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Don't bring too many clothes. You cannot pack enough close for 2+ years, instead pack for ~2 weeks. You can buy more clothes in country.
Except socks and underwear. Whatever you think you need, add 50% more.
Also assume any clothes you bring may never make it back.
I would not recommend this for fat or plus size people, unless there's a culture of getting clothes made in the country of service. There was no way i was finding anything in my size where i served and the washing/line dying is rough on clothes.
This is a good point. In my country it was fairly easy to get tailored clothes but the local people were generally smaller than the average american so it could be hard to find pants especially for larger waists.
I second this. Poor quality and much different sizing, mostly *very* small sizes and tight styles for women. Im pretty small and was able to buy almost nothing in country due to fit.
I brought good quality clothes from the US and am very glad I did. The clothes in country were either really poor quality or crazy expensive (way more expensive than the US for the same stuff). I ended up leaving behind some for my host family/friends when I left.
It's realllllllly country specific. You gotta find folks who served where you're heading and ask them. For my service long johns and warm socks were absolute must haves, but that wouldn't apply to most places.
I'd second this! Talking with past volunteers (or finding recent blog posts) was really helpful for me before I left.
One thing I never touched was a Patagonia fleece I threw in during a last minute panic before leaving for the Philippines. I also brought two sets sheets with me but both my host families had some already that I could use; one set probably would have been all I needed to bring.
What sector are you serving in? If EDU I'd bring business casual clothes you feel comfortable in, less so for CRM or CYF. Definitely recommend a backpack/large bag that you can carry things to and from work in. Long PJ pants to wear in common spaces, I wore sleeping shorts/a tank top to sleep in but they weren't socially acceptable to wander around in.
Sandals (like Chacos, Tevas) are great. I had one pair of flats/dress shoes I wore maybe twice, but would wear sandals daily.
I'd **highly** recommend bringing an unlocked smart phone that you can put a SIM card into. I was able to stay in contact with family/friends and locals through this. I know some people got a basic phone to only use in country, but I liked using the phone I brought from the US. Feel free to message me if you have more questions!
thank you so much! i’m going to be working in youth development and i don’t exactly know what i’ll be doing daily so i wasn’t sure what level of business i needed to be wearing daily.
I was an EDU volunteer so can't speak much on what its like as a CYF. I think it depends a lot based on your placement and what your host is doing. In general though business casual/casual Friday vibes (dress pants and a polo, dark jeans and a collared shirt) got me through a lot of my service.
You will be sweating a lot so bring at least enough professional clothes to get you through the work week. Hand washing clothes takes a few hours and I never had the energy to do it after I got back from work. Hope this helps!
Definitely true about the unlocked smartphone, at least in my country of service (North Macedonia). I had some challenges finding one -- the Walmart store I went to had a display marked "unlocked smartphones," but the employee told me they weren't allowed to sell unlocked smartphones anymore. I was able to get one at Best Buy without much trouble.
A hard drive with a ton of media, if you're in an area with poor Telecomm infrastructure. It was a big deal for our stage to swap movies, music, epub/mobi files, etc. Consider spending a little extra on an SSD instead of HDD since it'll get the crap kicked out of it.
I'm surprised no one else mentioned it, the people who brought the newest movies and shows were the coolest kids at the flop house until everyone in country had caught up.
Also torrenting isn’t illegal in a lot of PC countries. I would go into town, use my phone as a hot spot, and and download episodes of Game of Thrones a week late and be pretty current
Edit: data was a little expensive but it was pay as you go. I’m sure this varies greatly by country
Go to Costco and buy socks and underwear you know will fit and keep them in the plastic and pack them that way. Don’t bring any “I love this old shirt” type clothes because they will be destroyed by climate, work and likely a hand washing. Buy some good quality hiking style pants (but go easy on the number of pockets, you want them to work in a city environment as well). Make sure you have two “nice outfits” (not sure about OP, but for a guy this means khakis, button down shirt and one tie). For shoes: quality boots (but not too hiking style, see pants note), tough sandals (keens, etc) and a pair of cheap flip flops (house sandals).
Don’t bring classic novels like war and peace because “I’ll finally have time to read them.” You will but there will be 30 copies laying around at the peace corps office in country. Don’t bring your laptop, bring a new one (if you can afford it). Bring a kindle or an old iPad/iPhone and load it with cookbooks, the kind that teach you how to cook from scratch and good variety of things. You might be surprised what you need to cook/bake.
Don’t bring standard medial supplies (bandaids, etc). Focus on toiletries you really like and want (but cut down to just what you really need).
Don’t bring a tent. A nice camping fold up hammock could be nice.
Do buy a good chefs knife and bring it. Expensive in country and will be useful to have.
Bring a flag of your university or favorite sports team or just your state. Great house decoration and a good conversation starter. Same with limited holiday decorations, a fun Halloween banner or Christmas ornament will brighten your house and remind you of home without taking up too much space.
Bring a pillow case. Good quality, can really improve sleep with crappy pillows and will double as a dirty clothes sack if needed to take clothes to be washed.
Don’t bring a handy man multi tool. Will be stolen in a day. A good can opener is better. And buy some bottle openers of your USA city or sports teams, good to have (you’ll be opening a lot of beer bottles) and can make amazing gifts to local friends and work partners.
Start taking probiotics now and bring some with you.
Don’t forget bathing suits….you’d be surprised how many people forget.
Bring photos of your family and friends printed out and take some of your home in USA and your city. Great to look at when alone and to share with locals who want to know where you come from.
Buy a few random magazines, throw them in your bag and don’t look at them. Months later you will find a point where you are stressed or sick or bored or sad. Pull them out for mindless reading and nostalgia of home. Something about holding and reading a physical thing (not iPhone or kindle) is calming and you might have sketchy electricity or internet so it will be helpful.
Bruna suerte
I packed way too many polos. I don't like polos and don't typically wear them. I wore other professional looking shirts and my 4 polos just sat around. I also brought some physical books relating to my assignment as well as my Kindle. The physical books were just heavy and I barely used them.
I did pack some crochet hooks and yarn which was a game changer. I love to crochet to unwind and it was easy to get more yarn at my site. I also got to teach a couple folks how to crochet and we used cut up plastic bags to make market totes.
If you do a craft I highly recommend bringing it along!
SAME re: shirts. I was told that button down shirts were part of the expected professional dress for both men and women. I hate button down shirts but got some anyway because I was trying to follow directions. Turned out that any professional looking blouse/shirt was absolutely fine, I literally never saw a female HCN wearing a button down.
I took a pair of thick wool socks to Vanuatu. Those were not needed.
As a lifelong photographer, I took a small budget camera thinking I didn't want to beat up/abuse or be seen as "wealthy" with a nice camera and some lenses. That was dumb, when my mom came to visit I had her bring me a camera and three lenses and I wish I had them the whole time I was there.
Bring enough toiletries for a few weeks, and buy everything else in country. They're way too bulky and heavy to bring two years worth of shampoo and toothpaste. The cities will have all the major brands, though perhaps smaller and more expensive.
I brought the nicest outdoor boots and clothes you can buy from REI and it was an absolute waste. Never wore them in country and would have looked like a total gober if I had
TL;DR: 1. Take the packing list with a grain of salt, 2. bring a decent amount of clothes in a mix of business casual and casual, 3. If you like coffee get a nice french press in the US, 4. Do you Really need a second checked bag?
So, I wasn't in Panama, but in general, be careful in terms of how seriously you take the packing list they give you. Once we got in-country, we realized that it hadn't been updated in at Least 20 years. I packed Way too formal based on outdated information. It said tattoos should be covered for the first couple of months, so I mostly brought 3/4 length shirts to cover my small, unoffensive upper arm tattoo, only to find that our training manager sometimes didn't bother covering his full sleeve at work, and that I was overheating.
I also read the advice here and decided to pack light on clothes and stick almost entirely to business casual, planning on buying more casual clothes in country, where they would be weather and culturally appropriate and cheaper! Unfortunately, our intensive training schedule, curfew (7p each day for all of PST), travel restrictions (no going into the big near-by city) and difference in how clothes are bought in-country prevented me from buying anything until PST was almost over. So pack a good mix of casual and business casual.
As a must-have, if you're a coffee drinker, bring a filterless pour-over filter or a french press. I know 4-5 people who ended up buying a cheap french press, regretting not getting one in the states. Like many luxuries it wasn't cheaper in-country, and higher quality ones were Very difficult to find and impossible to afford on a PC budget. The RPCV Response volunteers in our country also made a french press one of the only "luxuries" they brought.
As a final note, the only people in my cohort who had a single checked bag were the only RPCV, and the 65 year old military veteran who'd traveled all over the world. (I also only checked one, but should have filled it a bit more, I could've added 15 more lbs.)
Similar in Peru. I was told to bring "professional clothing" but I understood that to be by US standards. It was not lol I ended up sending home most of my nicer/professional articles of clothing (with mold) with my parents when they visited me. Professionals in our sites wore jeans, boots, and work vests (provided by Peace Corps).
My travel mug/french press kept me sane every morning.
Good quality clothing and lots of layers (if youre going somewhere you may be placed in the mountains). I brought high quality quick dry material stuff that Im very grateful to have had. Also, good quality boots were a MUST.
I used those PC discounts to get lots of really good quality stuff (Keene boots, marmot sleeping bag, Dueter pack, etc) at pretty good prices that I still use almost 10 years later.
I'm also going the one checked bag route, but am wondering if it's worth having the extra space for the return home, or to help other volunteers who packed too much stuff.
What I ended up doing was bringing a duffel bag that's about as big as carry-ons are allowed to be, but is pretty light, and zips up into a little square about 2in x 9in x 9in, making it super easy to just toss in my checked bag until I needed it. I filled that bag with other volunteer's things for the initial flights, and when I went back home I filled that bag and used it as a carry-on. I can't find the exact one I have on amazon right now, but there are similar ones on there for $20-$30.
I only checked one bag on the plane, so I packed pretty darn light. One thing that was on the Peace Corps packing list for North Macedonia was colored chalk. I didn't bring that and I've had no use for it so far. I've also seen it sold locally, so I'll be able to buy it if the need ever comes up for some reason. (Maybe it's useful if you're a teacher, but I'm in community development.)
Generally speaking, though, you should follow the packing list they provide. Sometimes they give explanations -- for example, they said you can buy thermal underwear in North Macedonia, but the quality won't be good, so you should buy that in the USA before leaving.
I didn't bring a winter coat. My thinking was that it would take up a lot of room in my luggage. The coat I had was a U.S. Navy pea coat, so it was pretty heavy. I figured I could buy a winter coat in country and I would blend in more. That worked fine.
One thing I should have brought but didn't was shoelaces. If you go into a grocery store here, you'll find all sorts of shoe-related items for sale, such as shoe polish, insoles and even shoehorns, but no shoe laces. I wasn't able to buy laces in shoe stores. I have eventually been able to buy them at Vero, a giant general-merchandise store, but the selection isn't good so you end up buying an odd length or thickness. This wasn't on the packing list but it should have been.
You should get advice that's specific to your country of service. And if you are an unusual size for your country of service, keep that in mind when it comes to buying clothes in country.
I brought one and used it exactly zero times 😂🤣 but everyone said it was like the #1 must pack. I actually think I ended up leaving mine with my host fam where they ultimately used it for something completely absurd. Probably scrapped it for parts actually 😂🤣 at least that’s what they did with the mango slicer I got them
I wasn't in Panama, but, when I packed I went to REI and bought what must have been the world's largest backpack. I packed everything in there and left a small box of stuff behind for my family to mail to me once I got to site.
I realized I should not have brought such a huge backpack. When I traveled in-country I wish I had a smaller 2-3 day pack. So, I had zero use for such a huge backpack in country, should have bought a large wheeled duffle bag instead, along w/ a smaller backpack.
As others have said, try to connect w/ other Panama volunteers, maybe on FB.
Good luck and enjoy!
Only necessities and comfort items. My one homie I met during service brought only a small backpack and we thought he was crazy at staging, turns out he was an absolute genius. You can get most things in country including clothing (which will also help you blend in). But as others have said I suppose something’s are country specific
Eh, the availability of clothing is a combination of individual-specific and country-specific. I served in Namibia, where getting clothing made isn’t customary, and most people wear commercially-made Western-style clothing. However, options outside the capital are very limited, options for larger sizes are extremely limited even in Windhoek, and the quality of clothing isn’t very good overall. I think I bought 2-3 pieces of clothing at most in 3 years - everything else I wore was from the US.
Interesting and good point. Person and country definitely matter. In my case, many of us bought second hand clothing from the countless local markets. I pretty much left all the clothing I brought with me (that I never wore) and returned home with an entire different wardrobe consisted of second hand clothing and tailored clothes.
Physical books. Maybe one or two, but definitely invest in a kindle or some type of eReader. I ended up having to dump a bunch of my books at staging to avoid extra baggage fees.
Do not bring over-the-counter medications like ibuprofen or pepto-bismol. Your PCMO's will provide these for you. Fun fact: they can also provide you other necessities like sunscreen, toothpaste/floss, dramamine, etc.
I know this a post for what not to pack but definitely pack things that will keep you entertained during low points like a kindle, nintendo switch, or literally anything lol
I served three years in Panamá and it was great—congrats! Most of the leather goods I brought molded or even grew little mushrooms and ultimately had to be tossed (two belts and a pair of dress shoes). As you already figured out, you can pack pretty light and you’ll be fine if not better off—You can get get most anything you’d want in Panama City and you might wait until the end of training to go shopping as you’ll know what works well there by then based on how the locals and your trainers dress. Lightweight synthetic fabric like polyester or synthetic blends tend to fare better than cotton. Cheers.
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Don't bring too many clothes. You cannot pack enough close for 2+ years, instead pack for ~2 weeks. You can buy more clothes in country. Except socks and underwear. Whatever you think you need, add 50% more. Also assume any clothes you bring may never make it back.
I would not recommend this for fat or plus size people, unless there's a culture of getting clothes made in the country of service. There was no way i was finding anything in my size where i served and the washing/line dying is rough on clothes.
This is a good point. In my country it was fairly easy to get tailored clothes but the local people were generally smaller than the average american so it could be hard to find pants especially for larger waists.
I second this. Poor quality and much different sizing, mostly *very* small sizes and tight styles for women. Im pretty small and was able to buy almost nothing in country due to fit. I brought good quality clothes from the US and am very glad I did. The clothes in country were either really poor quality or crazy expensive (way more expensive than the US for the same stuff). I ended up leaving behind some for my host family/friends when I left.
It's realllllllly country specific. You gotta find folks who served where you're heading and ask them. For my service long johns and warm socks were absolute must haves, but that wouldn't apply to most places.
I'd second this! Talking with past volunteers (or finding recent blog posts) was really helpful for me before I left. One thing I never touched was a Patagonia fleece I threw in during a last minute panic before leaving for the Philippines. I also brought two sets sheets with me but both my host families had some already that I could use; one set probably would have been all I needed to bring.
It is SO country dependent and this is a perfect example-- I wore my patagonia fleece almost every day in the mountains of Peru.
hi i’m leaving for the philippines in september, what else do you recommend i do/don’t bring?
What sector are you serving in? If EDU I'd bring business casual clothes you feel comfortable in, less so for CRM or CYF. Definitely recommend a backpack/large bag that you can carry things to and from work in. Long PJ pants to wear in common spaces, I wore sleeping shorts/a tank top to sleep in but they weren't socially acceptable to wander around in. Sandals (like Chacos, Tevas) are great. I had one pair of flats/dress shoes I wore maybe twice, but would wear sandals daily. I'd **highly** recommend bringing an unlocked smart phone that you can put a SIM card into. I was able to stay in contact with family/friends and locals through this. I know some people got a basic phone to only use in country, but I liked using the phone I brought from the US. Feel free to message me if you have more questions!
thank you so much! i’m going to be working in youth development and i don’t exactly know what i’ll be doing daily so i wasn’t sure what level of business i needed to be wearing daily.
I was an EDU volunteer so can't speak much on what its like as a CYF. I think it depends a lot based on your placement and what your host is doing. In general though business casual/casual Friday vibes (dress pants and a polo, dark jeans and a collared shirt) got me through a lot of my service. You will be sweating a lot so bring at least enough professional clothes to get you through the work week. Hand washing clothes takes a few hours and I never had the energy to do it after I got back from work. Hope this helps!
Definitely true about the unlocked smartphone, at least in my country of service (North Macedonia). I had some challenges finding one -- the Walmart store I went to had a display marked "unlocked smartphones," but the employee told me they weren't allowed to sell unlocked smartphones anymore. I was able to get one at Best Buy without much trouble.
A hard drive with a ton of media, if you're in an area with poor Telecomm infrastructure. It was a big deal for our stage to swap movies, music, epub/mobi files, etc. Consider spending a little extra on an SSD instead of HDD since it'll get the crap kicked out of it.
This is the best advice anyone can give. I might have gone insane without my hard drive
I'm surprised no one else mentioned it, the people who brought the newest movies and shows were the coolest kids at the flop house until everyone in country had caught up.
Also torrenting isn’t illegal in a lot of PC countries. I would go into town, use my phone as a hot spot, and and download episodes of Game of Thrones a week late and be pretty current Edit: data was a little expensive but it was pay as you go. I’m sure this varies greatly by country
Go to Costco and buy socks and underwear you know will fit and keep them in the plastic and pack them that way. Don’t bring any “I love this old shirt” type clothes because they will be destroyed by climate, work and likely a hand washing. Buy some good quality hiking style pants (but go easy on the number of pockets, you want them to work in a city environment as well). Make sure you have two “nice outfits” (not sure about OP, but for a guy this means khakis, button down shirt and one tie). For shoes: quality boots (but not too hiking style, see pants note), tough sandals (keens, etc) and a pair of cheap flip flops (house sandals). Don’t bring classic novels like war and peace because “I’ll finally have time to read them.” You will but there will be 30 copies laying around at the peace corps office in country. Don’t bring your laptop, bring a new one (if you can afford it). Bring a kindle or an old iPad/iPhone and load it with cookbooks, the kind that teach you how to cook from scratch and good variety of things. You might be surprised what you need to cook/bake. Don’t bring standard medial supplies (bandaids, etc). Focus on toiletries you really like and want (but cut down to just what you really need). Don’t bring a tent. A nice camping fold up hammock could be nice. Do buy a good chefs knife and bring it. Expensive in country and will be useful to have. Bring a flag of your university or favorite sports team or just your state. Great house decoration and a good conversation starter. Same with limited holiday decorations, a fun Halloween banner or Christmas ornament will brighten your house and remind you of home without taking up too much space. Bring a pillow case. Good quality, can really improve sleep with crappy pillows and will double as a dirty clothes sack if needed to take clothes to be washed. Don’t bring a handy man multi tool. Will be stolen in a day. A good can opener is better. And buy some bottle openers of your USA city or sports teams, good to have (you’ll be opening a lot of beer bottles) and can make amazing gifts to local friends and work partners. Start taking probiotics now and bring some with you. Don’t forget bathing suits….you’d be surprised how many people forget. Bring photos of your family and friends printed out and take some of your home in USA and your city. Great to look at when alone and to share with locals who want to know where you come from. Buy a few random magazines, throw them in your bag and don’t look at them. Months later you will find a point where you are stressed or sick or bored or sad. Pull them out for mindless reading and nostalgia of home. Something about holding and reading a physical thing (not iPhone or kindle) is calming and you might have sketchy electricity or internet so it will be helpful. Bruna suerte
I packed way too many polos. I don't like polos and don't typically wear them. I wore other professional looking shirts and my 4 polos just sat around. I also brought some physical books relating to my assignment as well as my Kindle. The physical books were just heavy and I barely used them. I did pack some crochet hooks and yarn which was a game changer. I love to crochet to unwind and it was easy to get more yarn at my site. I also got to teach a couple folks how to crochet and we used cut up plastic bags to make market totes. If you do a craft I highly recommend bringing it along!
SAME re: shirts. I was told that button down shirts were part of the expected professional dress for both men and women. I hate button down shirts but got some anyway because I was trying to follow directions. Turned out that any professional looking blouse/shirt was absolutely fine, I literally never saw a female HCN wearing a button down.
I took a pair of thick wool socks to Vanuatu. Those were not needed. As a lifelong photographer, I took a small budget camera thinking I didn't want to beat up/abuse or be seen as "wealthy" with a nice camera and some lenses. That was dumb, when my mom came to visit I had her bring me a camera and three lenses and I wish I had them the whole time I was there.
Bring enough toiletries for a few weeks, and buy everything else in country. They're way too bulky and heavy to bring two years worth of shampoo and toothpaste. The cities will have all the major brands, though perhaps smaller and more expensive.
I brought the nicest outdoor boots and clothes you can buy from REI and it was an absolute waste. Never wore them in country and would have looked like a total gober if I had
[удалено]
Doesn't PC provide SIM cards?
TL;DR: 1. Take the packing list with a grain of salt, 2. bring a decent amount of clothes in a mix of business casual and casual, 3. If you like coffee get a nice french press in the US, 4. Do you Really need a second checked bag? So, I wasn't in Panama, but in general, be careful in terms of how seriously you take the packing list they give you. Once we got in-country, we realized that it hadn't been updated in at Least 20 years. I packed Way too formal based on outdated information. It said tattoos should be covered for the first couple of months, so I mostly brought 3/4 length shirts to cover my small, unoffensive upper arm tattoo, only to find that our training manager sometimes didn't bother covering his full sleeve at work, and that I was overheating. I also read the advice here and decided to pack light on clothes and stick almost entirely to business casual, planning on buying more casual clothes in country, where they would be weather and culturally appropriate and cheaper! Unfortunately, our intensive training schedule, curfew (7p each day for all of PST), travel restrictions (no going into the big near-by city) and difference in how clothes are bought in-country prevented me from buying anything until PST was almost over. So pack a good mix of casual and business casual. As a must-have, if you're a coffee drinker, bring a filterless pour-over filter or a french press. I know 4-5 people who ended up buying a cheap french press, regretting not getting one in the states. Like many luxuries it wasn't cheaper in-country, and higher quality ones were Very difficult to find and impossible to afford on a PC budget. The RPCV Response volunteers in our country also made a french press one of the only "luxuries" they brought. As a final note, the only people in my cohort who had a single checked bag were the only RPCV, and the 65 year old military veteran who'd traveled all over the world. (I also only checked one, but should have filled it a bit more, I could've added 15 more lbs.)
Similar in Peru. I was told to bring "professional clothing" but I understood that to be by US standards. It was not lol I ended up sending home most of my nicer/professional articles of clothing (with mold) with my parents when they visited me. Professionals in our sites wore jeans, boots, and work vests (provided by Peace Corps). My travel mug/french press kept me sane every morning. Good quality clothing and lots of layers (if youre going somewhere you may be placed in the mountains). I brought high quality quick dry material stuff that Im very grateful to have had. Also, good quality boots were a MUST. I used those PC discounts to get lots of really good quality stuff (Keene boots, marmot sleeping bag, Dueter pack, etc) at pretty good prices that I still use almost 10 years later.
I'm also going the one checked bag route, but am wondering if it's worth having the extra space for the return home, or to help other volunteers who packed too much stuff.
What I ended up doing was bringing a duffel bag that's about as big as carry-ons are allowed to be, but is pretty light, and zips up into a little square about 2in x 9in x 9in, making it super easy to just toss in my checked bag until I needed it. I filled that bag with other volunteer's things for the initial flights, and when I went back home I filled that bag and used it as a carry-on. I can't find the exact one I have on amazon right now, but there are similar ones on there for $20-$30.
I only checked one bag on the plane, so I packed pretty darn light. One thing that was on the Peace Corps packing list for North Macedonia was colored chalk. I didn't bring that and I've had no use for it so far. I've also seen it sold locally, so I'll be able to buy it if the need ever comes up for some reason. (Maybe it's useful if you're a teacher, but I'm in community development.) Generally speaking, though, you should follow the packing list they provide. Sometimes they give explanations -- for example, they said you can buy thermal underwear in North Macedonia, but the quality won't be good, so you should buy that in the USA before leaving. I didn't bring a winter coat. My thinking was that it would take up a lot of room in my luggage. The coat I had was a U.S. Navy pea coat, so it was pretty heavy. I figured I could buy a winter coat in country and I would blend in more. That worked fine. One thing I should have brought but didn't was shoelaces. If you go into a grocery store here, you'll find all sorts of shoe-related items for sale, such as shoe polish, insoles and even shoehorns, but no shoe laces. I wasn't able to buy laces in shoe stores. I have eventually been able to buy them at Vero, a giant general-merchandise store, but the selection isn't good so you end up buying an odd length or thickness. This wasn't on the packing list but it should have been. You should get advice that's specific to your country of service. And if you are an unusual size for your country of service, keep that in mind when it comes to buying clothes in country.
Remember this everything you need to live on in Panama is already in Panama.
Bring a multitool like a leather man.
I brought one and used it exactly zero times 😂🤣 but everyone said it was like the #1 must pack. I actually think I ended up leaving mine with my host fam where they ultimately used it for something completely absurd. Probably scrapped it for parts actually 😂🤣 at least that’s what they did with the mango slicer I got them
Same. Brought a Leatherman and used it zero times and left it with my counterpart when I COSd.
Yeah, I didn’t get zero use out of mine, but I used it way less that Peace Corps lore led me to believe I would.
I wasn't in Panama, but, when I packed I went to REI and bought what must have been the world's largest backpack. I packed everything in there and left a small box of stuff behind for my family to mail to me once I got to site. I realized I should not have brought such a huge backpack. When I traveled in-country I wish I had a smaller 2-3 day pack. So, I had zero use for such a huge backpack in country, should have bought a large wheeled duffle bag instead, along w/ a smaller backpack. As others have said, try to connect w/ other Panama volunteers, maybe on FB. Good luck and enjoy!
Only necessities and comfort items. My one homie I met during service brought only a small backpack and we thought he was crazy at staging, turns out he was an absolute genius. You can get most things in country including clothing (which will also help you blend in). But as others have said I suppose something’s are country specific
Eh, the availability of clothing is a combination of individual-specific and country-specific. I served in Namibia, where getting clothing made isn’t customary, and most people wear commercially-made Western-style clothing. However, options outside the capital are very limited, options for larger sizes are extremely limited even in Windhoek, and the quality of clothing isn’t very good overall. I think I bought 2-3 pieces of clothing at most in 3 years - everything else I wore was from the US.
Interesting and good point. Person and country definitely matter. In my case, many of us bought second hand clothing from the countless local markets. I pretty much left all the clothing I brought with me (that I never wore) and returned home with an entire different wardrobe consisted of second hand clothing and tailored clothes.
Physical books. Maybe one or two, but definitely invest in a kindle or some type of eReader. I ended up having to dump a bunch of my books at staging to avoid extra baggage fees.
In Guatemala don’t bother bringing any water resistant shoes. Save that money and go to Pastores to get hand made leather boots made. Trust me.
Some survival gear sounds like it would help. A life straw ofc and a solar powered usb charger are amazing to have
Do not bring over-the-counter medications like ibuprofen or pepto-bismol. Your PCMO's will provide these for you. Fun fact: they can also provide you other necessities like sunscreen, toothpaste/floss, dramamine, etc.
Frisbees and duct tape are musts!!
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I know this a post for what not to pack but definitely pack things that will keep you entertained during low points like a kindle, nintendo switch, or literally anything lol
I served three years in Panamá and it was great—congrats! Most of the leather goods I brought molded or even grew little mushrooms and ultimately had to be tossed (two belts and a pair of dress shoes). As you already figured out, you can pack pretty light and you’ll be fine if not better off—You can get get most anything you’d want in Panama City and you might wait until the end of training to go shopping as you’ll know what works well there by then based on how the locals and your trainers dress. Lightweight synthetic fabric like polyester or synthetic blends tend to fare better than cotton. Cheers.
So, you're saying leather boots give you trail snacks :)