Marine Life and the House Skeleton

Playa

Playa Blanca (White Beach) Pacific Ocean
Farallon, Cocle, Panama

Before I proceed into my housing update, first I would like to deliver a small anecdote about a recent visit to my friend’s beach house in La Playa Blanca (The White Beach), a beach on the Pacific. First, I would like to provide a little background information to preface the story. I have a friend from Chicago that has a Panamanian mother. My friend’s nuclear family lives in Chicago, but she has family here in Panama as well as a wonderful house on the beach. She was recently in Panama, and I made a very quick trip to see her and her family at the beach. I actually spent more time traveling back and forth from my village to her house than I spent hanging out with her and her family. The trip from her house to my village consists of two bus rides. The first bus ride from Almirante to David is roughly 4 hours, and the second bus ride from David to her beach house is roughly 5 hours and fifteen minutes. It was a lot of traveling, but it was great because they all had wonderful questions about my Peace Corps experience. It’s always fun to share all the craziness of the jungle. Anyways, shortly after breakfast, we ventured to the beach to swim, play Frisbee, and enjoy the beautiful Panamanian weather (it is technically the Panamanian summer right now, so it’s warmer and doesn’t rain as much). I decided to take a short walk down the beach. As I was walking back to our spot on the beach, I stepped down into the water only to feel something move very quickly and a quick shot of pain in the top of my foot. Since the water was murky, I couldn’t see what I had stepped on. So I exited the water to analyze my foot. Looking down at my foot, there was a small hole in my foot above my third toe. There was a little blood coming out but not to bad, and there was not a lot of pain. Not knowing what it was, I decided to go back up to my friend’s house to clean up the wound and further research what type of animal I had encountered. On my way back up to the house, I passed by one of my friend’s family members; she asked where I was headed. I said I was headed back to the house to clean up my foot. I pointed down to my foot only to realize that now, the top of my foot and my toes were covered in blood. She took one look and decided it would be best to come help me clean up my foot. While we are cleaning my wound, everyone else shows up, and they decide it would be best to take me to the doctor to have it looked at since we did not know if it was a stingray or some other kind of marine creature. So we wrap up my foot and drive to the closest clinic roughly a 3 or so minute ride, very close. The doctor gives it one look and just said “raya” the Spanish word for stingray. By this point in time the pain was a little worse, and they told me it would continue to increase as the stingray’s toxin begin to spread further into my foot. Anyways, the doctor further cleaned the whole in my foot and I received two injections in the buttocks. Quick note here, Panamanian’s love to give injections in the buttocks, not sure why, but they do. This was my first encounter with injections in the buttocks. What better way to start then to receive two injections in the buttocks? The doctor was nice and gave me one in each cheek. After receiving the injections and sitting around the doctor’s office, I was beginning to experience more pain in my foot. I could feel the pain crawling up my foot and into the lower portion of my leg. The pain was also pulsating with severity. I know I just made it sound horrible, but it was not that bad. Although, I believe I did not experience the worst of the pain because I received an injection for the pain so quickly after I had been stung. Oh yeah, I received one injection for the pain and one to stave off infection. After receiving my treatment, we returned to my friend’s house where I was instructed to sit in the hammock and soak my foot in hot water, drink a few cervezas, and read a book. Anyways, the trip was extremely short, but I had a wonderful time!
A few notes on stingrays

Stingrays bury themselves in the sand and wait for their prey, in this case me, to pass above them or step on them. When this happens, they flip up their barbed tail and stab their prey. Frequently, the barb in their tale breaks off in the wound, lucky for me it didn’t. They usually dwell in relatively shallow water. It is recommended that when walking in waters that are largely populated by rays that the individual shuffle their feet as they walk through the water. This act makes them flee the general vicinity. Their toxin causes localized pain and swelling as well. Soaking the stung area in hot water, the hotter the better, causes the toxin to break down quicker, thus reducing the severity and duration of the pain.

The wound is above my toe. Roughly two weeks have elapsed; therefore, the wound has healed up nicely.
My feet are kind of gross and hairy. Enjoy!

House Update

Last week we constructed the “skeleton” of my house if you will. Tomorrow Monday Feb 2nd we will be hanging the zinc for the roof and hopefully getting the floored built. Check out the following pictures!

The little guy above loved to have his picture taken, as all little children in my community do.

We built this structure in roughly three days. It seemed to want to rain a lot when we were working. So that definitely slowed down the process.
Hopefully I'll be able to complete my house in the next few weeks. I actually have a week long training event coming up from February 9-13th in the province of Cocle, about 10 hour trip from my village. I hope my villagers will continue to work on it while I'm at training. My fingers are crossed.


Aqui en la lucha,


Koguira