The Colors of Panama

Panama is in the middle of its "dry season" now. Even though it's the end of March this is the time of year they refer to as "summer." Despite the fact that everything has a patina of brown from the dried out and blowing dirt colorful flowers are everywhere.
These yellow flowers above remind me very much of the mimosa that grew wild alongside the roads in France.

Of course bougainville grows everywhere.

IS IT SAFE IN PANAMA?

Since I first thought about retiring south of the Rio Grande and started mentioning it to people one of the questions most asked is “isn’t it dangerous down there?”
I don’t know. How dangerous is it where you live? Recently in Fort Lauderdale five guys held up several Dunkin Donuts stores and killed two people. Shouldn’t it be safe to go have coffee and a donut in the middle of the day without having to die for it?

Three cops killed in Oakland, California and a third in critical condition and not expected to pull through. Just a routine traffic stop. In today’s (March 22, 2009) Sun Sentinel on line: “Driver Robbed at Gunpoint in Boca Raton.” “Authorities (in Lake Worth) Try to Identify Slain Home Intruder.” “Two Women Sexually Battered During Orlando Home Invasion.” And people wonder if it’s safe in Panama?
So, then, how is it in Panama? Well, recently on the blogs I read there have been stories of home invasions here, too. And murders. All the guide books, and people as well, say that you will, at a bare minimum, get mugged if you wander out of the Zona Libre in Colon. The ever present and highly visible police in Panama City’s Casco Viejo district will gently steer the unwary tourist away from dangerous adjacent neighborhoods should they unsuspectingly turn down certain streets. As in any big city there are definitely places you shouldn’t be and Panama City and Colon are two of those here.

In the past week I’ve been to three separate towns in Panama: Santiago, Chitré and Pedasí. These are completely different from the large city. I didn’t see much of Santiago and can’t really say if it’s a dangerous place or not. I simply didn’t see enough of it to form an opinion. I do know that I didn’t care for it much. Most of the travel books pretty much write it off as a stopping off place for travelers going between Panama City and David, the country’s second largest city. I had been planning to go to David but an international festival had all the reasonably priced rooms (i.e. under $50/night) were booked solid.

Pedasí, with a population of less than 2,000, is probably about as safe a place as you will find anywhere. In Chitré, with about 45,000 people, I felt reasonably safe. I walked everywhere.

The lighting on the side streets is nothing like it is in the States. It’s pretty dim with maybe one street light every block or so, but it’s pretty hard to feel uncomfortable walking down the street at night when families are walking there, too. Teenage girls, singly and in twos and threes walk down the side streets after dark with no apparent apprehension. At first I wondered about this but came to realize that eyes are watching everything that’s going on.

One of the things that has made America unsafe has been the advent of air conditioning. When air conditioning came along Americans shut their windows and closed their doors. Doing so not only kept the cold air in, it kept the world outside. Americans insulated themselves from the world.

Here in Panama, at least outside of Panama City, anyway, the majority of people don’t have air conditioning. They leave their front doors and back doors open in their small homes to catch the cooling breezes, and though nearly all homes have bars on the windows, doors and porches, the people are aware of what is going on on the other side of them. Many sit on their porches chatting the night away and they often acknowledge your presence as you pass by with a murmured “buenas.” (Note: Here in Panama “buenas” says it all. “Dias,” “Tarde” and “Noche” are only added to “Buenas” occasionally.) So, back in the States, we talk the good talk about “Neighborhood Watch” and have even set up a single night that encourages people to get outside their homes and onto their front yards, porches or steps. Here in Panama, at least in the few places I’ve been so far, that’s a 365 night a year occurrence and I’ve felt a lot safer walking down the street after dark than I do in Fort Lauderdale.

The Indigenous People of Panama

If anyone thinks of the native people of Panama it is most likely the Kuna of the San Blas archipelago that come to mind with the women in their colorful molas blouses, their gold nose piercings and their beaded leg attire. The Kuna are, in fact, photographically exploited by tourist sites promoting Panama.

But there are five other native American tribes in Panama and some much larger than

the Kuna. The

Ngöbe-Buglé tribe is by far the largest

indigenous group in Panama. The 2000 Panamanian census cites 110,080 Ngöbe-Buglé Indians in Panama, forming 63.6% of

the national Indian population.

While visiting Santiago, Panama, recently I spent a couple of hours at the bus depot waiting in the wrong location for my bus to Chitré, but for an inveterate people watcher like myself I enjoyed the two hour wait for a bus that departs every half hour.

It’s quite easy to spot the indigenous population in Guatemala.

Many of the Mayans there look as if they had stepped right off of one of the pyramids. In the central part of Panama it’s as easy to spot the Ngöbe Buglé as well. At least the women. Just as the Kuna women are easily identified by their dress, so too are the Ngöbe-Buglé women who wear what is known as the enagua (pronounced nah wa). It is a shapeless dress not unsimilar to the mu-mu of Hawaii. They are all bright primary colors, reds, yellows, purples, blues and greens with brightly decorated collars, waists and hems. I saw literally hundreds of Ngöbe-Buglé women at the depot arriving from, and presumably returning to, the mountains.

There is also a tribe known as the Embera with a population of

around 15,000 who live, along with the Wounaan, primarily in the rainforest of the Darien. The Darien is a nearly impassable swampy wilderness area separating Panama from Colombia, though some Embera are also found in the Chagres National Park, around the Canal. While the women are often bare-breasted at home they also have wonderful breast-plates made from silver and nickel coinage.

The Naso Indians, with a population of about 3,500, live in small communities along the Teribe River in Bocas del Toro province. The Naso have retained their own language, and are taking steps to preserve their disappearing traditions. The Shaman's Apprentice Program now encourages Naso to preserve the knowledge of traditional medicine. Handicrafts are made by local community members. ASOMETRAN has established medicinal plant gardens in three Naso communities and established a small herbarium of dried plants. Wekso Ecolodge plan to produce a book on medicinal plants and Naso culture and establish a 10-hectare medicinal plant forest.

Finally there are the Bribri who live in the mountains and low-lying Caribbean coastal areas of southern Costa Rica and northern Panama on the Talamanca reservation. There are an estimated 5,200 Bribri who have maintained their indigenous customs and language. One small tribe of the Bribri, the Kekoldi, only has about 200 people. The Kekoldi farm iguanas in order to keep up the iguana population, which was in danger of being over hunted. The iguanas are farmed for their eggs which are hatched, then when the iguanas reach 5 years old, they are released into the forest.