by Heidi King
Still want to come? Good… I haven’t regretted a single day.
The Gods Dance on the Kuna Islands
By Dr. Michael Anderson
Most people know Panama for the canal that unites oceans. But it is also a bridge that unites continents. Whether it be conquistadors moving gold, or Americans moving ships, those that settled here were moving something to somewhere. But for seven indigenous tribes the isthmus was not a bridge or a canal – it was home. Through revolutions and missionary zeal they have managed to preserve some of the same religious customs they had as the day Columbus arrived.
Of the seven tribes, one of the most successful at preserving their autonomy is the Kuna. Driven to the brink of extinction in the Darien jungles by the Spanish, they fled to an archipelago of 365 islands. They chose the islands of San Blas not for the pristine white sand beaches but because there was no potable water. The Spanish would leave them alone that way.
The Kuna are especially noted for the women who exhibit their traditional culture by wearing brightly colored fabrics sewn together to create designs, usually birds or fish. They cover their legs and arms with beaded jewelry, pierce their noses with small golden plates, and mark their foreheads to the tips of their noses with thin black lines. This, however, is a tradition somewhat imposed upon them by missionaries and facilitated by the arrival of cotton. Originally they were naked and the Church encouraged them to transform their decorative tattoos into clothing.
At a hostel in Panama City I was lucky enough to meet the captain of a catamaran. He was quite close to the Kuna, despite the fact he was Swedish. One particular community befriended him, most likely because they fell in love with his blond five year old son. When he had enough tourists to make the trip worthwhile, he offered to take me to a village where I hoped to meet the village shaman. As a student of Jungian archetypes, for me it would be a real treat to study the Kuna religious traditions and participate in one of their rituals.
Our boat had three Australian backpackers and a Colombian girl we picked up in Portobello. As we approached this island I was awestruck by its pristine beauty -- lazy palms drooping over turquoise water and blinding white sand. A group of Kuna men stopped playing basketball to watch us approach. Unlike the women, the men were not a picture from National Geographic. They wore modern clothes and drank Balboa beer.
The Colombian girl on our boat started shouting out to someone she recognized at the dock. “Matt! Matt!” she shouted as she peeled off her jeans down to her thong. To the protests of the captain, she slipped off her tank top, fully exposing her breasts to the Kuna men, and dove into the clear water. The Kuna have learned modesty from Christian missionaries all too well. By the time the boat was moored all the men playing basketball were gawking at the near naked girl.
As the Colombian girl emerged from the water a group of twelve men surrounded her. The commotion brought forth an old man, a village elder, and he did not look pleased. As he approached the Kuna men looked nervous and quickly went back to their basketball game. The old man shouted toward one of the long houses and an attractive girl with long hair appeared squinting in the doorway.
I was confused because when a Kuna girl reaches womanhood, as pronounced by her first menstruation, she cuts her hair short in addition to shedding the nickname she carried in childhood. But she was clearly a woman and she had long beautiful black hair. She looked Latina. She walked down to the beach to the side of the village elder, who stared out to sea with an angry expression. He spoke softly in his indigenous language to the girl and walked away.
“You do not have a permission to dock here,” the girl said.
Our captain offered his apologies and shouted, “Everyone back on the boat!” He was clearly angry.
I spoke to the girl directly. She was pleasant and smiled. “Excuse me,” I said. “I have come to see the shaman. Would it be possible for me to stay? I will find another way back.”
The girl’s expression immediately changed. “The shaman is not here today,” she said abruptly.
“Get on the boat,” the captain barked at me.
As we dejectedly walked back to the dock, the captain’s son popped his head up from a nap. “Ooznahvi!” he shouted. The Kuna girl responded immediately and ran to the boat to greet him. She jumped on deck and cradled the boy, rocking him back and forth and rubbing his blond hair. He giggled uncontrollably.
Apparently our captain knew this girl well. He departed with her still in the boat, without asking at all whether she wanted to join us or not.
Suffice it to say, I was not happy. The other passengers, Matt from Boston and his reacquainted friend María, the Colombian with a penchant for getting inappropriately naked, were fine with canceling the island visit in exchange for snorkeling around a nearby coral reef.
“Look,” I said, “seeing how my only interest was to visit the island, I think it might be appropriate that some of my money be refunded.”
“Your money is in the gas tank,” the captain said. “Besides…. You asked me to bring you to the shaman. The village shaman is not on the island right now.”
Ritual in the Bayano Caves
By Mathew Hope
“The only thing to fear is fear itself.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt – U.S. president and moron.
Okay, FDR wasn’t a moron. Steve was. We were standing at a National Police check point on the highway to the infamous Darien Gap, a lawless land of drug runners and Colombian leftist rebels, when Steve decided it would be cute to stick his finger into the barrel of a loaded AK-47.
The police guard flipped – angry and scared he pointed the automatic weapon at Steve’s head. Steve smiled and raised his hands. Guards from inside ran out and there was a whole lot of commotion and guns. Steve was wearing shorts, flip flops and a t-shirt that said Yo estoy a favor de la ampliación de todos los canales with a picture of ship entering a girl’s metaphorical canal. Since the vote for expanding the canal was only a week away, the police captain found it amusing enough to disarm the situation. Nothing like sexism for macho bonding which infuriated Steve’s new girlfriend, Estrella. We all filed in to register our entry into the Darien, which I guess is something you have to do so that they know what to write on the toe tags when you show up dead. It was touch and go there for a while if they were going to let us pass or not.
The leader of our adventure was a psychologist everyone called Dr. Mike. He was kind of a short wiry haired version of Robin Williams. He kept trying to name drop important Panamanians he knew which amused the guards but didn’t seem to help. I think he did it more to impress us or at least Usnavy the half Kuna half gringa he had a hard time hiding his interest in. It wasn’t until María calmly explained with a disarming smile where we were going that guards seemed ready to let us pass.
Our destination was not Colombia or the dense jungle, but a cave recently made accessible when Lake Bayano was flooded to build a dam. It is in on the highway to the Darien, inside the independent comarca, or reservation, of Kuna Yala where Usnavy is from. María and I met Usnavy and Dr. Mike on a boat on the San Blas islands. Because Usnavy felt bad we missed a visit to her island village she persuaded us to let her take us here instead. Her name really is Usnavy, a name not uncommon among the Kuna. Her father disappeared before she was born, and the only thing they know about him was that he was in the U.S. Navy, so that became her name.
In a small Kuna village, we got out of our rented bus and onto a 15 horse power dugout canoe. The Kuna women there had heavy metal jewelry hanging from their noses, and bright red circles colored their cheeks. They sold spicy dried plantains and bright embroideries called molas. Kids ran around in their underwear playing guns with sticks and cardboard.
We motored past the tops of trees that were once rooted on the forest floor, now at the bottom of a lake. The cave was at one time high on a hill, but now we could motor right up to it.
I don’t think this is the kind of place I would have approached on my own.
We drifted under reeds and mangrove and kept our hands in the boat, worried about the caimans said to infest the cave. Once in the dank cavern, we got an idea of how many bats there were – tens of thousands that came within centimeters of our heads. The nervous banter stopped when the sandy bottom of the cave creek dropped below foot range and we had to swim with flashlights in our mouths.
The cave is a kilometer of cave, canyon, cave, canyon. It ends with a nice sunny spot with smooth limestone walls, perfect for relaxing and swimming. After we got to the end I floated for a while, just staring up at the cliffs and the birds circling above. I emerged into a discussion about phobias. Claustrophobics, hydrophobics and especially chiroptophobics (bats) would not have survived this trip. Dr. Mike, among some of his many talents of which he constantly reminds us, was an expert at treating phobias, and María admitted to a fear of falling. It was a reoccurring nightmare of hers.
Dr. Mike is a Freemason. He often drops this casually into conversations. At first he did this I think just to inform us-- like it might mean something to us or maybe so we would ask him what the hell he was talking about. On our four hour cave journey he captivated Steve with mysterious talk of rituals, and even I actually found it kind of interesting.
The cave, Dr. Mike told us, is death. It is fear. It is the underworld. It is the primitive symbol of the unconscious. And if we confront our fears on this perilous journey to the underworld we can learn to tap into the secrets of the unconscious. A ritual is nothing more than a journey to the underworld to learn control and to learn from our unconscious.
We decided to do a ritual at the sunny, open pool at the back of the cave. It was like the classic trust exercise where the person falls back with their eyes closed. Except María wasn’t just going to fall back, she was going to fly. We all held our hands high, supporting her as you would a crowd surfer in a mosh pit. But instead of just easing her down, we eased her onto Steve’s back. He was crouched down over the pool, and the curve of his spine perfectly supported Maria. Maria stared up at the clouds and each of us, Usnavy, Dr. Mike, Estrella and I, held a limb and moved them in a random swimming motion.
Dr. Mike soothed her by saying “Rays of sunshine rain down on you as you float. You are floating. And slowly you gain control. You can fly.”
As I moved her right arm she began to tense up. “No,” she murmured, and she stiffened. The edges of her mouth tightened into a frown. She pulled her arms in and Estrella and I lost our grip. She slid off of Steve’s wet back, into the water. I didn’t see it, but she must have hit her head on the edge of a rock because the wound she got on her head at the pilgrimage of the Black Christ reopened. She was bleeding from her forehead.
María stood up in the shallow water and tripped over the rocks as she waded into deeper water, where she swam to the opposite end of the pool. We were silent -- shocked actually-- that this little ritual triggered the phobia in María. She sat at the opposite end with her back to us. I think she was crying. Blood flowed down the side of her cheek.
The mood soured and the sun was getting lower. On our way back, the narrow slit at the top of the canyon let in scant light, and there seemed to be even more bats swarming around us. It was a wonder they didn’t hit us. María walked ahead, ducking the flying rats. I wondered if the bats would be attracted to her blood.
If I had been alone down there, I would have been downright petrified. I was petrified. I just did my best to hide it. I pretended I was in an Indiana Jones movie. The only thing to fear is fear itself. Sometimes the only thing to fear is fearlessness. We are built for fight or flight. As evolved as we are, I’m not sure we always know what the right response is. I saw everyone react to fear today. Estrella got angry, Steve became a moron, Dr. Mike dropped big words and names, Usnavy became silent and María broke down.
There was a moment in the cave on our quiet walk back to the boat when we passed through a cathedral-like cavern. I stopped and shut my eyes and just listened to the voices echo. María startled me. I thought I was alone in the darkness but she was so close she could just whisper to me -- “I want to show you my tattoo tonight.” She is the type of girl I know could be bad… she would take me on a rollercoaster. She scares me. I don’t know what will have the greatest rewards -- running from the fear or fighting it.
We started talking again in the van during the ride home. During a lull in the conversation, María said, “Let’s try again. I want to try again.” And we decided that these caves in Panama would not be our last adventure together.
Casco Viejo Under Siege
By Dr. Michael Anderson
One of my favorite things to do is sit and read today’s paper, drinking years old wine, listening to decades old music, in a centuries old citadel, in the shadow of a millennia old symbol.
The paper is from Miami, a little conservative perhaps, but the only English daily in Panama. The wine is a Merlot from Chile, very good value. The music is Latin Jazz played in the restaurant where I come to sit and relax every Saturday. It is called Las Bóvedas, which literally means ‘the vaults’ or ‘the crypts’. The crypts are part of a citadel that was built in 1688 when the infamous pirate Henry Morgan destroyed the former Spanish settlement at Panamá el Viejo, established for the plundering of Incan gold. Centuries later Las Bóvedas was used as a military prison. In the early 1900s, prisoners were chained to the outer wall to be swallowed by the rising tides.
The ancient symbol I mentioned before sits as the focal point of the citadel, and for that matter the entire colonial neighborhood of Casco Viejo. But to understand why, and to understand why it holds so much power, you have to know something about the Egyptian goddess Isis and her lover, the god Osiris.
Osiris had a brother, Set, who coveted both his brother’s throne and wife. So Set tricked Osiris into climbing into a golden chest which was buried in a distant land under a sprig of acacia. Isis searched the lands in vain until resting against a tree. She used the sprig of acacia to help herself up and pulled the bush right from its roots. She correctly deduced that something had recently been interred and so began to dig. She found Osiris and, using what we Freemasons call the Lion’s Grip, raised him from the dead.
This was not the end. Osiris’ brother was infuriated and when Osiris returned for his throne, he brutally cut him into 14 pieces so Isis could not resurrect him again. But Isis, ever devoted, recovered all body parts save one – the penis – which had been cast into the Nile and devoured by a crocodile. Isis would not give up. She assembled all 13 body parts and crafted an artificial phallus and used it for copulation. She could not raise Osiris as she had before, so instead she conceived their son, Horus, who was actually the reincarnation of Osiris. Osiris’ soul entered the womb of Isis at death and conception.
This is why Osiris is known at once as the god of death and the underworld and the god of rebirth. This archetypal ritual of death and rebirth spans primordial cultures to modern secret societies and it is personified in the greatest of phallic symbols. And that is the millennium old symbol I gaze up at while drinking my wine near the crypts of Panama City – the obelisk – a giant penis. But it is more than a phallic symbol. It marks not death but the hope for rebirth. The obelisk here was raised for the noble French canal workers that died in their failed attempt to build a sea level canal. The French cock sits atop the obelisk. And just meters away is the former French embassy.
That is why Casco Viejo so richly deserves its World Heritage status. Underprivileged neighborhood kids kick soccer balls on cobblestones in front of decaying French colonial apartments as Jazz floats from restaurants in preserved Spanish Colonial architecture. But Casco Viejo and its status is again under siege. Not from English pirates this time but urban development. From Casco Viejo you can see the ships lining up to enter the expanding canal, and high rises across the bay will soon be home to the highest apartments in the world. A new highway is proposed to encircle the fortress walls. Now I feel that it is I and others like me chained to the outer wall –
not to be swallowed by the rising tides, but by the rising cars. If only we could reload the cannons.
Where to Disappear
By Mathew Hope
María and I both knew the tattoo was only the pretense behind going to her hotel. She was staying at the Hotel Ideal, located in an area filled with pawn shops and cheap strip joints. The hotel was what Walt Disney would have built if he lost all his money on cheap acid and hookers. There was a lot of kitsch, from the red plastic lights near the 60’s vending machines to the mermaid guarding a quarter¬-filled swimming pool now flush with fat goldfish. The receptionist sat behind grated metal and a row of old telephones that María told me could not be traced. I have been told that as the money laundering capital of the Americas, Panama has long been the place to disappear, for everyone from the Shah of Iran to Patty Hearst.
She led me by the hand to her room. Before the door to her room swung shut she jumped onto the bed. She stared at me without saying anything and peeled off her pants and underwear. They were still wet from the cave. In one go, she kicked them to the side. Then she motioned me closer. Well below her navel, in the area where there would be hair, I saw a small tattoo of the moon eclipsing the sun.
“The moon is a mirror,” she whispered. “It holds the sun.”
I don’t get girls this beautiful… I should say I have never had a girl like María show interest in me. It was so otherworldly for me that the rest of my memories are faded untrustworthy and surreal:
There was a painting of scene from the States -- you know two mountains, water in the middle. What was home peeking out to tell me in such tactless way? What do you want?
The smoothness of her skin.