June 2011: Second visit to Colon!

In June 2011, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Colon for the 2nd time. It was great to see familiar faces and many new ones too! This time my visit took place over 4 fantastic days of genuine sharing, laughter and friendship. I was accompanied by my husband Vincent as he wanted to see what volunteer work I am doing but also to meet Javier, the young boy we are sponsoring for school.

We were welcomed with hugs and smiles which made us feel at home right away. Our first visit was Javier's school where we met the teachers, principal, classmates and of course Javier who was impatiently waiting for us! It was great to see the sparkle in his shy eyes when he noticed us! Javier and I met 2 years ago during my first visit with Kelly and Marlynne. At that time, I had shared my desire to sponsor a child and Dina, one of the sister who leads MUCEC, the women and children center in Colon, had suggested I partner with Javier. She got to know me better and after a few days and though Javier and I would be a good match.

It was great to officially meet him in 2009 as we tried to communicate as best as we could with my limited knowledge of Spanish and his limited knowledge of English. It did not matter because he understood right away my desire to support him and I could easily see the effect it had on him and his grandmother.

This experience has been very enriching for all of us. For my husband and I, it gives us the opportunity to share our blessings and give support to a young person who lives in a challenging environment with family struggles. It inclined us to keep in touch with the community in Colon and travel there to discover a new part of the world, a different culture and human challenges outside of our own country. Knowing we can make a difference in someone life is very rewarding on a human level. We do not have children of our own so helping Javier is a wonderful experience.

Our second day in Colon was spent laughing! During my first visit in 2009 I was impressed by all the smiles I saw, despite the poverty and the many challenges the residents of Colon face everyday. In 2010, I trained to be a laughter yoga (LY) leader as I believe everyone has the capacity to laugh; it doesn't matter what living condition one is in. Since LY's mission is to promote peace and love around the world, I decided to conduct 2 sessions of laughter yoga at MUCEC. The first one was facilitated with the women and it was a huge success! Aldo, from Kelly & Marlynne's community, had translated the instructions in Spanish so I could conduct the session in the women's language. I felt that speaking the community's language was fostering a welcoming atmosphere of openness and indeed, we did laugh a lot and it was absolutely fantastic! Soon enough, the children were listening at the door and wanted to join us in this great moment!

I then facilitated a second session with the children and again, we shared many laughs and lots of love! This session was also wonderful and I believe it taught the children that we do care about them and witnessing my husband and I goofing around with them made them feel accepted. The rest of our short visit with them was wonderful and we always had a little hand to hold, a hug to give or receive and laughter to share. Every time we'd see each other we would repeat the LY mantra and laugh again.

On our last day, we had the wonderful opportunity to visit la Carcel, the men's prison in the city of Colon. The pastoral team, lead by Father John, took my husband and I with them for their weekly visit with the inmates. This team has encountered many challenges since the new prison director has been in place 3 months ago. We could feel the hurdles to get in the Padre Alan salon, where the pastoral team meets regularly. At this point, negotiations are moving slowly to improve the room where the weekly meetings take place with the inmates. The pastoral team is confident to be able to move ahead with renovation plans, although they face challenges. They believe in their work and the inmates do benefit from a community of faith and support.

During our visit, we sang songs and shared prayers with the inmates. After we introduced ourselves, I asked the men to share with us what the pastoral group means to them. At first, the men were uncomfortable to speak but after I told them in details what the Panama Health Project was doing for them, they started to open up. I realized we had to create this safe place for them to share their feelings and they understood quickly that the PHP team was happy to be there. I have to admit that in the end, I was quite impressed by the level of sharing they all showed. Gradually, many of them stood up to talk about their personal experience and the most common themes of their talk were: family, respect and faith. These men are fathers, sons, oncles, friends, husbands who, at some point, lost their path and need to find it back. For them, it is quite moving that people from Canada would travel to visit them and share their religious meeting with them. We learned a lot from them but also from other members of the pastoral team. I was deeply touched by this lady's story about her husband being murdered and her path to forgiveness.

My husband was also touched by these guys whom are mainly in our age group and whom do appear tough, but still, are sharing their deepest fears and feelings. We did share with them how grateful we were for this visit and we all hope that we will be able to visit again soon!