Huckleberry Finn

The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect the positions of Mark Twain or of his estate.

“You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer…” says Huck in the first sentence of the book that bears his full name. I could say the same thing in regard to my three months in Panamá between January and May of 2010. Those three months in Panamá represent the Tom Sawyer to this Peruvian Huckleberry Finn. A synopsis:

December, 2009. I withdraw my application to the Peace Corps and accept a job with a reforestation project (Azuero Earth Project) on the Azuero Peninsula in Panamá.

January 11, 2010. I begin working for Edwina von Gal, the founder of the Project, as a volunteer and also as a paid employee helping to maintain her private properties.

January 15, 2010. I decide: this is not a marriage made in heaven. Get me the hell out of here.

January 18, 2010, 2PM. I have yet to receive any communication from the Peace Corps in response to having withdrawn my application. I receive an e-mail from my Placement Officer saying, more or less, “Too bad you decided to withdraw your application. We found a spot for you in Small Business Development in Peru.”

January 18, 2010, 2:01PM. Is it too late to say yes?

It wasn’t. Edwina was kind enough to let me work for her until April and the Peace Corps was kind enough to let me work for her until April so I worked for her until April. Then I returned to the U.S. to prepare for Perú, and a “leave date” of January 10, 2010.

And so my Tom Sawyer could easily be said to have ended with the same words as did Tom Sawyer’s Tom Sawyer:

“Most of the characters that perform in this book still live, and are prosperous and happy. Some day it may seem worth while to take up the story of the younger ones again and see what sort of men and women they turned out to be; therefore it will be wisest not to reveal any of that part of their lives at present.”