No rain = No electricty = No school ?

Every once in a while something very odd happens in Panama that makes us really feel like foreigners in a strange land. This week was one of those times. Some background - it's been a very dry dry season. The rains have been very late in starting, everyday we are expecting them to begin and still they haven't come. While this has been good for some reasons - for instance, we've been able to put a dent in painting the outside of the new house, we've put up porch columns, fixed some holes in the roof - a post on the house progress coming soon! - it has been very bad for other reasons. Dying plants and off schedule animals aside, people are very worried because it's sparked a "national energy crisis" - or so the government says. So much of Panama's electricity comes from hydroelectric dams that when it doesn't rain enough, there is a decrease in the production of electricity. So the government started issuing energy saving mandates. The first thing to go? Schools! It seems incredible, but yes. All public and private schools in Panama City were forced to close this week. Classes will resume Monday. Not only does this send a terrible message about the value the national government places on education, it doesn't seem to make any practical sense - all those kids have to be somewhere, doing something. Likely many (most?) of them are at home with their TVs on, using energy. We asked some of our Panamanian friends their take on it - the prevailing opinion is that it is a government strategy to convince people that the land that belongs to the indigenous people in the interior - land the government has been trying to take for some time - should be developed for hydroelectric power. Which sounds horrible but believable. I guess we can't be ones to talk - our own government is doing some pretty crazy things too. Closing schools before taking any other energy saving actions, however, seems like a very strange thing to do.

We do have one person who was very happy with the school closures, though. Gwendolyn was estatic to stay home in Gamboa, playing with her friends here, finding lots of new ways to entertain little Simon.

A couple of very happy, Gamboa-bound kids.