Wanderung 28

After a 1 hour drive we stopped at Salamanca, a little crossroads type of town on a secondary artificial lake created to help feed Lake Gatun and the locks around 1935. Now part of a National Park, the rain forest ecology is being preserved although the native folks are allowed to live in a village out in the middle of it. There are no roads to that village, however, and we carefully side-stepped into maybe 20-foot long dugout canoes to be ferried to the native village.

These dugout canoes were the real deal, hand-hewn from the logs of some very large trees. We sat two abreast on each seat, about the same width as a normal canoe, and our canoe carried 18 people. Despite that load, it seemed to draw only a few inches of water, which astonished me. The canoes were powered, however, by quite modern outboard motors--they are, after all, the way these folks communicate with the outside world.

The ferry trip wound first down a small river to the lake, then across the lake to the mouth of a larger river, and up that for a couple miles until we reached the village.

The village buildings, housing 27 families in all, were all built up on stilts with the main living platform elevated 5-6 feet above the ground, and had thatched roofs. The kitchen and main hall where the ceremonies and dancing took place, had no sides at all although some of the single-family homes had some rudimentary walls.

But the main thing was the Embera Indians themselves. We found them a remarkably proud, friendly, and gentle people with absolutely adorable children. Although clearly we were tourists, the welcome felt genuine, as if it were indeed part of their basic culture. The chief gave us a lecture about the community which was translated by our guides. Although the Embera have their own language, they all learn Spanish in school and that was the lingua franca of the chief while we were there. I really need to learn Spanish.

We had a dinner that was, uh, unexpected in several ways. First, the "plate" was a bowl of woven palm fronds that contained broiled (?) tilapia and baked (?) plaintain. Second, we ate with our hands, which turned out not to be difficult but with the predictable result that we ended up with greasy hands. Not wanting to get my camera controls greasy, I surreptitiously wiped my hands on my socks in lieu of a napkin. Third, Monika ate the tilapia, which is a fish, and pronounced it very tasty and acceptable. You may not think that is a "Stop the Presses!" moment, but I assure you that I had not seen her eat fish in at least 30 years, so it did rather surprise me.

Given the length of the journey to get to the village, we only had a total of maybe 2 hours there and that was not nearly enough time to eat lunch, see all the buildings including the school, shop among the tables of native crafts, listen to the Chief's summary of their culture (which was slower for being translated), and watch the traditional dances. But we tried our best. We first went shopping after lunch because I wanted some of the hand-carved sculptures and I honestly was afraid other visitors would snap them up. I ended up with a beautifully carved monkey and toucan out of the hard, dark root wood they use, but I ran out of money and couldn't purchase a carved armadillo! (Very frustrating) We did have $10 left for Monika to get one of the handcrafted beaded necklaces, so that was good. It was quite satisfying to directly pay the artisan who produced each of these things, and we noticed the wood carvings had the name of the Embera who produced it written on the bottom.

Then we laboured up the steps to the top of the hill where the school was located. Unfortunately it was closed for their winter vacation because I wanted to see exactly how they arranged to teach grades 1-6 there. We did find a large array of solar panels out in front of the school, so at least some electricity is available for that building only, but what exactly they powered I don't know. No electricity was evident in any other building, and clearly the Embera live quite happily without any modern electronic gadgets.

All too soon we had to turn around and return to the main hall where we watched the Embera women dance two ceremonial dances, a Shaman dance and a Turtle dance. Both dances were line dances somewhat like a conga line with the women ranging from the oldest, who was just middle aged, to the 4-5 year old girls. The dance itself was very rhythmic, reminiscent of North American Native American women's dances, and clearly the mothers were teaching their daughters.

When a men's band had been assembled, consisting of wooden flute, bass drum with bearskin on one side and pig skin on the other, a smaller conga-sized drum, marachi gourds, a grooved wooden scratch board, and a turtle-shell bell, then a general male and female community dance was performed. After the Embera performed it, we were invited onto the (packed dirt) dance floor to try, and I was one of the volunteers as the percussion was so pronounced that I thought I could at least sway rhythmically with the beat. As it turned out, the head lady (Chief's wife??) took me in hand and we had a grand old time kicking up our heels in the midst of the chaos of all the Coral Princess people paired with the native folks. Monika danced with a young boy and afterwards was presented with a flowered crown by a little girl, which just melted her heart. (We miss our grandchildren and are thus quite affected by youngsters that remind us of them.)

Lest I give the Gentle Reader the impression that the Embera Indian village was a Garden of Eden, let me hasten to list the negative aspects of such a life style. Fresh water is from shallow dug wells beside the riverbank. The earth filters the river water and the Embera can apparently drink it with impunity, but I am much less certain other folks could. Cooking is over an open wood fire, so plenty of smoke although having the kitchen building open-sided would ameliorate that to some extent. Sanitation is strictly an outhouse with pit toilets over to one side of the village. Medical services are a state-sponsored doctor visit once a month. But I was also told that the Embera really prefer the Shaman and traditional herbal medicine cures as a first resort and will only use modern medicine as a last resort. For a dentifrice, the Embera use some kind of herbal gum rather than toothbrush and toothpaste. I did not hear of any access to modern dental care, BUT the middle-aged Chief had absolutely perfect teeth and no one I saw had any evidence of missing teeth or gum disease. That might be partly due to an all natural diet--not sure.

One 16 year old girl we talked to already had a 1 year old baby, and that is the normal result of early sexual activity among the Embera, which reminded me of Margaret Meade's classic ethnography about the Samoan Islanders in the South Pacific. The Embera teenagers apparently have sex when they feel they are "in love" and as contraception is not used, many children are born quite early. Again the births occur in the village with two Embera women who are trained as midwives. I could foresee problems if things went badly in the birth as the nearest hospital would be a 45 minute canoe ride and then another hour or so drive away, but I did not hear any data on infant or maternal mortality. Marriage may occur at some post-teenage time, but it is not recorded either civilly with the Panamanian government nor religiously with the Catholic church, but rather there is an "understanding" among the local Embera community that acknowledges the marriage, which is regarded as a life-long commitment. Average life span, however, was claimed by our guides to be 85-90 years old, which struck me as quite high. Possibly those ages would be achievable with a very natural diet and a very low-stress, pre-modern life style, but I am not sure the formal data exist because the Embera do not seem at all keen on official record keeping of things like births, deaths, and so forth.

All in all, we both had a wonderful time and were really sorry to leave those hospitable folks. But needs must, we clambered back into our dugout canoe and were putt-putted back to the far shore of the lake and then up the little side river to our landing, where we caught our bus back to the ship. Meanwhilst, the Coral Princess had rehung all her lifeboats and worked her way back down through the Gatun Locks to the port area of Colon 2000, where our bus dropped us off. There was a huge line to re-embark, however, so we went shopping at the Super 99 store that lies in a small shopping mall about 1 block down the street from the cruise ship wharf. If you get there, look for the direct pedestrian path over to that mall as it will save you quite a bit of walking compared to going out the car gate and then turning left on the access street and then left again to enter the shopping mall.

I found sesame-seed pretzel sticks, a delicacy that I have otherwise only seen in Spain and which I enjoy very much as they have a more nutty flavor and less saltiness than the regular US salted pretzel sticks. Most importantly, these sesame sticks do not provoke acid indigestion which for me is a big plus! So I bought two bags of those, a bag of Doritos, and Pepsi made with real sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup!! Yahoo! Monika found two ice cold "Panama" beers for 57 cents each, so we both ended up very happy people, although we had to pay the $8 tab by credit card because I had spent all our cash on the carvings back at the Embera village and a tip for our tour guide, of course.

So we bundled all that back onto the ship, had a light dinner in the Horizon Cafe buffet, and then read a while. I updated the journal and Monika played on her IPad until it was time to turn in early for the night as we had a meet-on-the-dock time of 7:00 a.m. for the rain forest tour in Costa Rica the next morning.