San Blas-The Home of the Kuna Indians

Welcome to San Blas! The home of the Kuna Nation. They are one of the six individual indigenous tribes in Panama. They have their own government as well as participating in the larger government of Panama. Many of their cities are located on tiny islands near the eastern coast of Panama, hugging Columbia. One of the many things I liked about these shy, yet kind hosts were that they are my size! Very short-including the men. The children are very tiny. I would see a child and think they were at least 4 to 5 years younger than they actually were!
Let these pictures speak for themselves!

From the plane, flying in, this is some of what I saw!

First Impressions!
I was stepping back in time and into a totally different world! Not at all what I expected! I thought of endless, white beaches with lapping waves, a drink in my hand, a little music in the background. You know what I mean? Well…I think I got something even better! The plane touched down on several different islands no bigger than two football fields long. Each runway truly was the entire island! On the third touch down, it was my stop, Playa Chico. Corn fields tucked into the wild jungle, one hundred men lined up wacking back the jungle from the runway AND then, I am greeted by Amador Torres. The owner of my little accomodations. So “just trusting” works again and off we go. What a kind, soft spoken man he turns out to be. The hotel is called Obannoed Nega Dupbir. To get there is yet another adventure all in itself. Jumping off a plane that has approximately twenty passengers and directly to a canoe (with a motor) me and Amador and a young boy who, I found out later, had caught a ride from the island to sell his bananas. We were off in one direction and everyone else in another. Oops, should I worry? Not yet! The mantra “Another place and time” kept repeating in my brain! Adventure! This isn’t Colorado anymore! It gets better! About thirty minutes later, we arrive at the island that is about the size of three football fields and the home to a few hundred people. The homes are simple, made of bamboo, braided sticks and palm leaves for the roofs and some of the walls. (By the way, most of these dry, bamboo huts had a fire roaring on the inside!) A few cement buildings for the center of the pueblo and the school. My hotel is actually partly cement as well. A good storm and this entire place is history! The shopping district,school and two churches and the pier make up the center of the island. I am learning that if a building is painted blue, then it is a government building!

My first walk through the pueblo felt like a National Geographic magazine and I was the insert! There was one main dirt path, swept each morning, down the center, with individual simple homes and stores (looking very much like another bamboo hut except for the sign by the door or window announcing what they had for sale) twisting around each other this way and that. The children were playing, banging from the man repairing a roof, singing from a radio, chatting from small groups of women and children gathered and sewing were the sounds that floated out from the walls. The total experience seemed to weave together to create a hum that WAS the village. I was timid to take pictures but-of course- the children were happy to pose and they came running. I happened upon a group of women sewing molas and asked if I could take their pictures and they agreed. The older woman was so cute, in Kuna,I think she said, “Just a minute.” and she disappeared into her house. About two minutes later, she reappeared, dressed traditionally!

Every woman-I really do mean every woman from about 12 on up, sewed all the time! In the alleys between the houses, in chairs or on logs, you name it. I asked my host and he said the girls begin learning how to make molas starting at about 5 years old. It is also taught in the schools in the cities during “cultural” classes. They are truly a unique art form!
More views of the pueblo.




Then, off to the only little beach on the island, remember it is a volcanic island! The edges truly were hard, jagged volcanic rocks! It was just a wade away from the little hotel. I snorkeled for a bit-a few small fish, sea urchins galore! little turtles! When I returned to the beach a gaggle of about eight young boys had joined me. I found out later this is THEIR place to play! They quickly stripped to nothing and began to perform a minimum of 100 back flips each! They were jumping off a boat that was turned over, off pieces of coral, a truck of a piece of drift wood-you name it and they flipped off of it! Nothing scared them! One decided to see how many flips he could do in a row and proceeded to flip right into the water for two more. Their little bodies were total muscles. Three decided to go swimming and came up with a red starfish! Next up-the long jump! From one stick to the other! They were pretty good at that too! I asked how old they were (mind you they spoke Kuna for their first language and they looked somewhere between 7 and 11) They were all 10-14. I am getting a little better at guessing ages. Around noon, I returned to the hotel for lunch. It was all things that I have never had, but it was quite tasty-vegtables that I guarantee you can not buy at Safeway and the fruit=incredibly tasty! Some kind of chewy fish, a potato like vegetable that Amador told me came from a tree, fresh pina juice! During lunch, Amador told me about his three sons-they are all attending university on the mainland. Agriculture, technical systems, and medicine. He went to college for three years in Cuba. He was in Havana but never got to see Fidel! He shared stories about different guests that have stayed with his family (all this was in spanish so who knows if I really got it straight!) one guy from the Smithsonian Institute studying the Kuna language, stayed for two years! Just recently a young man and his novia stay for six nights from Spain, he had a group of women from Portugal and then a family of Chinese (they liked hot tea at all meals and he was so surprised!) While we were eating lunch, two big barges tied up to the main dock-one from Columbia and another from the town of Colon. Then a police boat, then something else-it was quite a busy place for awhile. The barges were bringing supplies for the island-everything from rice and flour to soap and radios.
The water seems to be in everybody’s blood. Everyone has a canoe or two! They are hallowed out from logs and fit two, maybe three people in them. The fishermen are constantly moving around in the water. On Sunday afternoon, many of the teenagers were just playing in them! When the island is as small as this one is, and the ocean as large as it is, they just extend their play into another realm! One older fisherman was paddling by and Amador told me he was his father-in-law and he was 87! He looked great! A little while later, right beside where I was sitting, a man comes up in a canoe to what looked like a bamboo cage going down into the water, and he dumped in about 7 HUGE crabs and a bunch of lobsters! I learned later that the “gentlemen’s club” next door, another little bamboo house that had nothing in it but a scale and a table made from bamboo, was actually the collecting spot on the island for crabs and lobsters. Then, they are sold to anyone that wants to buy them. The fishermen are then paid. In the evenings, there was a radio, turned up very loudly, with a soccer game going and a few tables of dominoes. By the way, even though they are up and about by 5:30, they play dominoes until the wee hours of the night!



It had been drizzling for awhile so I cuddled down into a hammock and fell asleep for about three hours! I never do that! It was one of those sleeps that was so deep that, even when I tried and was conscious of thinking I should wake, I could not! The sound of the waves under me, the rain above me, the chorus of a few birds, and I was gone!
Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you what the little three-walled structures located around the island, over the water were. You guessed it! The bathrooms.
Just a few memories to share quickly:
1. Watching young boys (5 and 6) collecting little sardines off the jetties in a net.
2. The dinner stories from Amador-his brother is a farmer on the mainland and he sees panthers, tigers, ranas, sapos, boas, you name it!
3. Noreiga Crabs. These are huge, red crabs that they call Noreigas!
4. Playing a Jenga type game with the coral that washed up on shore. I got better at it!
5. The industriousness of the people! Everyone is doing something all the time! Sewing, weaving baskets, collecting stuff from the jungle, collecting sardines, fishing, getting water, and enjoying each other’s company while they do it!
On Monday,the motor on the boat reared alive-or as much as a small skiff might putter to life- and off we headed across the waterway to the mainland. In a quick, 15 minutes, we were among a small group of working dug-out canoes. Each was loaded with different gems of the jumgle-coconuts, bananas, bamboo, and baskets of leaves and spices. The trail was a well-used, slippery, reddish muddy path crowded on both sides by plants of every possible variety. Amador was an incredible guide-he could stop at just about any plant and explain its natural medicinal uses taught to him by his grandfather. This one for memory, another for arthritis, a small wonderfully smelling one for the stomach and kidneys. One special one-it smelled like lavender but without any flowers, was for the babies. He knew the names just by smelling them and looking at the leaves. I was so impressed. At the end of the trail, about a 45 minute walk in the steamy jungle, we came up the pueblo’s cemetery. Each famiy has a ittle structure all their own-a little A-framed, low roof, dirt floored structure. Inside are small mounds of dirt signifying each grave. On top of the mounds are little tokens of the person-a clay pot, herbs, little canoes. When the women visit the graves-usually on Sundays and Wednesdays-they burn a mixture of charcoal and seeds to remember the soul by and to help them on their way to heaven. We came upon a few graves that had little canoes on them too. Amador told me (mind you in Spanish so who knows what I missed!) that when a fisherman dies (and all the men are fishermen!) The women put the charcoal and seeds into the canoe and send them out on the river. The most amazing feeling came over me while I was there-I did not feel weary about being among so many dead-and SO MANY CHILDREN-I felt instead the closeness and dependence these women have with their families. A sad fact about the Kuna women, however, is the fact that many marry (within the family) by 12 and have 5 children by the time they are 20 and each child may have a different father. Several of the boys at Cuidad del Ninos are Kunas.

From there, we headed to our own private, white sand island! It was about the size of my front yard,complete with palm trees and flowers!

It had its own reef so I got to snorkel again. The coral was beautiful with yellow, green, purple, striped, skinny, you name it, fish. At the edge of the reef, it went straight down. It probably would have been a fun place to dive. The water was pristine.
The afternoon was filled with another jungle walk on an island a little larger than the one earlier. The mangroves kissed the water on all sides leaving small white beaches exposed for the turtles to lay their eggs. An iguana greeted us before he zoomed off into the jungle. Again, every plant was named and its use announced. There were edible plants, plants to rub on your skin, spices, building materials, everything to help sustain an entire population without ever going to a store! I felt like Robinson Crusoe cutting through the jungle. We followed the beach for a ways and then headed back through the mangroves to search for more signs of iguanas and plants. We came upon one plant that was loaded with these perfectly round pink fruits (bigger than a berry but not as big as a plum) and we ate several. Amador filled his pockets to take them home because his wife cooks with them. He told me that in about a month, all the children and women would come here and harvest all the fruit and make jellies out of them.
Our next stop was another island that was surrounded by mangroves as well. This one had even thicker undergrowth and was loaded with mosquitos! These were the first mosquitos I had seen and FELT!! The call them “no sees” because they are so small. Needless to say, we did not stay too long.


My impressions? A self sustaining people, proud of their heritage and language, fighting to stay alive in a world that is competing for both their children and their land. The Kuna government has outlawed anyone owning any of the land that is not a Kuna and even then, they must be approved. This was an experience that I will not soon forget and I am so grateful I was able to go. I am also proud of myself for going alone! I never felt scared but, at times, I did wonder what was going to happen next!
Here are some pictures of the curious, happy children!

If you look closely, you will see the little one has one hand that is very deformed. One of the boys also had deformed eyes and another was an albino. The albino children are called “moon children” and are considered very special. This is due to the interfamily marriages.




Hasta luego!

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