In Boquete Panama there are many roads, the good, the bad and the really ugly. The road in this video is the ugly but safest route up Jaramillo. It starts on the Boquete David Highway and although it begins on a paved, patched road. It crosses a once upon a time, maintained bridge, down a once upon a time maintained dirt road toward Jaramillo Abajo and a pricey subdivision. Then this ride ascends up what was four years ago, the best road up Jaramillo. You would never know by its current state it was once a decent road. It is the safest road because it has no shear drops and what little traffic it has needs to move slowly.
The video is about 10 minutes of uncompressed real time bouncing. The camera actually bounced off its mount twice but I did edit out the drama of me playing catch the camera. Mr President, if you read this, Jaramillo needs a better road. Please remember some of us pay taxes and some can vote too.
Before I came to Boquete Panama, I lived in the desert of Tucson, Arizona. In almost forty years living in the arid South West the only time I thought about water was when my water bill arrived. Those water bills grew over the years from $3.21 a month in 1969 to over $200 a month in 2006. Admitted, we had meters, I used more water and the city charged more per unit for my water because they had to pump it up hill, still $200 month was an average not a peak bill. Here I pay $1.50 a month, now.
In Panama I think about water every day. In part because we are surrounded by it, in part because in October it is falling daily and in part because my neighbors put me on the Water Directiva for Alto Jaramillo. When I accepted the position I thought it might take a few hours a year for meetings, the few hours were used the first week. It has been many more since because here in the land of abundant water we have water problems.
When I was put on the board I thought the key issue was equity, stopping the indifferent discrimination against new immigrants. Although we have a temporary fix for that the real solution has not been finalized. Our more serious issue is the Jaramillo aqueduct project, funded with money from a World Bank Loan it does not work. Jaramillo Centro has no potable water now, they are using polluted river water for drinking. Alto Jaramillo still has water, although it is showing a high bacterial count. The new Aqueduct was supposed to resolve both issues but it was never completed. Perhaps I should better say it was completed and exploded, due to much water pressure.
Today members of the Alto Jaramillo Water Board and the Jaramillo Centro Water Board drove to David for an 8 am meeting at MINSA to discuss the issue. Much to our surprise when we arrived at meeting the people from MINSA the Health Department and PASAP, the entity created to administer the loan, were not there. They were in Alto Jaramillo waiting for us. It seems they wanted to see the problems first hand, a good idea, but it would have saved a lot of pain if had they told us.
We headed up to La India to Intercept them. After a couple of kilometers of bad road we needed abandon the 4×4, cross a river (cold river) and walk about another kilometer, straight up.
You can see the loan dollars suspended over the river. We never actually went high enough to see all the issues because we met the World Bank MINSA team returning.
After a short trail head meeting we returned to the virtual oasis of Alto Jaramillo and concluded our meeting on the porch of a closed restaurant. In addition to representatives from MINSA, PASAP and both Alto Jaramillo and Jaramillo Centro the Representante and a certain well known local woman were there.
The summary of the outcome for my neighbors who inquire occasionally is this. The World Bank required MINSA to hire a private contractor to engineer the aqueduct. The contractor did an incompetent job. The design was bad, the installation followed the design and the water pressure exceeds the capacity of the pipes. They need to redesign the upper portion of the aqueduct, the representative of the World Bank said they will provide pipe and community once again needs to provide transport and labor to do the job. When? Hopefully before my grandchildren can vote and I don’t have any grandchildren yet.
The current Jaramillo Centro crisis is supposed to be given a bandaid on Thursday with filters and purification equipment installed to make the current river water potable. I will not be here on Thursday but if the job is done when I return in two weeks I will be amazed.
Panama does not just frustrate new immigrants, it frustrates people who have been here all their lives. The positive side is we the community are stirring the pot and nudging things to action.
I suspect there will be a series of these updates in the next few weeks. The Jaramillo Aqueduct is a project using World Bank money for materials, local money for tools and local residents for labor. This is a quote from an email I received from Kent McNaughton, one of the people working on the project.
“Yesterday morning Rhody Edwards, Jim Seltzer, Glenn Bostrom, Lee Zeltzer, and myself met up with a crew of about 30 that were working on the new aqueduct. First, I want to thank Rhody, Jim and Glenn on ATVs for carrying the materials necessary for the project up steep grades that takes a man an hour to walk while carrying a load of from 50 to 100 lbs. I know the workers appreciated you all lessening their load. Thanks also to Lee for bringing some workers to the project (a distance of an hour’s walk to get to the bottom of the hill). Also thanks to Lee and Phyllis McNaughton (and another unknown person) for retrieving these people after a hard day’s work. I know those people appreciated the lift. Ruby, thanks for the loan of your ATV. Rhody made very good use of it. The materials aren’t completely up there, but a huge bite was made on Sunday.
Secondly, I want folks to know that the 30 or so people working on Sunday, and others who work on the project during the week are doing some monstrous work in the very primitive surroundings of the cloud forest. After we delivered construction materials to the limit of where an ATV could go, these men carried two blocks each (50lbs.), or a 100lb. sack of cement or sand uphill on a very rocky trail for another hour to where the construction will take place. About noon, the women who came made lunch for the workers at the site of the construction. I’m awe-struck at the work ethic of these people and proud to call them neighbors and friends.
The work isn’t complete, of course. It will take three or four more months to put in the 10-plus Km of pipe and various components that will make up the system. If you’re looking for an eye-opening experience, drive down the La India road to the first river where you can see the La India rock formation, then take an ATV up 15 minutes to its limit, then walk up to the construction site. While admiring the huge trees and gurgling sounds of the rivers and creek, look at the piping already laid. Amazing what can be done with pick, shovel, and machete!”
Kent McNaughton
Jim Seltzer posted some excellent photos on http://www.boquete.ning.com. Since I drove a Gringo Taxi I did not get up into the areas of ATV’s and later foot travel.
In much of Panama there are interesting Archeological sites while I was out traveling some mysterious mounds appeared in Alto Jaramillo, Boquete Panama. The mounds pictured below were not on the road when I left Boquete.
According to anecdotal evidence, gossip, they appeared mysteriously sometime when I was in South America. Stories quoted in local bochinche (gossip) are that they were delivered by truck, however there are no photos or substantive proof of those claims. All I know for sure is that they were not here when I left and are now.
Asking around the hill people, my neighbors, I am told that they will be used at some time in the indefinite future to improve our road. Observation over the past two weeks however has not confirmed that supposition. The mounds have not moved on their own nor has anyone come to distribute them over the existing road.
They are placed not to block traffic, in fact they are carefully positioned as to just impede the flow. To slow the traffic as if the condition of the road itself was not sufficient to accomplish that fact.
The material deposited perhaps by truck, horse team, alluvial means or hundreds of natives seems very large for road bed or even walking but only time will tell if the deposits remain until the seasonal rains distribute it or if indeed they take the shape of roadbed.
For now this lay archeologist is only sure of one thing they are here. All of us who use the road find them a new navigational challenge. Knowing the rate of project completion in Panama it is my suspicion that if this is indeed a road repair it might happen within the next month, year, century, millennium; choose any from the list or just say as my neighbors do manana!
The 2 sidebars have been placed within an element so that you can enter information here at the bottom or up at the top that exists outside the 2 sidebars.
