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All Eyes

Sunday, November 17th, 2013

More people are killed by falling coconuts than by lightning.

Currently I watch where I walk for centipedes, tarantulas, midges, mosquitoes, cockroaches, rocks, roots, x-back snakes and never drying potholes. Now I have to look up too?

For any ‘doubting thomas’ who envisioned this tropical life as a vacation assignment, should live here for even a day. You can stop and make a pb&j sandwich for Carson, but if you look a way the ants will carry it off.  You have a well but it needs to be pumped for water. They just got a shower head installed by their landlord, but previously it was ladled water from a bucket. Sewage is septic but some of that gets into the riverlets and then into the ocean. All trash is fair game for critters and must be dealt with immediately.

Electricity is fickle but we do have air conditioning units in the 2 bedrooms. Washing is a challenge as the local laundermat has two machines in the open under a tin roof and today the dryers weren’t working. No internet but that’s a mixed blessing. There is a beautiful ocean to look at with stifling heat. So it takes a lot of planning to bring your food in from afar and store it away from bugs and mold, cook and clean up immediately, get your clothes laundered, not track in muck, check for bugs, stay cool, raise two kids, and now plan and carry out your ministry here in Panama to a populace that waxes and wanes with the tourist season and are indifferent because they need that much energy each day just to live.  It’s not my version of Paradise.

post script: The other morning Jonathan was disgusted to find a colony of ants in his raisin bran but food is precious.  So he threw his bowl full in a hot skillet to kill them off and proceeded to eat his toasted cereal and the added protein. yum

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This entry was posted on Sunday, November 17th, 2013 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Florida Panama Fall 2013, Panama, Travel Challenges. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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