The Rancho´s

During the last months we have been busy organising the construction of two rancho’s. Rancho’s are fairly simple buildings, consisting of four poles supporting a thatched roof. No walls, no windows. So building them should be simple and easy. At least that is what we thought, but the reality was somewhat more difficult.
The photos http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/loesroos/album?.dir=/f66fre2&.src=ph&.tok=ph7fv0GBxfLDF8DM ) illustrate the rather elaborate process...

We already wrote about organizing the wood in a previous blog (sampling, measuring and building). In the end, getting the wood took three weeks longer than we thought. Nispero is getting scarce in the area. And although we dutifully repeated the message from the carpenter that he needed either guayacan or nispero, the trader got stuck with the thought that we only wanted nispero. But guayacan is much easier to get, so next time we will just ask for guayacan.

The next cause of delay was due to the design. We wanted an elevated wooden floor in the rancho’s so that guests would be above the forest floor riff raff such as tarantulas. An elevated floor needs a bit more wood and longer poles. And then location caused further delay. We wanted the rancho’s on a hill side in order to provide our guests with a nice view. But then it is slightly more difficult to build everything level.

Then we found out that the guy whom we contracted was not a carpenter after all, but a mason. That is a handicap when one is working with wood, but we think it is not an excuse for poles that are not vertical or roofs that are 165 cm instead of 210 cm above the future floor level. After all, even masons should be able to use a measuring tape and a level. Having taken into account these flaws in the first building stage, we decided to say goodbye to the mason and find someone who knows how to use a level and a measuring tape.

We found another builder who took a good look and declared he could transform this into rancho’s. We jacked up the roof (literally) and put it on new poles placed perfectly perpendicular. Then the builder started to put in the floor. That gave us something to do as well. The wood for the floor was delivered straight from the saw mill, so it took Loes and me a good week to plane and sand the floor boards. But it looks pretty good, if we say so ourselves.

We are now waiting for the finishing touch: closing the thatched roof with specially woven palm fronds. The difficulty was finding someone who can do that. With the introduction of corrugated iron roofs, this craft became superfluous and within a decade or so, almost nobody knows how to do this anymore. Only people who are so poor they can not afford a corrugated iron roof know how to do this. We have now found a person who knows and he will be somewhat less poor by next week.

Moving House

After half a year in a one bedroom flat with a miniscule balcony, we moved to a real house with three bedrooms and a back and front garden. All for the same price! So we can now enjoy our breakfast on the verandah in front, while hummingbirds and woodpeckers pass by (the back yard only provides a view of the free range chicken breeding project of our neighbours).

See our photos in the yahoo album:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/loesroos/album?.dir=/4bdbre2&.src=ph&.tok=phg4KuGB032gpUaL

On our verandah we are surrounded by all the trees we have grown in the last couple of months (moving those was the most time consuming part of the whole moving process). We have now over a hundred saplings, such as Panama trees, Stinking Toes, Monkey combs, Monkey Condoms, Cacao, Tamarind, Mahogany, Sand Box Tree, Soursop, ‘Melina’, ‘Corotu’ ‘Vaino’ ‘Uvito’ ‘Guabo’ and many others. Seeds germinate almost daily because we have sown hundreds during the last couple of months. Some grow real fast, the Stinking Toes are 50 cm high, while others take their sweet time. The monkey condoms were sown way before the stinking toes, but the highest barely reaches 10 cm.

Our kayaks are now lying next to the house, rather than in the living room. The latter is now three times bigger while we have far less items to put there. So when you talk loudly, you hear an echo. The advantage is that the statue we bought in Mozambique can be displayed to its full advantage. And, by coincidence, the pink in our Mugapela painting matches the pale pink walls.

Yes, not only the house on the property in Malena has pink walls, our living room in Santiago has the same colour. Apparently pink is a very popular colour among home decorators in Panama. We politely remarked that in our country pink walls are mostly associated with little girls’ bedrooms and got the owner to repaint some walls in white.

One cannot accuse the majority of Panamanians of good taste when it comes to home decoration or art. Kitsch is definitely the norm: the more frilly bits and candy colours, the better it is. Paintings of European landscapes in the romantic style, but without any sense of perspective are very popular for decoration, as are biblically inspired scenes, also without perspective and featuring people with decidedly vacant faces. The final alternative for cheap decoration is Technicolor pictures of Hong Kong, Dubai and other examples of modern ‘power architecture’. Luckily two of the two rooms have deep, dark cupboards where we have stored these gems to protect them from the harmful rays of the sun.

Distractions

The rainy season has definitely started. During the last four weeks we have had two to three showers per week. Both plants and animals react almost instantaneously to this change in weather and there are many new animals and plants appearing on the farm. All very exciting, but it does occasionally distract us from the work at hand.

Like two weeks ago when Kees left to improve the path here and there. He was back in three minutes to get Loes and the camera because there was a five foot snake in a small tree along the path. The branch on which the snake was lying, bent under the weight of the snake (it was, admittedly, a rather thin branch). So of course we had to take pictures for our blog and our website-in-construction. After that, Kees did start the work, but since he and the snake were both constantly looking over his shoulder, progress was slower than normal.

See the photos in this album! http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/loesroos/album?.dir=/44cere2&.src=ph&.tok=phCz6rGBsZ2FWn7I

We showed the picture to several Panamanians and all agreed that this is a ‘Java’ (pronounce ghàhbàh) but opinions about whether it was dangerous and/or poisonous differed. According to the local farmers the snake is poisonous, brave but not aggressive. According to a Panamanian student of environmental studies, the snake was not poisonous, but he agreed that the snake was brave. The student also claims that the snake wraps itself around your legs and hits you with its tail when you get too close, to scare you off. We also thought it was rather calm, we came within ten feet of the snake but it stayed calm.

Finally we found some info on the insufficiently praised Internet: The snake was a tiger rat snake or chicken snake (Spilotes pullatus). The snake is not poisonous, a member of the colubrid family and reaches an average length of 1.5 – 2 m. but can reach 3.3 m. The tiger rat snake kills its prey (just about anything smaller than itself, including other snakes) by strangling. Apparently the tiger rat snake rattles its tail and inflates is neck to scare you off when you get too close. Oh, and it is very popular among those who keep snakes as pets and zoos because it is colourful and active even though it has a bad reputation. Almost everybody who owns tiger rat snakes, claims that keeping them is not for the faint of heart because they are big, fast and bad-tempered.

Besides the tiger rat snake (that name sounds so much better than chicken snake) we also have some large iguanas, terrapins, cane toads (Bufo marinus) and assorted smaller frogs and lizards running around. You will find some pictures of those in the soon to be uploaded photo album as well.