or ignored by men in conversations or stores, he notices situations that he wouldn't have - the situations are natural to him in this culture, and that feels like just stepping back into his home. After being with me in the USA, he gets frustrated on my behalf (or Luly's). We have worked out the little day-to-day kinks and haven't met with the "I only came because you wanted to" bump that Miguel keeps pointing out in other couples heading back to the US complaining (or one person from the pair is heading back complaining). I think this one-year point is a good mark!
Little Things:
Rainiest of the Rainy Seasons - rain starts at 11:00 a.m., on the dot. We purposely arrived at the end of Seattle's summer last year, and we needed to see Panama's rainy season, which has peak months in October and November and then again in April and May. We are obviously hitting October 1 tomorrow - the rain starts at 11:00 sharp each morning and scares the bugs right out of the air. The good news is that the weather often relents in the afternoon and apologizes with some glorious sun so that you appreciate it all the more. The rains are downpour-worthy and come with lightning, thunder, and pond-like puddles. As soon as the downpour drops to just plain rain, the birds celebrate with songs and dances, bouncing off the roofs and branches like they have been cooped up for far too long!
View out the front door. An hour before, I had put out thick slices of papaya and banana halves along that white fence for the birds. After that ten minutes of downpour, you cannot tell there is any fruit there - it is drowned! If you look closely at the top of the cyclone fence, a hummingbird is waiting under the awning for the weather to clear so she can get to the feeder to the left of the photo. She is patient - the rain would pelt her pitifully if she braved it.
A slightly more close-up view of that hummingbird waiting to get to the feeder. Still, I cannot get close enough for you to see her beak and know she is a hummingbird.
Panama has been hurting for rain this year, and the volume of water has reduced the traffic through the Panama Canal by more than 25%. Our current rain may help, but it is not enough to make a dent in the catch-up needed. It would take a lot to get the Canal back on track, and who knows what damage that kind of volume would do now. It will be interesting to see what the world comes up with as options for recycling canal water or perhaps using ocean water to run the locks instead of fresh water. We shall see - this pain is hitting much further than just Panama, and creating another canal in another location in Central America will run into similar issues. Start thinking!
120 inches of rain a year: With an average of 120 inches of rainfall each year around Boquete, what kinds of problems do we have with mold, and how do we prevent it from making our lives miserable? We don't have mold issues, and I suspect there are a couple of reasons. One is because people don't collect things in closed spaces here - very few drawers, no bins, and doors and cupboards are open most of the time. Windows and doors are not sealed - they leak like a sieve, and the wind blows right through. That works well for keeping the air moving around wood and fabric. Leather is not an upholstery material here, and it's not a wise choice for coats, shoes, or mini-dresses - it gets slimy and molds. We leave our doors and windows open all day, close them for a couple hours at dusk, and often open them again after the bugs and critters settle for the evening - keep the air circulating. Local woods are wise choices, and particle board is a short-term choice because it will rot - you are better off having a new cupboard custom-made from a local cedar than buying new from a furniture store if it is made of particle board. Our hanging clothing is well spaced in the small closets, and I open the closet doors to air them out; plus, the closet doors are not well sealed anyway. We don't have dressers, we have shelves. We don't have many folded clothes; they sit on open shelves and rotate weekly so that they get washed every 5-10 days - they don't have time to mold. Shoes sit out under the shelving units or at the door/exits; constantly airing. We had Ameth build a bookshelf made of wrought iron that has mesh metal shelves to maintain airflow to the pages, and the rule is that no book can be pushed up against the wall so as to maintain air circulation; so far, no book has suffered, but he doesn't have a lot in his Spanish collection yet. The tricks are keeping things open, few in number, and circulating. It is working so far. In Seattle, we battled with sour bath towels and kitchen sponges; we don't have those problems here. We know lots of people here who buy de-humidifiers for every closet and have lots of issues, but we haven't had any (yet); I can only say that keeping the house and rooms open and not having a lot of stuff so that everything circulates appears to be the secret.
Bugs - third-floor Seattle apartment to Panama's ground floor doors; "Walk right in!" Being on the ground floor in Panama significantly differs from being on the third floor in Seattle. Bugs in Seattle found stuff to eat on lower floors and seldom ventured to our place on the third floor. In Boquete, we have two doors on the first floor and an open-door policy, every day, all day. One major difference is that the weather in Boquete is much better than in Seattle, year-'round, and as a result, there is not much advantage to being in the house unless you are an ant (food, especially sugar-based and juicy stuff) or a moth (light sources). As a result, we have some live-in laughing geckos, tiny ants with whom I argue constantly, and moths that cannot figure out why the sun moved indoors over the stove and has that blue tint - better go see. Most of the other bugs come in to see what's up, and they spend the rest of the day trying to find their way back out, with which I can help.
Our giant katydid is still hanging around. Today, he was waiting out the rain near the dryer, checking out a bug on the windowsill.
A Year Later, what we're missing, besides You:
2-Day free shipping: It is not just paying a minimum of $4 per pound to ship to Panama from Miami, but waiting 5-12 days after Miami for the goods to get to Boquete is painful. We were so spoiled in Seattle! Sometimes, the excitement is trying to remember what we ordered and from where or whom, since the notice we get only says that a package has arrived. I remember the excitement of a package coming when I was a kid, and no one knew how long it would take to ship across the country or what might have been sent from Aunt Susan. Who knew this would be an adventure again?
Ribs, ribs, ribs! The beef in Panama is not good. Eat before you come. Chicken is terrific - genuinely delightful. Seafood is great. I want ribs. I really, really want ribs.
Warm water at the kitchen sink. We don't need it. We have hot water on demand at the showers (heated at the shower head), but hot water at the kitchen sink would be lovely. If we need hot water at the kitchen sink now, we heat it in the microwave and use it that way. It is not worth making a major plumbing change, but I miss a hot water tank some days - just a little one.
View of the water. Need I say more? Mountains alone are not always enough... I just miss the sea.
One thing I absolutely love about our Panamanian Paradise:
06:00 in the morning is heaven. The sun is rising, and the most brilliant light is spilling onto the millions of greens all around us. Every color is intense and pushing its way into the windows, and the no-longer exotic birds are loudly greeting the new day while the babbling brook chuckles with delight. You will have to imagine it for now - at that hour, I am too groggy to stumble two rooms down the hall to get the phone off the charger, but I will endeavor to get you a 06:00 photo for next month. Each day is born, and greeted, like a new gift here.
Happy Anniversary!
Scarlet Passion Flower
October 18 is the official anniversary of our move into this house in Boquete. I will work on some ideas to create a House and Yard edition to celebrate. See you in October!
MaryBea y Miguel
FAQs and How to find us:
No photos? I might have made it too heavy if this got to you with no pictures. Go to the site where all the old posts are sitting, and read it there - much more colorful. https://seattletopanama.digitalpress.blog/ghost/#/site If you cannot get in using this link, let me know, and I will send you an email invitation - it likes to know you are expected.
Replies to blog postings via email: If you hit "reply" to this email and get a "no reply" address, use the x to knock it out, type in MaryBeaGallagher@gmail.com, and I will get your response. Quirky.
Email: Use our Gmail accounts for email - My Comcast/Xfinity doesn't work consistently in Central America.
WhatsApp is the best route for texts and voice calls, but it is uncertain for video calls. We are officially in the Outback of Panama now, in a valley with mountains and extinct volcanos around, and the added interference of lightning and thunderstorms in the afternoons, so there are periods where transmissions will not get through. Find WhatsApp for your phone or computer at your favorite App Store.
Phone calls: In theory, our phones can connect, but the reality is that usually, it rings once, and then a voicemail transcription shows up, and sometimes it never rings, and a voicemail transcription shows up days later. Don't trust it. If you try and we don't pick up, we probably aren't seeing or hearing it ring. If you don't use WhatsApp, stick to email as more likely to get through. We are in the outback and reliant on many factors that may not all align.
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