Guna Yala Hike

On February 25, 1925, the Guna (or Kuna, depending on who you talk to), an indigenous group along the Caribbean coast of Panama, won their independence.  For years before their culture and traditions had been repressed by the Panamanian government and the Catholic Church, and finally they came together and fought against their oppressors.  Eighty-eight years later, they are still widely discriminated against, but their culture thrives and their traditions live on within their semi-autonomous comarca.  Every February 25, they remember their independence day through re-enactments, ceremonies and celebrations.

88 years later, I found myself sleeping on the concrete floor of a stranger’s house with 27 other volunteers the night before a reputedly grueling two-day hike north across the country to celebrate the Guna independence day on the island of Ustupo.  Before dinner a veteran related every difficult part of the hike, detailing steep climbs, multiple river crossings, and warning of no contingency plan should someone pass out.  As it turned out, all of what we had heard was true.  It was one of the most difficult things I have done (though not as bad as climbing up Volcán Barú) and definitely one of the most rewarding.  We started early the first day with high spirits, but as the dirt road cutting through pastures turned into a winding trail through the jungle, I began to question my endurance.  By the time we made it to lunch in Nurra, the capital of the Comarca Guna de Wargandi, I was a little concerned.  We had repeatedly gone up hills, without, somehow, going back down, and I was having a hard time keeping up with the rest.  Despite my best efforts to keep my backpack light (including a last-minute purge of half my clothes), the weight was slowing me down and wearing me out.  Of course, I was not alone in my suffering, and there really was no turning back now, so I took heart and sucked it up and kept going.

The trail was beautiful.  We walked among tall, fat trees centuries old and beneath a thick canopy of interwoven leaves far above.  Large palms and bright green leaves the size of a chess boards continually smacked us in the face as we trudged through the well-preserved forest of the Comarca.  We had beautiful views of the mountains looming before us on our journey, and the water in the river was crystal clear as we filled up our water bottles and learned to love or hate the taste of iodine tablets.  As the day began to close on that first day, I learned to distrust our guides, who, through a desire to keep our spirits up, insistently told us for three hours that we were only half an hour away.  So, when we did finally arrive at the river bank that was to be our campground for the night, I dropped my bags in the first spot available and jumped in the river without a thought for my clothes.

Within a few minutes, we were all in the river, washing our sweaty and dirt-stained clothes, soaping up and rinsing off, and just relaxing in the cool, clear water.  It was heaven!  The beauty of water, I find, is that it supports your weight and lets your feet take a break, and that night, I relished in it.  Eventually, we cooked an excellent pasta dinner (well, I mostly helped to eat it, kudos to the chefs!) and allowed ourselves to forget the trials of today and what was to come tomorrow.

Although we aimed to leave at 7am the next day, we didn’t get out until 8, as we had all probably expected would happen.  Today, the second day, I did much better.  I still managed to be one of the last people, and by the time the day was over I could barely lift my legs, but as the weight of my pack numbed my back and my hips, movement became mechanical and I could keep up a little better.  The second day we had to cross the cordillera, or the mountainous backbone of the country.  This included a steep trail infamously named the miranalgas, because on the way up all you can see is the nalga (butt) of the person in front of you.  Luckily, it was our lot to climb down rather than up, and only one member of my group slipped, sliding down in the half the time it took the rest of us to walk down.  For the second half of the day we traded out hills for the river, and spent about 30% of the afternoon walking through water in our hiking boots.  Eventually, our path led us out of the forest and into fields of bananas and coffee, providing a more level ground for our torn up feet, and finally to the coast.

We could hear the ocean long before we could see it.  We walked through mangroves, glancing hopefully ahead trying to see the ocean, which would signify the end of our journey.  Finally, it appeared amidst gnarled mangrove roots jutting out of the brown water – a welcome sight, if not as majestic as we imagined.  There was a boat waiting to take us to the island where we would be staying for the next three nights, but since the mangroves are generally shallow, we had to wade out into the muddy water to catch our ride.

The island was remarkable.  Imagine a maze of bamboo houses with bamboo fenced-in yards lining streets of wide walkways.  It was a city of bamboo!  Of course, this meant that the breeze could pass more easily through the houses, and since the roofs were made of palm leaves instead of tin, the island was much cooler than a city of concrete would have been.  There were of course concrete buildings, many of which were poorly built and subsequently abandoned, so that the island was dotted with two- and three-story concrete ruins rising amongst clumps of bamboo structures.  The island was filled with houses, tiendas, bakeries and basketball courts.  There was a school that went from elementary all the way to university level, two restaurants, a town center and oh so many children.  The traditional Guna dress for the women is a mola blouse, a skirt of fabric wrapped around their waist, and a bright red scarf over their head, and while all the older women wear this outfit, the children ran around in shorts and shirts, and sometimes less.

Of course, many of these wonders we did not discover until the morning after our arrival.  During our stay we would be sleeping in one of the dilapidated two-story concrete mammoths, and our hostess, who lived in the bamboo house attached to ours, told us which parts of the wooden floor we should not step on and showed us our bucket bath shower downstairs.  Spots claimed and a shower line formed, we were all prepared to eat, sleep, and save exploration for the morrow.  One of the wonders we did discover that night, however, was our latrine.  It is the custom of the Guna to do all of their business over the ocean, where it will be tidily taken care of by nature, so the latrine we were allowed to use was a two-minute walk away from the house on the sea.  The sun had already set, the moon was full, and the tide was coming in, so the leaning wooden latrine standing above the dark surging ocean impressed me less with a sense of security than with awe.

Since the coast of the island was lined with latrines, swimming was not really an option, so the next day I spent recovering my calories and getting to know the island.  While we were there, our breakfasts and lunches were provided for free.  We all arrived at the community house and waited as individual families came and took groups of 2 to 6 to their houses to eat with them.  While many of the Guna are shy, just as many spoke Spanish, or even English, and wanted to get to know us and what we thought of their home, their culture, and their celebration – more than once I was offered free bananas to eat.  By the end of our stay I had sampled two of the Guna’s main exports – fresh coconuts and molas, the handmade fabric artwork the women make of geometric designs and representations of nature.

Before we had arrived, my fellow hikers had mentioned that there is a high rate of albinism in the Guna, a fact that did not fully hit me until we were on the island and I saw for myself.  Apparently they are considered special, to have been touched by the moon or the sun (there was some disagreement between the accounts), and I had expected white hair, white skin and red eyes (the only albinos I have ever seen are rats and rabbits).  I was therefore completely amazed to find that the Guna albinos have blonde hair, pale or sunburned skin, and light eyes – in essence, like me.  If it weren’t for their Guna features, their dress, and the fact that they spoke Guna, I would have taken them for gringos.  How to explain how I felt?  I have spent all my lif thinking of blonde hair and light eyes as a normal thing, and here I discovered albinos were not too different.  After a year of being the only person not latina in my community, I finally had a glimpse into what my community sees when they see me.

The actual Independence Day was the second day of our stay on the island, and the morning dawned with a parade.  All the women wore their traditional dress, and all the men and the volunteers who did not have the outfit wore a red shirt to represent the blood that was shed.  We walked all over the island, ending in a yard where they re-enacted the war.  The day before they had played out all the acts of oppression the Panamanians had done against the Guna, but on the Independence Day they showed the Guna rising up and out-smarting their oppressors by attacking them on a holiday when the soldiers were all drunk.  The Guna playing the Latinos dressed the part, spiking their hair and painting black facial hair (the Guna themselves do not have any facial hair, an excellent adaptation to living in this humid climate). 

Once the war was won, everyone moved to the casa de chicha that held giant pots of chicha fuerte, or fermented sugar cane juice with cacao.  And the chicha was bien fuerte.  On the women’s side of the house, female descendents of those who had died in the war brought around small calabash bowls filled with the chicha to women waiting to drink.  The men, on the other side, had to form lines of eight and dance and shout up to the big pots where they were each given a bigger calabash bowl of chicha, which they had to chug.  As one can imagine, after about 15 minutes everyone, including the small old ladies and the towering gringos were having a grand old time happily singing and dancing around.  Since the festivities started early, around 11am the chicha ran out and everyone staggered away in search of a carb-filled lunch and a soft place to crash.  We were told the casa de chicha would open again at 4pm, but none of the volunteers were feeling up to it and chose instead a hearty meal.

The following day was our day of departure.  Method of travel: a 5 hour boat ride leaving at 6am, followed by a 2 hour car ride to Panama City.  Luckily, it did not rain and the waters were not as rough as years before, and I am happy to say no one on my boat got seasick.  We zoomed between other islands dotted along the Caribbean coast, some as populated as the one we left, while others were left inexplicably vacant.  There were a few islands that had only one or two buildings and a welcoming beach for tourists, but the majority was football-field-sized islands crammed with wild vibrant vegetation.

When we finally reached the city, I stayed the night with friends who wanted a good meal, a soft mattress, and an air-conditioned room, luxuries that we often do not get in our daily lives.  During the hike, a friend had related it to our time in Peace Corps – a memorable, once-in-a-lifetime experience filled with moments of misery.  Our hike was merely a more concentrated form of misery.  But more than once on this trip – swimming in the cleanest river I’d seen in Panama, partying with a bunch of tiny old women, eating coconuts and bananas with a family in a bamboo house – I thought with great satisfaction, This is my life!  I won’t get the chance to go on this hike next year, but if I could, I might be tempted to forget the concentrated misery and give it a whirl again.

Homesick for Holidays

With Halloween gone and Thanksgiving around the corner, I have been feeling so homesick.  I imagine cold autumn wind biting into my nose, walking with a scarf tucked into my red plaid pea coat; the smell of pumpkin spice, hot chocolate and baked goods in a warm café with soft jazz playing; waking up in my parents’ house and padding downstairs in multiple socks, flannel pants and a sweatshirt to eat a breakfast of frosted mini wheats (or if I’m lucky, Dad’s pancakes!) in our yellow kitchen with Christmas music in the background.  I miss talking to my parents over Scrabble after dinner, joking with my best friends at Kayak’s Café, or taking walks in Forest Park, feeling winter settle in and hoping for snow flakes to fall from the battleship sky.

Of course, I can expect none of that here.  Sometimes, if I lay in my bed with earplugs in, I can imagine that there aren’t a dozen chickens looking for breakfast outside my window and, if it’s chilly after a night’s rain, I can pretend like I’m at home in the cold.  But most of the time, it’s hard to picture Christmas here, in the oppressive, humid heat, the steady 12-hour days (6am to 6pm), típico music with accordion and drums playing everywhere, and complete lack of pumpkin lattés or need for a hot drink to warm me up.

                I have been doing what I can to spice things up.  I hung twinkle lights in the rancho behind my house with my hammock, though that was mostly to replace the broken light bulb as much to create a warm ambience.  A friend of mine gifted me an extra zapallo he had – a squash resembling an overgrown acorn squash with the insides of a butternut and the flavor of a pumpkin – which I have turned into quite a successful pumpkin bread.  Of course, since I only have a range top and no chickens, I have had to use my neighbors’ ovens and eggs.  Being generous Panamanians, they are more than happy to help me out.  With anything, for that matter – just today I was given two lunches, a handful of tiny bananas, a large papaya, several green plantains, and milk.  I sometimes suspect it’s because I live all alone and have no one else to help me take care of things.  The women frequently tell me that they would hate to have to cook for just themselves, so much work for just one person.  The prospect of living without one’s family is inconvenient, at best, and sleeping alone is terrifying.  The only people who live alone are those that have no other place to stay.  I was told, upon moving into my house, that I should invite the neighbor’s daughter to come sleep in the extra room so that I wouldn’t have to sleep alone.  I responded by saying that my neighbor’s two dogs and my cat are keeping me company.

                In general, it’s hard to imagine autumn in this weather.  Although this rainy season has been inconsistent and unsatisfying, it lingers with sticky humidity clinging like saran wrap without the relief of a cleansing downpour.   When it does rain it’s a blessing – the skies turn grey-white, blank with no depth, and the storm will bring in a wind that can chill sweated skin to the bone in a matter of seconds.  At times it will roll thunder in great grey clouds above, trees half bent in the wind that sounds like the rain itself, and then it will pour buckets.  Other times the breeze is softer, accompanied by a constant, soothing rain that lasts for hours, but chills off the day leaving me with the urge to make tea.  But a lot of the times, it will threaten like all get-out, and then drop nothing.  Or worse, it will tease you, pretending it will rain cats and dogs, but then stop after a minute or two, leaving the air thicker than ever. 

               

                Of course, for Thanksgiving all the volunteers get together to celebrate in the coldest area of the country – in Chiriquí in the mountains that surround the dormant volcano, Volcán Baru.  I have been told to expect all the traditional food: turkey, sweet potatoes, gravy, and (dare I hope?) cranberry sauce.  This week I taught my kids about Thanksgiving, using the Three Sisters planting technique (pretty awesome, check it out!) for an environmental agriculture aspect and having them draw hand turkeys.  It amazed me to see them choosing blue, black, yellow and green for their turkeys, rather than my expected orange, yellow, brown and red.  Some even chose red, white and blue as a nod to el mes de la Patria.  For Panamanians, the month of November is not the waiting period to put up your Christmas decoration, but rather the month of Flag Day, Independence Day, and Separation from Colombia Day.  Starting on November 3 and lasting until pretty much November 30, Panama celebrates one party after another.  Trying to be efficient, I suppose, they have three large national holidays on November 3 through 5, honoring their separation from Colombia and the Panamanian flag.  November 10 is the Cry of Independence, November 28 is Independence Day, and November 30 is Teacher’s Day (which the teachers, naturally, take off).  To top it all off, November 27 is the day of my community’s patron saint, La Medalla Milagrosa, which is considered a local holiday.  Suffice it to say that the school calendar is pretty much shot.  Of course, school lets out for summer after the second week of December, so no one’s heart is really in it from November onward, including the teachers, who are more than happy to let their pretty white Peace Corps Volunteer use up an hour of the 5-hour school day to teach their kids how to draw hand turkeys.

                Some things haven’t changed for me this year despite the shift in climates.  For one, I still got a pretty heavy head cold this month.  Having a cold in a hot climate was a different experience however.  Instead of the urge to bundle up in sweatshirts and sweatpants, I lay on my hammock sweating, not sure whether the heat was from the day or from an oncoming fever.  But, as soon as the slightest breeze would blow through, I would get chilled.  Luckily, citruses are in season, so I could eat 4 to 5 oranges, mandarins and tangerines a day for some extra vitamin C.

                Another thing that hasn’t changed:  like in college, I find myself very busy with the end of the year arriving, but my motivation slowly abating.  I am so tired, and so excited for my family to come visit, that I am having trouble staying focused on the events going on in my community.  Four weeks until I go pick up my family at the airport!  I am trying to be active – I bake bread with my women’s group, for whom I am organizing a business seminar to teach them some basic business practices; I go to school and teach Environmental Education, English and Agriculture class; I am trying to start a youth club; I turn compost with the men who make compost and are growing a community garden; and I constantly attend social events.  But I really just want to stay home in my hammock, watch my cat play with her new avocado peel toy, read a good book, work in my garden, experiment with recipes and make pumpkin baked goods.

Food

 After plucking out the feathers of the chicken, they have to put it over a fire to make sure all the feather pieces come out

 They eat all the chicken here - even the liver and things

 My host grandfather picking a fruit here called guava (not what we think of as guava in the U.S., see below)

 This is what they called guava here - the black things are the seeds, and the white things next to the seeds are the seeds with the pulp around them . You suck the white part off and eat it, and spit out the black seed.

 Mangoes!

 grated coconut

 Maranon cruzado - it's a fruit that tastes roses

 This is called changa - it's made from newly-harvested corn.  They blend it up and put it in a banana leaf and put it over the fire (left).  It comes out looking like the one on the right.

 On the left is the grind up corn and on the right are corn husks filled with that mixture.  They boil it and eat it.

 These are hojaldres - basically fried bread

 Taking dried corn off the cob - they then feed it to chickens or make it into a tortilla

 Passionfruit

 pixfae - it's a fruit from a palm tree that is boiled with salt and eaten.

 This is how they pick pixfae from the palm tree - they use a long stick with a hook at the end and try to catch it with a big tarp















Four different types of bananas

Peeling coffee with a heavy stick -  they mash the dried coffee beans until the peels come off and all that is left is the bean that they then roast.

What goes up must come down

This past Saturday was the follow-up meeting to the community analysis meeting I had held back at the end of June.  Then, my boss had come to community and I had spent a whole week planning the meeting and walking around inviting everyone personally to come.  During the meeting, I had presented them with proof in the form of a jeopardy game that I had in fact been doing something for the first three months when all I was doing was getting to know the community.  I had also divided them into small groups to list some of the environmental projects that they wanted to do to improve their community, but out of the many ideas they listed we hadn´t had enough time to actually pick one or two to actually begin working on.  So last week, I did it all again – I planned a meeting and I walked to as many of the 150 plus houses in my community as I could to invite them.

            Now, those of you who have been reading my blog will know that I have been really happy.  And this past week was no exception.  I gave successful environmental education talks at the school, I took care of the school garden, I met with the newly-formed women´s group to teach them how to make banana bread and identify their values, vision and mission statements, I had finally gotten my kitten to keep me sane, and in general I felt confident and comfortable in my community.  The morning before my meeting I went to the nearest town to buy supplies to make the customary bríndis, or meeting snack, and baked banana bread with my neighbor (since she has an oven and I do not).  The meeting was set for 4pm, but I left my house after lunch to drop off my stuff at the school where the meeting was to be held and set things up.  I then headed to the house of a woman who had offered to paint my toenails for the baile the next day.  As I walked to her part of my community, I started to get butterflies in my stomach.  Due to the nature of my community, there are large stretches of road with few to no houses, and as I past by fields planted with corn and pastures of cows under the heat of the sun, the thought of leading a meeting all by myself weighed on my mind.  And what if no one came?

            At my friend’s house, they asked me about my meeting.  What activities was I going to do?  What projects was I going to hand out?  Could everyone participate still?  Despite the fact that I had posted signs on all the local tiendas, they didn’t know what time the meeting started, which did not make me feel any better.  But when I left, they indicated that they would show up, if for no other reason than to eat the banana bread I had made.

            Hora panameña refers to the fact that Panamanians are almost always late, so when 4pm rolled around and no one had shown up, I told myself to just be patient.  But when 4:30 came and I was still the only one in the school, my stomach dropped.  At my last meeting there had been a few people who had at least shown up on time.  Today, there was no one.  A boy had paused in front of the school and just stared at me as I prepared the room.  I invited him in, but he just looked at me mutely before disappearing.  Finally, a handful of people started trickling in.  We sat in the front of the school waiting for anyone else.  Due to the chronic tardiness, Panamanians are used to just sitting around and waiting for things to start.  They talked about the weather, the baile, and upcoming birthdays.  At some point, one of them mentioned that I should have put the time at 3pm so that people would have shown up at 4pm, something I heard from everyone I had invited.  Another mentioned that everyone was always on time for mass.  When mass was at 11am, people showed up at 11am, because otherwise they would miss the mass.

            Finally, an hour late I started the meeting with the handful of people who had come.  We talked about the different projects we could work on and then we all voted.  In the end, the projects were ranked eco-stoves, waste management and then reforestation.  I wonder how the vote would have come out if more men had come.

            As we walked back, I was lost in my thoughts.  What could I have done differently?  People will show up when my boss comes, but when it comes time to supporting me, just me, no one bothers to come.  Even the family who had painted my toenails earlier hadn’t come, and I had just told them about it.  I was so frustrated, so down.  I felt like I had failed, like I was a joke.  Why else would everyone else in the community blow off my meeting?

            I don’t know what the people talked about as we walked home.  I was in no mood to chit chat.  I heard one of my companions call to a woman who had not attend that we women had won, meaning that the women had outnumbered the men and would get their improved cook stoves.  After about 15 minutes of walking, one of the ladies said to me “Are you getting sad?  Don’t get sad, I am here to support you.  Lots of people here support you.  You have to just keep going forward.”  There is a saying here, echarse pa’delante, which literally means throw yourself forward, and they use it to mean keep going through tough times.  That’s what she said to me.  Hay que echarse pa’delante.

            I live farther than the rest of the women I was walking with, and after they had all gone to their houses, my neighbor’s son passed me.  Apparently a lot of guys had shown up to play soccer that day, since the afternoon was so pretty.  I should have held the meeting by the soccer field, he said to me. 

Since then, many people have offered me their excuses of why they didn’t go and told me how I should have done the meeting differently.  All the suggestions are a little different, and all the suggestions are most convenient for the person offering them.  You should have held the meeting in this part of town, one person says, while another says I should have held the meeting in another part of town.  I have to remind myself that the concept of the community members themselves choosing their projects is relatively new.  In the past, all projects have been offered to them by external agencies and organizations without any real consultation of the community.  I also think that day in general was just bad.  Not that Saturday at 4pm is inherently a bad time, but for some reason or another, no one could go when they otherwise would have.  And, of course, I have to remind myself that this is my third meeting I have ever held, and it was the first not to be well-attended.  I just have to keep throwing myself forward and hoping that there will still be people to support me.