Teamwork - Watching the Ants

I have mentioned before about the fact that every inch of this country seems to be alive. Plants grow vigorously without any particular care being given to them. There also seems to be an endless supply of insects of various shapes and sizes.

Yesterday I came across a whole army of ants who were all carrying parts of leaves. It really is fascinating to see them all, each carrying something that is at least eight or nine times its own size. As one group goes in one direction with the leaves, replacements are endlessly scurrying in the other direction to collect even more.

This spectacle continued all day long, and continues again today. Quite an amazing display of coordinated effort!

One of the things that caught my attention is that the pieces of leaf were being carried right up the driveway of the seminary - a distance of approximately 300 yards!!! To carry the leaves all this distance the ants had to pass a whole array of plants of all types in which they seemed to have no interest at all - so what made them choose the particular leaves that they were carrying???

There was very definitely a smell of eucalyptus in the air so I was inclined to think that the leaves were obviously from a eucalyptus tree. However, having searched on Google, I have discovered that eucalyptus is actually used to repel ants, so that's another theory quashed!!!

I don't know exactly why they were doing it so I think I'll have to be content with watching the spectacle of this amazing coordinated task.

In the photos you will see the leaves - you will also see the ants but you will have to look harder; they are so small that it is hard to photograph them.

Chicken with Rice or Rice with Chicken - A Varied Diet

Lots of people have asked me about the food here. Well, rice is the staple diet and appears at two of the daily meals – midday and evening. Normally the rice is white but it can be a different colour (and flavour, even though the flavour doesn’t always come through). This evening, for example, the rice had a faintly green colour which was due to it having been cooked with celery. It was grand but I would not, personally, be in any particular rush to have it again. However, I have had rice here cooked with coconut which was quite nice; with chilli which was lovely; and with roasted almonds which was really delicious. However, no matter how you might colour it, rice is always rice. After one month here I could do with a break from it. I did have one day since I came when I ate no rice, but only one.

Potatoes are served sometimes – in small amounts, as mash or as chips, but they are still accompanied with rice. They don’t seem to consider potatoes to be in any way, a substitute for the omnipresent rice.

Maize (Corn) is also very popular here. I don’t tend to eat it as I find it to be very hard on the tummy. Most of the time it is not eaten as we would eat it – either on the cob or as kernels. It is most often ground and made into a sort of hard pancake which people here eat with great gusto.

Another thing made from corn is Chicha. Chicha is a word which in Panama means fruit or vegetable juice of any kind – in other parts of South America it refers only to a drink made from maize. Here, in Panama, that maize-based drink is called Chicheme. Traditionally, and here I warn anyone with a sensitive tummy, it is prepared in a most unusual way – the women of the family chew the maize kernels into a pulp, then they spit the pulp into a bucket where it is allowed to ferment. Once it has fermented the pulp is passed through a sieve and the liquid that remains is the drink that people here enjoy so much – Personally, I wouldn’t touch it with a  barge pole.

The other, almost daily item on the menu here is chicken. Dinner is normally either rice with chicken or chicken with rice. These are not the same thing!!! Rice with chicken is rice with pieces of chicken mixed through it with some vegetables and seasoning; chicken with rice, on the other hand, is a piece of chicken served on top of a bed of rice.

I’ll try to get some photos of the different dishes here and share them with you.

By the way, it was so hot today that I was sweating even in the air conditioning!!!

Academics, the USMA and other thoughts on Education

As I said in an earlier post, the patron saint of Panama is Santa Maria la Antigua (the Old Our Lady - old painting, not old Blessed Virgin). She is also the patron of the Catholic University here (Universidad Santa Maria la Antigua - USMA). This is considered to be among the best, if not the best university in the country. This is a university that has a close relationship with the seminary and during the next year seminarians will begin to take part in courses there - especially in the areas of philosophy and English.

I think this is a great step for the seminary for a number of reasons. Firstly, it ensures that the

seminarians are studying among their peers - these are the people among whom they will eventually be ministering so it is important not only that they know each other, but that they are speaking the same language. Being educated only in the seminary brings with it the risk that the seminarians would have an experience that would make them significantly different from their peers, thereby making honest and open dialogue difficult.

Secondly, I think it is important academically. Where there is only an internal forum in the academic context there is always the danger of standards slipping - even with the best will in the world to avoid this. Being formally part of the life of the larger university provides a sort of objective yardstick by which academic progress can be measured. This is of tremendous help in ensuring that both teachers and students in the seminary maintain a proper standard in terms of academic discipline and learning.

Police Notice - an attempt to deal with drug dealing on campus

Thirdly, I think the seminarians have a lot to offer the university. To have a group of seminarians mixed in with the general body of students has to be helpful in terms of promoting discussion, dialogue, and reflection. I think that the interaction between the two groups - and one group at the same time - is a good platform from which to launch the idea of religious commitment in the context of a group of students that is living in a world that is increasingly subject to materialism and the breakdown in community that has been seen in other countries.

Panama seems to have quite a good system of education. At least, judging by the seminarians, they seem to have a good ability to deal with concepts, to talk through problems, and to engage with questions. This augurs well for the church of the future, here in Panama. However, one thing that I notice is that general world culture is not familiar to them very often. Even simple things like knowledge of world events or awareness of world figures is often lacking. I'm not too sure what, if anything, can be done to rectify this - now that everyone has access to internet this information is so accessible that maybe it doesn't need to be retained in the same was as it used to be necessary. I think, however, that I would be traditional on this one - I think that awareness of history and of how our world has come to be as it is, is essential formation for anyone.

Comparing Religious Practice

This weekend was an interesting one during which I was helping out at the Augustinian parish of Los Angeles, in Panama City. The Parish Priest has gone on holiday so I was helping out there this weekend and will be doing the same next week. Essentially, this amounted to saying some of the masses and, today, taking care of the baptisms.

There are number of things that are very striking about churches in Panama. Even the very poorest ones are very well equipped in terms of the bits and pieces that are used in the liturgy. In fact, they all seem to have the very best of everything - albs, vestments, chalices, ciboria, furnishings etc. In my experience, Irish parishes are not, generally, so well supplied in this area.  However, while all of these things are taken care of very well I do notice that there is one area in which Irish parishes, again in my experience, are noticably stronger than those in Panama - that is the area of lay ministry.

Readers, Ministers of the Eucharist, Monitors, Collectors, People who Welcome - all of these are to be found in Panamanian parishes - parish councils and finance councils, however, are, I am told, not as widespread. This says something about the type of lay involvement that is to be found in these parishes - it is not part of the direction the parish is taking; it is largely focused on the liturgy.

Another thing that strikes me is that the ministers really seem to place the priests on a pedestal, and quite a high one at that. This suggests to me that the lay ministers don't consider themselves to have the same responsibility for what they are doing as the priest has - they see themselves, very much, as "helping Father". While "Father" may like to be helped, this is not what ministry is all about. I think that in many of our Irish parishes there is more of a sense of lay people taking responsibility in their parishes as part of an expression of their baptismal calling - I think the difference is that in Ireland the priest works in the people's parish; while in Panama, the people help out in the priest's parish.

I may be wrong, of course; after all, these are just my impressions and, as such, are very subjective, but these impressions are borne out by comments made by the Archbishop of Panama and his Pastoral Vicar. There is still a lot to be done in the area of lay ministry. Of course, the same is true of Ireland, where things are far from ideal, but, nonetheless, I think the Irish church is further along this particular road.

The official figures say that  28% of the people go to Mass every week. I doubt if this is accurate - in parishes of 50,000+ people, that would necessitate enormous churches and many Masses. However, those that do participate are very active participants in the celebration. They tend, also, to be very active in the life of the parish in general.

This struck me very much today when I did the baptisms in the parish of Los Angeles. There were only two baptisms, and the ceremony was celebrated in the context of the Sunday Eucharist. This was the first time that I had ever had the experience where all of those involved in the baptisms (except the babies!!!) - Mothers, Fathers, and Godparents, knew all the prayers, all the responses, and, indeed, all of the words of all of the hymns. I asked afterwards and people were surprised that I found this to be unusual. In fact, this is expected of parents who want to have their child baptised. This is not something that I have found in other places (not just not in Ireland). However, obviously, since only 28% are estimated to practice their religion on a weekly basis, it is likely that there is a significant percentage of those coming for baptism who would not be quite so familiar with what goes on in liturgical celebrations.

On Death and Dying...

If you have time, one of the very interesting things to do when you visit an other country is to visit a

Cemetery in Penonomé

cemetery. This is not a morbid thing but is actually a way of gaining an insight into the mentality of the people you are visiting. In Ireland, for example, hearses always have glass sides so that we can see the coffin; in France, the coffin is transported in a van where it is not visible at all. As I'm on the subject, here in Panama, they seem to go for a sort of in-between measure - the coffin is transported in a vehicle with darkened windows.

Another interesting thing here is the way funerals are celebrated. Firstly, due to the heat, funerals have to be celebrated quickly - any delay means that the body will start decomposing. Here in Panama City embalming is available but I'm not sure if every corpse is embalmed; I remember when I worked in Ecuador it was necessary for the body to be buried within 8 hours of death - this meant that most people didn't have an actual funeral mass; there just wasn't time to hold it.

Niches (Bovedas) with flowers

This meant that the period after the funeral (a period of nine days) was very important. This was when the formal, and public, mourning took place. This involved nine nights when people would gather for prayers in the house of the deceased; the host family would be expected to feed all of those present during the nine nights which meant that it could be a particularly difficult time for poor families - ie most families. Here in Panama they also have the nine nights but, as far as I can gather, there is not the same obligation to feed those who come to the house.

Another interesting thing that I have noticed here is that it is not unusual, again due to the extreme heat, for the funeral to be held without the deceased being present - something that, I suspect, Irish people would find very strange. At least here it gives the family, relatives and friends the chance to be together for this moment of formal mourning.

Quite a few people here are cremated but the traditional way of being buried is for the remains to be

The grave in tehe right foreground is of one of Panama's national heroes

resposed in an overground "niche" known as a "boveda). This is normally made of blocks and plastered with cement; then it is kept painted, normally white. I learned last year that on the Caribbean island of Aruba, when a family repaints its house it always paints the grave (also a niche) the same colour so that the deceased person won't feel left out - I thought that was a nice gesture that shows how close they feel to their faithful departed.

In Panama there are many, however, who can't afford a niche, no matter what colour it is. These people are buried in the ground, the same as we do in Ireland. However, while this is considered normal is Ireland, it is very much a sign of poverty in Panama; it is also a source of some shame for the family of the deceased.

Pauper's graves also exist but, from what I have heard, this is really a case of burying the dead, with very little ceremony. My sense is that people here fear this sort of burial very much.

That's enough about death - tomorrow I'll try to have a more uplifting topic

Health and Sickness

Today, after lunch, I headed off with the rector of the seminary to the home of one of the seminarians

Taken last week - James scores a goal

who hasn't been so well lately. This otherwise very healthy young man (see the photo) was heading off for his pastoral assignment last saturday when, out of the blue, he took a convulsive fit while he was on the bus. Luckily for him his companion didn't panic and there was a man on the bus who was a first aider and who was able to ensure that James wasn't hurt during the fit. However, as you can imagine this has been quite a terrifying episode in his life and in the life of this family. He is now undergoing tests to establish exactly what the problem is - please keep him in your prayers.

We met James, his mother, brother, sister and two year old niece in the town of Chorrera and they are certainly putting a brave face on things although they must be very worried. This evening he was to go for a further test (on the brain), the results of which should be available by next Tuesday or Wednesday. Everyone here is hoping and praying for good news.

While James, because of the urgency involved, is having these tests carried out privately (he is very lucky that his sister is working), Panama has a pretty good health system; but like all public health systems, there are waiting lists. People here pay in to the "Seguro" (Insurance) which is a health insurance system run by the government; it includes hospitals. All bills are then paid by the Seguro. So far, a wonderful system. However, there are difficulties - it is not unusual that the Seguro has either run out of particular medications or that it doesn't cover certain medications (the most expensive ones - wouldn't you know it). Also, certain operations aren't covered. All of this means that while the system is generally very good, there continue to be significant gaps.

I thought this might be of interest to people in Ireland as we seem to be going through a sort of transition period with regard to health insurance. We hear a lot about Sweden and Holland; there is also a lot to be learned from poorer countries who have put a lot of thought, and  lot of their scarce resources into health care.

It Suddenly Dawned on Me...

One of the very interesting things about living so close to the equator is that the day begins and ends in a very particular way. Dawn, and sunset, take approximately 15 minutes. There is no real twilight. It really is a bit like the old Dudley Moore sketch where the commentator says that "night fell" and, all of a sudden we hear the sound of something dropping to the floor.

One of the consequences of this is that there is no sense here of the day gently waking up; or, for that matter, of the evening waning - it really feels like it's night one minute and day the next (or vice versa). This means that, at least as I see it, the day begins and ends rather abruptly. Of course, it also means that there isn't the problem of trying to drive in twilight which can be very tiring, not to day dangerous - not that I have dared to try driving here.

I thought it would be nice to show you how dawn progresses so quickly here - to be honest, I'm not sure that I have achieved it but here goes anyway. What follows is two series of photographs. In each series, each photo was taken 5 minutes after the other. Hopefully, it will give you some idea of what I'm talking about