South American Jaywalker: Fearless

Although I try to avoid jaywalking as much as I can in Panama, sometimes it’s just not possible. David is one of those times. It’s a city that I went to twice during my first month here. David is in the province of Chiriqui and it borders with Costa Rica. The first time I went I caught a lift to the beach and had my first chance to swim in the Pacific. The experience was a bit surreal because there was this little hut on the beach that was blasting a cello concerto by Hayden. Getting there was also interesting since the road required a 4x4 vehicle and we only had a 10 year old Nissan Sentra. There were definitely times where I felt the road bump up against my feet on the floor of the car. I also went to Boquete and did a tour of a coffee plant. I also did a supposedly “short” hike (actually 3 km each way on a shady trail) to a not so impressive water fall during which time I managed to unknowingly insult a one legged man from Iowa. There was a special flower and coffee fair going on in Boquete at the same time. I enjoyed the flowers, but was a bit coffee-ed out from my tour in the morning. I also learnt that 2008 is the FAO year of the potato!!! Anyway, the place turns into a bit of a mad house at night when the whole fair turns into a reggeaton dance ground with some serious base. At the hostel I was staying at I saw a posting for this indigenous cultural event that was happening the week afterwards. I decided to go, even though it’a a 14 hour round trip. The festival was a cultural showcase for the Ngome Bugle Indians who are the largest (and probably have the most diluted culture) of all indigenous groups in Panama. As I should have guessed, it took a while to get started. There were a couple of cool highlights. The first was a story written by one of the Ngome Bugle women. Talk about lost in translation. It was said first in Ngome Bugle, then translated into Spanish and then translated into English. I didn’t understand the Spanish and really didn’t understand the English. The story started out with a worthless husband leaving his wife and kids at home to go drink. From my experiences in Panama, this seems to be a recurring theme. The moral of the story ended up being something along the lines of don’t leave your children alone at home. The second was a game a traditional game organized by the men. This was something to watch in itself because they hadn’t really planned anything before. The stages of confusion, fighting over rules, team separation and then actually playing the game took about 20 min. Coming back on the bus was one of the coldest experiences of my life since they air condition the busses here like you wouldn’t believe. Sadly, the movies they show on busses here are not as bad as the ones in Ecuador. I have yet to Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jean Claude Van Dam. The best part was that I got to wish my sister Elizabeth a happy birthday!! See quote below…

LAUREN: Hey Elizabeth, I called to wish you a happy birthday!
ELIZABETH: Oh, thanks Lauren.
LAUREN: But I don’t have too much time. My bus is leaving in a few minutes so I’m going to keep talking to you until I see it drive by. If I hang up abruptly it’s just because I’m chasing it down.
ELIZABETH: That is so ghetto.
LAUREN: The saddest part is, I’m not even lying.

6 Easy Steps to Carnaval

For all of you who were not able to celebrate Carnaval as they do in Panama (which is pretty much everybody), I have provided an easy checklist of items to make sure that you can recreate it yourselves.

1. Dress in bathing suit and skimpy clothes on top.
2. Find a small child’s blow up wading pool. Fill the pool with water. Poor dirt and garbage into the water. Leave it in the hot sun until it develops a funk
3. Get a water bottle. Fill this waterbottle with an alcohol of your choice. Remember: it must be something that you will still want to drink once it is very warm. My preferred option/the only thing I could afford was Clight juice powder mixed with water and vodka (doesn’t actually taste good, but it is consistently bad, so you know what you’re getting).
4. Get 15 of your closest friends to stand in the pool with you. You must be so close that you cannot move very well.
5. Get one of your friends outside of the pool to hold a pressure hose, another to blast generic reggae and dance music, another to put rum inside a water gun and another to stand next to you with an open can of beer.
6. Dance to music with all of your friends. Simultaneous to this drink from your water bottle and get pressure hosed. In between drinking from your waterbottle, have your friend with the beer poor it all over you and your friend with the water gun spray rum in your mouth.

And that my friends, is Carnaval.

This is a picture of a float during a night parade.