Real People

By now I’ve gotten pretty used to the reality that nothing can be taken for granted.

No matter whether a Panamanian service provider says “Tomorrow” or “A week from next Tuesday”, it invariably translates into “When I have nothing I’d rather be doing, and need the money.”

Nothing works dependably, human or otherwise. The electricity and the internet go out at least once a day, sometimes for just moments, and sometimes for hours.

The public water system is also doomed to frequent failure. Mountain

water – it is clear and delicious – flows by gravity down plastic PVC pipes. The system is such a hodgepodge that even Rube Goldberg would shudder. The pipes are sometimes buried, and sometimes simply laid across the surface of the land. There are unexplainable L joints zigging the pipes into unnecessary detours, incomprehensible junctures, dead-ends, and my favorite – frequent breaks that send geysers of water spurting into the air, and which remain unrepaired for weeks on end.

When the water system fails, most residents, even the gringos, rely on barrels they’ve had under their roof runoff downspouts to collect rainwater. Curious, I asked what they if the water system fails in the Dry Season, and the rainbarrels are empty. “Oh,” I was told, “we just go down to the river with a couple buckets.”

* * *

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.

The Frontier Land

What does it mean when we say this is a frontier land?

A friend suggested to me that the term carries an unpleasant implication of prejudice against the Native people who live here, who once were the only human residents. But I think it’s an appropriate way to speak of this land.

The seacoast cities, and some of the more gringified inland communities, are certainly laden with all the unpleasant trappings of Western civilization. But even there you see Ngobe Bugle people dressed in their traditional raiment – about the only concession they make is to wear shoes in the cities, because of the invaders’ penchant for letting broken glass and dirty needles accumulate in the streets. These Ngobe Bugle pass through like the wind, like ghosts and spirits. They do not tap their feet to the loud Latin music blaring from loudspeakers on the public buses and in the shops.

They say not a word. Their faces, carved from the same stone that their ancestors immortalized, show no expression. The Panamanians and the gringos pay them absolutely no attention unless they stand directly in front of them and take some of the invaders’ money out of their pouches to buy something.

But I look at them; I am again and again struck by the similarity of what I am seeing to photographs of the American West in the 1880s or so. I see a proud people learning to turn invisible before they are made to disappear by the advancing flood of, ahem, civilization. I love especially to watch

the Ngobe Bugle women passing through the Panamanian world in their colorful dresses; they are eternally unhurried and unruffled, simply visitors from another world, not participating in this one; they are more like wild animals in their utter separateness. Sometimes I surprise them when I greet them in their language – their expressions do not change, but you can see in their eyes the thought, “What, you see me? You, a foreigner, can speak words in our language?”

* * *

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.

Where the Wind Blows

I learned the other day that my little house back in the Catskill Mountain region of upstate New York was destroyed in a hurricane. Apparently the combination of wind and water pulled down a tree, which crashed through the roof into what had been my bedroom. If I had been in it at the time, I might well have been killed. At minimum, I would now be homeless and destitute. But, instead, I am alive and well and very happy in las Tierras Altas (Highlands) of Panamá.

One friend walked through it, talking to me on the telephone and describing the damage. I learned that thieves had come in, in my absence, and stolen pretty much everything – furniture, dishes and silverware, and precious family heirlooms like my great-grandmother’s handmade coverlet from the 1880s. Later, a neighbor came by and, with my permission, took what little was left to give to the poor. Since a lot of people, including families I knew, had lost everything in the hurricane, I was glad to do what little I could in this way.

What are things? Just things! All my life I have preached and taught that we must not allow ourselves to become possessed by our possessions. As one medicine man taught me, “Walk lightly upon this Earth.” For many years that little house with my few belongings was all I had. So it’s gone. In any case, I have had no plans to return to it; I couldn’t afford a return even if I wanted to. All I have lost is the option of going back, which I have never intended to exercise. In any case, I have had no plans to return to it; I couldn’t afford a return even if I wanted to. So, whether it exists or not is all the same to me. So, let the mortgage people, the insurance people, the tax collectors, and the lawyers fight over the bones. For, whether it exists or not, I have

what’s most precious: my memories. And look how Creator has looked out for me: Rather than losing everything, I’m safe here in another country.

Another country? I’m in another world!

* * *

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.

Taking Life as it Comes

Coming home in the darkness the other night was a wonderful experience for

me that most people in the Northern Hemisphere will never experience. If and when residents of the “developed” countries must go somewhere in pitch dark, without the incandescent lighting they completely expect and rely on, they are confused and frightened.

Here in Paso Ancho, even when there’s electricity, there are long stretches of the calles that after the sun has set are unlit by any artificial light – neither streetlamps nor houses with electricity are nearby, for these parts of town are mostly inhabited by Ngobe Bugle people. But, when the electricity goes out, as often happens, then the entire town is completely black. The only exceptions are the houses off in the gringo part of town; there the big gringo generators are fired up, generating an alien effulgence that seems to be from another world; you have to be careful not to look their way or you lose your night vision.

These nights, as I find my way home after having dinner and a pleasant evening with friends, are for me a fine adventure indeed. I don’t have a flashlight as I negotiate the calles (what pass for streets in this village, basically dirt paths), and I don’t need one. I let the darkness teach me: it is a Grandfather, a wise master who reminds me to slow down and become acutely aware of my surroundings through the senses, other than sight, yet available to me. This wisdom I am learning to invoke as well during the day.

On either side of the road are deep ditches, and often there are dangerous

deep ragged ruts right down the middle of it, erosion from the runoff from the heavy downpours of Rainy Season. There are, besides, large rocks here and there that can upset the unwary. And I never know if another section of the road has been washed away since the last time I came this way. So, if I’m not extremely careful, I could break an ankle or leg, or even fall and hit my head. And nobody would know about me until sometime the following day. So I must carefully use my senses of touch and hearing and what information sight does afford me.

* * *

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.

Tortillas of Love

Now I realize what a severely limited diet people are forced to eat in North America and Europe. Thanks to the megafarms and food marketers, the only grain is wheat, and it is so common that many people develop allergies to it. Much more grain is grown to fatten beef cattle to be flipped over into fast-food hamburgers. Fruits rarely go beyond apples, oranges, bananas, and grapes, maybe the occasional peach or apricot. And the staple vegetables are just corn, carrot, and potato. Salads – when North Americans even eat them – comprise mostly varieties of lettuce and tomato out of which all food value has been genetically engineered. Corn syrup, indigestible fats, and unpronounceable chemicals are inside all that pretty packaging. They are grown in polluting fertilizers and weed- and insect-killers that will also kill human beings. They are picked before they are ripe because of the vast distances they must travel to your supermarket, stuffed with artificial preservatives and flavor enhancers, wrapped in tons of plastic that winds up in landfills, trundled in dank trucks over thousands of miles, consuming fuel and producing roadway pollution.

Here in Panamá the variety of fruits and vegetables is astounding. I have been discovering an endless number of new flavors and textures, and half the time I don’t even know the name for what I’m enjoying. Only hours before I pick up some interesting tuber or gourd or fruit at the grocery it was still basking under sun and rain, in rich fields no more than a few miles away.

I’m crazy, for instance, about otoë. It is a tuber with a shaggy

dark-brown skin. Once I wash and peel it, I have its lovely lavender flesh, which can be eaten raw, or baked, boiled, or fried. When you first bite into it, especially raw, it has a “snap” to it slightly reminiscent of ginger, but as you continue to chew it provides a wonderful velvety flavor. It is flabbergastingly good cooked soft in a stew. Then there is yuca – not to be confused with its friend related only homonymically, yucca. Yuca, again, is wonderful raw or cooked, with a yellow flesh that tastes like well-buttered potato. Both of these, I’m told, are rich in vitamins and minerals.

Chayote is plentiful; one can buy it at the grocery, but I find it for free growing wild here and there. Think of it as shaped like a large knobbly green pear, but with a flesh reminiscent of zucchini. And also ullama, which I discovered when it fell off a farmer’s truck; superficially resembling a melon in size and shape, its flesh is like that of a hearty squash. Onion is grown plentifully here, spreading its redolent aroma through the countryside from each household's little field.

* * *

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.

Artifacts: Art and Facts

In North America and in Panamá, and probably everywhere else in this hemisphere, students are taught in school only about history after the arrival of the Europeans – a clear ethnocentrism in which the subliminal message is not just that pre-Columbian Native American history is not worth mentioning, but that Native Americans are themselves not equal to those Europeans.

This double standard, I think, is especially devastating for Native

American students throughout the Americas. Here in Paso Ancho, where I live, the student body at the local primary school is eighty-five percent Ngobe Bugle. Yet the staff, which is entirely composed of Panamanians (people of Latino culture and claimed Latino descent), teaches only Spanish and not Ngobe Bugle, teaches history only since the “arrival” (i.e., bloody religious and political conquest) of the Conquistadores, teaches only Panamanian dance and music. These Native American children are educated into Panamanians in Ngobe Bugle bodies, never hearing a word about their culture or heritage, like it doesn’t exist. And I believe even the fifteen percent who are Panamanian students suffer too, from never being exposed to the joy of learning about this great civilization that once flourished here, and is still struggling to survive.

The signs are everywhere of the great Native American presence. I

went to what is called an Archæological Institute, situated on a working farm, and was stunned by the beautiful works of ancient art dug up right there. An institute it isn’t – my companions and I were given a tour by the farmer’s son

* * *

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.

In Diós

Sometimes I feel like if you lifted North America up, all the loose parts would fall down through Mexico and get stuck at the narrow point that suddenly bends from west to east – Panama. This land is the crossroads of the world, the juncture of North and South America, the meeting-point of the Pacific and the Atlantic, a place where you find all races, all terrains, and every climate from northern temperate to tropical.

Here in Panama one sees a lot of young backpackers traveling on their parents’ credit cards – tall, lanky guys in baggy khaki pants, adorned with blond halos of long hair and not-yet-full beards, their arms around short attractive young ladies without bras, out to see the world from the road. By and large these are a pleasant sort to chat with. They seem to have some respect for the local cultures, are unafraid of a stiff hike in the back country, and more likely than not speak a reasonably serviceable high-school Spanish. With their height they seem to float above the general population as they stride on long legs through the shopping districts and up the mountainsides.

Tourists older than they generally stay close to coastal resorts or mountain-country spa hotels where they feel safe from the rather frightening local population. But many middle-aged foreigners are are here to put their vast sums of money into mega-mansions that would have cost them a lot more back home, or else to escape bad debts or legal trouble. Still, some of the gringos I meet are quite nice people. In a visit to Boquete I chatted in German with a visiting Swiss couple, Bruno and Renate, in French with a delightful young man from Haiti, and finally in French and Spanish with a quite interesting man who had lived for many years in Montréal.

Gringos who settle here, however, often cannot be bothered to learn to speak Spanish.

* * *

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.