Stories of Love

Are you sure you want to go there?

That was the question put to me when I wanted to visit the village of Molejon during my first trip to Panama for the Mona Foundation. The question was repeated each time I communicated with colleagues in the country who were arranging my trip. And each time I answered, “Of course, why not?” Molejon is the site of one of the elementary schools that Mona Foundation has supported and accompanied for seven years in the indigenous Ngobe Bugle region. Each week, a dedicated volunteer native teacher leaves his family and farm in his home village and walks ten hours to Molejon to give lessons to the children there. During the week, he sleeps on a plank in a one room classroom, eats one meal a day provided by the villagers of Molejon, subsistence farmers themselves. Week in and week out, he, and other native teachers who go to different mountain villages, have made that trek for seven long years. When asked why, the native teacher says, “For the love of the children.”

I was anxious to get up the mountain to see how this project was progressing. So, my companion and I got on the mules provided and headed out. Our native guide walked. We brought our own food and water. The local people are hospitable, but poor, and would have very little to offer in the way of food and shelter. The Ngobe Bugle fled into the mountains 500 years ago to escape European invaders. They've been there ever since, scraping a meager living from the forest, often hungry, in isolation, without education or contact with the modern world.

The scorching sun and wilting humidity of the tropics are difficult to understand if you've never experienced it. Our little mules labored on the steep climb up the rocky paths. Sometimes we had to dismount and walk because the trails along the cliffs were so narrow and fell away to chasms far below. Hours went by. My legs ached and were rubbed raw by the constant movement against the saddle. Each time I asked our guide how much farther it was to Molejon, he'd point to the horizon and say, “It's just over there.” I thought about the native teachers making this rigorous trek on foot every week.

Crossing five mountains and three rivers

We crossed five mountains and three rivers on the way. At one river crossing, my mule lost its footing and we were swept downstream by the dangerous current. Luckily, the guide was able to overtake us and help pull me out.

Ten hours after we started our journey, we came across a stoic-faced Ngobe woman standing in a forest clearing. Our guide stopped. The woman pointed to some mats on the ground. We understood that we were to get off the mules to rest. My companion and I dropped on the mats, sore and hungry, but too exhausted to eat. After we rested, we were taken to a mountain stream where the water ran into a natural rock pool. A Ngobe woman stood guard while we two western women peeled off our sweat-soaked clothes, washed and dried off with the one towel we had between us.

When we got to the village, it was deserted. The only concrete structure was the simple school — two completed rooms and a third still just a shell. I knew that the villagers, most of them barefoot, had carried every sack of concrete used to construct this building on their backs, across those rivers and over those perilous mountain trails.

We ate the rice and beans we brought. After dinner, some candles were lighted and then, seemingly out of nowhere, forty people streamed in from the surrounding mountains and packed into the school. They knew we were coming because Radio Baha'i announced our arrival. The villagers all have small portable radios. It's the only way they can keep in touch with what's going on outside their mountain region. Each person welcomed us. The Ngobe language was translated first into Spanish and then into English. They said how much they cared about the education of their children. How they had worked hard to build their school where there was no electricity and no running water. They wanted to finish the building and continue classes.

Tell us your plan

We said, “Tell us your plan, how you're going to contribute to it, and what you'd like us to do.” At once, six women got up, formed a “mothers for education” committee, elected a secretary and chairman and made a plan. They would sell their embroidery work — purses and dresses — and pay a percentage to support the school, if we would agree to help them finish it.

When we returned down the mountain, we met with FUNDESCU, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the Ngobe Bugle people. They said the native teachers who left their own farms and livelihoods all week to teach the children in the mountains needed support. We agreed to provide a basic salary for the teachers of seven schools for one year and asked, “What would it take for the native teachers to be recognized by the government of Panama so they could receive regular salaries like any other teacher?”

FUNDESCU said they'd have to be certified. So, Mona Foundation helped to arrange certification classes. Then for two years, these devoted native teachers spent five days teaching children in the mountain villages and every weekend taking certification classes in the town of Soloy. Finally, five teachers were certified. And then the law changed. The government said all teachers must have at least two years of college. There was no college anywhere near native lands, no library and no books. We discussed access to computers as a solution, but no electricity was available.

Mona Foundation approached Microsoft and they agreed to donate $130,000 for a solar-powered Community Technology and Learning Center. Eventually, permission was granted from all interested parties to place the Center at the high school in Soloy.

Through a close collaboration with FUNDESCU and the native teachers, the Community Technology Learning Center was established and made available to the entire community with classes for government employees, students, women and children. For the Center's inauguration, 500 native people came down from the mountains to Soloy. None had ever seen a computer.

By the end of last year, over a thousand people were using the Center. The women, in particular were enthusiastic, learning to read and wearing eye-glasses for the first time so they could use the computers.

“And this we will do ...”

This close collaboration over several years attracted the attention of the Ngobe chiefs and the native indigenous council. They requested to meet with representatives of Mona Foundation and traveled from Soloy to Panama City. Over three hours, they presented a thick proposal filled with their dreams and ideas for a native university. The chiefs reiterated their belief that education was the only way to break the cycle of poverty for their people. Their conviction was rock-solid. At the end of the presentation, one chief looked directly in my eyes and said quietly, “And this we will do with or without you.” An individual who had lived in the area was willing to seed this effort with $20,000. We met with those working on the University curriculum and asked, “What is your plan?”

Over the next year, the plan was flushed out and we went back to Soloy to meet the Ngobe chiefs, the tribal wise men and the teachers. They pulled benches together and we sat under the trees in a circle to talk. They had developed a three-year plan to establish an administrative office and a computer lab, in order to have access to the University of Panama library online. Through Mona Foundation's efforts, another generous individual came forward to fund this phase of their needs. The native University has been approved for accreditation and will be inaugurated in August, 2007.

At the same meeting in Soloy, villagers walked nine hours down the mountain from Molejon to meet with Mona Foundation’s representatives. One 71-year old woman, barefoot and thin, obviously hungry, asked for neither shoes nor food. She wanted a high school in their village so the children could have higher education.

Over many years we've walked with the Ngobe Bugle people, gaining trust, building relationships, listening to them, forming a deep and full partnership — never doing the work they could do, but always sharing ideas, resources and supporting their efforts to educate their children and themselves. And in the meeting at Soloy, we had the sense of completing the first full circle in this ever-expanding, mutual journey of development — a journey that started by saying “yes” to the question, “Are you sure you want to go there?” And taking an arduous mule ride up the mountain to Molejon.

Please enjoy a brief 6 minute video of the Molejon people taken by Matthew Salton during the 2006 Mona Foundation visit: view video.

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