From November 10 to December 10, 2009, I had the opportunity to embed with Dead Wheat International Foundation, an organization dedicated to empowering the impoverished and malnourished Ngöbe tribe in central Panama.

A Ngöbe girl we met in the mountains...

I got to see firsthand the work Dead Wheat is doing to help impoverished farmers develop sustainable agriculture, clean air and potable water supplies.

The trip may have been exhausting.  I may have come back with a billion bug bites.  But I know now that I saw the Kingdom of God at work in some powerful new ways, and I wouldn’t trade that knowledge for anything!

A Land of Extremes

From the filthy rich to the desperately poor, Panama is a country full of disparity…

Click here to read this travel journal…

Photo Gallery: Starting Over

In a land devastated by deforestation, a new generation of children is working to undo the past…

Click here to see this photo gallery…

The Harvest

By harvesting rice with my host family in Panama, my whole perspective on food began to change…

Click here to read this travel journal…

Culture Guide: Surviving the Jungle

Tips and tricks for YOUR next vacation in the heart of the Panamanian jungle…

Click here to read this culture guide…

Fruitless Land

In the once fertile ground of Panama, farmers struggle to grow crops and starve.  One organization seeks to change all that…

Click here to read this article…

Photo Gallery: The Hike

What seemed like a challenging adventure to me was simply a part of everyday life for the villagers we met along the way…

Click here to see this photo gallery…

Breathe

After seeing a hut wreathed in smoke, I discovered a surprising new injustice in the mountains of Panama…

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Comfort

After facing hunger, exhaustion, pain and thirst in Panama, I learned a lot about the true meaning of comfort…

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The Aqueduct

On a trip to a remote jungle village, I learned a valuable lesson about social justice…

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About half-way through my time in Panama, I had the chance to visit a different part of the Comarca (a region home to the native Ngöbe people).  What I saw gave me a whole new appreciation for those who long to bring clean water to those who don’t have it…

For the last couple of years, Dead Wheat International Foundation has been working with the Peace Corps to build an aqueduct that will bring potable water to the neighboring villages of Kwite and Calante.  Our mission for this four-day trip was to install a sediment filter at the water catchment area two hours into the mountains.

To get to the village of Kwite, we had to take a four hour ride on a motorized canoe.  The boat’s tiny engine propelled us for a few miles along the coast before turning into the mouth of a wide brown river.

Kwite's river... a source of life and of death. (Click the image to see the full size panorama)

As we headed upstream, we passed villages on stilts, fishermen in canoes and wide stretches of dark, dense jungle.  Every minute of our journey took us farther from cell phone towers, farther from electricity and farther into the empty spaces on the map.

Hunkered down to keep my head out of the rain, I had plenty of time to reflect on just how remote we really were.  But I had a hard time concentrating with the number of distractions in the boat.

The motorized canoe we took to get to Kwite.

Every time someone shifted their weight, the canoe would rock to the side, threatening to tip us all into the muddy water.  Whenever the rain picked up, the lady behind me would open her umbrella, stabbing me in the back of the neck with its poles.  The village store owner sat in front of me, slamming down beer after beer with his son.  By the time they had each had seven bottles, they were practically yelling in my ear.

Finally, we arrived in Kwite, a village of 15-20 elevated huts perched on the side of the river.  We got out of the boat, strapped on our water-tight backpacks and started marching toward our destination…

As we trudged toward our camping site, we slipped and slid down muddy paths, climbed hills and waded through streams.  We reached our camping site as dusk was closing in.  We set up our tents at the edge of a cow pasture, less than half a mile from the aqueduct’s water source.  With headlamps shining, we tried our best to avoid stepping in the many piles of cow dung covering the area.

Steve Bliss from Dead Wheat and I installing the water filter.

Finally, after setting up our camp, we went for a quick bath in a nearby river, zipped ourselves into our tents, and feasted on a dinner of plain tuna and granola bars.  With nothing else left to do, we went to bed.

The following day we woke up, put on our wet clothes from the previous day and headed off to the water catchment area.  There, we spent a couple of hours building a makeshift sediment filter out of PVC pipes.

Later in the day we walked the line of the aqueduct to see the work that had been done by several of the men from Kwite.  Although poor, they were able to contribute “sweat equity” to the project, and had been working tirelessly to cut a path through the jungle for the pipes.

The aqueduct cutting through the jungle.

From its source all the way down to the tank where it ends, the aqueduct is roughly four miles directly through the jungle.  We hacked our way through overgrowth with machetes, plodded through muck and mud and fought with the razor grass lining parts of the path.

As we slogged down the trench beside the half-finished PVC pipeline, I thought about how significant this whole project was for the people of Kwite.  For decades, they have been drinking, cooking, washing and bathing with water from the polluted river.

Looking at a map of Panama, you can see that there are 10-15 other villages upstream from Kwite, and all of them use the river as a latrine.  Cattle droppings, trash, chemicals… they all get washed into the water.

And with no other source of potable water (except for exorbitantly expensive bottles from the city), villagers drink in parasites, bacteria and harmful chemicals every day.  Many adults lose valuable weeks of work to painful diseases.  Many children die.

So for the people of Kwite, the aqueduct isn’t just a fun project.  It’s literally a matter of life and death.

One of the villagers of Kwite.

It struck me, as we followed the line of the aqueduct down into a swamp, just how simple the whole thing is.  These people are getting sick and dying because they have no clean water.  With a little hard work and dedication, they can drink safely once again.

But as we headed back to our campsite that evening, I wrestled with the reality of it all.  Sure, it’s simple, but it still seems so huge and impossible.  I mean, it took a whole team of people months of hacking and digging to bring water to just a single village.  How can we possibly hope to bring drinking water to the millions of people in the world who don’t have it?

Eventually, I realized the truth.  It is impossible.  You and I cannot bring clean water to the entire world.  We just can’t.

But do you know what?  We can bring clean water to the people of Kwite.  We can invest our time, energy and resources in the initiatives like Dead Wheat that are already there.

We can't help everyone. But we can help them.

And when that aqueduct is done, there is another village right across the river that needs help with their water.

Sure, these villages are remote.  On the global scale they are rather insignificant.  But because the people of Dead Wheat long to live out the Kingdom of God in their part of the world, these villagers will not suffer forever.

This is a truth that has been growing in my heart for a while now.  When I look at statistics about billions of people suffering needlessly, I realize just how small and insubstantial I am in the struggle for social justice.

I can’t fix the world.

But here’s the beautiful thing.  I don’t have to.  That’s not my job.  God will restore this world.  I just need to love and care for “the least of these” (Matthew 25) that I encounter in my life.  He will take care of the rest…

At the end of our time in Kwite, we once again boarded the boat, this time headed back to the land of cell phones, TVs and tap water.  Behind us was a tiny jungle village that will soon have clean, fresh water.

To the world, it wasn’t much.  But to the villagers of Kwite, it was everything…

I have been uncomfortable a lot here in Panama.

It started with my first week in the village of Llano Ñopo.  I was living in a hut made out of sticks and sleeping on a “bed” which was really nothing more than a wooden table.  Sure, I had a thin air mattress and an old, ripped sheet to lay on, but let’s just say that a chiropractor would have wept to see it.

Every night, despite slathering myself with 98% Deet (and getting uncomfortably slimy in the process), I was eaten alive by all sorts of strange creatures.  I woke up several times each night, itching all over and wondering when the sun would finally come up.  Fun, to say the least.

The inside of my hut. Protection from the rain, but that's about it...

But tiny insects weren’t the only organisms in my little hut.  One morning, I awoke to the sight of a spider building a web one foot above my head.  The following night, as I got ready to climb into bed, I saw a huge rat crawling through the stick wall inches from my pillow.  He looked at me with a big yellow smile, said “Sup?” and disappeared into the night…

I crossed many rivers in Panama, but only a few with dry feet at the end...

The climate was uncomfortable too.  I went to bed hot and sweaty, then often found myself freezing cold in the middle of the night (high altitudes near the equator are like that I guess).  Because November is the end of the rainy season, it poured every single afternoon.  And with air this humid, my clothes never really dried.

And then there were my two other excursions into rural Panama…

On my first trip, our campsite was in a muddy field filled with cow droppings.  Moments after setting up my tent, there were spiders crawling all over it.  It rained the whole time we were there.  Each morning, I slid into wet, muddy jeans and laced up soaking wet boots.  Awesome.

To bathe, we had to hike up and down across a rolling cow pasture and wash ourselves in a freezing cold river.  To eat, we had to rely on cans of plain tuna, crackers and granola bars.  For days.

And on my final trip, we hiked a grueling 18.5 hours in a day and a half.  We climbed 9 miles into the mountains, sometimes going straight up for an hour and a half.  By the time we reached our destination, my leg muscles were cramping, my back was killing me and my skin was sunburned.

A view from the top of one of the many hills I climbed. (Click the image to see the full size panorama!)

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The night after we limped back into Llano Ñopo, I was so physically exhausted that I woke up three times to throw up outside.  Oh, and once just to swat a cockroach off of my back.

Ok, ok.  You get the picture.  I’ve been uncomfortable here!

But here’s the crazy thing.  Here’s the reason I’ve gone on and on here about my discomforts… When I look around at the people who live here, I am the only one who is uncomfortable.

For people who are used to spending long hours sitting in the back of pickup trucks, comfort really isn't an issue.

When I’m miserable at six in the morning, covered in bug bites and groaning about my wet clothes, my Ngöbe host family is walking around with smiles on their faces.

When I am slogging through the mud, dreaming only of a hot shower, the farmer I’m following is walking happily.

And when I’m collapsing sweaty and exhausted at the top of a hill, wishing I could just call in a helicopter, our indigenous guides are taking in the view.

They have to live here.  And I’m the one who’s uncomfortable.

At first this totally confounded me.  Don’t they see where they live?  Don’t they understand how uncomfortable they are?  But then, I began to realize something.  Perhaps I’m the one who’s missing something…

In the States, we spend a lot of time, energy and money keeping ourselves comfortable, don’t we?  A/C in the summer, heat in the winter, ice cold drinks in the fridge…

These boys are used to discomfort. To them, it's just a part of life!

We have silk PJ’s, universal remotes and dish washers, and we come up with new must-have comforts all the time.  Remote control car starters, toilet seat warmers, blankets with sleeves!

Yet despite our never ending quest for well-being, we’re the ones who are the most uncomfortable in the world.  Doesn’t that seem kind of strange?

It’s got me thinking.  Maybe all the time I spend worrying about my comfort is actually just a waste.  Maybe if I changed my perspective, I wouldn’t be so uncomfortable.  Maybe my discomfort is not so much a status as a choice…

Now, it is going to be hard to change a lifetime of habits, but perhaps now I can start the process.  With winter in full swing back home, I’ll have plenty of opportunities to be uncomfortable.  Freezing temperatures, stuffy nose, chapped lips…

Maybe I can learn something from the Ngöbe and simple appreciate what I do have instead… Warm clothes, food and a loving family.

Woah.  Who knew that I’d have to go to the jungle to learn how to be comfortable?

Take a deep breath.  Smell the air in the room.

Do you notice anything?

Like most households in the developed world, your air is probably clean.  Free from smoke.  Free from carbon monoxide.  Free from harmful particles.  You and I go about our day enjoying pure, harmless air.

But it is not that way for everyone in the world.

In fact, for most people living in third world countries, filthy, smoky air is simply a part of life at home.  Because most impoverished people have no access to cooking gas or electric stoves, families must burn combustible materials to cook, boil water and heat their dwelling.  And what do these things all do when burned?  They produce smoke.

I’ve seen it all over.  In Nairobi’s Kibera slum they burn charcoal.  In India they burn cow dung.  And here in Panama, they burn wood.  But until I lived among the Ngöbe people, I never realized how big of an issue this really is.

A Smoking Hut

The other morning, while living in the village of Llano Ñopo, I woke up and stepped out of my hut to see a jaw-dropping sight.  There, right in front of me, was another hut entirely shrouded in a cloud of white smoke.

The hut I saw in the morning wreathed in smoke.

Inside, a mother was busy cooking breakfast for her family.  As she burned piece after piece of wood to get the water boiling, she was filling her small hut with thick, noxious smoke.  Her older children stared at me from the haze.  Her youngest baby played on the floor.  All of them were breathing in the air without a second thought.

The sight of that smoky hut (and the many others that I have seen here since) has driven home for me a stark reality that I had never even considered before.  People in developing countries are breathing in vast amounts of air pollution.  Every day.

The Kitchen Killer

The other day, I read a report by the World Health Organization (WHO) on the topic.  It says that indoor air pollution – the “kitchen killer” – is responsible for more than 1.6 million deaths every year.  That’s almost 3% of the global burden of disease!

Click on the image to download a copy of the WHO indoor air pollution report.

In rural Panama, women spend large portions of their day cooking indoors with their children at their side.  While some wealthier families can afford to build a separate outdoor “kitchen” hut, most can only afford a single hut or shack to serve as bedroom, living area and kitchen.

Making matters worse is the Panamanian climate.  With long periods of torrential rains, huts need to be as airtight as possible.  The rain stays out, but the smoke stays in.

So, families live, eat and sleep in an environment filled with carbon monoxide, particulate matter and many other harmful chemicals. Children develop pneumonia, adults contract chronic respiratory diseases, and the cycle of poverty grows deeper.

It’s a terrible problem, made even worse by the sheer scale of the thing.  Indoor air pollution is not just a problem in Panama.  It’s in every developing country.  How does somebody combat a problem that a third of the world sees as just a part of life?

A New Initiative

For many children in the world, clean air in the home is something they've never had.

Several options have been presented, but few have fulfilled the three necessary ingredients to a successful initiative: practicality, sustainability and empowerment.

But there is one initiative being pursued by Dead Wheat International Foundation that is sparking interest around the globe.  One that has the potential to change thousands of lives.  A simple, smokeless stove that villagers can build themselves…

Practical

The stoves, designed by Dead Wheat founder Steve Bliss, are simple and effective.  According to Steve, smoke is simply made up of gases and matter that weren’t consumed by the fire.  Operating under this principle, the stoves restrict air intake and direct 100% of a fire’s heat up a central channel, forcing all smoke to be burned and consumed before leaving the top as heat.

One of Dead Wheat's prototype stoves (the current version is round).

An added bonus to the design is that, because all of the heat exits the stove immediately under the cooking pot, it requires less fuel and heats things faster than a regular cooking setup (three rocks with wood being fed in from the sides).

When a few Ngöbe villagers first saw the stoves in action, they were shocked. One of them said, “It’s not working properly.  Where’s the smoke?”  But when they saw how quickly a pot of water was brought to a boil, they all wanted one!

Sustainable

Dead Wheat has designed plastic molds that will each be able to produce hundreds of stoves each.  The stoves can be made from locally available concrete or a concrete/mud mixture.  Because the molds are collapsible and lightweight, they can be taken deep into the mountains to help villages normally untouched by aid organizations.

A Dead Wheat stove mold costs $30 to produce.  Because one mold is expected to produce upwards of 250 stoves, more than 1,500 people will benefit from each one.  Where else can you find such an incredible cost/benefit ratio?

Empowering

Very soon Bernardo, Nidia and their children will be able to breathe clean air at home!

There is one aspect of the smokeless stove project that has created a bit of controversy, however.  While the molds will be donations to specific villages and community organizations, the stoves themselves will not.  Villagers will be responsible for buying their own cement to make a stove.

While some say that it is unfair to expect villagers to pay out of pocket for something so necessary, Dead Wheat sees it from a different perspective.

By requiring people to work for and earn these stoves, Dead Wheat hopes to create ownership and empowerment. Instead of giving the Ngöbe people another handout, as so many well-intentioned aid organizations have done, they will offer them an opportunity and say, in essence, “We believe that you are smart and hard-working enough to take it the rest of the way…”

Who would have thought $30 could go so far?

Sure, it may be controversial, but from my perspective, Dead Wheat’s method gives dignity to a people who have long since been told that they have no value.

Next Steps

Now here’s the cool thing.  Right now, you have the opportunity to get involved.  For a donation of just $30, you could be instrumental in bringing clean air and more affordable cooking to 1,500 people.

Dead Wheat is partnering with The Red Cross in 2010 to distribute 150 molds throughout Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.  If Dead Wheat successfully raises the money for all 150 molds, more than 225,000 people could benefit this year alone.

So what are you waiting for?  Head over to Dead Wheat’s website and make a contribution today!

It’s time that the Ngöbe people breathed clean air once more…

While hiking in the mountains of Panama, I realized that what seemed like a challenging adventure to me was simply a part of everyday life for the villagers we met along the way…

“These people shouldn’t be starving.”

That thought has run through my head many times while living in Llano Ñopo.  Here is a community of farmers with access to land, plenty of rainfall and generations of experience living in the mountainous Panamanian countryside.

These people shouldn’t be starving.  And yet they are…

The Ngöbe people (pronounced Noh-bay) are not lazy.  They work hard.  Yet because of a lack of agricultural education, an ever increasing population and unreliable water sources due to deforestation, they struggle to eke out a living from soil that has long since been drained of its nutrients.

My host Bernardo harvesting rice.

As families continue to grow and expand, farming techniques that have worked for hundreds of years are now becoming unsustainable.  Now that every square inch of land is claimed, the same four acres that used to feed one or two people now have to feed entire families.

Dead Wheat International Foundation has stepped in to bring change to this broken system, but there are many factors working against them.

Ineffective Traditions

A path between two of Bernardo's fields. This is the foliage he needs to cut down by hand each year!

First of all, there are the long-held farming traditions among the Ngöbe people.

For hundreds of years, the primary method of farming here has been what is often referred to as “slash and burn.”  Farmers rotate from year to year between three or four fields, working on one while letting the others become overgrown.  At the beginning of planting season, they cut down the growth on one field, burn away the foliage and plant crops on the newly cleared ground.

While the “slash and burn” technique works effectively when there is an abundance of workable land, it becomes increasingly ineffective as populations grow.  As more and more people have to live on less and less land, fields are rotated much more often, reducing the amount of naturally available nutrients in the soil.

On top of all of that, “slash and burn” is incredibly labor-intensive.  When my host, Bernardo, took me with him to harvest rice, I was shocked to see how overgrown his other fields were.  I got tired just thinking about the week of back-breaking work it would take to cut it all down by hand.

A Lack of Education

The second major obstacle to overcome is a lack of education about proper farming methods.

Two Ngöbe children. It breaks my heart to see so many distended bellies here.

When it comes time to plant new seeds each year, farmers use the antiquated technique of scattering their seeds across the ground.  Many seeds are wasted as they fall on rocks, paths or among other, stronger plants.

Because of the high risk of crop failure, Bernardo actually scatters several different types of seeds.  Each year he plants corn, beans and rice in the same field.  This helps when a pest attacks one of the plants, but with three different crops vying for the same plot of land, none of them will grow to their full potential.

Without knowing any other options, however, Bernardo and farmers like him will continue these methods.

No Knowledge of Nutrients

The third significant problem is that the Ngöbe have very little working knowledge of the science behind nutrients in the soil.  Without realizing the long-term consequences of their actions, many farmers have essentially “sucked the earth dry” by over-planting.  Each year, their crops give smaller and smaller yields, and their families must make do with even less food on the table.

As I harvested rice with Bernardo, I was disheartened to see how puny the rice stalks were.  Every stalk I cut would eventually end up being less than a fork-full of rice.  And after an hour spent harvesting with three other people, we had only collected about five pounds.

Compared to rice harvests in countries where soil is understood, we brought in a fraction of what could have grown.

These problems, when combined with widespread deforestation, create a cycle of poverty that is extremely difficult to break.

As with this mortar and pestle used to separate rice kernels from their husks, the Ngöbe continue to use centuries-old farming techniques.

An Advocate Steps In

Thankfully, organizations like Dead Wheat exist to help these farmers work towards a more sustainable future.

By discovering the true needs of a community and supporting individuals and groups in each village that are already taking initiative, Dead Wheat hopes to reverse the trend of malnutrition without reverting to handouts.

While many aid organizations inadvertently promote dependence among the poor, Dead Wheat’s goal is independence.  Instead of taking over and treating subsistence farmers as helpless peasants, they educate and equip those farmers to pull themselves out of the cycle of poverty.

My host's wife, Nidia, looking out over the countryside on the way to harvest rice (Click the photo to see a larger version of the panorama!).

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Aquaponics

Currently, Dead Wheat is exploring the potential benefits of an aquaponics program in the Comarca (the region where the Ngöbe live).

The “grow beds” for Dead Wheat's prototype aquaponics project, only weeks away from completion.

Aquaponics is a brilliant system that has been used in some parts of the world for thousands of years. Essentially, it entails the creation of a small, closed ecosystem which provides fish, nutritious vegetables, and sometimes even chickens and eggs, with almost zero external inputs.

Let me explain.  It starts with a tank full of tilapia fish.  They are amazingly adaptable, and can feed on the algae which forms naturally in Panama’s wet climate.  As food, tilapia are nutritious and plentiful.

The fish eat, live and reproduce in the tank, their waste fills the water with nutrients that plants need to survive.  This water is then pumped into long, flat “grow beds,” filled with everything from beans to corn to rice.  The nutrient-rich water feeds the vegetables, then flows back into the tilapia tank to begin the process once more.

When Dead Wheat teaches Ngöbe farmers in the Comarca how to set up and run their own aquaponics systems, they will be able to have a consistent, ongoing source of nutritious food.  Meanwhile, the nutrient-poor soil in their fields will finally be allowed to rest and recover.

Even though many aid organizations have given up on the Ngöbe or taken over completely (assuming they are incapable of helping themselves), Dead Wheat maintains hope. Hope that these beautiful people can once again prosper.  Hope that children can once again have full bellies.  Hope that the land can once again be fertile…

These people shouldn’t be starving.  And someday soon, they won’t be.

If there’s one thing just about everyone can relate to, it’s the feeling of helplessness that comes from standing over your suitcase trying to figure out how best to prepare for a week spent deep in the jungles of Panama.

Well not to worry!  Now that I have gone through this experience several times, I have developed a few basic guidelines for just how to prepare for your week in the jungle.

Choose the Right Footwear

There are many obstacles to maintaining clean, dry, un-mangled feet in the jungle.  Knee-deep mud, malevolent thorns, rivers and streams filled with slick, moss-covered rocks… The list goes on.

So just how do you keep your feet from becoming swollen, infected, slime-covered appendages dangling from the end of your ankles?  You’ve got to choose the right shoes!

Now, some people prefer to wear flip flops or sandals when hiking in the jungle.  They keep your feet cool and they’re easy to clean.  Unfortunately, they also turn into ankle-twisting slip-fests when your feet are covered in mud.  And there is a lot of mud in the jungle.

Rubber boots. Making a comeback on the Parisian fashion circuit!

Before you know it, you’ll be slogging your way barefoot through a half mile of mud, hoping desperately not to step on those little thorn-covered branches that lie across the path, but stepping on one anyway and having to balance on one foot so that you can wash off the other one enough to pull out 30 thorns…  Just a hypothetical, of course.  I’m not saying that the exact same thing happened to me. 

The second option for footwear is to use hiking boots.  They support your feet, make it easy to jump across muddy puddles, and they are amazingly comfortable for really long treks… that is, until you need to cross a river.  Then they fill with water like a sponge, gain an extra three pounds and give you that wonderful, squishy feeling of soaking-wet socks all day.

Hiking boots were my footwear of choice, and by the time I went to bed most days, my wet feet looked like the pale, shriveled paws of a 2000 year old mountain gorilla.

Ok, so flip-flops and hiking boots are out.  That really only leaves one legitimate option.  Rubber boots.

The locals wear them, you can buy them here for $7, and they are pretty much the only way to finish a week in the jungle with even a shred of sanity and human decency left.

Rubber boots wash clean in seconds, they can go into foot-deep mud without getting you dirty and they make you look like a super-hot New England crab fisherman.

And be honest.  Who doesn’t want to look like that?

Don’t Mourn the Death of Your Stuff

Rain.  Humidity.  Mud.  Heat.  What do these things have in common?  They all spell the death of your beloved electronics!

Having a foggy lens does have one advantage... It makes it really easy to capture glowy, dream-like images.

It doesn’t even matter what they are.  Cameras, iPods, laptops… Give them just a couple weeks in the jungle, and they’ll all be nothing more than a soggy pile of wires and plastic.

Every time I take my camera out of its bag here, I have to wait for a good 2-3 minutes for the lens to un-fog.  As I take picture after picture, the lcd screen and viewfinder start to glisten with trapped moisture.  Let’s just say that, if I come home and my camera is not full of mold and mildew, I will be shocked.

There are really only two choices here.  One, don’t bring any electronics at all!

Of course, if you are supposed to be a world-traveling photojournalist, that’s not really an option.  I suppose I could just draw sketches of everything I see and post those on the website, but since sheets of paper here feel like moist towelettes, that might not work out either.

So, for those who need to take their gadgets along, the only option left is this:  accept the fact that they are already dead.

Realize deep down in your heart that you have already lost your laptop.  Start working through the stages of grief for your iPod now.

If you do that, then when you return home to find an entire ecosystem growing inside of your camera, you can simply remove your hat, flush it down the toilet and get on with your life…

Pack the Right Gear

Nothing is more important in the jungle than packing the right gear.  Too much stuff and your back will break under the weight.  Too little, and you’ll spend most of your time wishing you had brought more.

Here are a few essentials to get you through your experience:

Some of my gear. Oh no! I forgot the hand sanitizer!

Headlamp – Having a lamp strapped to your forehead has got to be the coolest thing ever invented.  Ever.  Everywhere you look, the light is shining.  It’s like having your own personal flashlight fairie, reading your thoughts and illuminating whatever you want.  Side note: flashlight fairies are really good listeners.  Great for those long dark nights without electricity…

Machete – I don’t care if it is just a $3 piece of metal with a handle.  It looks like sword.  It cuts things.  I’m a boy.  Enough said.

Tuna Packets – Ok, so tuna may not be the tastiest way to get protein into your system, but it’s a whole lot easier than carrying filet mignon.  And believe me. You throw a can of smoked tuna into a pot with some Ramen noodles, toss in some onions, some garlic, and you, my friend, have got yourself a FEAST!

Don't like mud? Deal with it!

Water Filter – Unless you want your stomach to be swimming with parasites, worms, bacteria and amoebas by the end of your trip (and I’m sure some people do), you’ll want to use a water filter.  Believe me.  When you’re filling your water bottle downstream from a horse, two chickens and an open latrine, a filter gives you just a bit more peace of mind…

Deal With It

By far the best advice I can give for surviving in the jungle is this: Deal with it.

Whatever it is that’s causing you discomfort, driving you crazy or making you wonder what in the world you were thinking leaving your nice comfy room to trudge through mud in the jungle… Deal with it.

No, you’re not going to be comfortable.  No, you won’t be clean.  But if you’re willing to deal with the pain and hunger and exhaustion, you might just learn something new about the world.

If you can make it through all of that, you will have earned that nice, hot shower waiting for you back home!

A couple of weeks ago, in the seven days between my Haiti and Panama trips, I had a hard time building up the will-power to buy groceries.  The closest grocery store was only a five minute drive away, and buying groceries for only a week was hardly going to take long, but I just didn’t seem to have the energy.

I scrounged in my pantry for old soup cans, ate out once or twice, and, like any bachelor twenty-something should, I bummed a few meals off of my parents. 

Somehow I made it through the entire week without putting in the “hard work” of buying any groceries.

But then I came to Panama.  I began living in a shack made out of sticks.  I ate my meals with a family of impoverished subsistence farmers. And when they took me with them to harvest rice one day, the “hassle” of buying food suddenly didn’t seem like that big of a deal…

We crossed this bridge early in our trek.

The plan for the day was simple.  My host Bernardo explained that we would walk to one of his fields in a nearby village, harvest rice for an hour or so, hang out at his family’s home there for a little while, then walk back to Llano Ñopo in time to beat the early afternoon rains.

Yeah, the plan was simple, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

We rose before the sun came up, beginning our trek at around 6am.  Bernardo, his wife Nidia and I walked across the village to pick up Andrea (a “community ambassador” for Dead Wheat).  Then, the four of us headed off for the fields.

I was feeling pretty good about life.  The sun was shining, the hills were green and the river we crossed  was sparkling and clear.  As we walked across the rusty old suspension bridge, I definitely had a smile on my face.

On the other side of the bridge, the path we were taking began to climb.  We walked from rock to rock, stepping over muddy puddles and trying not to slip.

“Whew!” I thought with a grin, as my breath started to pick up, “I’m getting a workout today!”

The first climb of the never-ending hill.

The path grew even steeper.  Up and up we climbed.  Every time I saw a curve in the path ahead of us, I got excited, thinking we had finally reached the top.  And every time we rounded the corner I looked straight up at yet another steep climb.

By now, my legs were getting a bit wobbly and my heart was pounding like crazy.  My smile had definitely faded.  With buckets of sweat pouring off my face and my lungs gasping for air, I asked if we could stop for a break.

I sat on a rock and guzzled water from my bottle.  When I was able to finally get my heart back to a semi-reasonable beat, we continued heading up the hill.  By the time we reached the top, I had asked them to stop at least three more times.

As we started walking along the top of the hill, I expected to see Bernardo’s fields of flowing rice around every bend.  But what I didn’t realize at the time was that our journey was far from over.

Over the next hour and a half, we walked along cliffs, trudged down muddy jungle paths and crossed countless small streams and rivers. One thought kept running through my head.  “They make this journey all the time!”  I could hardly believe it.

Finally, after a seemingly endless hike, we arrived at the field.

My hosts, Nidia and Bernardo. For them, the hike was entirely routine.

With my legs throbbing and my back aching, I looked up to see just what would make such an arduous journey worth it.  What I saw took my breath away.

Bernardo’s “field” was nothing more than a few acres of rice, yuca and beans clinging to the side of a steep hill.  I couldn’t imagine how anyone could harvest on such a slope, much less how it would be enough food to get by!

Nevertheless, we dropped our bags, took one last sip of water and began climbing into the rice.

Using a small hand tool with a blade, we gathered stem after stem of rice, each of us moving at a snail’s pace farther and farther into the field.

Bernardo and Nidia harvesting rice.

After an hour or so, we gathered the rice we had collected and climbed a steep hill to reach the wooden building the family uses to dry and store the rice.  We ate a small lunch, watched Bernardo tie up the stalks of rice to dry, then began the long hike back to Llano Ñopo.

At one point during our hike, it began to pour down rain.  We slogged through the mud, slid down steep hillsides and finally arrived home in the early afternoon.

A lot of work for something so small...

The whole way back, I thought about how incredibly difficult it was simply to harvest a bit of rice.  After all of that work, the four of us produced only five or six pounds!

The day’s experience gave me a much deeper understanding of what it really means to be a subsistence farmer.  The work is hard, the payoff is slim and there is rarely much left over to sell.

And realizing that much of the world lives like that is a deeply sobering thought.  Millions of people scratch out a living on tiny plots of land, never fully satiating their hunger.

It’s a difficult reality to deal with, but I know one thing for sure.  The next time I’m home looking at an empty refrigerator, my perspective will definitely have changed.

I don’t think it will be quite as hard anymore to get myself out to buy groceries…

In a land devastated by deforestation, a new generation of children is working to undo the past…

I flew into Panama on a Tuesday night.  After waiting in the slowly crawling customs line for an hour and a half, I smiled, expecting this country to be like other developing nations I have visited in the past.  But the moment I left the airport, my assumption was turned on its head.

As we drove across the country, I was shocked to see how many fast-food chains and American businesses there were.  I mean, I’ve seen familiar restaurant chains in other countries before.  That’s nothing new.  But here they have just about everything!  KFC, McDonald’s, Blockbuster… even TGI Friday’s!

Hmm... This logo looks familiar.

And Panama City?  Unbelievable.  Huge skyscrapers, luxury apartments, beautiful landscaping… Definitely not what I was expecting to see.

Apparently, because of the Panama Canal, this country makes a fortune in tolls.  To pass through the canal, a large cargo ship could easily pay upwards of $180,000.  And from what I could see from the plane flying in, there were twenty or thirty massive ships just waiting in line.

One of Panama's many breathtaking rivers.

On top of that, because of the vast amount of cargo that crosses through the canal, almost every single international bank has a branch in Panama City.  Business people from all over the world converge here to make a living.  There is a lot of wealth in this country.

So, as we drove down the perfectly paved highway, I had a hard time imagining just what the rest of my experience would be like.

From what I understood, I would be living among subsistence farmers hovering just on the edge of starvation.  People so poor that their children hike two hours through the mountains just to get to school…

But how, in a country so obviously wealthy, could such poverty exist?  Was it all just an exaggeration?  Could such massive disparity actually be in one place?

The following day, as I took public transportation out to the village of Llano Ñopo, I finally understood the truth.  There are two different Panamas, and I was just about to enter one I hadn’t yet seen.

The truck (called a “taxi” here) that we used to get out to Llano Ñopo.

Traveling with me was Andrea Martinson, a “community ambassador” for the Dead Wheat International Foundation.  She lives in the village of Llano Ñopo to give Dead Wheat a better idea of the true needs of the community (more on Dead Wheat’s work in future articles).

To get to the village, we rode in the back of a pickup truck with 12 other people.  Our luggage was crammed into any available space, and we held on to support bars over our heads as the truck began to roll.

Initially, we drove down a nicely paved road, winding around the lush, scenic hills of the Panamanian countryside.  I have to admit, I was enjoying the experience, soaking up the views as we drove higher into the mountains.

But then, two things happened around the same time that gave me a much more realistic picture of just where I was.

Andrea, who has been living among the Ngobe people for four years.

First of all, the nicely paved road came to an end.  The rest of the road was made of gravel. We didn’t glide gently along anymore.  Now, our truck was scrambling up rocky hillsides and dodging huge potholes in the ground as the passengers held on for dear life.

The second thing that happened was that it started to rain.  And I don’t just mean drizzle.  It poured!

All of a sudden, the roads had turned to mud, our truck had a much harder time scaling steep hillsides and the passengers at the rear of the truck had to hold down a tarp to keep the other passengers dry.  Every time we hit a bump, water from the top of the tarp would come gushing in, soaking the poor guys in the back.

At one point, the truck came to a stop while driving up a hill.  Without being able to see what was ahead of us, we thought that the driver must have encountered a slope just a bit too steep.  After a few minutes of being stopped, however, we heard the squeal of tires and realized that a different vehicle was stuck just in front of ours, blocking the road.

Well, with virtually no infrastructure in place this far out (and no cell phone service even if there was!), there was no hope of a tow truck ever showing up to help.

So, in a scene that is becoming rather routine for me in the developing world, I got out to help.  Together with a bunch of other soaking wet guys, we piled rocks under the wheels, tried to push the truck forward and choked on burning rubber from the squealing tires.

Eventually, the vehicle was free of the mud and we were on our way, but not before adding a good 45 minutes to our travel time.

Exhausted and drenched, we arrived in Llano Ñopo.  Andrea gave me a quick tour of the village, and I finally saw what I had been expecting to see since arriving in Panama.  Stick huts with thatched roofs.  Farmers pulling skinny horses through the mud. Children playing without shoes.

In a word, poverty.

My new host home in the village.

As dusk was settling over the village, we arrived at the home where I would be staying for a week.  My host, Bernardo, showed me where I’d be sleeping.  It was a hut made out of sticks.  A rusty metal roof kept the rain off of the dirt floor.  The bed was a rough wooden table.

As I got ready to sleep that night, I thought about the fact that just a few hours before, we had driven past a Pizza Hut.  Even after seeing it with my own eyes, it was hard to believe.

Although I had only traveled a few hundred miles that day, it felt like I was a world away…