Baila tus sueños Dance Camp

February 18th to 22nd was the final week before the school year started, and also the culmination of a several-month project, Baila tus sueños, a dance camp. My friend Lindsey and I have been planning this camp for months and finally got to share our love of dance with Panamanian kids and Peace Corps volunteer friends. It was a week of ups and downs, a few disappointments and many accomplishments.

I went to Lindsey's site on Wednesday of last week to start doing the bulk of the work: final preparation and getting the materials. We spent Thursday through Sunday buying school supplies, white t-shirts for tie dying, all the food, and dozens of other things. Every one of those days leading up to the camp was exhausting, filled with running around from store to store and usually carrying all those bags around the city. Valentine's Day was especially taxing, since it rained in the early afternoon, all over us and the bags. So that was fun.

However, we had plenty of help from some people in her community, including the principal of her school and a handful of kind women. One day, we went with the principal and a neighbor to PriceSmart, a Costco equivalent, and bought hundreds of dollars worth of rice, beans, oil, and other food in extreme bulk. Of course, these stores are rare and found only near the large cities. Every time I go, I get excited and homesick. Sadly, there were no free samples that day. We couldn't get any food from the food court, either.

14 volunteers from across the country came to help us, which was wonderful. Their help made the camp run smoothly. I felt at ease knowing that I could depend on them to do their work well, plan and execute educational and recreational sessions, help prepare food and maintain order. As I mentioned earlier, we had lots of help from Panamanians. Those nice ladies helped us prepare food on a daily basis and provided us with some local favorites, including duros (small popsicles in baggies) and almojábanos (fried corn in an s shape, a favorite among those living in the Chiriquí province). Aside from the principal and ladies, we got a nice donation from the town mayor, which allowed us to buy more food and some gifts to everyone who helped.


Tie dye with the kids. Some didn't turn out so great, but hey, everyone got a tie dye t-shirt to keep as a souvenir of dance camp!


This was a game teaching kids about deforestation during a session on caring about the environment. Kids were all scarlet macaws (guacamayas) and had to find a "tree" to live in to be able to survive and reproduce. Each volunteer was a tree, and had two spaces/arms to accommodate the kids. However, Industry slowly cut us down. AHH!! Turns out some trees can feel pain.


Most of the participants were kids from Lindsey's community who live nearby or at least go to the school. However, we also had a dozen or so kids from other provinces across the country. It was great to give those kids the opportunity to travel outside their village (which they may have never done) and interact with kids their age from all over. During the camp, we split the kids into teams and had team building games, like this, the Human Knot. Sometimes there was some friction. Once during swing dancing, a boy yelled that he refused to dance with a girl because she was indigenous and "dirty." However, for the most part, the kids got along and became good friends by the end of the camp.


Muchachas Guías, Panama's Girl Scouts, came and gave a presentation. Here you see the kids doing a little dínamica, or game.


Obviously, we did a whole lot of dancing. I mean, the camp was called "Dance your dreams!" Lindsey and I taught short routines to Taio Cruz's "Dynamite" and Lil Jon's "Snap Ya Fingers" and did a bit on the Electric Slide. Sharing American culture to the max!

During the camp, we managed to feed the kids 3 meals and 2 snacks per day, gave several 1-hour sessions per day, switching off between classroom and active sessions. Kids made tie dye t-shirts, learned about self-esteem, environment, swing dancing, diversity, nutrition, sexual health and HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention, and lots more. And hopefully gained some confidence from all that dancing they did throughout the week.

It wasn't perfect. And if you know me, I beat myself up because of that. However, I learned a lot about doing projects here in Panama and how whatever you can manage to do is a success. These kids would have done nothing of interest if it weren't for the camp. Now they have great memories to take back home. Some ate better than they ever do at home. This camp gave the kids an opportunity to express themselves, which is usually VERY rare back in their communities. They got to be silly with us. They got to stay up late, watch movies and eat popcorn, play fun games and learn about themselves. So instead of focusing on how transitions weren't always smooth, how some promises fell through, or how we forgot simple necessities like band-aids, I need to try and realize that it was an overwhelming success because the kids and volunteers had fun.

I'm certainly glad it's over, but now that I have a moment to breathe, I can and should be happy with how it turned out.


Teaching Panamanian kids the Crip Walk was definitely a highlight of the camp, and of my service.

Summer English Seminars

Every year, the Panamanian Ministry of Education hosts training seminars as a developmental opportunity for its employees, a chance to learn some new methods. A few volunteers and I worked on sessions for the English teachers and professors.

The theme was Integrating Technology in the Classroom, or something along those lines. We did our best to incorporate that into our seminars. As you can see, we used a projector, a PowerPoint presentation, and video clips during our workshop. It sounds like I'm reaching, I know...However, there are many deeper problems besides teachers not using technology enough in the classroom, such as antiquated methods, lack of resources, lack of motivation, etc. We felt it was better to address methodologies and techniques more realistic with expectations placed on them from without, something a bit more finite.

We presented on two topics, both methods we volunteers learned during our training. We hope they encourage teachers to plan lessons, thereby greatly improving their chance to succeed in transferring their (occasionally) stellar knowledge of English. I would like to believe that our topics/methods are fun and engaging ways to teach language.

Our first topic was TPRS, or Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling. It's something my high school Spanish teacher occasionally did with us. Here you see the teachers really getting into their lesson during the workshop portion.

Sometimes they behaved well, and other times, who knows? A cultural difference, perhaps. It leads me to believe that age has very little to do with behavior in a classroom setting. If allowed, people will act a certain way no matter what age. I thought that since these were teachers, professionals usually on the other end of the classroom, they would understand our desire for an attentive, engaged audience. Yet sometimes people would answer phone calls during sessions, talk, and be generally disruptive. I was a bit offended, but thankfully it didn't take away too much from the sessions.

Here you see a group performing "Are You My Mother," the famous children's story by P.D. Eastman in the style of Reader's Theatre, another one of our topics. We hope it can get kids excited about reading, which is not much a part of the culture out here in the interior.

As work-related business can often be here, things were occasionally lacklustre, disorganized, and frustrating, but the teachers seemed to have gotten a lot out of the seminars. I just hope they take these new methods and try and implement them into their classrooms for the benefit of their students. I can only hope to have some sort of impact. We'll see.

GAD Camp

From January 28th to February 1st I, along with a group of about 12 volunteers and 40 kids, enjoyed a phenomenon known as GAD Camp. GAD, which stands for Gender and Development, is a committee within PC Panama that organizes workshops on youth development, HIV/AIDS, and other topics. Their large annual project is GAD Camp, where volunteers apply to have kids from their sites, ranging in ages from 12 to 17, come to a camp site and learn wonderful things, interact and become best friends with one another, and experience something new and amazing. It was a fantastic week.

The first day, students from surrounding provinces joined together in a Jesuit mission type of place in a town called San Felix. Participants mostly did not know each before coming to the camp. As you can expect, they were shy and reserved during the first few days, and especially during the arrival day. Some had a long day of travel (as long as 8 hours!), so our first official activity wasn't until after dinner. We started with introductory games. A highlight from that night was watching the kids play Pass the Orange, where they needed to pass an orange from one to another person without using their hands.

One cultural thing struck me. During the first night, the kids got to know each other by finding out basic info about one another: age, community and province where they live, etc. Many of our participants were indigenous, people who either live on one of the five indigenous "reservations" or live elsewhere and identify as such. However, not one of those who live in the indigenous comarca mentioned it as their province of residence. The name of their community, or their features, clothes, and speech pattern could denote being a member of that community, but not one of them mentioned their self-autonomous indigenous province (Comarca Ngabe-Bugle) as their location. There's a fair amount of discrimination between Latino and indigenous communities (which I touched on earlier with my Teacher Meany Pants). It's just very unfortunate to see that these kids don't often show pride in who they are. That changed pretty quickly, though. A good amount of indigenous girls wore their traditional dresses, known as naguas, throughout the entire week.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a good picture of one of our participants in her nagua, but this is what they look like.

Every morning during the camp, we woke the participants up at 6:30am for morning exercise, which included yoga and P90X-style kickboxing. Seeing kids who've never done some of these things was amusing, and also quite encouraging. For the most part, they were willing to try and had lots of fun doing it.

After exercise and breakfast, the fun started. Throughout the week, pairs of volunteers presented on topics, such as Setting Goals, Making Decisions, and Understanding My Body.

Lindsey and I led sessions on self-image and self-esteem. Their attention, as it did throughout the camp, ebbed and flowed.

During the camp, my image of the participants was constantly changing. Whenever they had free time, we gave them the opportunity to play sports or do whatever they wished. Many took advantage of the sports balls. When I watched them I realized something you can forget sometimes. They're still kids. Many kids this age, especially what I've seen here in Panama, have the bodies of men and women. Many will be parents before they are really prepared. No matter what though, watching them play and interact with each other reminded me that in many ways, they are still just kids. Then of course, sometimes when they made comments or asked questions during sessions, their maturity astounded me.

We challenged ingrained gender stereotypes and debunked a lot of myths about sex. The sex workshops were especially interesting. As 12 and 17 are vastly different stages of young adult life, we got vastly different reactions during those workshops. Some may have already had sex, while others haven't started to develop, who may not know what a period is, or an erection. During that session, we encouraged kids to write down questions they were too shy to ask up front. Some of my favorites:

-What does sex feel like?

-What is masturbation and does it cause pain?

-How do you give oral sex? Please help me!!!! (Exactly as it appeared on the card. Does the phrasing reveal urgency? Possibly troubling ...)

-If I love my boyfriend/girlfriend but I don't want to have sex, what do I say so that he/she will understand?

So we touched on some great topics. I also learned some great new words, like foreskin, dry humping and wet dream.

On the first day, every volunteer and participant decorated an envelope, a "tank" for others to fill with nice things, a sort of warm fuzzies activity to boost their confidence during the week.

On the last night we had a sort of closing ceremony, a talent show. Both volunteers and participants performed. It was truly amazing to see how much some had come out of their shell. Indigenous boys and girls, proudly donning their traditonal clothing, sang songs and recited original poetry. Collaborative dances to popular Panamanian and American music happened, and it was a great way to finish the camp.

The camp served as a way for Panamanians to share their knowledge and experiences to us, the Americans, and vice-versa. It was also a fantastic way to really reach the kids in a way we normally cannot. If only it were longer than a week...