Adventure in Bocas del Toro

The red dot, but on the mainland, is where I went. I spent a day at the touristy island afterwards.

Back in mid December, I traveled to my friend Whitney’s community in Bocas del Toro province to help facilitate her women’s health seminar. It took 9 hours to get to Loma Bonita (Pretty Hill) door-to-door from my house.

When I told my community members where I was headed, they were aghast. “All you’re going to eat is boiled green bananas.” “It is so muddy there.” ‘They talk funny there.” “You’re going to have to travel on a dangerous boat to get there.” [No one seemed to believe that I could get all of the way there by bus – and you can’t to many places.]

The 2 ½ day seminar included breakfast, lunch, health talks, cooking class, yoga, and jewelry making. We gave interactive health talks including “What is HIV/AIDs”, “Premature Pregnancy Risks”, ‘How to protect yourself from HIV”, “Self Esteem and Values” and nutrition. Administering the pre-test was important to realize how many common misconceptions there were – for example, that HIV can be contracted by hugging or coughing.

Yoga!

Loma Bonita is located outside of the Comarca Ngabe Bugle reservation where I live, but it is still a 100% Ngabe population. It was interesting noting the differences among the communities and the people. In Bocas del Toro the houses are generally built on stilts to prevent water damage. The women do not wear the nagua traditional dress, and never did. However the women still do make the chakara (bag) and everyone talks using just about as much Ngaberi language. Only a few words and the accent are different. Most women do not wear shoes/sandals, which I quickly adapted to as well because it was so slippery and muddy (I was warned!).

In my community and general area, the houses are far more spread apart and are built right on the ground. Women in my area are definitely shyer, which it will make it a bit harder to do a similar seminar. I was shocked to see women in Whitney’s community flirting with one of our male friends who was helping facilitate. This is partially because many of the indigenous people in Bocas del Toro worked for the big banana companies back in the mid twentieth century so they have more of a history interacting with outsiders than my mountain people. A very common last name there is Becker.

Proud certificate holders with red AIDS awareness ribbons

Overall, I was impressed by the amount of Ngabe culture preserved considering the community is only 40 minutes away from a major town, and not part of the indigenous reservation. I enjoyed relaying my experiences back to my community, to tell them that it really wasn’t so bad.