saying goodbye to Panama

Oh my goodness.  February and March just flew by, and now my Panama contract is over.  I tried to fit in as much as possible - gave up on some of the islands but managed some goodbyes to friends, an evening at Danilo's Jazz Club, a couple of days' birding in Soberania National Park (adding streak-chested antpitta and pheasant cuckoo to my life list) and a five-day birding trip to the west of Panama, around Chiriqui, La Fortuna and Boqueron.  All this plus listing and packing up everything I own ready to be shipped to West Africa for my second stint in Senegal.

This from my Chiriqui trip isn't the best ever photo of a resplendent quetzal, but it still shows the beauty of this amazing bird.  Whilst not restricted to Panama, it is nevertheless one of the country's best-known birds and so it seemed appropriate to post a picture.  I saw five of them during the few days spent around Chiriqui.  There were some other good birds too, including the yellow-eared toucanet that I have searched for unsuccessfully on two other trips; this time they appeared, frustratingly in the clouds that covered La Fortuna that day and so just as colourless silhouettes calling from the trees, until the cloud briefly lifted and I got to see their colours.  Bare-shanked screech owl, fiery-billed aracari and wrenthrush were some other highlights of the trip.

The birdlife of Panama really is quite spectacular, and I wish I'd somehow found more time to get out there and enjoy it.

The other part of the natural environment that I loved were the sloths.  The last one I saw, although wild, was hardly in a natural environment, as it had come into the open-air kitchenette behind the ticket office into the tiny La Culebra park out on The Causeway.  The guards told me it sometimes comes in to drink water, and does not seem to be disturbed by their presence.  This time it was lying on top of their lockers, and seemed curious about me when I approached.  Of course I took it too far and briefly stroked the fur on its extended leg (how could I resist the chance to touch a sloth?); it hissed at me but didn't seem seriously bothered.

I didn't really get that much time to reflect on my five years in the Americas, my time being rather taken over by all the practicalities such as closing my internet and bank accounts, plus the listing and packing that I mention above.  Overall my feeling was that I would have liked another year, that the country has much more to offer than I was able to experience in my time there.  But looking back over my final year in the country, I actually spent only 13 weeks in Panama, with the rest in 16 other countries.  So I suppose I shouldn't be too harsh on myself for 'failing' to really get to know the place.

I suppose this should be my last post on louiseinpanama ... so I shall see you back on louiseinsenegal !

a busy month

Since my Emberá day trip I have been pretty busy, with work assignments in Nicaragua and Mali, and I'm writing this in my hotel room in Bolivia, ready to start the next assignment here tomorrow.  Three continents in six weeks (I also attended a big meeting in the UK) - they are still working me hard!

Mali was an interesting trip, coming just a couple of days after I had been offered, and accepted, another contract back in West Africa.  I'll be starting back there in early April, and this quick trip to Mali was a great reminder of what I will be going back to.

Firstly there is the rather less comfortable travel than I've become used to over here.  The airport in Bamako, for example, has just four international departure gates, no restaurant or cafe inside the terminal (in fact not even a place to buy a simple coffee), a departures board that was showing only flights that had already departed earlier in the day (so I wandered between gates, trying to guess which one my flight would leave from), and I didn't even bother to check whether there was wifi.  Once on the plane there was the confusion about who sits where - I had forgotten this aspect of West Africa - as people either willfully sit wherever they want (until challenged) or, perhaps, can't read what is on their boarding pass.  It was sufficient to delay take-off for nearly an hour.

Then there's the security aspect, which is now a lot worse than it was when I left back in 2013.  Trying to board our flight in Bamako, every passenger had to present laptops and mobile phones to a row of security staff who carefully swiped certain parts to check for explosives.  In our office the security briefing warned me against visiting any restaurants or bars that are popular with expats as they are a potential terrorist target.  I was safe to eat in the hotel, but the hotel was like Fort Knox and consequently rather lacking in character.  In the countries where I will be working, we have Al Qaida and related offshoots in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, Boko Haram in Nigeria and the north of Cameroon, and various rebel groups in the Central African Republic.  It will not be safe for me to wander around on buses before and after assignments in the way I used to.

But on the good side, on the plane I watched a film called Clouds over Conakry which captured so well the different (competing) aspects of the culture - the modern young women wanting to enjoy nights on the town, the Muslim preachers warning about the young misbehaving, the still strong power of the ancestral fetish and spirits - and corruption at high levels.  Really an excellent film.  & of course there is the music!!  The first African music I listened to on my short trip was on the Air France playlist - a band called Fofoulah, who I had never heard of before.  There was no information on them, and I was puzzling over the Senegal-style drums and some of the lyrics seeming to be in Wolof, yet with a dubby feel that I guessed might be more Nigerian.  Ha!  It turns out they are a London band, but with Senegalese members on drums and vocals.  Then in the car, travelling out to visit a field office, I heard Rokia Kone (new to me), a superb Burkinabe singer whose name the driver didn't know, and then some classic Salif Keita from the past.  It whetted my appetite for the cultural side!

I realise as I write this that I will have been in my three favourite countries (Mali, Nicaragua and Bolivia) all within the space of one month.  Wow!  OK so I feel as though I've spent much of that month in aeroplanes and airports, and I did miss the entire carnival weekend on the Mali trip, but still, how lucky am I?

the Emberá day tour

Still trying to fill every moment of my spare time, as the clock ticks down on my contract here in Panama, I managed to grab a last-minute space on a day trip to an Emberá village.

The Emberá are one of seven indigenous tribes in Panama, all largely looked down upon and discriminated against by those of Spanish/mixed descent - considered 'primitive' and uneducated.  It's probably true that most of them are uneducated, at least in the subjects covered by the national curriculum, although they all speak at least two languages (Spanish as well as their indigenous language) and have an in-depth knowledge of the rainforest where they live - including which plants to use to heal infertility, diarrhoea, diabetes, etc.  They do go to school, but many leave at 12, as the government has not provided them with schools of higher grades.  & primitive?  Well, their villages are not accessible by road, but only by boat, the area where they live has no electricity and negligible phone coverage (and so no internet), so their lifestyles are certainly different from those of the 'civilised' world.

The Emberá traditionally live off what they can gather, hunt or fish, with a few other products purchased in occasional trips into town, financed by the sale of their own produce.  Previously they all lived in the Darién, both on the Panamanian and Colombian sides, but with a trip to town taking them several days, some migrated, around fifty or sixty years ago to what is now the Chagres National Park - much closer to Panama City and thus more accessible.  When the area was declared a National Park they were allowed to remain, but were forbidden from hunting, and of course from chopping down any forest in order to plant crops.  They have now introduced chickens to their small villages, and perhaps the odd bit of illicit hunting still takes place (one man told me they still eat iguanas during festivals), but the restrictions of the National Park make it harder for them to survive.  So some of the villages have opened themselves up to tourism, as a useful source of revenue.

What the tourists see is not that different from the day-to-day reality, the only difference being that they wear their jewellery, and sometimes a crown of flowers, on days when tourists are coming (none will come unexpectedly given that they have to take a dug-out canoe 45 minutes along the river to collect you from the nearest road access), and in the afternoon they do a quick traditional dance display.

This man in the photo, for example, had put on his jewellery for our visit, but the body coloration and the loin cloth are his normal 'attire'. The coloration is from a berry of the genip tree, an extract of which is painted onto the body and allowed to dry, leaving its mark for some two weeks.  It protects from the sun and apparently repels mosquitoes as well as being decorative.  I think everyone I saw in the village had some degree of body coloration (known by some as jagua tattoos), and they will happily apply it to visiting tourists.  Although mine got splashed in the boat coming back, so I will have a nice blue splodge on my arm for the next two weeks...

This woman working in her kitchen is not dressed up for the tourists (but is still photogenic!)

whilst the woman on the right has her best jewellery on for the visitors.

Children also join in the fun:

The visitor fee allows you to roam around, ask questions if your Spanish is good enough, and take as many photos as you like.  Revenue is split between the families in the village.  It does feel touristy, but is still a very interesting visit and the money paid enables the Emberá to continue their traditional lifestyle.  I heard that those who try to move to the town and cities can only get basic work, at the minimum wage, and so can only afford to live in the poorest areas where the drugs, gangs and violence is endemic.  So most choose to go back to their peaceful, rural, lifestyle with their family and community.  'Primitive' or not.

the tranquility of Mompox

After Peru I was able to take a few more days off, in compensation for many weekends spent travelling and working away from home, and decided to go to Mompox in Colombia.  Founded in 1540 beside the River Magdalena, it became a major Spanish colonial trading post, but then when more modern boats required a deeper berth, and trade moved to a different branch of the river, Mompox went to sleep.

The streets and buildings are still as they were hundreds of years ago, perfectly preserved (it is a UNESCO World Heritage site) but now there is very little activity.  The few tourists who pass through mostly spend just one or two days there, despite its remoteness and difficult access.  But for lack of time to do the necessary research, I had booked myself in for six days... that turned out to be six days well spent.  Not that I did very much, but it is an easy place to wander around slowly, to sit in a rocking chair in a cafe beside the river and sip a coffee, to watch the iguanas, kingfishers and woodpeckers in the trees beside the river...

I also wandered along the river out of town, just to enjoy being out in the countryside, although of course there turned out to be more attractive birds there.

Not to mention that the people were so friendly!  Many of the older people stopped to chat - to ask where I was from and what I thought of their town, to admire my eyes (it seemed as though no-one with green eyes had ever before visited the place), and in one case to ask me to join a family reunion celebration.  Even when I declined the latter invitation they ensured that I hung around long enough to drink a glass of Scotch with them.

The people running the hostel I stayed at treated me like family, inviting me to share their food (not that I'm a big fan of chicken feet soup), going on a boat trip with me along the river, and even now, two weeks after my return, sending me nice messages on facebook.

There were a few things to do in town.  A rather nice cemetery, full of cats.  A small but interesting museum.  & a botanical garden - totally overgrown as the caretaker has some long-term illness and clearly no-one is covering his responsibilities in his absence, but a trio of rather cross-looking red-mantled howler monkeys were around as well as a large number of mosquitoes.

But overall I didn't do very much at all while I was there.  A rare time of relaxation!  Something I know I don't do enough of these days as I am usually rushing around either working or trying to fill every moment of my spare time.

the end of the Peru holiday

 My short holiday in Peru comes to an end today, and it has been fun, although sitting here in multiple layers of clothing in Cusco and still freezing cold, I am certainly looking forward to getting back to the warmth of Panama!

I did go back over some old ground on this trip: a second boat trip around the Ballestas Islands; and second views of the Inca ruins at Sacsayhuaman and Pisac.  I saw more trepanned and elongated skulls, and more Inca mummies.  But I also saw a number of new places.  Arequipa is a great city (as is Cusco despite being too cold - and too touristy), the Colca Canyon is impressive, the floating islands tour on Lake Titicaca is a massive tourist shopping trap - to be avoided - and the Inca ruins at Ollantaytambo are not to be missed.

My favourite sites of this trip though were rather unexpected.

This is the active Sabancaya volcano, seen from the 4,910m pass at Patapampa, on our way to the Colca Canyon.  It was cold, of course, but the early morning sun was glistening off the snow on the rocky ground, and then with the bonus of this volcano ... absolutely stunning.

Also stunning were the salt pans, or Salinas, at Maras.

Extremely salty water from a spring has been channeled into a series of hundreds of ponds - each owned by a local family - from which (once the channel is temporarily blocked) the water is allowed to evaporate and the remaining salt is collected and sold.  The process takes only a few weeks.  It was one of those rare places that made me go "Wow!" - out loud - when the bus turned the corner and the salt pans came into view.

Finally, there were two small village churches - at Chincheros and Andahuaylillas - with amazing painted ceilings and walls, although unfortunately no photos allowed in either place.

Huacachina - is this what tourism means?

Huacachina is a small oasis in the southern sand desert of Peru, apparently a once tranquil place where one could bathe in the lagoon and wander amongst the peaceful sand dunes.  But then it began to develop into a more active tourist destination, with backpackers coming in to go sand-boarding down the dunes, zooming around in noisy dune buggies, peddling around the lagoon in garish plastic boats, and partying all night on cheap pisco sours.

I spent a night there as it is on the route going south down the Peruvian coast, and it sounded nice despite the dune buggies.  I did find the odd nice corner such as this mini-lagoon a dune away from the main one:

There were moments of tranquility (between passing dune buggies).  It truly was a beautiful setting.

However, the presence of so many temporary visitors leads to much more consumption locally.  Not just in whatever fuels those awful buggies, but in the acres of plastic bottles and bags that people seem unable to do without these days.  When I travel I carry a water bottle with me, fill up from the tap, and add a chlorine tablet - and sometimes a neutralising tablet to get rid of the chlorine taste, but not always.  As far as I know these do no direct harm to the environment, although there is of course some environmental impact in their manufacture and packaging.  But - despite this also being cheaper than buying bottled water - no-one else seems to do this.  With the result that the above mini-lagoon looks like this if you walk a little further down:

(with dune buggy on the sand dune behind, grrr!).  & the yellow-crowned night heron I was so pleased to see was surrounded by plastic waste:

I used to have hope that we could sort out our environmental problems.  I started giving to Greenpeace some 35 years ago and they are still the main beneficiary of my will.  I am mostly vegetarian (100% vegetarian at home, and mostly so when I travel though will eat meat to avoid inconveniencing people), for environmental reasons as I do like meat, I always use public transport (have never owned a car), and I try not to consume more than I need to - although I do recognise the negative impact of all my flights around the world, of course.  I will continue all this for the rest of my life, as I would feel selfish and irresponsible to live any other way.  But sadly I no longer feel sure that it is worth the effort.  The world's population keeps on increasing, we keep on consuming more and more, and finding more stupid ways of using up finite resources whilst churning pollution into the environment (bitcoin??  using more energy to 'mine' the coins than most countries use in a year - so that people can use them to evade taxes and other obligations or to gamble on their value?).  I no longer feel much hope, and sometimes even wish that some deadly new disease could sweep the planet and wipe out half the population.  As I say, I will continue to try to keep my own contribution to the damage low, but knowing at the same time that there is probably no point.

Peru - and thinking about Senegal

Straight after my assignment in South Sudan I had another in Peru - so with two weeks' leave still to use up by the end of the year I thought the easiest option would be to stay on in Peru, and visit a few places down in the south of the country where I haven't yet been.  But life is never that simple.  My new boss - still learning the trade, I guess - made a mistake with her calendar as a result of which a meeting had to be scheduled - in the UK - for mid-December.  Straight after my Peru assignment.  So instead of travelling around Peru I was in the bitter cold and snow of the UK, reminding me once again of the need to put off my return 'home' for as long as I possibly can.

By the time all this happened it was too late for me to think of some alternative holiday (somewhere I could have gone directly from the UK, perhaps?), so I used up my remaining air miles to fly back to Peru once the UK meeting was over.  I had an afternoon in Lima to start with, so treated myself to a meal at Maido, currently ranked as the eighth best restaurant in the world.  I didn't go for what the restaurant is famous for, however - the 13 course tasting menu at $130, or even more if you have the recommended drinks with each course - but just one of the cheaper main dishes from their a la carte menu.  A kind of seafood risotto with a seafood omelette draped over it, accompanied by a glass of 'vinmuth' (wine steeped overnight in herbs).  It was nice but did not make me feel like I was in a world class restaurant.  But I'd really gone there for the experience: arriving rather before 7pm in order to get the one slot that cannot be reserved in advance; having all the staff call out 'Maido!' (Japanese for welcome) as you walk in; and watching the guy next to me go through the first few courses of the tasting menu.

I have no idea what he ate as the food was beautiful but unrecognisable (little colourful blobs on equally colourful bases), although I overheard bits of the extremely long descriptions of his first two courses, especially the instruction that the second course be consumed in one mouthful as it was designed to explode in the mouth...  Dining at Maido was an enjoyable experience but also a valuable lesson, as I left 30% of my one dish - not because of any issues with its quality, but because I was already full.  I realised that my decision on where to retire will not need to take any account of the availability of top quality dining opportunities as those are wasted on someone with as small an appetite as mine.  As long as I can buy good quality (preferably cheap) fruit and vegetables I shall be happy food-wise!

I've been thinking a bit about retirement recently, as my contract in Panama comes to an end on 3 April.  Luckily I do have an option within my current organisation, as my old position in Senegal has become vacant and I would be eligible for a second posting there.  I was disappointed that the East Africa position was made available for locals only (ie for Kenyans, as the job is based in Kenya), but then intrigued and confused about the possibility of returning to Senegal, taking a weekend of deep thinking before deciding to send in my application.

Those of you who know me may be surprised that I didn't jump at the opportunity to apply to return to Senegal, which I loved so much.  In part it is through fear that it won't be the same second time around.  I won't get to live again in that beautiful apartment, my friends have all departed, the management team in the office has changed...  Also, just the fact that I've already been there.  You've seen how busy I've been during my time here in Latin America, squeezing in trips to every corner of the continent in any spare moment - but I've already seen all those corners of West Africa.  In the end, however, it was this factor that encouraged me to apply.  Whilst I've loved every minute of all the travelling I've done here, it does take its toll.  I never have time to rest, I never have time to build a social life, I never have time to listen to music or read a book - and I realise that I need to re-learn to do those things.  The main alternative I had in mind to applying for that post is early retirement, which I could afford to do if I chose to live somewhere cheap like Nicaragua.  But I was a little scared of this option - what would I DO all day??  An hour a day working to regain my fitness, perhaps, another hour reading a book, maybe a third hour online, reading the newspapers and commenting on friends' facebook posts ... but then what?  So I'm hoping I am successful in my application for the Senegal post.  An opportunity to return to a place that I loved (the local music and culture will still be there even if the apartment isn't), where the work feels very worthwhile - and where I have more time to myself, to learn to relax again in preparation for the future.