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Saturday, March 12, 2011

Darkness and Wealth

Here I learn the fragility of life. My home is gone lost to me because of my poverty. My children are incredibly far away. Here I must survive by speaking a language in which I am not entirely comfortable, in a land where I am not yet quite at home. The country in which I was born is becoming impossible to live in - both because of the economy, which is devouring the middle class, and the new ultra-conservative rulers, who are making it just about illegal to be anything but rich and white.

I understood this sense of alienness and fragility well when I was in a small restaurant in Volcán that caters not to gringos but Panamanians. I was with a few friends, speaking in Spanish. I think at one point I said something in French, and a man seated alone at a table behind me came up babbling joyfully in Italian at me. He had mistakenly thought I had spoken in Italian, his own native tongue. As it happens, I do speak a little Italian, and he was overjoyed to hear the language on someone's lips other than his own. He embraced me and kissed me on both cheeks. He called me friend and brother, and went out into the night almost dancing with his joy.

But this land in which now I live is warm and welcoming in ways I have never experienced before.

One cannot imagine walking down the street in a typical American community, and walking up to the door of some stranger's house at suppertime, and being immediately ushered in and asked to partake of the evening meal. But here one can. One does not abuse this generosity of course, and one extends it as well. Yet here it happens.

* * *

As they come to me to be written, new chapters will be added to this blog, so stay tuned! But the blogs up to a certain point are now chapters are now in a book.

So, to read more, you need the book A WRITER IN PANAMÁ.

The book is available in three formats:

HARDCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (smaller size edition, no interior photographs)
E-BOOK (all versions available, including Kindle and Nook, no photographs)

To browse or order, CLICK HERE!


The book is also available through Amazon (USA, Great Britain, and continental Europe) and other major book retailers.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

The Gringo Effect

There is a strange spot between Volcán and Paso Ancho where it seems like cars and trucks roll uphill.
Some people insist that it is an optical illusion created by the immediate surroundings, and others are quite as emphatic that it is magnetism from ore within the mountains pulling the vehicles along the incline. I do not know, myself, which it is, or if it is something else altogether. But it is an odd feeling, to say the least. A gringo friend of mine taking me somewhere demonstrated this spot, pulling to the side of the road, coming to a complete halt, and putting the car into neutral. The vehicle began to move - and the optical illusion, if that's what it is (as I think), is certainly quite convincing. I may just take a paperclip with me to that spot and see if the paperclip is drawn along.

But I'm not going to solve as easily a quiet controversy as to the effect of gringos (often called transplants, expatriates, and the like) on the village of Paso Ancho and a thousand just like it in Latin America and the world.

A respected friend of mine here, of European origin, points out persuasively that, when he first came here quite a few years ago, "There was nothing." By that he means there were no paved roads, no supermarket, no public water supply, not much electricity. The arrival of the gringoes, he insisted, meant two things: an inflow of capital, improving the collective wealth of Paso Ancho, and the opportunity to learn new, marketable skills.

* * *

As they come to me to be written, new chapters will be added to this blog, so stay tuned! But the blogs up to a certain point are now chapters are now in a book.

So, to read more, you need the book A WRITER IN PANAMÁ.

The book is available in three formats:

HARDCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (smaller size edition, no interior photographs)
E-BOOK (all versions available, including Kindle and Nook, no photographs)

To browse or order, CLICK HERE!


The book is also available through Amazon (USA, Great Britain, and continental Europe) and other major book retailers.