Jan West­maas

With our brief stay in Guyana now be­hind us, on Au­gust 12 we flew back to Man­aus from Boa Vista on Azul Air­lines. No 12-hour bus ride this time. Twelve days had gone by since we left Trinidad, and we were due to leave Man­aus for Pana­ma at 3.30 am on Au­gust 13. By 5 pm on Au­gust 12, we were back at our base, Casa Dos Frades, where we had just about enough time to or­gan­ise our pack­ing and to step out op­po­site the ho­tel in­to the bright and live­ly San Se­bas­t­ian Park.

There we en­joyed our last mo­ments in the city. We walked around the park in ad­mi­ra­tion of the many fam­i­lies walk­ing to­geth­er, old and young, with tod­dlers in abun­dance. We then went look­ing for a restau­rant to dine. For all prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es, we sep­a­rat­ed in­to small groups, bump­ing in­to each oth­er every now and then as we searched for food, which was plen­ti­ful around the square.

Our two-night stay in Pana­ma (Au­gust 13 and 14) al­lowed us a full day and a half to play with, as the morn­ing of Au­gust 15 was our date of de­par­ture for home. We had some op­tions: rest, go shop­ping at Alls­brook Mall, a vis­it to the Em­berá In­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ty, a vis­it to the canal zone and mu­se­um and fi­nal­ly, a tour of the city’s down­town his­toric sites. “It’s a stretch to at­tempt all in the lim­it­ed time,” I ad­vise.

A head count re­vealed that most peo­ple had done the Pana­ma Canal tour and the his­toric city tour on pre­vi­ous vis­its while just about every­one want­ed to do some last-minute shop­ping at the pop­u­lar Alls­brook Mall. I al­ways en­cour­age trav­ellers to do a tour of the Canal Zone and mu­se­um to un­der­stand the lo­gis­tics of ves­sels cross­ing from the At­lantic to the Pa­cif­ic and vice ver­sa, us­ing fresh wa­ter from the Cha­gres riv­er.

For the shop­ping-ob­sessed, Pana­ma is heav­en, but Pana­ma is equal­ly a na­ture lover’s par­adise. Eigh­teen trav­ellers signed up for the vis­it to the Em­bera in­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ty not know­ing what to ex­pect, ex­cept that eco-tourism in their na­tive habi­tat was their pri­ma­ry source of in­come. I had been there many years ago but had for­got­ten that it took some do­ing. They are ba­si­cal­ly a riv­er peo­ple who re­side in the Cha­gres Na­tion­al Park and move around the Cha­gres Riv­er in dugout ca­noes (pi­raguas).

Get­ting there, the way our na­tive guides planned it, was not for the weak of heart. The first part of the jour­ney by bus was a breeze. We were then tak­en to a point on the riv­er where we board­ed three ca­noes which took us to a beach in the vicin­i­ty of the Em­bera vil­lage. So far so good. I sus­pect most of us would have pre­ferred to go straight to the vil­lage. But the na­tive guides had oth­er ideas. They want­ed to take us on a hike to a wa­ter­fall first. Part of the pack­age, pre­sum­ably.

They led us on an or­deal, hik­ing over slip­pery rocks and through shal­low wa­ter for what seemed like eter­ni­ty. Had we each not been giv­en sol­id sticks (staffs) for sup­port, and gen­er­ous as­sis­tance from the guides them­selves and from each oth­er, heav­en knows what dis­as­ter would have be­fall­en us. In all this, our sense of bal­ance and our ba­sic con­di­tion­ing were test­ed to the lim­it. When we even­tu­al­ly did get to the wa­ter­fall, we spent a short while and then re­traced our steps as an­oth­er group of trav­ellers had vir­tu­al­ly tak­en it over!

We fi­nal­ly ar­rived at the vil­lage to be warm­ly re­ceived with pul­sat­ing drum­ming and danc­ing by na­tives, male and fe­male, in their tra­di­tion­al dress. We were then in­vit­ed in­to a huge thatch-roofed hall where we had a meal of riv­er fish, lo­cal fruit and veg­eta­bles and Em­bera-style fried plain­tains served on ba­nana leaves.

While we ate, we were in­vit­ed to form a cir­cle to be ad­dressed in Span­ish by the chief’s daugh­ter. Chris­tine vol­un­teered to trans­late in­to Eng­lish. “One hun­dred and five of us from this Em­bera vil­lage live as a com­mu­ni­ty in this part of the na­tion­al park. We are not al­lowed to keep do­mes­tic an­i­mals nor to plant crops oth­er than for our own use. We are one of eight dis­tinct eth­nic groups or tribes in the en­tire coun­try,” the chief’s daugh­ter said.

There was a lot more that was re­vealed as she ad­dressed us. And at ques­tion time, even more in­for­ma­tion was shared. We learnt that, de­pend­ing on the re­gion, elec­tions for the po­si­tion of Noko (Chief) may be held every three to five years. Women can stand for lead­er­ship in de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions. Vot­ers must po­si­tion them­selves phys­i­cal­ly be­hind their choice of leader to be count­ed on elec­tion day.

They al­so prac­tise monogamy. One of the more se­ri­ous crimes is for a mar­ried man to have an­oth­er woman. The pun­ish­ment for this can be se­vere. The of­fend­er must sit on the floor with his feet clamped to a de­vice for a cer­tain pe­ri­od de­pend­ing on the sever­i­ty of the of­fence. That’s not all. Sug­ar and hon­ey are spread around the guilty par­ty to at­tract ants to add more bite to the pun­ish­ment!

We were com­ing to the end of our three-coun­try ad­ven­ture, and by the time we ar­rived back home in Trinidad, we had suf­fi­cient time to re­flect. Cap­ti­vat­ing and en­er­vat­ing as it was, it will be some time be­fore it is ex­punged from our mem­o­ries, if at all.

Jan West­maas is the au­thor of Out of the Box Tales of Trav­el 1972–2013. He is a lin­guist, teacher and trav­eller ex­tra­or­di­naire.