Panamá

My intention of going down to Panamá was to get reacquainted with my roots. There were so many feelings about coming back to the land of my birth. It felt like a swirling concoction of elements that didn’t quite mix. Like looking at the designs of water and oil and other unnamed things.

I wasn’t sure how to feel. I knew I was nervous about staying with family - especially with my limited Spanish. And although traveling alone wasn’t that big of a concern, the thought of driving in another country AND in a big city in another country, woke me up in a cold sweat more than a few times.

Casco Viejo -

This area was perfect for me to dip my toes into the city and the culture. It’s touristy and artsy but still very “Panama”. Most of the shop keepers didn’t speak any English and their Spanish was different from what I was used to in Mexico. I enjoyed myself though, going through the different shops and stopping by the different art galleries.

San Carlos

This is where the trip actually began for me. I rented a car and headed north. I stopped for a quick pic by the canal before continuing the two and a half hour drive towards San Carlos.

My cousin Doris opened her house to me, a virtual stranger when I first arrived.  She lives next door to my mothers land so I was able to see that and assess the condition of the house there.  By the end of the visit, the gratitude and love I feel for her defies my grasp of the English language.

Speaking of language; no one spoke English . . . that was hard . . the constant banter and the Panamanian accent short circuited my brain repeatedly.  

I went from house to house, talking to cousins and visiting with my 98 year old Tía (Auntie) Pola. I’m related to everyone on that street, in that whole area for that matter.  My heart was filled with the kind of warmth that only family can provide. My stomach filled with the food they kept serving me. I swear I looked like I was four months pregnant inside a week.

Regardless, their kindness was akin to being coddled in a warm, fuzzy blanket of love. I even went to a couple of neighborhood bingo games which was SO very fun and it gave me a taste of the community.

The heat and humidity was absolutely stifling though. We ended up going to the beach one day which was lovely. Being in the ocean always feeds my soul.

On another day we went up to Chame which is an area not too far from San Carlos. It was gorgeous up there. You could see a couple of islands in the distance. One is Taboga and the other might be called Tobilla (I’m not sure). Plus you can see the beginning of the canal. On the way back we stopped at a roadside stand and got passion fruit Chicha which is a lovely juice drink. In my mind now, it’s the taste of Panamá.

I definitely felt the separation of the 25 years it’s been since I’ve visited but I made a solid vow to return more often.

El Valle

El Valle is another hour and a half further up the mountains.  It might have been shorter if not for all the road work along the way.  It didn’t matter, the drive was stunning.  One of the views along the way was “Indio Dormido” (Sleeping Indian).  It’s a mountain ridge with a story about a young Indigenous girl who fell in love with a Spanish soldier . . . I don’t want to go into the whole story here but in despair when things didn’t work out, she fell dead looking back at the mountains where she was born.  The mountains were so touched by her sad story they formed the shape of the Princess.

My grandmother was from this area and I wanted to feel the land here.  My original intention was to go to the Tribunal Electoral to look for her birth records.  Tracing back another generation or two would help me be that much closer to finding my indigenous roots.  Which tribe were we from?

I arrived on a Friday.  Unfortunately my nervous system, having been under such strain while in San Carlos (the language thing being the biggest culprit), completely unraveled and I slept for the rest of that day and well into the next. 

To my dismay the Tribunal Electoral was closed for the weekend and I was leaving Monday morning to go back to the city.  Aaarghhh!  Poor planning on my part.  That will have to be on the list for my next visit.

To appease the disappointment I had for myself, I went in and sat in the same church my Abuelita (grandmother) attended.  I tried to imagine that she was sitting next to me.  I wondered what she felt like. Did her mental musings ever extend into the future to where I sit now? What was her life like?  What was the world like back then?

The flora and fauna of El Valle remind me so much of Hawai’i. Maybe on a cellular level that’s why Hawai’i felt so much like home when I first arrived there, not realizing that it was a call back to my origins here.

All the way back to the city I worked on changing my thoughts from “a missed opportunity” to “everything works out the way it’s supposed to”. Acceptance is a skill and I’m still honing my ability with it.

I met another one of my cousins in the city. We had lunch and talked about how we both missed my mother. She got teary eyed and that touched my heart. Knowing the impact my mother (and father) had on so many of our family members was comforting.

I spent the next couple of nights working on drawings and reading the journal I kept. Although I feel much closer to my family now, I still feel estranged from the land. Born in Panamá but raised in the United States and I don’t feel like I belong in either place.

As luck would have it. I left Panamá the day before the 7.7 earthquake.

“Everything works out the ways it’s supposed to.”