In order to get this resort operative I need to get the pool in order. The first order of business is to fill it.  As we had drained the few remaining tanks that had not been stolen and the catchment systems were profoundly deficient a new plan of attack was in order to get this place open in a timely manner.  Along the hill adjacent to the property a long run of four in PVC snakes its way toward the school, it is buried and crosses the finca.  Ricardo agreed to fix a section that had been broken by horses and to attach a fitting for a hose which is to be run to the pool.  Although the water pressure is insufficient during the daytime to be useful, when the villagers are asleep significant water, about a thousand gallons a day, can be obtained.  Ok, sounds good. And fix the catchment gutters on that cabin up the hill.  I’ll be back Saturday to inspect.

Friday

Saturday

Three large desks, simple structures of flat boards best described as small picnic benches with affixed seating, but only one sitting bench were placed with served the providers.  desks tables consulting under metal roofed concrete slab that formerly served as soccer field. Kid playing baseball throwing a ball up in the air and throwing with a stick.

Presently Dr. Ben arrived and draw a crowd.  His boat was pulled ashore and the clinic quickly began.  In contrast to the scores of people waiting for medical attention on Wednesday people there were but a few waiting at a time.  There was never a long line, but there was never an empty provider desk.  Ben consulted by himself.  Jen enlisted the aid of ??? ???’s of the Red Cross.

Skye was the receiving person, pulling prior records and completing a form based on a patient interview.  The patient was then seen by Ben, Jen or ??? a gastoenterologist.

Common ailments included stomach distress, most often likely caused by improper sanitation or bad water.  
I met a particularly interesting individual when he was asked to show us his calf which was severely damaged by a snake bite in Costa Rica.  Many Ngobe are seasonal workers at coffee plantations, picking coffee beans.  This gentleman was declared a deaf mute (not by a member of the Floating Doctors)  I said, “He’s not deaf, he is hearing and understanding everything you say.”  He looked at me, gave me a big grin and a thumbs up.  He understood my English.  Later he talked to me in Spanish.  After we went for a swim he walked down a hill and greeted us wearing a security guard outfit and a realistic plastic pistol in holster which he brandished at the Peace Corp worker.   Several of the health providers thought it was a real gun and that he was actually a security officer.

Information 

Welfare

Some of the women get 100 dollars every two months. 15 women get the benefits. They go get the money from no bukori.

Education

Three buildings accommodate 97 students first to sixth grade. Three teachers one from Changuinola, one from Santiago Veraguas and one from Almirante live on site and visit their families on every three weeks.

Two other teachers. One from San Martin Veraguas. Every 15 days she goes for one day. Other teacher is from Changuinola with married a member of the group. Her husband teaches kindergarten. 

At the school women cook for the kids 18 women rotate. They get food on weekdays when school is in session. School is out December 13 to last week of February. The school consumes 184 pounds of beans and 345 pounds of rice each month.

Crops

The women plant and retrieve

Health

One person gets elected from the village to attend a seminar in David for a week to learn how to reach the kids and observe problems of health. If they detect that the kids are sick they are taken to the nearby settlement of Punte Sirin in a dugout canoe. Frequently the facility in Punte Serin is out of what is guessed to be the appropriate medicine.

Bush Doctor

Many of the villagers prefer the bush doctor that lives in the village.  He is generally unable to determine the problem and provides a common herbal treatment for a wide variety of ailments that are often ineffective.

Mortality

The number of children under age six varies between ten and twenty.  It is not uncommon for three or four deaths a year in this age group.   Three or four children. 10 or twenty children under school age. Try to tell them to bring to the hospital. Costs a lot of money to get to town. Give the kids coffee.

At the school women cook for the kids 18 women rotate. They get food on weekdays when school is in session. School is out December 13 to last week of February.

Peace Corp

Evan halls from Rhode island and has worked with the Peace corp for ??? Months spending his time at Playa Verde. He lives in a two room hut that he rents for 20 a month. Built his own water catchment tank our of concrete. His best friend hereis Jorge.

He shits in a bucket with sawdust and composts it inn a bamboo frame.

Cowboy coffee. Fried flour.

Back to my house.  Just out of town I put another five gallons of gas into the tank.  They, Zhenya (Jenni) and Stani were there, cooking up moussaka.  They finally finished cooking and we ate, me included, despite having just finished a hamburger in town.

Finally another break in the rain and my buddy Chris called, “Are you coming?”  “Working on it.”  “C’mon girls, put some swimsuits on, we have things to do.  I have no idea how it took them half an hour to change and get ready to go out the door.

Off to the South Anchorage, we picked up Chris, over to another sailboat, picked up Marcus and off to Saigon.  We pulled along the wreck.  The plywood substrate to the deck was warped up and fully exposed. I hopped the rail and stepped through the floor.  Thereafter I only stepped on large things on the deck that distributed my weight across a greater area.   We made our way to the bow and dropped ourselves through a hatch.   This boat was a complete disaster.  The only thing left of any merit were some walls of finished 3/4″ marine plywood in great condition.  Two Detroit Diesels would probably be sunk with the boat.  In the port sternmost was a wooden box that housed the Onan generator.  Gotta get some diesel fuel and a battery and see if it runs.

Dropped off Chris and Marcus and headed to the Cosmic Crab on Carenero to drop off an air hose and a regulator that I had borrowed and we had employed while working on Nothing Wong.  While there I received a phone call from an assistant of Dr. Ben LaBrot of  the Floating Doctors.  He wanted to meet with me.  So, I left the women there and boated over to Carenero.   I was invited to participate in a clinic on Cristobal and a three day clinic this weekend in Kusapin.   Awesome.

I was informed of the fact that the local hospital had managed to get these wonderful people from treating residents of Isla Colon, the most populous island in the archipeligo and the island on which Bocas Town is located.   I am not sure what their motivation is.  The lines are so long at the hospital that people wait all day, aren’t seen, are turned away after ten hours and told to return.

Then we hit Old Bank where they got a flavor of something completely different than Bocas Town and headed home.

Frequently cited locations.

So I went to the Yahama store and walked behind the counter to get it myself as the clerk was busy and the phone.  Were I to ask he would probably say he doesn’t have it.   I went over to the register and he indicated he was talking and therefor could ring up a sale.

Down to the hardware store. This pump will do.
“Let’s take a bet on how many fittings they come up with convert 1 FIP to male hose fitting.   I guess 6.  Half an hour of fumbling and the hardware clerk came up with a fitting with only five parts, 3 were threaded 2 were glued, we to cut nipples to get the whole thing done.   At any Home Depot you could by one part for $.60 to do that.    Needed PVC glue, teflon tape, electrical tape some hose fittings.  A hundred bucks later I was

We need some terminals to make an extension cord, I have 1200 feet of 8 guage at my house.  There was no service as usual so it a pair of us, one took through the glass counter and one to remove the cardboard boxes from the densely packed shelves as the contents couldn’t be seen from behind the counter.  I need an oil filter for my outboard the guy disappeared for twenty minutes.  A woman who had been writing up my ticket was now engaged with another and I would have.

I went back to the first store and the guy spent 15 minutes ringing up a gallon of oil and a filter.  When that was finally completed I went the hardware and only waited five minutes for them to ring me.  Water,  four gallons should it. I had to ask the clerk to come out from out back to take my money. We had a bunch of food from yesterday.   All right, back to my house, just burning gas and off to Dolphin Bay.

A cooler, 4 gallons of water, a generator, two tool boxes, 100 pounds of wire, a 12 volt converter, gas, the pump were all walked up the hill in the bright sun.  We put a hose on a tank and improvised a series of hoses that involved cutting demolished hose fittings looking for a way to jury a long enough hose.  Two hoses had a piece of brass pipe that was salvaged and hose clamps were improvised.  Now to connect the hose to the water.  Of course there is no water tape.  More fitting, more reducers more scraps of finally it was attached. We started the pump.  Nothing, just a gurgle.  We took off the discharge hosed and notice air in the water.   Shitty hoses.  We now needed to improvise an extension cord.  The terminal we bought was defective so we just the male plug off a pot warmer that was certain to never be used and could be repaired easily and spliced the wires to that.  More diddling with connections to attach the pump to water tank and half an hour later we were delivering water at the rate of 36 liters per minute to drain a 1000 tank.  We were hot, had been working the tropic sun and douched ourselves prior to filling the pool.  Wet, with a breeze in the shade, it was downright cool.

 Ok, this’ll take a couple of hours let’s go work on one from the main.  It’s higher elevation, we can siphon.   Well, yeah, that worked but 300′ of 3/8″ (The only reason to have hose that small is so that’s light carry if you just want very small volumes)  This is going take days.  A couple of hours later, something that could have become apparent with a little we realized we couldn’t fill this pool with every tank on the property.

Off to look at the golf cart we were having very difficult time pushing down the hill until we realized the woman at the wheel was riding break  Now for the uphill portion and inspection.  This was more jungle than vehicle, ant infested, with plants growing through the engine.  Some broke the gas tank presumably to steal gas, with all of tubing it would have been easier to siphon.  Spare parts on the boat a tank was improvised. The battery had been stolen.  Let’s get that 50 amp jumper.  A bit of screwing with the controls and it sound like low voltage solenoid related, all right we’ll try when we have a battery.  What’s this vice grips.  Oh, this must be transmission.  Yup the control is broken.  Nothing like reaching to a hole of parts including drive belts and pulleys to add to the thrill of driving a golf cart.

Off the generators, next two two formerly magnicent diesel generators disassembled, missing parts and rusting a chinese piece of stamped steel.  Turn the key, nothing, of course the battery is dead.  It position in such a manner that it was nearly impossible to pull the cord.  

In celebration of a great day we had a huge meal in the furnitureless bodega having availed ourselves of the grill locked in the behind a rotting.   Was it hot?  We each drank a gallon water and never pissed.

Chris is going to be here at 8:30. He is pressed for time.  How could this be?  He has nothing to do, ever.

One inch manilla lines were tied off to the bow of Nothing Wong.  Here he comes.  Chris called me on the phone.  He couldn’t see to navigate the shallows as he was heading east into the morning sun.  I grabbed some polaroid sunglasses, took my bearings and set off in my boat to lay a course through the shallows, surveyed the water and headed out.  I called him on the phone. It was terse. “77. Copy?”  “Roger”.

I turned on the VHF radio and set it to channel 77.  “Come straight to me.”  The big boat bore down on me cautiously, travelling but a few knots.  Just one tack necessary.  I stopped at the turning point. “Straight to here. I’m heading out to the anchor point.”  I did so.  The beast came to rest. As he was anchoring I was dispatched to get “Cool Boat Chris” (CBC) from Alejandra’s panga, tied off and secured with a stern anchor.  I picked up CBC and shuttled him over to Marita so he could do some line handling, then back to Nuthing Wong to get the tow lines.  One of the boys threw them to one that was on my boat and he started to feed out line.  “Just throw the whole damn thing overboard, else you’ll get the ropes tangled in your feet.”  Jesus, what do they teach these guys in the Coast Guard Academy? Apparently not much to do with boating.  “Get in back and make sure they don’t get near my prop.”  Back to Marita.  The lines were tied off.

Marlin boarded my boat to supervise.  The lines slowly tightened, Marita pitched, the water churned. “Put your rudder amidships” I squawked, repeating Marlins order.   Marita straightened out and another pull was attempted. Marlin observed, “He’s never tugged before, he should let the slack out and surge.”

“Chris, lay back.  Go.”  Something Wong moved a couple of inches.  “Off….. go.”  A foot. “Off, go.”  A few minutes later, she was free.  We hooted and hollered and danced little jigs. Clive broke out into a shit eating grin.   CBC was escorted back to Alejandra’s Panga.   The mast and rudder were left to be collected later.  She was pulled at three knots toward her next mooring in Saigon.  I left with my crew to town for a celebratory coffee or two.  My phone rang. “Jim, get us a bottle of rum, we want to celebrate.”  “There is one on Nothing Wong.”  “I don’t want to wait until we get to Saigon.”  What time is it? 10:30?  OK, I bought a handle of Abuelo, we boarded my boat and pulled alongside.  Marita came to a rest, we tied off and resumed the journey.  The sound system was cranking, blasting a particularly bad selection of music. The boys consumed rum in moderation.  Others?  Not so much.  By the time we got to Saigon, the captain was wasted.

The boat was pulled into position, Marlin put the anchor and a hundred feet of chain on his cayuco and pulled out to drop anchor.  Crazy Chris, yet another Chris, but this one is very dependable.  You can always rely on him to be an asshole.  He got on his dinghy and came over to tell us to move the boat, it was too close to his.  It was three hundred feet away.  Do you think you own the whole bay, asshole?   After an unduly long time elapsed, accomplishing little, the mainstay of activity aboard Marita we headed back to the south anchorage, leaving nothing Wong and a very happy Clive.

Crazy Chris started calling, “Get the f***ing boat out of here.  I don’t want it so close to my boat…” He was screaming so loud that Marita Chris put down his phone and we all listened.”  Crazy Chris then started issuing threats.  He was advised in strong terms that he was screwing with the wrong people.

I gassed up and we snorkeled Hospital Point on the way home.  The water was far murkier than I had ever seen it.   While enjoying a late lunch on the deck the dogs took off down the stairs in a barking frenzy.  A bit later up walked Simon, my gardener.  He had just returned from six months of seminary training in David. This place is turning more Catholic than an Irish neighborhood in Boston.  Yup, I have work for you to do.  I pointed to a tree I needed felled.  Then I pointed to a spot of land which had been cleared.  “Tres muchachas, una hora.”  He laughed heartily.  It was a pathetic effort for three gringo lads with machetes.  Maybe half an hour for Simon by himself.  We fed him and gave him coffee.  He said he would be by at seven in the morning and paddled back home.

Marlin a well respected local for many reasons, not the least is his knowledge of many things was the fourth to attempt the effort to get the boat off the sand bar. He had secured three anchor lines off the starboard bow and was winching on the lines in order to pull the bow in the direction of the nearest channel.  Forty tons of steel, with a six foot long steel keel and two steel skegs and six tons of lead were buried in the sand.  

The boys tried to pull on the lines.  I directed them to get them taught and to pull perpendicularly,  the leverage advantage is enormous.  Every time an inch or two was gained an Indian re-secured another line and the process continued, a couple inches at a time for about an hour.  We swung the bow about four feet.  A three ton winch was employed, but taking in the slack was painful.  Every time the limited travel of the load chain was reached a hundred feet of work chain had to be pulled backwards, a new knot tied in the anchor rope to hold the hook and the chain had to be worked out to the rope again.  All in all we swung the bow ten feet before the rapidly subsiding tides frustrated further efforts.

Marlin secured his massive cayuca, a dugout canoe thirty two feet long with four inch thick walls, with the stern but four feet from the bow and ran his reluctant forty stroke outboard at full throttle for hours, the prop wash blew away large quantities of sand, fortunately, away from the reef.  This had been attempted before but weather washed away away progress.  

The boys, Clive and I went to town. Clive had to provision and had no tender, the boys, well, something is always happening around me and they didn’t want to miss anything.   We took a taxi to Saigon, an isthmus that separates the peninsula that is Bocas Town from the bulk of the island and I led the way to Marlin’s house.   The five of us walked up to the boat house and two of the boys jumped up and monkeyed their way across a beam to reach another winch used for lifting the cayuca.  Marlin’s son Noah came out.  I’d never met him before.  “Hi, we are just getting one of these for your dad. Can you get us a plastic bag to put it in?” Nothing like carrying a large amount of rusty chain covered in used motor oil.

We returned to the boat, turned over the winch and decided to snorkel.  Sam saw a couple of nurse sharks. I was told they were always hanging out in the mangroves there.  Enough, to be continued tomorrow.  We headed home.   Leaving Marlin and his crew to continue blowing a channel. Tomorrow, my buddy Chris is bringing out his sixty foot trawler and we are going to try to pull this boat off of the sandbar.  If it doesn’t work this time, I guess we’ll have to wait for a full moon tide.

Hell, we blow off most of the day, why stop now? Sam and I went snorkeling.  I saw barracuda after barracuda.  Most likely it was the same one.  Curious creatures.   I dodged the giant moon jelly fish.   I avoided the box jellies, they sting.   I was swimming for exercise, not pausing to inspect.   I saw that barracuda again and then a big one.  A big pull in the crotch of my pants. WTF?  I spun around.  No blood.  No pain.  I spun around again.  Whew! It was my dog, a quarter mile from home who thought he’d join me on my swim.   I wasn’t quite done yet, but I returned home.

Shortly thereafter, Sam returned with a nice Spanish Mackeral.  He had been pursuing fish for an hour and was just standing to rest and this fish swam up to him, asking to die and Sam fulfilled his wish.

First coat on the floor of the  guest bedroom, the hall, the guest bathroom

We hopped on my boat and a few minutes later arrived and looked at the pile that had been sitting, soaking on wet earth for five years.  Moldy, green and black mold covered all surfaces.  We picked up a 15 foot board, which weighed 140 pounds apiece to find termites crawling under it.  We took some scraps of aluminum plate and scraped the wood.  Yup, it looks good.  Nispero is amazing stuff.  Untreated in rainforest, uncovered and no rot.

We picked them up, moved them over near the generator as the extension cord had been borrowed and not returned, a common situation in Bocas and using an old left handed circular saw, I didn’t even know such a thing existed until I was handed it, at cut them to length.  The saw was old, the blade dull and glazed with resin.  The saw had a workout. Board after board and hauled them to the boat.  

Steps were pried out, wood scraped, wood treated with insecticide and a mixture of diesel and used motor oil on the underside and the posts.  This is an extremely effective means of treating wood.   I didn’t have a circular saw an I sure wasn’t going to try to use that one to do the finish cuts.  A text message later, yup, I have one you can use.  A drill, a text to somebody else.  He had one.  

The floors were sanded to the finish state and I headed out to town to get a couple of gallons of varnish that I will mix with penetrating oil to make a Danish Oil.  The lady behind the counter asked where I’ve been. “Did you go out of town? You haven’t been here in a couple of weeks.”  A South African from the top end resort in Bocas, where rooms are over $500 a night, “Hey, Jim, come and visit.”  Yeah, I’ll have to go back, I get rooms for free.  A very cute blonde walked in and gave me a hug.  “Hi, sweetie.” And so it went for 10 minutes, I knew everybody who walked into the place.

Got any sponge mops and refills?  Shakey proudly showed me all the refills.  Wow! I should stock.  Do you have the mops that match. He told me to look for myself.  Past the authorized personel only gate, Jessie and I went.  “My head is spinning, is there someone in this town you don’t know?”  “Yeah, lots, but everybody knows me.”  Two cans of marine varnish, a paint brush, some turpentine filled into a water bottle.  “Could you put a tape label on that?”  A piece  of masking tape was stuck on the bottle and the spanish word for turpentine was put on it.  It came to $97.34.  “I left my wallet at home.”  “Ok, just put your name on the top of the bill”.

Jessie ran off to buy some rum, wine and fruit and we took off for home. I decided to take the long way.  This young man took notice that we were on the wrong side of my island.  On my side, Bastimentos is but a mile away.  On the other side there are hundreds of mangroves. They don’t remotely resemble each other.

We were 100 feet from a large steel Chinese Junk, made by a guy I know with three other people over the course of fourteen months.    The main mast which, a large spruce tree was floating in the water, tethered to the boat.  The rudder had snapped off.  We had a hell of a blow last Sunday, We boarded the boat.  A grizzled old man looked through the window at me.  “Permission to come aboard.”  He put on some clothes and we entered the dismal cabin.  Clive offered beer, Jessie accepted.  The plan was to pull off at high tide on the new moon. “That’s tomorrow right?” Yeah, 8 o’clock.  “Need help?” “We can always use help.”  We’ll be here and bring you some breakfast burritos.

Kirk is going to Thailand, I have to visit him.  We pulled into the mangroves, walked down a long dock.  I knocked on the door of a tool shed.  A grizzled 77 year old man, missing half his dentition looked through a crack in the door, swung it open and crushed my hand in a popeye grip.  “Jim!  Where are the pretty girls?”  Sorry, not today, I was at the Junk, thought I’d swing by, you look beat, did we just wake you up?”  I was just watching Bonanza come on.  We entered his living room a 10′ x 8′ room adorned by calendar girls, a band saw, scuba tanks, a two stage air compressor for filling scuba tanks, cans of paints, a drill press a bench that served as a table and a chair.  Jessie looked like he’d just entered Oz.  “Kirk, built Odin, that 60′ foot trimaran, himself.”  

“I just got back from a cruise with Chris.” “To see the 80′ trawler? How’s it looking.”  “Yeah, it’s in rough shape, at least 3 injectors are stuck, we are sending them all off to David.”   I told him we were going to try to get the junk off the sandbar tomorrow morning. He said he would be there.

The boys swept and scrubbed the floors and removed most of the remaining dust that covered every surface of the bathroom.

Back home, we decided to go to the pizza fest being held on Red Frog that we were invited to yesterday.  A mile boat ride, a walk through half a mile of jungle and a couple of hundred meters on the beach to be told that they couldn’t accommodate us.   The place was full. There had not been a boat at the dock.  The operators were sold out due to accommodating the outgoing crew, the incoming crew, the operators relatives and a few guests.  I don’t know why they invited me if they couldn’t accommodate me.

Sam cooked up a rice, brocolli and onion dish, made some a curry and stir fried some chicken breast while I wrote this blog entry and made a few phone calls.