Something bumped Maruba's hull, lightly. Barbara and I exchanged glances.
Tired after an overnight passage, we were below
deck settling in for an indeterminate stay in the area. We'd just set the anchor
off Isla Gomez, a picture postcard
islet with a palm lined beach. Isla
Parida, on the Pacific side of Panama, was a couple hundred yards away.
We had navigated into the protected anchorage through
a cluster of islands. At the time, 1991, the surrounding jungle revealed no
sign of human habitation.
We hurried on deck. Two teenage boys were paddling
away in a dugout canoe. They looked back, smiled shyly and waved, then kept
going.
A crawling gift
A pair of small langostas (spiny lobsters) waved their antennae and scrambled for a
hold on the unfamiliar surface of the teak deck.
The boys had been sent to open our boat for
business. The mutual gifting had already begun. The coffee pot wasn't even on
yet.
The gift of langostas
was purposefully generous, intended to set the scale for the subsequent generosity
expected of us.
For the extended family living on Parida, cash was hard to come by; the
nearest store was on the mainland, a two hour boat trip away; and they used the
cruising sailboats that showed up now and then as fortuitous shopping centers.
Like those living at other remote anchorages, these people had a well honed business plan based on mutual gifting.
They were experts at assuring the crews of visiting boats felt welcomed, well
treated, enjoyed their stay, and departed with substantially fewer goods than
they arrived with.
Presents for the children
Taking the advice of other cruisers, we had left
the dock with gifts for the people we expected to meet on our voyage. For the
kids we had balloons, pencils and crayons, baseballs for the boys and the
plastic barrettes the girls prized. For special circumstances we had a stash of
colorful T-shirts that had been remaindered after an event in Canada.
For the adults we stocked up on cigarettes and
the finely ground coffee, heavily pre-sugared, popular in Latin America.
The people in the islands, aware we were
ignorant of their actual needs, made straightforward requests.
What people wanted
They would have kept us fed for months in exchange
for practical gifts like over the counter meds, nails, fish hooks and line, hand
tools of any kind. They lived on the outer fringes of an economy where a smoker
went to a tienda to buy a single cigarette,
a person in pain to buy two aspirin.
One man, disappointed that Maruba's paint locker had nothing to spare, asked for a contribution
from her fuel tank. Diesel fuel, soaked into the bleached wood of his house, was
plan B for termite-proofing.
Women hoped for odds and ends of used clothing,
plastic containers, spare utensils, anything useful around the house.
In return we were gifted fish, papayas and mangos, bananos by the bunch, cocos by the dozen, wild yucca and yama roots dug from the jungle, limons in a variety of shapes and colors, and home grown rice. We never asked for monkey meat but could have had that too—if we donated the .22 shells.
In return we were gifted fish, papayas and mangos, bananos by the bunch, cocos by the dozen, wild yucca and yama roots dug from the jungle, limons in a variety of shapes and colors, and home grown rice. We never asked for monkey meat but could have had that too—if we donated the .22 shells.
The family on Isla Parida asked for money only once, when they invited us to their
Dia de Madres feast. Since they had
to go all the way to the mainland for the supplies, they figured we should pony
up for ice and a couple cases of cerveza.
Barbara is a problem
The subsequent celebration created an etiquette
crisis for the family. The Mother's Day feast was of course prepared by the mothers.
They served the men at a shaded table outdoors, then ate standing in the
kitchen after the men finished. Where and when should Barbara eat . . . a
woman, but also a guest of honor and co-contributor of the beer?
Although our stay at Isla Parida lasted over a month, valuable langostas—which could be kept alive and sold for cash on the mainland—never
turned up again. The credit and debit columns, if totaled, would show the family
cleared a handsome profit from Maruba's
visit.
On our last day a gifting frenzy erupted. Dugout
canoes passed back and forth between the shore and the boat.
As we sailed away, Barbara, by nature generous, discovered
to her regret that she had given up two brand new plastic buckets. She used them
almost every day. She knew two or three months might pass before we docked in a
port where she could buy replacements.
 |
The Children of Isla Parida |
NEXT POST
In China, at the Wrong End of the Line
No comments:
Post a Comment