Alive and Well in Panamá

When we arrived in Panamá two weeks ago, we lost the Internet as Google Fi stopped working at the border and the San Blas Islands do not have connections to the Internet. A week ago, we were able to purchase a SIM card on the island of Nargana and we now have the ability to connect to the outside world through Digicel if we happen to be in range of a cell tower, but most of the time we have been anchored near remote islands. Today we have a signal, although it is not strong, so photos to accompany this text will be posted later.

Sunrise as we sail to Panamá

From Isla Fuerte in Colombia, we sailed and motorsailed across the top of the Gulf of Urabá, setting off on the evening of Friday, Sept 6, and traveling through the night under clear skies with light winds, to arrive in Puerto Obaldía, Panamá, in the early afternoon. (We decided to bypass Sapurro.) The bay is large, surrounded by green hills. A beach spans the southern end of the water and it would be lovely except for the abundance of trash piled high along the high tide line. We thought how sad it was that this picturesque bay has become a dumping ground for the world's flotsam and jetsam. As we traveled westward along the Caribbean coast of Panamá, we came to realize that the unsightly trash thoughout the indigenous province of the San Blas is, for the most part, a self-created eyesore of the native people.

Non-motorized transportation along the trash lined shore

In the placid bay, the only other boat, a somewhat decrepit craft perhaps used for tranporting goods, seemed to be permenantly anchored. A couple of local canoes and the boats that brought people and supplies to and from Obaldía came and went. There are paths but no roads into Obaldía, and there are no internal combustion vehicles (although we did see one nicely maintained electric motorcycle) in the small town. Everyone walks. The streets, which themselves were clean, are packed dirt that become giant shallow puddles with rain. The houses, made of concrete blocks or wood, are small and painted in various colors. (The directions we received in town always had references to the color of the house that was a landmark.) There is a central plaza with brightly colored benches and fences and playground equipment. On one side is a regulation sized basketball court made of concrete and covered with a high corregated metal roof. Another side is bordered by three traditional phone booths which seem to be maintained but are approaching obsolescence as most people seem to have cell phones.

Phone booths in the plaza of Obaldía

Since Obaldía was our port of entry, we had to clear in. There is a high government dock with no ladders, making it somewhat inaccessible although the crew on the local supply boats seemed to use suspended tires to clamber up and down from their boats. We had to disembark at the same place as the taxi boats, on a rocky shore with crumbling concrete and rebar to negotiate. After tying up our dinghy, we checked in with the police on the dock, who then directed us to Immigration and Customs, two separate offices. The police had notified Immigration of our arrival, so an agent showed up and escorted us to his (hallelujah! air-conditioned) office and expeditiously took our fingerprints electronically and stamped our passports. He then told us that we would need copies of our passports, ship's registration and clearance papers out of Colombia to give to Customs. (He kept our only copies of our passports.) Luckily, the pink house where copies could be made was only a few doors down. Three copies of all our documents (15 copies all together, I think) cost $3, but the woman did not have change for a 20 dollar bill. She told us we could pay her with the change we would receive at Customs. (One very convenient thing about Panamá for us gringos is the US dollar is the official currency, although the country does mint its own coins in addition to circulating US coins.)

Down the block and around the corner was the Customs office, painted bright white and looking brand new. The door was locked and no one responded to our knocking; just as we were departing to ask the Immigration officer about this, a man with a polo shirt and cap indicating his official capacity came hurrying up to let us in. Unfortunately, particularly because the process was more time-consuming, his office was not air-conditioned although he turned on a small fan and directed the air flow toward himself. While Immigration has computers and modern technology, Customs has not caught up to the late 20th century. Multiple forms had to be filled in by hand. (The man had very nice hand-writing; maybe this is an employment requirement.) Two of them had to completed in septuplicate! For another, he had to extract carbon paper from a drawer of his wooden desk and staple it between pages. Then he had to carefully separate all the copies and make piles to be filed or sent to various places. About 45 minutes later, while sweat streamed down my back and my skin itched with the salt of prespiration, after giving us a bit of change (enough to pay for the copies plus a bit more) from the $200 we had thought to bring to shore, he told us that we would need to get copies of our copies of the forms to give to the police at the dock. We wondered to ourselves why copies for the police were not included in the stacks of forms he had created!

After we paid the woman in the pink house for the first set of copies, we did not have enough money for more to be made. So, we returned to the police on the dock and told them that we needed to return to our boat for more cash in order to make copies for them. Peter dinghied out and returned, and we walked to the pink house, which was locked up. Back at the police bunker, we explained our dilemma, and they directed us to another location. We went the wrong way the first attempt. Then we asked two children, who gave us directions. Still, in this small town, we couldn't find it. We returned to the center of town (a block away) to ask at the cafe advertising Internet service, and they sent us to Señorita Frannie. We retraced our steps, turned down a street we hadn't tried before and found two soldiers having sodas on a porch. When we asked for their assistance, they told us we had reached our destination, which looked exactly like someone's house and not a place of business. Indeed, it is, but Señorita Frannie's humble home is also the Kinko's of Obaldía. A few moments later, we had our copies for the sum of $1.25. Then I noticed helado (ice cream) advertised by the front door. Sadly, none was available that hot day.

We stayed another day in Obaldía in hopes of finding Internet service. After all, there is an open air cafe advertising Internet in large yellow block letters above the door. (Imagine a red concrete building with unpainted concrete floor with a few mismatched plastic tables and chairs and a small counter with a kitchen somewhere in the back, not a sophisticated Parisian-style establishment.) As I suspected, Internet service was not available that day or probably any day since there seemed to be no electronic equipment whatsoever. However, the two nice women there who had sent us to Señorita Frannie's the previous day came outside and pointed in the direction of a yellow house on the other side of the plaza and a field. Dodging muddy puddles, we crossed the field and asked for clarification at a little store. A soldier buying a beer directed us down the street. We walked that way, eyes alert for  any sign of Internet service. Fortunately, the soldier had watched our progress and yelled to us that we had passed it. Once again, there were only houses around us, but another person pointed to an open window. There was signage at all, but this was the place. For a dollar an hour, we could sign on to their Internet service and even buy a soda but, not, alas, a Coca Cola sin alzúcar (Diet Coke). This was a disappointment since my supply on the boat had all been consumed! So, we had Internet service but no place to sit. When I asked if a chair was available, the man passed one of the  ubiquitous plastic chairs, held together with zip ties, through the window. They try! Peter and I took turns sitting over the next hour.

On the morning of Sept. 8, we hauled anchor and set off to visit the San Blas Islands. This 100-mile long archipelago of 365 islands, of which about 50 are inhabited, stretches west from Obaldía to the Guna capital of El Porvenir. Since the 1920s, these islands and the coastal strip of the mainland have enjoyed autonomous rule within the republic of Panamá. This is one of the last places in the world where the indigenous people have retained their right to self-governance. Although still denotated as the San Blas Islands, a name bestowed on them by the Spanish conquerors (who never really successfully conquererd them), on maps and charts, the Guna prefer their province to be called Guna Yala, the land of the Guna. They zealously protect their own customs and use their own language (although most also speak Spanish). In order to maintain their ethnic identity, they do not allow marriage with non-Guna people. Of course, this has limited the gene pool diversification, and about ten percent of the Guna are albinos. This is not apparent when we visit their villages and towns because those with this genetic variance must stay indoors to avoid the intense tropical sun; so far in our travels, we have only seen two. Non-native people cannot settle in Guna Yala, buy land or make investments.

Our first anchorage (on Sept. 9) was just south of the 300 foot high island of Suledup, which we chose because most nights and sometimes during the day there are rainstorms with thunder and lightning, and the lightning would be more likely to ground on Suledup than on our mast 65 feet above water level. At this time of year, sunshine is intermittent; it is usually sunny in the mornings and into the early afternoons, but there is often rain, sometimes quite heavy in the evenings and at night. We are collecting the rain and keeping our two 200-gallon tanks full easily.

Suledup

We were surrounded by sand and coral islands and cays populated by palms and ringed with starkly white sand beach. On these islands, the coconut palms grow up to 30 to 50 feet high, stretching vertical to the sun except at the edges, where they lean out over the water in graceful curves. We snorkeled to the nearest cay across an nice little reef and walked the perimeter. The only other people around were men, couples and families out in their ulus (dug-out canoes), enjoying the afternoon and catching some fish. The Guna use their ulus to get from island to island and to and from the mainland. In the early mornings, the men set out in the canoes to fish along the reefs or in deeper water or paddle to the coast of the mainland or up the rivers to tend to their crops of coconuts, bananas, pineapples and other tropical fruit and to cut wood for building and for fires and collect palm leaves for thatch. They return to their home islands by mid-afternoon. "Hectic" is probably not in the vocabulary of the Guna language. The pace of life is slow and idleness does not seem to carry any stigma.

Guna man hauling wood from the forest

The next day, we put the kayak in the water and paddled to a nearby inhabited island, Caledonia. There is no apparent dinghy dock. We approached one with a half dozen children playing on it, but when we got close, they cautiously backed away, so we continued around the island. Near the one concrete dock where three mail and supply boats were docked, we found a small wooden dock where a man took our line. We asked permission to walk around and directions to the congreso; each village and town has a traditional community building large enough to hold the entire population, and most evenings, everyone gathers there. These sessions are presided over by each town's three chiefs or sailas, who swing in their hammocks encircled by first the women and children and then the men behind them. Here, people can discuss issues, lodge complaints and make suggestions. The congress is where the plans and punishments are made, the core of the community.

Congreso in Caledonia

The congreso is just a larger version of the traditional homes. They are built of stripped cane poles woven together with vines, or, more recently some manufactured material. The most traditional buildings have no sharp corners. The small vertical spaces between the poles allows ventilation and allows some light in. There are no windows, only one or two doors. The thatch roofs keep out the rain and the sun, so the interiors are dry and dimly lit during the day. The floors are packed dirt, as are the streets, which, unlike the waterfronts, are well-maintained.

Two houses in Caledonia

There was one school made of cement blocks. In other places, the children in the classes with the doors and windows wide open might have been distracted by two white people walking by, but the students in this school seemed to stay on task and focus on the teacher. Perhaps this a result of extremely good discipline or maybe attention deficit disorder is not in their genes.

Some houses and the school in Caledonia

There is no electrical system on Caledonia, but there were a few solar panels. Like all the other islands, water is brought in from the mainland via PVC pipe which rests on the mud and sand. (The charts show these areas so boats do not destroy them with anchors.) in some places (as can be seen by the houses in the photo above) the piping has been exposed by foot traffic. Obviously, trenches for the pipes could not have been dug more than a few inches into the solid coral base of the islands. None of the islands have facilities or infrastructure for sanitation.

On all the islands, individual families collect their trash in bags, buckets or drums and then take it in their dug-out canoes to the mangroves to dump or burn it. This system probably worked well when everything they used was made of local, natural materials and either decomposed quickly or burned to fine ash. However, like the more developed world did after WWII, the Guna have recently embraced plastic for packaging, furniture, everyday household items and toys without considering the ecological implications. We talked to several Guna people on various islands who seemed sanguine about the problem; a couple even almost boasted about having their own separate mangrove islands for trash disposal.

As deplorable as the system of trash disposal is, the treatment (or lack thereof) of human waste is even more appalling. Ingeniously, the Guna build outhouses, some with actual porcelain toilets but no running water, over the sea, creating a less than appealing waterfront environment. Yes, they urinate and deficate directly into the same water where they swim and procure fish for their daily diets. As if this were not bad enough, on some of the islands, they very cleverly situate their pig sties over the water also so they do not have to bother with cleaning them out!

So, while we found some aspects of Guna culture less than agreeable, we did like the people themselves and their system of self-governance. We were invited into a couple of the houses by women who wanted to sell us molas, the traditional hand-sewn, colorful decorative pieces of layered cloth that the women make for themselves to wear around their midriffs. The first house was one large room, very sparsely furnished. At the far end of the structure, which was about 20 feet in length, a pot of stew boiled over what we would consider a campfire. The floor was very uneven, following the contours on the underlying coral. This woman only had one mola to show us, and it was not finished, so we did not buy it.

As we were heading toward our kayak, another woman beckoned to us to her home, which was at the time occupied by herself, another relative, her daughter and her tiny baby granddaughter. She had a treadle sewing machine. It was interesting to talk with them and we bought a couple of pieces before departing.

It is getting late, so I need to stop writing. I am being entertained as I sit on deck with my laptop by the loud and sudden and frequent splashes of rays cavorting around our boat in the dark. I wish I could see them!