Panama October 2009

The end of 2009 is finally here and I realized that I can't write my year-end summary if I haven't even caught up on my blogging for the year.  So, here's my Panama blog...finally.

Here's our group in Panama City.  There were eight of us plus Charlie, the driver of our big yellow van.  From left to right it's Charlie, me, Scott, Whitney, Julia, Ann, Erik, and Joey (whose real name is Scott but who we nicknamed Joey because he looks like Joey Tribbiani and because it was too confusing having two Scotts in the group).  

Julia, me, and Joey in front of the Panama Canal

The Panama Canal


For some weird reason I've always wanted to see the Panama Canal...lifelong dream=fulfilled.  

From Panama City we flew to Playon Chico.  It is a small town in the area of Kuna Yala (also known as San Blas) which is occupied by the Kuna Indians.  It is basically a strip of land along the Caribbean coast of Panama and also includes the San Blas Archipelago.  From Playon Chico we took a 45 minute dugout canoe ride to Irgandi, a small village where we spent most of our time.  

In Irgandi we stayed in the LDS church.  Yes, that's probably illegal but that's where the church and village leaders thought we should stay and none of us were about to complain since it is the nicest building in the village.  A pretty high percentage of the Kuna Indians are LDS.  In Irgandi probably about 20% of the people are active LDS...and I'm sure many more have been baptized.  Even the Saila, village chief, is LDS in Irgandi.  

Things are just different in Irgandi.  Nobody thought it was weird for us to hang our hammocks on the church rafters.  I think everybody there thought we were there officially for The Church.  We had to keep reminding them that just because we were all members of the LDS Church didn't mean we were sent there by The Church.  We were treated like royalty anyway. 

Here's the view out of the window of the church building.  It was a pretty sweet setting.  Luckily a tsunami didn't hit though.

A little path through the village.  We kept hearing different things but I think there are about 250 people in the village.  It seemed smaller than that though but I guess there were a lot of kids.  

This is Rafael.  He was our main translator in the village.  They speak their own Native American language there.  The more educated people speak Spanish a little too.  So those of us who spoke Spanish would translate from English to Spanish and then Rafael would translate from Spanish to Kuna for us.  The double translation made things a little complicated but there wasn't any MAJOR miscommunication luckily.  


We brought old glasses and new reading glasses for the people there.  I love the glasses that Rafael chose for himself...bling, bling.

Some of the village women in their traditional dress.  Pretty much everybody in Irgandi wears the traditional clothes except for the kids.  

We didn't have a lot of bottled water since we had to bring all of our water from Panama City so we supplemented with coconut water.  It isn't too bad really.

This is the "hospital" in the village next to Irgandi.  I think it is only really used for the women who are having babies.  

This is the birthing room in their "maternity hospital."  How would you like to give birth there?  They at least had running water in the room.  It's the only place I saw running water in Kuna Yala.  

A favorite play spot for the kids in Irgandi

The guys in our group went fishing with the men of the village.  They brought back some lobsters and octopus for us to eat.  There were eight of us and eight octopus tentacles so we had to take a picture.  I'm not a big fan of octopus.  It basically tastes like plastic...and I bet plastic has fewer calories.  

Here are some of the women trying out the glasses we brought.  They were testing the glasses by seeing how well they could sew with them on.  

We taught some hygiene classes at the school and practiced proper hand washing with the kids.  I felt kind of like a hypocrite teaching hygiene classes when I felt so dirty myself...but oh well.  Also, teaching kids to properly wash their hands using river water (the only source of fresh water in Irgandi) may have been counterproductive.  I guess if they use soap it is better than nothing.  

Jose and his daughter Flori (in the background) were our "tour guides."  They are Kuna but have lived in Panama City for a long time.  I like the glasses Jose chose for himself.

Here's one of the village women with a mola she made.  Molas are a traditional Kuna artwork that they use as part of their traditional clothing.  They use reverse appliqué and their work is quite intricate.  The molas look really great framed and we are selling a bunch of the molas for the women of the village to raise money so they can build a library there.  The way this woman's cheeks are painted is just how they do their make-up when they are all done up.  If you look closely you'll also notice that all the women have their noses pierced...even the Relief Society President. 

And this lady read my mind and had a nativity scene mola.  So cool.  I collect nativity scenes from all over the world and I love that I found this one.  As you can see the molas are sewn into a shirt but the women just took off the shirt parts for us.  They are also really cool sewn into handbags.  

We did a little face painting of our own to get our guys ready for the VIDA versus Kuna basketball game.  We probably shouldn't do weird stuff like this since we are the only Americans that most of these people will ever see and now probably everybody in Irgandi thinks that Americans paint their faces before playing basketball.  Too bad there aren't many TV's in Kuna Yala so the people can learn the truth about America...octomom, midgets, white trash weddings, little girls in beauty pagents, washed up stars who dance, etc.  

The guys and Flori all ready for the big game.  The only bad thing about their basketball court is that if the ball goes off the court it might land in the ocean.

The guys got really sweaty.  I guess I shouldn't have let on that I'm a bit of a clean freak because Scott thought it was SO funny to give me a big sweaty hug.  Yuck. 

This is the LDS church in Playon Chico.  I just thought it was cool how it is built out over the water.  Some of the villages are built on little islands and they build a lot of buildings out over the water since there isn't much ground.  

Another view from the church in Irgandi

Some of the cute little boys from Irgandi.  Sorry about the speedo/undies.  I was just glad they were all dressed.  

These little boys always wanted us to take their picture.  The one in the front was a little rapper...every time we saw him he'd start into a little rap.  It was pretty funny.  

The girls were a little more camera shy but still let me take their picture.  

There were a lot of kids in the village but these seven really liked us white folk.  They were kind of our little entourage.  Everywhere we went there were little kids watching our every move.  The really little kids and babies were afraid of us though because most of the really young ones hadn't ever seen a white person.  They would stare at us for a minute and then start bawling.  It was kind of funny.  

Just a pretty little path in Irgandi

We did our own cooking as a group.  Here's Julia and I taking our turn cooking. Staying at the church was awesome because they even had a gas stove there. We all thought we'd be cooking over a fire so having the stove was a huge improvement.  Thank you tithing!

Here's Julia and I with the kindergarten kids and other random children after we taught them hand washing.

And speaking of hand washing, here's the bathroom we had to use for our stay in Irgandi.  And yes, it is a latrine that just hangs over the ocean.  And yes, I felt like a bad world citizen every time I went to the bathroom.  Most of the islands the Kuna people live on are too small and the water table is too high to dig latrines so this is the traditional Kuna bathroom.  They are working on other solutions, but for now, this is it.  Makes you think differently of the ocean, doesn't it?  

Me with a little friend that was always hanging around the docks in Playon Chico ready to greet us

The San Blas Archipelago is made up of nearly 400 islands.  Some of them are really small, like this one.  They call the really small islands "coconut islands" because nobody lives on those islands but they use them to farm coconuts.  They trade the coconuts with the Columbians for food and supplies.  They don't have much cash in Kuna Yala, especially in the smaller, more isolated villages.  They didn't even use money until the 1990's.  Before that they just traded coconuts for everything. 

On our last day in Kuna Yala we took a boat out to one of the little "coconut islands," far away from the islands where people live and use the ocean as their sewer.  It was like a little piece of paradise.  

Here's the little island where we spent the day

And back to Irgandi...one last picture of the kids playing on their playground equipment.  

Here are some people watching a soccer game from the runway in Playon Chico before our plane came in.  The locals all seemed to know the plane schedule and moved off the runway before our plane landed.  Kind of scary though...

But before we flew back to Panama City we spent one las night on the island of San Ignacio.  We had a nice crab dinner that last night in Kuna Yala.  The crabs were super huge and super yummy.  

And they were still slightly alive.  While we were taking pictures, Julia's twisted a bit and it's claw fell off.  Sick.

We visited the Panama City Temple on our last day in the country.  It had a really neat setting overlooking the Panama Canal.  It felt weird to be walking around, even just the Temple grounds, and feeling so dirty.  Being dirty was the hardest part for me on this trip...but I did it!  I bathed in a river, didn't use a hairdryer, and wore a hat for pretty much the whole week, and still had a good time.  That's pretty amazing for me.  Also, it's amazing that I didn't get sick since we washed our dishes in unboiled river water.  Thank you once again to swimming in canals of Idaho as a child.  It sure makes traveling, but not weight loss, easier.  

The end of my first Panama adventure.  We're planning on going back in May and will hopefully (if we can raise enough money by then) be helping the villagers build and stock a library for their village.  They are going to help build it and will take care of it but since they don't have much actual cash, we are working to raise the money for the library.  

I really, even without showers or a real bathroom, had a great time in Kuna Yala.  The people were wonderful, the place was beautiful, and we had a lot of fun.  I can't wait to go back!