Final Blog

Well, it's been interesting attempting to assimilate back into the banality of daily life. As exhausted as I was when I got home from the airport last night, I still felt wide awake, my mind refusing to power down. Looking around my apartment at all of my belongings, at framed photos of smiling family members, certificates of achievement proudly on display; what could be done but have a good cry?
As I looked squarely at the physical representation of my life, interspersed were the images of the children I'd held, played with, and fed. These children will never have so many of the things that were automatic in my world. And while the concept of both Nutre-Hogar and Casa Esperanza is rehabilitation and release, these children will undoubtedly go back to only marginally better conditions than when they left, if they're lucky.
This was truly an experience of totality. Never have I been able to see so clearly, from the very top to the very bottom, how policy affects people and their quality of life. We were fortunate enough to get to meet both the American Ambassador and her cohorts as well as members of the Embera tribe. Through these experiences I've been able to see without a doubt that government corruption in Panama, along with the United States complicity/lack of action against it forces social programs to become utterly defunct and ill-passed laws to have dire, dire consequences. Efforts at conservation of Embera land means the people have no way to feed themselves. This fills up places like N-H and CE; a generation of wasted lives; innocent people forced to deal with an unjust reality.
I feel Panama and its people are standing on a precipice. They have both an election and the expansion of the canal in the works, two huge events. Their indigenous tribes are fading into the ether like so many countries before them. NOW is the time for Panamanians to make their government work for them. With so many different groups of people, and distinct regions, I feel Panama would benefit greatly by putting in place local, state governments in addition to a larger, federal government. This template allows each group to have equal representation, and for the balance of power to be spread over a much greater group of people. Panama is still a country in transition, and thus I feel that this concept is not entirely out of the question for their future.
For me, this experience is one I would not trade for all the beach, sleep, and relaxation-filled spring breaks there are.