Where Wonder Meets Wander

A little guy on the Island of Carenero skated boarded circles around the other kids on a borrowed board in front of the grocery store. It really is the only place they have to play. Well, our hearts went out to him and today we took him shopping in town for a skateboard of his own. His name is Josel and he is 8...or will be in a couple of days. You should have seen the determination on his little face as he kept up with us at a good clip dodging in and out of stores looking for a new board. We finally found one. Its got Captain America on it. He grinned carefully and said thank you (in Spanish of course) Back in the panga (our little traditional Panamanian boat) and back across the bay to Carenero. Josel got to try out his new board on the concrete in front of the store. Of course, a few other kids were there to help him. Last I saw, he was trotting off home with his board in both hands propped behind his back. We headed back to the marina to discover that a friend and backpa...

This home belongs to a woman who lives on a tiny island in Panama. She has no husband and her son is very ill. Most of her money goes to hospital bills for his care.  We are so excited for her today as her home is finally getting painted. when we asked her if we could paint her home, at first she didn't understand. Apparently my Spanish needs some work, or maybe the idea was so foreign to her that she thought she must have misunderstood me.  When a translator explained everything to her, she buckled right there in the slop. He had to catch her so she didn't fall. You see, the water under her house is contaminated with raw sewage. Anyway, through her tears, she agreed we could paint her house for her. She picked out a lovely bright green and white trim for the windows. Here you can see Mijo, Gordo and a couple other boys hard at work painting...and laughing...I am super happy we can pay them for their labor too... Mijo might need a shower... :-) Signed...Happy...

Clean up day started out wet. But no matter, adults and kids alike turned out to pick up trash and at the end of the day over 860 big black bags of garbage were hauled away. What an impressive beginning! I think I was most impressed by the smiles and the willingness of everyone to pitch in and help.  Working hard,  laura Please check out our FULL WEBSITE at www.PovertyProjectInternational.com Connect with us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/povertyprojectinternational/ If you want to chat, you can email us at povertyprojectinternational@gmail.com Or if you want to help us out and DONATE, you can go to PAYPAL and send your donation to   povertyprojectinternational@gmail.com All donations are tax deductible. Live is an adventure, Live it!

I guess because truth really is stranger than fiction. I try to look past what I think I see and see what is. Sometimes the results are unexpected, endearing or even mystifying. I think we have a tendency to see what we expect. For example, I live near a Tico town called Quepos. If you walk its streets, you will likely think it poor. The tin roofs are rusting. The streets are narrow and everything from dogs to golf carts to buses and delivery trucks, to segways (those funny looking two-wheeled, motorized things that you stand up on) whizzes past you. Street vendors sell empanadas, and cold coconuts, and frozen juice pops. Call girls swing their hips and moms with new babies run from the rain. The commotion combined with the hand scrawled signs and steep runoff ditches along the street sides makes you uncomfortable. You feel the third-world-countryness of the place. But what you may not notice is that every young girl walks with the guidance of her smart phone and every young boy h...

Its raining again. I guess that's why they call it a rainforest. I have red berry palm oil soup on the stove and hot cinnamon tea brewing. Lolli, my rescue dog from the Caribbean coast, is running around with one of my socks--a brand new one--but its ok. She's happy. Its hot and all the doors are open. The fans are running and a tiny trickle of a breeze is drifting in. My plan is to go to the market--the one that stretches out along the beach. But like I said, "its raining." Anyway, I am sure the market is not open yet. The farm trucks roll in around 4 or so and erect tents and lights and tables filled with yucca and onions and garlic and carrots and avocados and little red hairy fruits with sweet white innards and bottles of fresh pressed sugar cane syrup and coffee from the mountains in Terrazu. Ani used to pick coffee. He works for me now and I am amazed at his ability to do almost anything. He and his family moved here from Nicaragua when he was eight and ...

 The wind whispers in the bamboo and I think someone is calling me. Faintly, so faintly that I am not sure if it is my imagination. So I sit under the arching branches and listen, quietly, breathlessly even wondering who it might be. I am waiting to hear, you see. Waiting for an answer, waiting for a sign, and I think I might hear it in the bamboo. You never know these days where light might come in, and I think if I sit long enough, and still enough, I might hear it.

Tiki Laundry. You cannot imagine how good it feels to watch brilliant white linens waving like flags of surrender in the wind. Surrender to a simple life. Surrender to cold showers and butterflies and sunshine drying and foreign languages and chickens that were supposed to be egg-laying chickens but aren't and are now simply part of the family and will continue to be happy chickens. Surrender is not about living without, but rather living with. It requires a change of perspective. I choose to let the wind take me to a place where I get to have showers that cool my body from the heat of the day, and I get to chase butterflies, and I get to hang sweet-smelling wash out on the line, and I get to stretch my brain and learn new words, and I get to chase fluffy white chickens and hear them happily clucking as they chase bugs and nibble on left-over bits of papaya. Surrender is not such a bad thing. :-)