Category: Far From The Plastic World

There’s a poster of all the months of the year pasted on the wall in Baudeliano’s front porch, with the Guna names written below. Nacho helps to translate:

Yornii– the beginnings of things
Arrinii – the arrival of the iguanas
Dilanii – seeds from a palm
Olornii – cicadas that predict the sound of rain and herald the start of the planting season
Yaugnii – the arrival of the turtles, attracted by the moon
Masarnii– wood that the Guna use to build houses
Bunurnii – blossoming of ceremonial flowers
Gignii– the sea that recedes
Apinii – another medicinal flower
Guiblonii – the ocean floods, butterflies and birds migrate
Inanii – the returning birds
Bardunnii– flowers used to heal

The names we use are based on the planets. The Guna base their names on the phases of the moon, which is seen as feminine symbol, and the seasons. 

Luz drinks mate every morning. She has brought bags of it over. It’s a kind of tea, but very strong and there’s a technique to steeping it. She tops it up ever so often with hot water to ensure the strength and consistency remain. She has a special mate cup and a straw made completely of silver, which doesn’t colour the taste of the mate.

Caroline isn’t feeling so well. It was probably a spell of being exposed to pretty intense heat yesterday. She has no appetite and rests in the house while we go to another beach. The weather plus the mozzies and other small biting flies can be harsh.

In the boat, I start talking about how Singapore has denied itself as an island, with its intimations of a slow, idyllic life. We eradicated the kampungs, terraformed the landscape and even subjugated our outlying islands, merging them or reducing them to landfill. I wonder how villagers who used to live on Pulau Semakau feel about how their island is now a heaped pile of trash. We are City. A city breathing in the state of its reinvention, or maybe this is who we really are. We are no island paradise; we are a business hub. If you want an island, you fly elsewhere for the weekend. On weekdays, you work to pleasure those who are constantly remaking the city in all of its imagined ideological flex; through the external and internal landscape. For we have denied the old roads inside of us too. Forgotten languages, dialects, habits, rituals, ceremonies. Things that ground us to earth, to history. Instead, we are taught to yearn after the gods of capitalism, a faceless thing that is no real god, but a bottomless greed that never stops demanding our worship. We have lost our truest shape, and for what?

• 

• 

This beach has very different vegetation inland from yesterday’s beach, which was on the edge of the jungle. This fronts a sprawling coconut plantation. But there is a strange fruit that looks like a small sour sop that grows here. It isn’t edible, but the fruit can be used for shampoo and for burns. It’s incredible how people have figured these things out. Imagine the process of trial and error!

Snorkeling here is pretty satisfying. There are hardly any shells here, but the water is less choppy and I manage to film a bunch of pretty fishes and some coral that are bunched around a large rock. The world is so different underwater. I can completely understand why we are so taken with it, and how people are addicted to diving. It is escape and meditation, a kind of contemplation of a natural state (if you ignore the odd plastic bag and container drifting by). A jellyfish bobs in front of me. I instinctively start to reach out for it, something unknown, tantalizing, then stop short. It drifts away, heedless.

Over lunch, we are joking about how Maria has sewn a strip of mola with a crab motif, but no she didn’t just sew it, she made the tablecloth the chair, the table, even. Overnight! And Luis says that we are dreaming rather than just inventing. But it is also a nod to the incredible skill of the Guna. They build their own houses. They sew their own clothes. Of course, they aren’t entirely self-sufficient, but they won’t starve or be homeless either. I would probably not last a week out here in this terrain. All my skills are honed to thinking and reflecting whatever I see. I am dreaming against another reality.

Out of nowhere Bernie says, I think I am made out of bites. And all of us agree. The bites burn. They are a constant presence, a reminder of our place as strangers here.

When we return to Armila, a soldier waits for us holding a piece of paper, the best kind of weapon. He is probably tracking the visitors that are coming in for the chicha ceremony.

Nachito is all of three years old but he is already so intent on possessing. He lords over the cat and proudly leads the dog around on his leash, proclaiming, ‘mi perro’ (my dog). But do we ever really own ourselves? Even when we are fully grown, we are expected to own up, to own this. To own is to possess something tangible, of value. We own houses, cars. Companies. We used to own people, too. But do we ever really own ourselves? What does that mean? I’m in a conversation with Caroline and Maria about this. Maria offers an example of two men who are the only permanent residents on a small island off Iceland. They absolutely hate each other’s guts but are intent to remain separate, cut off because they each believe they own their individual right to anger and isolation. And Caroline recalls that a few years ago, she used to see how in the alley behind her row house how a woman would come and break up an entire loaf of bread each morning to feed the birds. And as soon as she had scattered the bread and went back in, her neighbour would open her door and let her fat basset hound out. He would waddle over and hoover up all of the bread. I suppose that is also way of owning space, by contesting it in a passive fashion.

Today I help Luis to prepare dinner. We use what we have, which changes every day. We also try to vary the routine. But it also depends on how imaginative people are. I just help him dice carrots and cucumbers. We make vegetarian pasta with a small topping of courgette in lemon and balsamic. The pasta is barely enough, but we used up all three packets. All of us are always hungry here, despite the fact that I hardly eat carbs in Singapore for dinner. Coffee is a large pot with one packet of coffee powder and Luis cuts a swathe of lemongrass from Nacho’s garden for the tea. It’s as organic as they come.

Various activities for the chicha ceremony start early tomorrow and will not stop until midday on Saturday. There’s always going to be something going on somewhere.

Angelica was adopted recently by Aida and Igua, her husband. She’s 11 and was the unwanted child when her mother remarried. She is from another community and has never been to school in her life. She will start next year, but it’s amazing how she has fit so naturally into the family and how they see her as one of their own, wholeheartedly. This is Aida’s second marriage and Nachito, all of three, is the product of her bond with Igua. Aida’s two kids from her first marriage are Nague and Zlatan. Families are patchwork, hard work, a constant sewing of sutures. I think of the tablecloth used at Nague’s party. It’s a beautiful blend of different molas that come together like a symphony or, for the Guna, a dance.

We travel for close to thirty minutes in the speedboat to reach Anachucuna, another Guna community. As we are leaving Armila, two men walk across the sandbar towards the village, carrying a deer on a stick between them.

We are staying in the house of Baudeliano Perez, the counterpart of Nacho, here in Anachucuna. He was born across the river from where the village is today. In 1972, the village moved to their present location. They were further down the coast, closer to Armila, before.

There are two stories about how Anachuchuna got its name: 

A foreigner met a lady from the community in the jungle with her dog. He asked her in Spanish what the name of the community was. She didn’t understand and thought he was referring to her dog. So she said, “this is my dog”. In Guna, this sounds like Anachucuna. Another meaning is more natural, ‘Where the bay narrows to the river.’

The Guna name for the town is Assuamulo – the avocado tree.

There are 650 people living here between the two towns. The new town, twelve years old, is a ten minute walk through a large coconut plantation, which is a community crop shared by 38 families.

The villagers fish and cultivate crops, specifically coconuts. Traders from Columbia come here to barter with sheep and rice and other essentials. Students study until 9th grade (14 years) and then go elsewhere. Baudeliano says that they would like to even have a university in some part of the comarca (region, or county), where the Guna live.

The banana planters left Anachucuna in 1947. They left behind the tracks and rusted out hulls of their little engines. It was a short train line, spanning the coastline between Anachucuna and Armila. The remains of an old jetty can be seen by the water. Some of the planters, who were little more than indentured slaves, chose to remain and settled down but all of them eventually left because the locals were not keen about having outsiders.

The village is laid out very geometrically in a grid-like fashion. Ordered, with lots of work being done on various houses. The girls are staying in an extension of Baudeliano’s house. Luis and I are in a house on the other side of the village. It is a clean, well-furnished room. We each have a queen bed to ourselves!

After lunch – chickpea patties fried by Luis, hamburger buns, boiled yuca and salad – all the ingredients brought from Armila, we head to a beach ten minutes away by boat. The community is out of sight and Luz allows me to fly the drone. I make a couple of low passes over a small island in front. It’s a tiny rock with some vegetation and palm trees, surrounded by rippling, rich blue. The drone loses its line of communication as I am bringing it back but I can see it and manage to land it safely.

The rest of the afternoon is spent looking for shells in the shore and in the water, swimming to that island and trying not to graze the coral in the extremely shallow water. The hours pass comfortably. Bernie returns with a lovely large conch; pink in the middle. Maria finds the bones of a pelican’s beak, stripped clean by the tide. I have a small assortment of shells.

An almost throwaway line from Maria – ‘When we grow up we need less repetition.’ Maybe structurally, we are already set in our ways, for better and worse, and this is both liberating and a curse. We sometimes spend our whole lives dealing with the demons we have made through patterns we have set as children. But we should also look for the good things we have built into our lives.

While waiting for dinner, we sit by the dock and listen to Nacho talk about this community. Nacho’s grandfather was from Anachucuna. At some point people moved to Armila, but it has always been considered more hostile country. Whirlpools, and sometimes the ocean is so strong you can’t even reach the shore. In certain seasons the community gets a bit isolated.

The Colombians who remained from the banana plantations planted coconuts. The locals fought them and they bought over the land from the company. They used to have ranches with cows but now it is forbidden because it would damage the land.

There is zero tourism in Anachucuna. Nacho only joined us late because he was away at a meeting to discuss the kind of tourism they want to have here. An alternative way of doing tourism, with an emphasis on maintaining nature in its natural state. Carti, seven hours away by boat, has the capacity for 60 people but in the high season there are 500 people. People erode the landscape. The sahilas should represent the community, but they aren’t always interested in tourism. It’s a double-edged sword.

A road is being opened that will be an hour from Anachucuna by boat. So the community wants to be ready for the flow of people that will surely come. The road is something needed. 40% of people in Guna Yala live in Panama City, and it is difficult to travel. The road makes it easier to visit and also to bring produce and goods. It is a door, but unwanted things could also enter. The question of the road has been under discussion for ten years.

‘Tourists are the worst race in the world.’ A nice thought from Luz. We do become a different people as tourists. Heedless of impact, devolved to baser instincts. Hungry to take as much as possible.

This feeds into a discussion I have with Luis after dinner while waiting for the Anachucuna bar to open. In this community, people are allowed to drink from 8-11pm every day, but the only beer available is Atlas, a watered down ‘light’ beer. Thankfully Armila’s beer of choice is MF – the ‘finest American style beer.’ The best beer around here though is probably Aguilar and then Balboa, both Colombian beers.

I was remarking to Luis how I feel that I will never be comfortable as a tourist anymore, even though I will definitely continue to go on ‘holidays.’ Because the depth of experience on this trip has been unparalleled. Luis shares about his experience traveling as a musician, with nothing but his music and the clothes on his back and how people offer him more than just money; they take him into their houses, feed him, invite him in not as a stranger, but as a guest. The tourist is always a stranger, peering into the threshold, insinuating themselves into the picture. The traveler steps over the threshold, is made welcome. Shares something of their own, and is given something in return. The traveler gives.

• 

• 

• 

• 

But before we head to the bar, Luis appears in the doorway of Baudeliano’s house, looking serious. He beckons to me. I follow him upstairs. Luz is there, looking distressed in the dim light. They tell me that the community has fined me $100 USD for flying my drone without permission. I’m angry, of course, because I had asked and they gave me the green light. But apparently, even the beach needs permission, it wasn’t just about a no-fly zone in the village, it was about asking and receiving the permission of the sahilas. A couple of fishermen who were fishing next to the island saw the drone and reported it. In Singlish, this is summed up as kena sabo (deliberately sabotaged). But I can understand why this happened. It is about protecting the community with a series of rules that seem strict and even draconian. I am not here as a tourist, not wanting to exploit the community. The images are not for commercial use. But it is not about all that. It’s a simple order of things. I, and the group, did not respect that order and so we have been fined. Luz and Luis offer to split the amount with me, which is a relief, because I don’t have that kind of cash buffer. It is a bitter, unfair pill to swallow but I see it this way – how many people have actually been fined by the sahila of a Guna community? I should be grateful they didn’t toss me into a pit of fire ants!

Rough music spills from a large speaker in the bar. According to Maria, ‘bootsandcatsand’ is the best way to replicate the sound of a club beat. It does work, though it feels muffled by distance, or a closed door.

I am trying to articulate why I am feeling and reacting far less emotionally these days. I do write emotionally, but it’s almost as if my body cannot feel extremes of emotion. I am an even keel, unmoved by currents, flippant even in a storm. When asked how long I’ve felt this way, I responded that it’s been a couple of years, at least. And then it hits me. That’s how long I’ve been at my PhD. Somehow, the constant need to think, reflect, process and write about all that over and over has kept me in some kind of narrow emotional channel. Even here, I’ve developed a structure and rhythm to the days. The journal is my way of reflecting on the entirety of the experience while the creative work is a more focused commentary through image and poetry. But even here, I have not given myself permission to play. Everything is ordered, rigorous. I wonder if this is just a PhD thing, or is this my new way of living?

Caroline thinks she has cat pee on her sheets. Nobody wants to smell the sheets to verify.

The aftermath of last night’s party is an entire table of dishes set out to dry.

The mosquitoes are getting worse. Everyone has multiple strings of bites down their legs and on their feet. These are tiny mosquitoes, unseen, unheard. We think they are sandfly bites.

There’s a large cockroach, la cucaracha, on a towel that Luis has hung to block the sun from coming in. He swats it to the floor but it returns to haunt us, leaping onto the breakfast table. Caroline spears it with a butter knife and it falls, writhing, to the ground. Luz stamps on it. Cockroaches are the only things she kills. I concur. Caroline remembers that when she lived in an apartment in her college days, one of her roommates had a cat who would trap cockroaches but not kill them. It would flip them on their backs in the kitchen. Switch on the light, and a dozen cockroaches would be spinning, hypnotic. There have been stranger ways of telling the time.

Luz tells us about the upcoming chicha ceremony and how the Guna bestow a name upon the girl, given it is her coming of age. Sometimes it is the same name they are given at birth, sometimes it is a new name altogether and it merges with the new name. Perhaps one is expected to be a new person with a new name. It is, after all, a parallel to baptism.

Luis Manuel Angel Gordo. Luis was his grandfather; Manuel and Angel were the names of his grandfather’s brothers. As the eldest grandson, he was given a triple barrel of the family tree. There are at least ten Luis’ in his entire family, Caroline has two nephews on either side of her family who are both named Brooks after Brooks Robinson, who was the first black baseball player to break the colour line. This caused a lot of friction on both sides, because one cousin accused the other of stealing her ‘idea’, as if a name is something copyrighted.

And I talk about my middle name, Daniel, how my brother and I both carry it and how my father changed his name when we were kids to call himself Daniel too. What does it mean to carry the names of your family? To hold the weight of older times, to feel strange memories when you are called in a certain way. Names that sing of stories beyond us, that carry expectation, animosity. Names that are places. The weirdest name I have ever come across was No.14 Bus Shelter. True story. I don’t use my middle name much. Somehow I feel that it takes up too much space. I like my name short, economical. Daniel is the name that I leave to my father.

In the afternoon, we have the privilege to try our hands at weaving a small fan that is used to stoke fires, or to keep cool on a warm day. Acario, one of the village weavers, brings a bundle of reed-like strips. They have been sliced to precision from the branch (or stem?) of the niwa tree. He proceeds to expertly fold a lovely pattern and shapes it into a tiny fan. It is a joy to watch but I can’t quite follow the warp and weave. The patterns all blur into one for me. It’s great for Charlotte, though. She studied weaving and for her, this is chicken feet. I do my best but end up with… a triangle. I literally twist the ends together and cut my losses. It’s a…. usable coaster? If you don’t mind the sharp edges! But I also buy a fan to remind myself of Acario’s mastery.

Richard Kearney, in his introduction to Gaston Bachelard’s “The Poetics of Space” writes, “Poetics comes from poiesis, meaning “to make,” and for Bachelard this is a two-way process: we are made by material images that we remake in our turn. We are inhabited by deep imaginings—visual and verbal, auditory and tactile—that we inhabit in our own unique way. Poetics is about hearing and feeling as well as crafting and shaping. It is the double play of re-creation.”

I am just starting on Bachelard but already there is such resonance with how he sees everyday things. ‘Deep imaginings’ is that homage to being able to see the stanza as a unit of a poem and as a room. All we do is re-create what is already all around us. It is the craft of how we create that allows us to offer the signature of our thoughts and who we are.

Over dinner, everybody trades cat stories while taking turns to hold lluvia, the family cat. Her name means ‘rainfall’. Suddenly, I feel terribly sad thinking about how I won’t come home to the familiar sound of Chubs, his nuzzle on my legs, the way he would race through his tunnel or leap up for treats.

At night the sky is made of lightning clouds. Thunder is far away. Like errant children, left unsupervised, lightning leaps from cloud to cloud, shimmering the sky for brief moments. The heavy cloud cover keeps the stars away. I do hope it won’t rain tonight, though we seem to have passed the rainy period that marked the first few days of our stay.

The chicha music calls to us again, and we return to watch this powerful, yet gentle dance. The dancers are still rehearsing for the ceremony on Thursday, and tonight, some of the faces are different. Maybe they have an ‘A’ and a ‘B’ team. One of the dancers, Victor, offers to let us try his pipes. They are of varying lengths and all seven of them form a scale, although it is a different mode from the Western scale, something completely haunting. I can barely make a sound through one pipe and I am in awe of those boys, who are able to blow the same melody on a loop, while dancing, for up to ten minutes at a time.

I wake up almost too late to join Nacho and the rest to collect coconuts. I race out of bed and there they are on the opposite shore, just setting off. I shout, “Hola!” And Nacho graciously paddles back to get me. We walk along a well-trodden path, past a series of fincas that belong to Nacho, his cousin and his wife. Each farm is a hectare or two and is full of coconuts, plantains, bananas, and papayas. The coconuts are sacred and if someone picks another man’s coconut, there is a $5 fine. So the coconuts lie where they fall, secure.

The green ones are called pipa and they are still tender and full of juice. But Nacho is after the brown ones. A group of locals meet us at his finca. We thought we were going to help split the coconuts, but it isn’t that easy. The men do it with a long tool that looks like a kind of plier, efficiently splitting the husk so that the younger kids can pull out the seed.

The seed is used for various things in the community while the husk is left behind. Sometimes people will come along and use it to make a fire as it burns really well. We walk back along the beach. It is a 6km stretch of beautiful sand.

Trash is there, but it sits higher up. This would be a real estate developer’s wet dream and it is all the more beautiful for it being untouched by the grasping hands of the modern world. Halfway down the beach, Nacho leads us back to another of his fincas. He uses a long bamboo pole, sharpened at one end, to nick coconuts from the tree.

I try my hand and manage to dislodge one. It isn’t easy! He expertly slices chunks of them off and gives each of us a coconut to drink from. It is thirst quenching and absolutely perfect. He then splits the coconut like a samurai, a single stroke down the middle, strong and sure. I don’t volunteer to try the machete. I want all my fingers intact! The coconut flesh is tender, juicy and very tasty. Quite possibly the best coconut I’ve had in my life.

Walking back to the village, a light rain begins to fall, cooling us off as we go by a bevy of plants that have a range of properties and uses. The biodiversity is incredible. Here’s a plant whose fruit is used to make jam. Here is a flower none of us have ever seen before.

I am suddenly reminded of numerous long, solo walks I’ve taken in my years of travel all over the world. I’ve always thought that I work best alone, that solitude is the succour for my creativity, that it is about nourishing my well by drinking alone so that I will be able to produce. But perhaps that is just one way of looking at life. Over here, we are a group of artists within a larger community. One that does everything together. I ask Nacho why people don’t build houses on this side of the river. The view is incredible and there’s so much space. He replies that the Guna prefer to be together. They are not a solitary people.

In community, they remember their stories. In community, they reinforce a way of life. In community, they draw the most out of life. 

At the house, Luz is preparing the batter for a giant birthday cake. Nacho’s family is throwing a party for his granddaughter, Nague. It’s her 15th birthday. And there will be plenty of beer and rum and food this evening. Once the batter is ready, Luz pours is into large trays and we carry it to one of the ovens in the village.

This particular one belongs to Hernanto, who is one of the sahilas. He wakes at 4 am every day to bake bread, which usually sells out by 7am. The Guna are a terribly hard working people. Most of them wake around 5am to get a whole range of chores done before the sun rises. They don’t sleep that early either! Music plays on well past 11pm and a television is always showing something somewhere. Not every house has a TV, though, so television does become another reason to gather.

At breakfast, we remark on Nacho being almost god-like in his ability to do so many things at once. He pays attention to one thing at a time, but his peripheral awareness is very balanced. So he is always thinking about what is happening in the house, and is always ready to jump in and out of conversation. A parallel thought to this is Maria’s comment that we don’t think through or with language, rather, through a series of sensations; of desire and non-verbal affects which our brain then translates into words and then sentences (perhaps). We then attach context and emotion as an afterthought, dismissing what we first felt as something primal, when it really is the thing we have to be most aware of.

Nacho beckons us over to see two roosters that he has killed to make chicken soup for the party tonight. He dips them in hot water so soften the skin and then starts to defeather them, expertly plucking out the short and long feathers. The chickens in his coop are all natural. No pesticides, no injections. He could sell one for $15USD. Not all the chickens we eat are from his garden, and he says the taste is very different. I think the chicken we consume is bought from Francisco’s store. I’ve seen pieces of raw chicken floating in a pail beside the beer coolers.

Over lunch, Luz tells us a little about house building for the local community. The entire village pitches in to build a traditional house from sticks and thatch. Everyone gathers materials for two weeks and then everyone builds a house in a single day.

There are members from the General Congress visiting Nacho today. As an important man in the village, Nacho is not only innovative but is also deeply connected to the community. He doesn’t think about making a profit off his skills and advantageous position but always has the good of the community at heart. He could have housed us in cabins that he owns at the edge of the village but instead, he got the community to convert an old Congress house by the river to become the main residency space for the artists.

Nague’s party takes hours to prepare for. Aida has been cooking all day. She expects 50 people to come. Nague’s entire class will be there. Luz’s cake is huge; it is a three-tiered con de leche. Maria and her grate coconut over it and place flowers from Nacho’s garden on top. It looks like a wedding cake.

• 

• 

• 

A gaggle of 15 year olds occupy all the chairs. They are ravenous and the food doesn’t really come out until 8pm, so they busy themselves on their phones, watching music videos. We wonder where and how they get their content and also think about the effect these videos could have in how they see the world. Do they feel stifled here? Or are they able to live with the knowledge that there is an entire world out there that isn’t for them? Many adults in their 20s and 30s have left Armila to work in the city. And some, like Nacho, return to make a life back in the village later on. We often talk about going back to the real world after a holiday. After being here for a week and a half, I’m really not sure what the real world means anymore.

• 

• 

The older people at the party are Nague’s teachers and a handful of sahilas. A few beers in, everyone is starting to slur and Nacho tries to impress me with his drunk English. He makes no sense! One of the sahilas is pretty tipsy, but still lucid enough to hit on Maria, spinning a line about how Lord Of The Rings is from Iceland and how beautiful she is and how he would like a beautiful lady to pay for him to visit Iceland and would she like to take him there? He definitely crossed a line there. But what can you do? We laugh about it later and try to think of ways to exit such uncomfortable situations. The best line we come up with is ‘Estoy teniendo diarrea’, ‘I am having diarrhoea.’

I walk into a breakfast conversation on dreams.  Charlotte dreamt that she was late to go fishing with Nacho because she hadn’t set an alarm. She raced to the shore where Nacho was waiting but he couldn’t see her. She was waving and jumping around but it was as if she were a ghost, haunting him.

Every coconut is worth 40 cents. They are put on a boat and sold in Columbia. People here wait for the coconuts to fall before harvesting them. No monkeys climbing up to pluck them from trees. This slow process keeps the natural rhythms of the coconut tree, prolonging its life.

Caroline wants to find out more about the origin myth of the Guna, specifically between god and the woman figured as Mother Earth. According to Nacho, God and the mother exist together, creating in a dual fashion. Father God has a duality. God set up two worlds, feminine and masculine. The feminine world is called Nawana. The masculine world is where God dwells. And where humans go after they die. In the Congress, they sing thank you to Nana and Baba, almost universal terms for elders everywhere.

This stands in contrast to the Catholic tradition, which Nacho says is an example of a late use of the woman in the history of religion. For the Guna, it is the woman who gives life to the communities and produces in terms of Mother Earth and reproduction. Mother Earth needs to get dressed, so we have to work the ground, harvest and love Nature. Education and technology moves people away from the land, into the barrenness of cities. It’s not just about subsistence farming here, nature needs man just as much as man needs nature.

A father would always give more possessions to the daughter and to the sons, because when a couple marries, the man comes to live in the house of his wife’s family. The man comes to work for the woman. Even Nacho only came to live in his current house seven years ago. If a man makes a mistake, his father-in-law disciplines him before he is allowed back into the house. If he really messes up, the Congress disciplines him.

And if a man or a woman kills someone else, the killer is caught and put alive into the grave along with his or her victim. There was a murder case twenty years ago after a chicha. A teenager, 16 years old and very drunk, entered the village on a donkey at nine in the morning and he cantered into the chicha house, still on the donkey. He was told off by a sahila and he didn’t like this so he attacked the sahila. A young man stepped up to defend the sahila but the teenager drew a knife and stabbed the young man in the face. He went to the hospital but died from his wounds. The one policeman in the village managed to arrest him but he now had a problem. If he gave him to the community, they would kill him and he would be an accessory to his death. So the policeman decided to protect him. He let him go and the killer went to Puerto Obaldía and surrendered. The Gunas tried to take him back to try him in their way but were not successful. So they went to the family of the killer and took everything in the house, even the house, and gave it to the family of the deceased.

Nacho’s memory is a house, every room known intimately to him. A robust, strong house, finely detailed and rich with the trappings of a life fully lived. And with each new day, the house grows a little larger. Yesterday, he just finished building a small coop for the hens, who knows what he will build today?

You are born in a hammock and you die in a hammock. The body is wrapped in a hammock and lowered into the ground. It is like a second birth for the Guna. Once they are buried they will go to the other world.

One of the best parties that Nacho remembers was the farewell party of his mother. She was a midwife, was a hammock-maker and a mola designer. A very important person in the village.

For the Guna people, the women are tasked with making and the men are tasked with memory. Only men are allowed to be sahilas. Throughout their history, it was men who organised village life and who learned to build. Both genders carve out their place not in a sense of equality but in terms of role.

If a man were to commit a crime such as smoking weed and be unrepentant about it, the Congress would punish him by ordering into a hole filled with fire ants. Just like the movies. His head and genitals covered, he’ll be left there for ten minutes at a time. This could happen up to eight times over a few days. But it isn’t all bad. The Guna believe that ant bites aid circulation and some of the older folk regular go for these sessions for their legs. The very definition of tough love.

This morning I write a lyric for a melody that Luis plays on his guitar. It is a gentle tune that reminds me of standing on the shore and looking out to sea. We manage to record it before lunch.

Slow Return 

The sea rolls in kindness 
The sun brings a blessing 
Where we must walk 
The day is bright 

The beach that saw our love
And sang the songs of old 
That teach us truth 
The way to live 

May we meet here again 
As often as the tide
To listen for the change
From darkness to light 

My love is oceans away 
The clouds carry these words 
May birds give you
their morning songs 

May we meet here again 
As often as the tide
To listen for the change
From darkness to light 

Nacho cooks us lunch: a different river fish, plantains, rice and a spicy salsa side dish. There are tiny peppers inside, the size of a papaya seed, but they burn the lips and sting all the way down. I try one and it is more than enough for me!

I carry on working on my short poems of found plastic and small installations of found natural objects. I have about ten poems so far. I can see it coming together as a kind of photo poetry chapbook. Probably an e-book because it’ll cost too much to print.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

(this is for the lightbulb)

 Warm currents tug at our toes
 as we walk between undying bottles. 
 The occasional frog splays in death, 
 holding an omen or a kindness. 
 
 When the sun sets the beach inks 
 itself into an invisible roar of waves.
 Bulbs of sea fruit long forgotten 
 slowly harden into dreams.

 If a jellyfish were to sting you,
 first there is an electric surge, 
 all the lights going on at once; 
 and then comes the pain.  

This afternoon’s lecture is about the string sheaths worn by the Guna women on their arms and legs. They are called uinnis. A woman sews one on Bernie’s arm for a whole hour. It’s painstaking and she probably only completes ten per cent of the entire sheath. One whole sheath costs $20 USD. The designs are mostly colour blocks and traditional geometric patterns from the molas.

Tomorrow morning we are going to collect coconuts with Nacho at 6 am. And in a few days, we will be taking an overnight trip to another community, very likely before the chicha ceremony, which is due to start on Wednesday.

Today is a rather beautiful sunset. Rich purple and orange hues shoot across the cloudy sky. We don’t actually see the sun, just its rays reflected on the water in slow ripples. Right on cue, a canoe paddles into the scene.

I sit in a hammock before dinner and think about what someone said to me a few days ago, “Don’t forget to read your Bible and pray.” It was sincere and well intentioned, but it is also a phrase I have heard all my life. It’s a mantra that is a Sunday school song but carries a veiled threat. IF you don’t… there’s no telling what would become of you. You’ll backslide, start doing drugs, sleep around, and become a shaman. And so on. And it used to make me feel guilty for not being a good Christian.

But I think about how the Christians around me don’t actually use the Bible in their daily lives; for them, it’s habit, like needing to practice the piano. Sometimes, a chore. Or at best, the equivalent of reading a charm aloud every day. And don’t forget how preachers abuse and treat the Bible like it’s context-free, devoid of the social conditions and historical epoch when it was written, how they twist and manipulate Scripture to the shape of their desires. But to read the Bible is in a way, to pray. Both are aspects of communion. To commune is to connect. And not just Communion as ritual, but communion as relationship.

Truth be told, I feel closer to something divine out here amongst the pagans, who, unlike us city dwellers, remain connected to the beauty, wealth and power of nature. And if nature is the bountiful creation of God, then they are doing a much better job of communing then we are. Ours is lip service in plush chairs and air-conditioned auditoriums. Our is a carefully crafted bullet point sermon and four songs practiced to chordal perfection. Ours is a sound and light show of emotive peaks and troughs. I feel nothing for the church. Why lift up a religion that has displaced all our stories? I feel saddened that I live in between cultures, knowing neither. When I learn about Guna mythology, when I listen to Maria talk about how she can read the Viking script and how she knows all the old stories, I feel bereft, an orphan in a multicultural city that remembers nothing and desires only the next empty edifice.

The iguana has been cooked in a stew. The texture is almost like pulled pork, but it tastes like a blend of chicken and pork. As we are walking back after dinner, a strange, almost eerie music floats over us. We set out to explore. It’s coming from the chicha house. Luz tells us that we have been invited inside to watch a rehearsal for the chicha ceremony.

Six men and six women face each other. The men begin moving back and forth powerfully, while blowing hard into a set of mouth reeds. The women hold maracas, which they bring down in a steady rhythm. The men symbolise a kind of power, a ploughing force while the women keep the tempo. Perhaps men are representing the idea of work while women are Mother Earth. There are variants of the same dance but in all of them the dynamic holds true. The men always moving impossibly back and forth for up to ten minutes at a time. The women match their movements in a more sedate fashion. They weave in and out, shift formation, and move in parallel, braiding themselves together like uinnis around the wrist. And all the while the melody, minor notes that build a palpable energy, plays on. It is mesmerising, hypnotic.

Patterns of speech are different amongst everybody here. Bernie says that she is dislearning her English. We learn bits of new words from other language, integrate them into our own.

Last year, there was an exhibition of the La Wayaka residents in London. Over 60 artists presented their works, culled over three years and residencies in three different locations. There are plans for something smaller, but more thematic, in Berlin next year. So much of the work, I imagine, is about transcending form. When your natural materials are the desert, the ocean, the sky, to call something by its medium is almost insulting.

After breakfast, we pile into a large canoe and start to paddle up the Armila River. Just a little way in, the river forks. To the right is Rio Negro, Black River. There are farms that way, and crocodiles too, but we are going up Armila River this morning. We paddle for close to an hour. The wooden paddle is heavy and our hands, soft from writing pens and the comfort of keyboards, are unused to such rigid, organic shapes. The river is calm and we pass a range of palms and plantains. Different palms have different uses. Some are used to wrap fish and are used for Guna ceremonies. Others become the thatch roof of traditional houses. Eventually, we pull up and disembark for a short walk into the jungle. This is much deeper jungle, and the vegetation is denser and the ants run roughshod all over.

Luz points out nivar – long vines that are placed outside every house when someone dies to help their spirit lift upwards and away from the earth. The fruit of the nivar is a medicinal herb that is used to quell anxiety. Perhaps anxiety is a kind of prelude to death, the uncertainty about where to go on a far more immaterial plane.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Fernando, our boatman, tells us that before WWII, a British company came to this part of the coast, harvesting bananas. They brought machines to open the land and built a small train to connect Armila to another community, Anachucuna. Some of the tracks are still there. When they left, the jungle came back, as it does. And now, foreign companies aren’t allowed to work in this part of Panama.

We pass freshly hewn canoes, still rough and unfinished. They are made out of cedar. They float on the water, awaiting the hand of a craftsman to give them their own identity, their own names.

We paddle some more to a tiny bank on the river where it’s possible to swim. The current is swift, though the water is shallow, barely waist-high here. It would be something to float all the way back to Armila from here.

Over lunch, Luis tells Nacho how cocaine is produced because we get talking about where poppy grows (none around here). In return, he recounts that when he was 16 and studying on another island in another community, he carried a really nice satchel as his book bag. One day, it was stolen, but a friend of his said that a bunch of potheads had stolen it. When he went to the principal of his school to complain, the principal managed to get the thieves to own up. But Nacho had to collect the bag himself from their house at a fixed time. When he arrived, his bag was there but instead of books, it was filled with bricks of marijuana! Needless to say, Nacho emptied out his bag before getting out of there.

Maria brings out a bar of chocolate from Guatemala from the personal stash in Aida’s kitchen. Somehow the chocolate keeps here without a fridge. I really should have bought that big bar of Tony Chocolonely that I saw in Frankfurt. Guatemalan chocolate is incredible. 77% cacao, but its smooth, flavourful and not bitter at all.

Scooping out a tortuma to make a container is the simplest thing. The insides can’t be consumed but they smell sweet and acrid at the same time, almost fermented. Could a tortuma make you high?

We are reading back in the house when Maria returns to say that some people have brought a large iguana, freshly killed, to Nacho’s house and we are likely to have iguana tonight or tomorrow. I want to go over to photograph it, but fall asleep, lulled by the warm afternoon and the sun burning its way through from the morning’s river expedition.

When I do get over there an hour later, Nacho has already drained the iguana and scooped out its insides. He’s starting to skin it. It’s kind of surreal. He tells me that hunters with rifles shot it and that it tastes like chicken. We’ll find out for sure at dinner tomorrow.

Nacho has never seen a tiger in his life, but there are tigers deep in the jungle. They don’t come to the coast, thankfully. The one time Nacho went hunting he was deathly afraid that a tiger was stalking him and kept turning around, to the irritation of his friend ahead of him, to check for tigers. Still on the subject of animals and extinction, Maria suggests that we anthropomorphize animals to make it easier for us to dominate them. Maybe there is something too about the nearness of animals that are like us in terms of intelligence, physical attributes, etc. So many folk tales and myths elevate animals to the stature of humans, focusing on particular attributes that perhaps we then amalgamate into our own natures. The serpent is sly, the fox is cunning, the lion is regal, the dog is faithful. Why then do we hunt animals to the point of extinction? What do we fear? What do they have that we lack, that we still desire?

“It’s Friday and the body knows it” is a saying that is apparently very common throughout Latin America. Even more so in Armila, where alcohol only happens on weekends. Tonight, the school is putting on a show for the kids in the community. This happens on the 25th of every month. The kids were singing earlier but when we get there the teachers are performing. A young man, who is Luis’ guitar student, does a decent rendition from a minus-one track on the PA. But what is even cuter is that he has a make-believe backing band on guitar, percussion and accordion.

The guitar man sways to the music, his left hand fixed in one position. The percussionist is holding a grater from a kitchen, and the accordion, held by the principal, is made out of paper! He gamely folds it in and out and even manages to amp it up during the accordion solo. I lift a girl up to see better and suddenly my right shoulder goes. It pops and creaks and I lose all strength. I quickly put the girl down, safely, of course. Hopefully nothing is torn. That would be the end of canoeing if that is the case.

The little boy next door singing a long nationalistic song about Panama and the Americas wakes me up. He is regularly interrupted and corrected by his parents, who I’m told are teachers.

This morning we are talking about cacao. Nacho grows some cacao. He’s now drying the beans. Apparently, chocolate isn’t eaten here. It’s only used for cooking, or as a chocolate drink, ChocoListo, or as incense during the chicha ceremony.

Apparently, there are cacao ceremonies all around the world, a blend of the spiritual and the hippy. They stem from Mayans and how people used cacao ritualistically. Today, these ceremonies create a safe space for sharing with chocolate. In the Cacao Temple in Reykjavik, which Maria has visited, people sing mantras and drink 100% ceremonial-grade cacao. But one can also add sweetener and spices. There is a goddess of cacao. I think when cacao is consumed in this way, it isn’t about chocolate as class or price or some kind of elitism, a la Godiva. It isn’t about finding one’s space on the spectrum between bitter and sweet. It is about being with cacao, of allowing it to effect the body. Perhaps there is a ritual kind of magic that we have forgotten, that the Nestles and Van Houtens of the world have destroyed. The goddess of cacao has many worshippers who never know her name, never give her strength. May we never forget.

For as many rules as they have in Armila, there isn’t one about noise. There’s always a kid shouting in glee somewhere, a radio going off with auto-tuned Latino pop at 5 am. The bats scurry about in the eaves, dogs chase each other around and roosters strut about going off like awkward bombs at all hours.

We take the speedboat to La Miel, the border town of Panama. It’s a pretty beach and I grab the chance to fly the drone. The batteries are already depleted (I didn’t check) and there’s less than ten minutes of flying time on each of them. On the second battery, I am too far out at sea to make it back to where I am, so I improvise and land on the jetty. Like a seaplane!

• 

• 

The water is warm and full of small fish and coral. It’s also very salty, but without a snorkel it is impossible to get too far. Still, the play of light on the seabed is a ripple of delight. We try a coco loco, a potent local cocktail of rum, Baileys and coconut juice for $5 USD. Lunch is plantains, coconut rice and snail curry. Incredibly delicious. The clouds are light and clear of rain, so we cross the border to Sapzurro, where ice cream and another beach await.

It is a steep, but manageable hill to climb to cross into Columbia. Apparently, a land crossing between Panama and Columbia is rare so what we are doing is quite the score. We have our passports with us but they aren’t stamped as quite a few people move back and forth every day. Or maybe the border guards can’t be bothered. We saw a few of them drinking from coconuts as we were leaving La Miel.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Sapzurro is tiny, but tourists do come here from the next sizable town, Capurgana. And I can see why. There are quite a number of hostels so it must be on the backpacking radar. The beach is in a very pretty bay and is quite chill. ‘Main Street’ has a church, drugstore, a few restaurants and the usual clump of old men shooting the breeze. We get an ice cream and sit on the beach. The girls go swimming and I take a walk around the curve of the bay, discovering another beach and some kind of local cookout. Even the sentry on duty in full army uniform and rifle gets a plate. Columbia doesn’t seem all too different from Panama, but still, it’s really pretty amazing to cross geographically from Central to South America overland.

The boat picks us up in Sapzurro and we wing our way home through steady rain to Armila. A long but satisfying day.

I wake up to a clear memory of birds migrating above me in the thousands. Large birds winging so confidently onwards. The ones ahead stop and circle in the sky. Armila is a kind of waypoint to their eventual destination.

In my bed, there might as well be no walls. Everything cuts through: conversations, chickens, even people farting.

I will have been here for a week today. Incredible. It doesn’t seem that way. I don’t feel like it has been a week. Does time pass more quickly here? Or maybe it isn’t about time. We find a different rhythm.

Last night I found myself missing you acutely. Missing our spirited conversations, missing our house and how it is a palace compared to here. But I think this time away is really important for both of us to heal from the loss of Chubs.

Over breakfast, we trade cat stories. Luz talks about how she moved her cat Apollo from Argentina to Germany.

Luis has gone with Nacho to cut plantains on Nacho’s farm. Later he tells us that at one point they were both swimming in the river and Nacho was telling him how there were crocodiles in these parts. And then Nacho disappears! Next thing, Luis feels a tug on his leg from below. He panics, imagining it is a crocodile and Nacho has been taken. But he ducks under to check and there is Nacho, literally pulling his leg. Nacho is 62 but still acts like he’s 16. Such a bundle of energy!

The weather is perfect. If it is the same tomorrow, we will take a day trip to La Miel, the very last point of Panama. The beach is apparently really nice and we can snorkel and even walk over a hill to Sapzurro in Columbia.

The conversation shifts to astrology and tarot. I ask if it is possible to create a deck from the mola symbols. Maria says that it might be better to think about an oracle deck instead. Potential new work!

Palm reading is like thinking about the structure of yourself; the ley lines that run before and after and through us. How do we read ourselves, how do we read others? Luz really is a philosopher. And she is the product of thousands of hours of thinking and talking. Talking is something that we are losing. Devolving things to pithy FB statuses is a broken kind of wisdom, a false dichotomy that reinforces our meaning.

I sacrifice my usual morning of reading and writing to pick lovely blue seeds close to the river in the jungle. It’s a lot less muddy today, so Luz, Maria and I go. Later, Maria collects some clay from the river. She offers to trade my plastic bag for her seeds. A good trade! On the way back, we spy a lovely seed, the serpent’s eye. It is bright red with a black dot in the middle. These are few and far between and it is hard work to gather even a handful of them. I’m probably going to make two separate installation/images with these.

• 

• 

After lunch, we are given access to the private mola collection of Gladys and Aida. Gladys is Nacho’s wife, and Aida is his daughter-in-law.  They unleash a barrage of mola in all shapes and sizes. I get one that I make into a tote bag and another small pouch. I also decide to make a shirt that is used for formal occasions. There will be some mola patterns on the sleeves and collar. It’ll cost about $37 USD with the fabric and sewing. It won’t be ready for the chicha ceremony next week, but I should be able to get it before I leave.

This occupies us all the way to the lecture, where Nacho regales us with two tales, or myths. One is the origin of everything, the creation myth, so to speak, and the other is a folk tale that carries a moral warning. It involves a man, a mole and a journey to the centre of the earth. And a lot of jealousy.

Origin story (or, it’s all about the chicha) 

In the beginning, when God sent beings to the earth, the earth was covered entirely in soil. These beings were animals with human characteristics; higher intelligence, conscience, speech. 

The tiger was the leader of all the beings. Everyone worked in harmony but the butterfly was a being who always seemed happier than the others. Apparently, she had visions! Tiger and the other beings held a meeting to try to discover her secret. They decided to follow her. In the village, where they lived, there was an enormous tree whose branches touched the clouds. So the butterfly flew high, beyond sight of the other beings. So they waited for her. When the butterfly came down, she was in a state of bliss, a state of grace. Tiger and the rest decided the only way to find out where she went was to chop down the tree.

So they started to chop. All day with machetes. But the next day, the tree was whole, as if nothing had happened. The same thing happened the next day. So the beings stayed up all night to watch the tree. They realised that the tree was crying, and the tears (the sap) of the tree began to regenerate its wounds. 

That is how the Guna explain botany. Nacho once had a machete cut and he used tree sap to salve the wound it was enough. 

Nevertheless the beings decided to chop the tree all the way thorough. Finally, they succeeded and the tree started to fall. Then it stopped. It branches were stuck in the clouds. Tiger thought that they had to cut the clouds so that the tree would fall. But nobody wanted to go. Finally, Tiger offered his daughter’s hand in marriage to the being who would cut the clouds. A squirrel volunteered and he managed to cut the clouds. The tree fell to the found and he had the tiger’s daughter in marriage, as promised. 

When the tree fell, they found that at the very top of the tree, God had put the seeds of every plant in the world. And when the tree fell, the force of its fall flung seeds throughout the world. And its fallen branches became the trees of the Earth. The impact of the falling tree made the oceans. 

Most importantly, the beings discovered fermented sugarcane at the top of the tree, which was what the butterfly was getting high on. And that was how chicha was discovered. 

The name of the tree was Baluala (the tree of life). But the animal beings didn’t believe in God, so God sent humans to earth to dominate the animals because the animals were causing chaos by doing whatever they wanted. Humans were the representative of creator God. In a kind of parallel Babel, God stripped the animals from having human characteristics, establishing a hierarchy of dominance on earth. 

A Mole Story

Before the arrival of the humans, animals held all the secrets of the world. When the humans came, they asked to know what was going on. They were keen to find out what was happening in the centre of the earth. That was difficult indeed, according to the mole. He told the humans that at the door of to the centre of the earth there were many beautiful women. But humans were not allowed to look or speak to them. Then there will be two jaguars, but human, you don’t have to worry because you’re with me.

So why did the mole bring the human? The mole told the human that in the centre of earth, there is a special kind of plantain that will produce food forever. The only way to there is with the mole but only the human can gather the seeds. So they had to go together. The seed was important because it would produce the plantain fruit and the mole wanted to give this to the humans. 

So they started on their journey. They passed the first test. And the second. They arrived at the plantain tree. But in order to gather all of the seeds, they had to make four trips in total. Back in the community after the first trip, the human told the rest of his people what he had to do. But after they had made three trips, people decided that he had gone enough times and were jealous. They wanted someone else to get a chance to go. Their jealousy won out in the end and another human was chosen. But he hadn’t been warned of the dangers, so he looked at the beautiful women and he became blind, and then he was so afraid of the jaguars that he lost all power of speech and died. Four people died in this way. And that is why, to this day, humans have never been able to get the eternal plantain. 

What is the moral of the story? 
Plantains are a staple part of the Guna diet, but jealousy is a limitation to making life easier for everyone. Sahilars use this mythology as an analogy to solve issues in the community. 

The lack of being connected to the Internet has led me to the realisation that everything I know I hold inside me. And everything I have allowed to let go or simply choose to forget is out of reach, inaccessible. If I remember half a story, that’s all I have. No facts to check, no ideas to confirm, no music recommendations to play. The stream is the one that’s a twenty-minute walk from the village. The cloud holds sunshine and sometimes rain. The net bulges heavy from the day’s catch. I search for seeds and coconut husks on the ground. Here in the engine of my hours, I fuel my desires by making, by taking, by working.

Washing clothes takes on new meaning here. The Guna are really big on washing clothes. They do have large households, but it is a marvel to see the lines of washing hung up every single day. If they run out of space they throw them onto their thatch roofs. I am reminded of how much work it takes when I do my own laundry. Maria remarked how the word for a washing machine in Iceland is taike, which derives from take and the sense that machines take work from you, but by hand-washing your clothes, you take that work back, redeem it, almost.

Random notes over dinner:

Death is figured male and female in different languages. Maybe we see whom we want to see at the moment of our passing

Caroline offers that being psychic is like having polaroids stuck to somebody. You see bits and pieces of a life.

Luis recollects that to celebrate tortaso is to have your face smashed into your birthday cake when you are about to blow out the candles. When you grow up it is about taking a big bite with your whole face. After a few years of this, Luis began to ask for a plate of fries instead of a cake.

The large papaya has been cut down from the tree. It is twice the size of my head! It’ll take another four days to ripen. Papaya in Guna means a woman’s privates. It is not so straightforward buying fruit here!

Over breakfast, Nacho tells us a bit more about the turtles. Up to five different species of turtles come to Armila to lay their eggs from Feb to June every year. Armila is a critical nesting point for the turtles, which will stay for up to two months until the eggs hatch. Some nights as many as 50 turtles, including the sacred leatherbacks, will mount the shore. It is forbidden to eat or make anything from the turtles here in Armila, though other Guna communities elsewhere do consume the smaller turtles, like the Hawksbill and Green Turtles. The Leatherback is considered sacred across all the communities.

The conversation moves to history and Nacho pulls out a Spanish book that lists some of the key figures of the Guna from the 19th and 20th centuries. He explains the origin of the flag, which was devised by a woman (of course!) and used as a standard in the 1925 revolution.

I mistake tortuma (calabash) with tortuga, turtles. It is the tortuma, a hollowed out gourd,that is used in one of the ritual ceremonies of the Guna.

Luis mentions that the turtles eat hedgehogs. Hilarity. It emerges that the Spanish word for Hedgehog and sea urchin are the same. Erizo. Perhaps sea urchins once were hedgehogs. Lost under the sea, they slowly forgot the taste of wood and soil.

Trash is normalized for the young kids. They have not known a time when the beach was clean, pristine. When the world wasn’t as heavy with all the weight of this undying skin. 

I spend an hour digging a hole in front of our house. At first, I am trying to look for stones or shells. Then I recognise that I am making the shape of a coconut, inspired perhaps by the half coconut that sits in front of the door. I place the coconut in the hole and arrange twelve stones around it. The coconut is now a clock. I take a picture and then write a poem around this idea.

• 

• 

After lunch, which is a tasty fish broth with plantain, rice and salad, I make my usual daily sketch + poem of plastic trash. Today it is a scrubbing brush.

• 

This afternoon’s lecture is on the imagery behind the mola. Nacho draws all of the different symbols out and tells us the story behind how they came to be. They are everyday objects, turtles, mountains, etc.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Then Jessica, a local artisan, gives us a live demonstration of how a mola is sewn. The layers are intricate and it is a primer for the more complex patterns laid out on the other table. Everyone lunges for the different molas. It is frenzy. and I buy two. One is a mountain and the other is a pair of animals that make up the meaning of Armila in Guna, an iguana and a fish.

It’s not as if there are loads of molas on offer. The ones we see have been sewn over months and are of a pretty high standard. All of the tourists who stay at the more popular Guna areas such as San Blas will never see molas such as these.

After class, we cross the river to gather firewood for a fire. It has been a clear, hot afternoon, and the wood is dry enough. The fire is behind Nacho’s house, and becomes a welcome way to end the day. A round of MF beers seals the deal.

The fireflies are stars that have come to visit for a while.

We speak of revolutions near and far. Some happening even now, in the places we call home. Others that reverberate, not across continents but through the heart of people who are tired of being forced to consume everything. They have seen that needing more is the lie that must be devoured. But how? Meanwhile, the artist comes and goes, crossing borders and belief systems, while holding on to that small knot of knowledge to call their own; whether it be a song, a sculpture or even a melody that needs no home.

Over breakfast, Nacho tells us about the village’s chief ‘chemist’, Tigre, who is responsible for tasting each of the 40 drums of fermented sugarcane alcohol that the village is preparing for the ceremony. These are giant metal containers, eight of which were newly purchased in Columbia at a cost of almost $1,000 USD. They take their ceremonies very seriously.

The sugarcane is first pressed flat using noisy motors (that start up at 2am) and then is boiled and fermented along with cocoa, coffee or corn. The chemist will test if the alcohol is fermented enough, whether it is too sweet or needs to be sweetened further. While they started the bulk of the fermentation two weeks ago, top-ups may occasionally be required, hence the late sugarcane pressing. Only when the chemist has tasted all the jugs would he be able to ascertain and pronounce the exact date of the chicha. Alcohol drives the ceremony (as it should)!

There is such clarity to the light here. Everything sings in Technicolor. Is it the absence of pollution? Or the isolation that allows the eye to focus and marvel at even the simplest things? The Guna certainly know how to use colour. It is everywhere, in their blankets and hammocks, in the intricacies of the mola fabric and certainly in the colourfully painted boats and houses.

There is a special breed of dog in Armila, called tipo perro, roughly translated to any kind of dog. Mongrels live everywhere. They are the most faithful, the kindest and the most obedient.

Luis tells us that in San Pedro de Atacama, nobody is allowed to dance. Musicians’ play and people get up, and the band has to tell people to stop and sit down. Maria chimes in: A long time ago in Iceland, there was a law against dancing. And it means that today, nobody really knows how to dance. Icelanders are people who stand. Despite being a performance artist, Maria remains self-conscious when she moves. She is still herself, vulnerable. But the focus is on care and consent and not on pushing the body through its boundaries.

Today, Nacho talks to us about the various ceremonies that girls go through in the community.

When God, Baba Dummad,  made the world, everything he did was hand in hand with a woman, the Great Mother, Nana Dummad. This is the starting point for the value of the woman and the main reason why ceremonies are focused on women. 

When the Earth was created, Baba created another world and told Nana to stay on Earth with humans and watch over them. That is why the earth is figured as feminine. When humans die, they will go to the other world. In their life on earth, everything is preordained by Baba and Nana.

There are four ceremonies in the life of a Guna woman:

1. Eko Ina (needle + chicha)
Perforation of the nasal septum (two months) The whole community is invited. This is a one day affair. It is done using a single needle. Chicha (fermented sugarcane) is drunk in copious amounts. The ceremony is done in the chicha house (a kind of religious communal building) Men and women are separated. After three toasts, the little girl is brought with a dance to the middle where the mother and the piercer await. The scream of the baby when the septum is pierced is a sign of happiness for everyone. This is a compulsory ceremony for all girls.

2. Ina Suit
This happens when the girl is seven years old, which is the middle age between being a child and a young woman. This involves a long chicha, over three days. The girl’s family prepares for this for two years. The community helps the family out to house the guests and provide fish. El Cantule, (The Cantor) is the MC, he sings different names for the girl. The mother will have to pick the name of the daughter. It will be a Guna name, just like a baptism). This is an optional ceremony. Usually, families who are better off will undergo this ceremony.

La Ayate is the woman who will cut the girls’ hair. Only women are allowed around the girl. There are various ‘event highlights’ over the three days. A communal spirit is evident, with people sharing biscuits, cigarettes and beer. Armila is the only community that opens itself to foreigners to experience this. 

3. Celebrating Puberty
The third ceremony is to celebrate puberty. It is obligatory. After the girl’s first menstruation, her mother will lick her in the fish. The parents will go house to house and ask the men to cut leaves and bring fish, while the women get water. The father gathers wood to build a small house for the girl. She will stay there for seven days. On the seventh day, people enter the house of the girl, put water into the tortuma (a small bowl made from coconut husk) wash the girl eight times (because the sun has eight brothers). They then use jagua, a kind of pigment, like henna, to cover the girl. This is a symbol of purification, a representation of mother earth. For example, when it rains and the river rises, it brings the overgrowth from the jungle and throws it into the sea. This is is the same as the woman. As she prepares to be fertile, the water is a kind of washing away of the detritus.

4. Becoming a woman
The last ceremony takes place when the girl is around 15 years old. This the age when she is deemed ready to become a woman. Her hair is cut short and she will be ready to leave for further studies and even get married. She will also start to wear the traditional Guna clothing. 

This last ceremony isn’t obligatory but it is important. It helps to keep the family, and by extension the village, together.

The other fascinating bit of history is the process of arranged marriages, which used to be the norm but are no longer practiced.

On arranged marriage

In the past, arranged marriage was the norm and the decision was always made by the parents of both families. The reputation of the family was always considered, not just the man himself (in Guna society, the woman’s family holds more power). The man would move into his wife’s family home after marriage.

In the traditional marriage ceremony, the woman would begin being completely covered in a chair. The man would then be placed in a hammock. The woman would be on top of him. The family would then swing the hammock and sing about different (deep) things, such as the duality of life and the beauty of nature. The couple will then be washed and they will return to the hammock. This process will be repeated four times. After that, everybody leaves except for the man’s father, who occupies a hammock on one side, while his mother is in a hammock on the other side of the couple. The couple are not allowed to consummate until the process is completed.

The next morning, at 5 a.m., the woman’s father will bring the man, together with his machete, to the mountain. The man has to chop 100 (yes, 100!) trees. And he has to bring four of them down to his wife’s kitchen. While he’s there the woman goes to take her husband’s things back to her house. When the man returns, she will receive him with a dish of bananas at his house. They are given a hammock in the corner of the man’s house. Everything, from birth, to life to death, happens in the hammock.