Tim Leffel
20th Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Men’s Travel category
When we walked through the village and down to the Teribe River, called the Tjer Di by the locals, we felt a mix of excitement and trepidation. On the one hand it seemed like good fun to take motorized canoes up the river to visit the home of the king. On the other hand, that river water was moving really fast and what was that part about needing a guy in the front with a pole in case we got stuck?
The people who live beside this river certainly didn’t seem fazed though, unloading supplies from one canoe and dropping off some residents who had been off to see someone in another village. Ladies stood at the side ready to hand brightly colored lifejackets to the visiting foreigners, as if these fragile beings needed neon signs on their backs saying, “Not from around here!”
The boat drivers didn’t wear any of these neon-colored life vests, of course. Neither did the guys in the front of the canoes who were holding poles and keeping constant watch on the water patterns. Sometimes they really did need to get us out of a shallow spot when a slightly wrong turn to avoid some rapids led to a different hazard to get away from. When we were moving, we were skimming the water at high speed though, the dense jungle on the banks flying by us, no time to watch for wildlife.
At a muddy bank with a wobbly pier, our guide announced that we had arrived at the village of the king. Introductions were made, flowery greetings exchanged, but then an apology. “The king is not here today. He is away on business.”
We shrugged and moved on, happy to have the chance to see his throne at least. It was a beauty: a carved wooden wonder of two flanking jaguars, an eagle at the top, and a tapir and snake on the sides, together emanating power and virility. In the modest dirt-floor common area it was housed in, however, the kingdom didn’t exactly feel almighty and powerful. Even the king can’t get a cell signal or Wi-Fi in this remote area.
I got the feeling they’re simply happy to have power over their lives, removed from the whims of a central government making decisions in a city of skyscrapers, a plane ride away.
We got back in our motorized canoes and headed downstream, this time riding with the current instead of going against it and going twice as fast. In 18 minutes flat, we were back on shore at our original village, chilling in the hammocks at La Posada Media Luna.
Autonomous Communal Life by the Jungle
The Naso people are self-governing, a right officially granted only recently when an enlightened national government listened and provided more autonomy to the Embera people around the Darien Gap, the Guna Yala people of the San Blas Islands, and the Naso population of around 3,500 near the border with Costa Rica. In reality they’ve long been off the radar of the national government anyway, with their own language and customs in an area few outsiders managed to visit.
This doesn’t mean they’re totally disconnected from the laws of Panama and if there’s a homicide they’ll go fetch help, but in general this means they can work out their own affairs and control how the lands they’re sitting on are used.
These groups have pulled off a few key victories in the self-determination battle. In the Naso peoples’ case, killing a hydro-electric dam that would have flooded ancestral lands and changed the whole way they move from village to village. The ability to speak with a unified voice—one not tainted by competing commercial development desires—probably helped their cause.
When one talented villager showed off his woodcarving skills to us and asked us if we had any questions, he was probably surprised that our questions had nothing to do with wood. “How do you decide who builds a house where if everyone owns the land collectively? How do they pay for it and is there a payment plan? What happens if they die or need to move? What if they want to add on to their property?”
For us visitors from the USA and Canada, working for the greater good and sharing the wealth is a bit of a mystery. We’ve heard plenty about the Amish and Mennonites on our own soil, but collective land and housing is especially hard to wrap our head around. The answers he came back with could be summed up rather easily though: “the elders work it out.”
So about these elders…
“Do they get voted into office or just replace someone who dies? What about the king? Is there a royal bloodline?”
Well, the elders are the old and wise ones, he explained, as might be expected, but being appointed is not automatic. It functions more like a city council, with constituents to answer to and the will of the people deciding who represents them.
The kings have all had the same last name, but the next ruler is not the eldest son or anything like that. A special council tasked with choosing the king decides who among the potential Santanas should be next to sit by the jaguars. (There was a little grumbling during our visit that the current one is not exactly beloved and revered by the people.)
Community Life Among the Naso of Panama
Life is simpler here among the Naso community than it is in the cities. They chip in together to build things and help each other out. They don’t have internet access except for an occasional weak data signal in one specific field in the village—if the gods are cooperating. So they spend their time making things or teaching traditions to the new generation. The group that ran our guesthouse showed off a few of their traditional dances, like the snake dance and the jaguar dance.
Cacao plants grow in various spots around the village and are more numerous up the hills, so the locals process the beans for drinking and cooking. They had to rustle up some coffee for us visitors in the morning: everyone here starts the day with hot cocoa instead. We watched our host Isabel roast the cacao beans over a wood-fired open stove and grind them down to powder to make the drink. When they’re able to create a paste instead, they use the chocolate for cooking.
We took our turns stirring the roasting beans while enjoying the smell, separating the beans from the shells with pan shaking and a flick of the wrist, then putting some muscle into the grinding with traditional tools.
Some of the Naso people we ran across were clearly getting more calories than they were using, but the diet here is based on what’s local and traditional, not what the mass-market food conglomerates are pushing. On our visit we ate a lot of what grows or can be caught in the area, like fish, bananas, fern greens, papaya, oranges, and plantains. Free range chickens pecked their way around the village and we did have some pork one night, but one guide told us that “bush meat” is sometimes on the menu for local families. I was glad we didn’t have to play a guessing game identifying any mystery meat from a hunting trip.
We didn’t see any packaged snacks during our two nights at the lodge and there aren’t any in the local stores either, apart from crackers. The parents are managing what few others around the world can anymore: keeping their kids away from junk food and excessive sugar. This also means that there’s a lot less garbage and waste around, a lot less single-use anything since most items get reused somehow. The bulk of the food waste ends up as compost or animal feed.
Life revolves around rituals, traditions, and festivals, most seemingly tied to the number eight. “The roasted cacao doesn’t become a paste if the grinding person has had sex in the past eight days.” That was the excuse we got for over-roasting the beans. There was something about drinking chicha during menstruation for eight days and then the complicated matter of killing a jaguar. That requires burying it for eight days and then digging it up, followed by eight days of dancing. After this the spirit animal is appeased.
The bucolic life here is not for everyone though and after two days of cold water showers, no phone connectivity, and long stretches between meals with no snacks in sight, we headed to the main town in Bocas del Toro. That decadent tourist trap place stood in stark contrast with its bars, fancy restaurants, and grocery stores full of processed snacks.
As we made a beeline for the items we had missed in the wilderness, I wondered how my lifespan would change if I lived among the Naso people and what it would do for my blood pressure and cholesterol. It would almost surely be a net positive over time, but for now my body would just have to say thanks for the break. There was a cold Balboa beer calling my name.
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Award-winning travel writer Tim Leffel is author of The World’s Cheapest Destinations, Travel Writing 2.0, and the living abroad book A Better Life for Half the Price. All have been published in multiple editions. He is also editor of the narrative web publication Perceptive Travel, named “best online travel magazine” by the North American Travel Journalists Association and “best travel blog” by SATW. He has contributed to more than 50 publications as a freelancer and runs four online travel magazines and blogs as an editor/publisher. He’s the former chair of the advisory board of NATJA, served as North American Conference Director for TBEX for six years, and is a media member of SATW and the Adventure Travel Trade Association.