Panama Update #15
July 28, 2008
Today I got a chance to go to the field with Nikki and some of her work group for the first (and probably only) time. Most of the volunteer work I will be doing will be office work, but to go once and see the canal close up is a worthwhile experience. Nikki drives the group, so she is already used to driving in Panama City. They leave around 6:00 AM so they can beat the traffic (and the heat), and also they are going out of town so the traffic is less. You may not be able to tell from the pictures, but they go to an area of the canal that is highly restricted and secure. The blank has arranged special permission to go the areas of the canal that they are going to widen. First the canal workers dynamite the area, and then Nikki’s group goes in to take measurements, samples, and observations of what they call the outcrops. You can see by the pictures that it is like looking at the banks of the St. Croix or the Mississippi River, only this body of water is human-made. Can you imagine all the work it took when they were building the canal to clear the area? They went through a process similar to what is happening now, using dynamite and then trucks to clear out the earth.
It is the first time I have been on a geological field site of any kind as a participant. There is a lot of carrying rocks and equipment and also a lot of hammering and very physical work. There is also the finer work of being very careful when they have found some fossil or rock specimen having scientific value. Today Nikki took measurements using a GPS system, brunton (like a compass), and other equipment. It started raining heavily late in the morning for about 20 minutes. The packs and samples had to be covered in plastic or waterproof cases. Once that was done, we all stood under an umbrella, watched the ships, and waited for the rain to stop. I was soaked, but because the temperature is warm, being wet actually feels good. It was overcast the whole day, which helps keep it cool, so the heat was not a problem. We came back about 3:30 PM and dropped off the collected samples.
I heard from two schools this afternoon. One is the Yitzhak Rabin School that I had dropped in on last Friday. The secretary called to say the principal wanted to meet with me. The other school that called was one I had answered an ad form yesterday’s Sunday paper. That school is called the Instituto of Alberto Einstein, which the guidebook says is also a Jewish School. It is located in the expensive part of the downtown area. The human resources person called to set up an interview with me for Wednesday morning. She was unclear about how my lack of a work permit could be figured out, but other schools I have talked to seem to know what to do in those cases.
