Independence Day

05:45, and fireworks in the old city signal the start of Independence Day in Panama.  Or rather, the start of the first of five independence-related days.  This, the first, celebrates independence (or separation) from Colombia in 1903, tomorrow the secret manufacture of the country's first flag and the day after that the successful prevention of a fight back by Colombian soldiers.  Then we get a few days back at work, before next week we celebrate the first cry of the fight for independence from Spain, and then finally at the end of the month the actual independence from Spain in 1821.  I hope they don't all start off with a 'wake-up call' at 5:45 in the morning.

After the fireworks we had a flypast of three jets, then another of seven helicopters.  I was wondering how many people get up to watch this, but by the time it finished the sky was flushed pink with the first light of the morning so I didn't go back to bed but made myself an early breakfast.

With my boxes having arrived from Senegal just before my last trip, I had borrowed a drill for the weekend from a colleague, so prepared myself for a day of putting up hooks for pictures and masks.  Only - the first obstacle - the flex of the drill was not long enough, so I went out to the DIY store to buy an extension cable.

On the way back I could hear drumming coming from the streets behind my building, so the DIY had to wait as I went to take a look at the Independence Day parades.  To Panamanians all this is of huge significance.  Apparently a few years ago the government made some noises about reducing the number of independence-related public holidays and there was uproar all over the country - not because they didn't want to lose a public holiday but because they didn't want to lose opportunities to express their patriotic fervour.

On that basis you might expect a lot of pomp and ceremony, or at least a lot of cheering and celebration, but really the only demonstration of patriotism is the proliferation of Panamanian flags at this time: flying from all the buildings, sticking out of car windows, hanging from backpacks...  The parade itself was quite dull, I thought.  Lots of drumming, but not in the African way that makes you want to sway your hips and tap your feet, but rather columns of school and college students in uniform banging out military style rhythms.  Between the drummers were girls dressed like cheerleaders, twirling batons, and with each group at least one woman dressed in the frilly white national dress, the pollera.

A couple of Panamanian colleagues have told me how beautiful their national costume is, but I'm afraid frilly white dresses don't do it for me.  I'm also disappointed at how much it seems to draw on their Spanish colonial heritage, resembling to my inexpert eye a white version of a flamenco dress - they also wear peinetas in their hair and many were using Spanish-style fans.  & the marching bands and cheerleaders draw so heavily on US culture.  There was no hint of local instruments or rhythms, nor anything I could see in the dress that drew on the customs of the various indigenous groups in Panama.

So I went home again, and back to my DIY.  I must say the flat is starting to look much more homely!

back in Senegal

Arriving at Dakar airport at the same time as a couple of other flights, I wondered briefly why I had got so excited about a trip back 'home'.  But I quickly slipped back into the Senegalese way, slowly and patiently pushing my way through the crowd, marvelling at the good nature of the people here as many potential arguments were quickly diffused by someone with a sense of humour.  90 minutes to get to passport control - 90 minutes to remember, as if I could forget, why I love West Africa.

I arrived during the latter part of the rainy season, a period I always found difficult when I lived here, but after the 90% humidity of Panama it felt quite comfortable.  Large parts of the city had been without running water for three weeks though as the government failed to deal promptly with a broken pipe.  Thankfully my hotel was in the lucky half of the city, but riots had broken out in some of the suburbs so I was pleased when it was fixed.  A marabout attended the site of the break and sacrificed three cows - one white, one red and one black - to ensure that the problem didn't recur.

Then with the water supply assured, the shepherds and their sheep started to come into town, more and more sheep filling any spare few inches of ground, on sale to fulfil the need for every Muslim household to slaughter a sheep at the festival of Tabaski.  Of course it would be disrespectful to Allah to sacrifice any but the best sheep you can afford, so there were sheep almost as big as donkeys on sale, the most expensive coming in at some $4,000 a head.  Those finding it hard to scrape together enough to buy even one of the cheapest sheep get desperate for money, and wandering around town is hard work, fending off the would-be guides and salesmen of tourist tat.  Apparently the risk of being pickpocketed is much higher during this period.

But still, it's good to be back.  Despite the demands of the work I managed to fit in two musical evenings, Souleymane Faye and Vivian N'dour at Just4U (an excellent night, thankfully, as I hadn't really warned my colleagues that it might not end until after 4am!), and Baaba Maal at the French Cultural Centre, his ngoni player pictured above.  A visit to the hairdressers too ($100 cheaper for highlights than in Panama), and to my old tailor, and of course to the friends I left here.  A quick trip to the fish market at Soumbedioune, journeys around town in battered old taxis and even more battered public transport - but above all just being here.  Feeling at peace to be here, and hoping that over time I can find that same feeling, somehow, in my new Latin American home.

a long-awaited delivery

Finally, two days short of six months after it was packed up and taken away, my shipment of personal effects was delivered to my flat.  I was excited, but at the same time nervous, as I had been given so may warnings (from the African end) of likely damage to my stuff, and (from the Panamanian end) of likely pilferage from the container.  But 42 boxes were packed up, and 42 boxes were delivered, so the next step was to open them up.  I went first for the ‘box’ I was most concerned about – a six foot high antelope plank mask from Burkina Faso.  Beautiful, fragile, and impossible to replace; I had asked the packing company to be especially careful with it.
 

The delivery man cut through the packaging, layer by layer.  This was what was revealed:

 

 
I will try to claim something on the insurance, but I’m sure they won’t pay up and in any case, I don’t want money, I want my precious mask.  The removal men, trying to comfort me in my distress, suggested that I could glue the two pieces back together.  I suppose I can, but it won’t be the same.

After that, what should have been excitement at finally getting my long-awaited stuff was more a case of trepidation at what further damage I might find.  Remarkably, though, nothing else was broken, although everything was covered in a thick, malodorous layer of pale grey mildew, having been stored in the Panama humidity for the two months it took the Senegalese movers to pay the necessary money to the Panama end.  Dry rot had also destroyed the heels of one pair of shoes, and paperback books, having been packed on their ends, were bent in two.  It wasn’t actually as bad as I had been led to expect, but I certainly wasn’t celebrating that night.  In fact I had a sleepless night as my eyes and nose reacted to all the mould/mildew spores released into the flat.  I had been looking forward to the arrival of two comfortable pillows, but they too were thick with mildew.

Six loads of laundry later, and a lot of scrubbing to bags, shoes, wooden objects, electric flexes and various other things I would never have expected to go mouldy, and nearly everything is clean.  Now I just have to find somewhere to put it all.

a different side of Brazil

A three-week assignment in Brazil offered a nice break from the process of settling in to life in Panama.  Not tourist Brazil though - we don't have an office in Rio, or Salvador, or the Amazon - but the city of São Luis in the little-known state of Maranhão.

It has a historic centre which is a UNESCO-listed heritage site, but this is run-down and empty enough, in the day-time, to be rather unsafe.

Some 280km away from São Luis though - enough to be done in a day-trip if you can face getting up at 4am - is the National Park of Lençois Maranhenses.  This amazing place consists of 1,500 square kilometres of white sand dunes, with small freshwater lakes in the dune valleys.

The standard trip there gives you a few hours to walk about on the dunes and swim in a couple of lagoons, but I couldn't help but think how nice it would be to stay overnight - to watch the sun set over the dunes and camp under a full moon.  Or even to float over the dunes in a hot air balloon...

The other unusual feature of Maranhão state is its love affair with Jamaican reggae, and I went with some colleagues to a very popular Sunday evening reggae bar where I sipped caipirinhas and danced under the palm trees.  The place was a great illustration of how liberal the place is; the crowd was of all colours and all ages, one Brazilian colleague had brought his boyfriend along, and a friend of another colleague - tall and broad-shouldered, with a strong jaw but otherwise seemingly feminine - was apparently part-way through her gender reassignment.  She described herself to me as "an androgynous boy" with no apparent concern.  What a contrast with the illiberal society I left behind in West Africa!

Speaking of which, my next trip will be a three-week assignment in Dakar!  How strange it will be to go back...

still settling in

Nothing has changed that much since I wrote about 'settling in' to my flat last month.  I'm still working from the fold-up desk and garden chair, still don't have a bank account and still can't sleep through the traffic noise.  But I met another English woman yesterday who lives 14 floors above me, and her news that some sun will start to reach the balconies in another month or so cheered me up immensely.

My lack of bank account is now in the hands of smile, my UK internet bank, as they tell me they do not have any email address and so my prospective bank in Panama will have to send their reference request by old-fashioned post.  Even if the reply arrives (mail here being highly unreliable) the process is likely to take a couple of months, so I continue to get by in cash.  I get some strange looks paying in cash - I think people suspect me of money-laundering - and it's difficult to know how much to carry as I still need to make lots of purchases for the flat (including the desk and chair).  I am quite astonished that an internet bank does not have an email address!!

The humidity has risen further, to an average 90% over the last couple of weeks, and apparently will stay at this level and above until December.  So I have an on-going battle with mould.  Mouldy jeans, shirts, underwear, shoes, bags, and twice in the last two weeks I have had to drag the corner settee away from the wall to wipe off the mould growing up the back of it.  It really is a most unpleasant climate.

On the good side though I have started to make a few friends.  The first Sunday of every month sees an 'introductory bird walk' in the Metropolitan Park; I went along this weekend and met a few nice people.  Then a chance remark by one of the staff manning the building's reception area led to my discovering an English couple living in the same block.  Over a couple of glasses of wine last night (and I now have a corkscrew on loan until mine arrives!) I learnt that they had experienced many of the same issues as me, but having been here a year longer they had found ways around some and learned that they could live with the others.  It was encouraging.  Although it seems that the only answer to the mould issue is air conditioning and frequent inspections and cleaning of possessions.

The final bit of good news was that the container with all my stuff in is getting closer to Panama - it is now in Mexico!  I'm not looking forward to adding more leather shoes, a leather jacket, a wet suit and a hammock to the list of things that have undergo weekly mould inspections, but I will be so very happy to have my clothes, my kitchen stuff, my music, my books, etc.

time out in Andalusia

In any other year, the news that our annual conference was to be held in Madrid would have been very welcome, but only three months after my move from Africa to Latin America I would have appreciated the opportunity to hit some British shops.  Still, looking on the positive side it offered opportunities to practice my Spanish and to take some of the rest days due to me in Andalusia - to finally satisfy that long-held desire to visit Granada.

In fact I started my time off in Cordoba, as I wanted to see La Mezquita - the old mosque - which is often described as one of the jewels of Islamic architecture.  I have to say though that I was rather disappointed with it.  I could see that it would have been beautiful in its day, but after the re-capture of the south of Spain by the Catholics, the mosque was 'Christianised' (is that a word?), with a cathedral built in the centre of it and gaudy chapels all around the edge.  At some stage the 19 entrances were also closed off, blocking much of the natural light from entering.  Still worth a visit but not what I'd been expecting to see.

On the other hand, I had expected the small town of Ronda to be worth a visit, but not to be such a jaw-droppingly stunning place.

Set on the top of an escarpment, one part of it surrounded on all sides by steep cliffs and only joined to the rest of the town by an impressive bridge, it offers spectacular views over the surrounding countryside. My €20-a-night ensuite hotel room with air conditioning, cable TV and wifi was just a ten minute walk in one direction from bus and train station and ten minutes in the other from these stunning cliff-top views.  There were cheap places to eat (admittedly not-so-cheap if you wanted somewhere with a view), friendly locals and, well, I found myself wondering if it might be somewhere to retire to when the time comes.  The photo is only from my phone (as my camera packed up on day one of the trip) but they really were the kind of views that I don't think I would ever tire of looking at.

I was so impressed with the place that I seriously considered spending the rest of my week there and not bothering with Granada, but as Granada was the real purpose of the trip I tore myself away.

Granada did not disappoint.  Bigger than the other two places, a real city in fact, but dominated by the hilltop Alhambra fortress and palace complex.  I spent an entire day looking around the Alhambra, and then returned for a 10pm concert in the grounds, which gave me a sunset view looking over the adjacent Moslem Albayzin district.

The complex consists of a solid old fortress, several palaces, a church, a very good archaeological museum, an art gallery, a set of Arab baths, and extensive grounds and gardens.  My favourite was the Nasrid Palace, a 14th century set of courtyards and rooms with intricately carved and moulded ceilings and walls, hard to capture on a phone camera but hopefully this picture gives some idea of its beauty.

going back to school

This time round, unlike the time when I started my previous contract in French-speaking Senegal, my employer decided to honour my right to a couple of weeks at language school.  The town of Antigua, in Guatemala, is widely considered to provide the best value in the region so that was where I went, for two weeks of intensive one-to-one tuition plus practise in the evenings with the local family I stayed with.

Intensive was the word, as we covered six tenses, reflexive verbs, pronouns and a number of other grammatical issues as well as adding enormously to my vocabulary.  It was tough-going.  For the first week I was in bed asleep by nine every evening, exhausted from the mental effort.  Words and phrases were spinning round and round in my head.  But, wow!  How much I learnt in the two weeks!  I'm still having to think carefully about my verb endings but now I can actually speak to people!

Of course the challenge now that I am back home is to keep up the momentum.  Today was not a good start, what with a mountain of washing to do (not just the clothes I wore in Guatemala but also the ones here that had grown a layer of mould during my absence), food to buy, and also with an abortive trip to the homewares store (I went for a kettle and a soap dish and somehow came home with a salad bowl and some picture hooks) - not to mention watching the final set of Wimbledon - I have not used a single Spanish word today.  Although I now know that "cuarenta igual" is Spanish for 40-all.  Tomorrow I have to start working on it again, to reinforce what I learnt and hopefully start adding more.

I did have some fun in Antigua too.  It was cold and wet most of the time and so not really conducive to sightseeing, but still the beauty of the town showed through - a grid of cobbled streets with colourfully-painted colonial houses around a pretty central square, in a valley surrounded by volcanic peaks, albeit that the peaks were usually shrouded in clouds.  This photo was taken at just about the only moment when blue sky was visible.

I found time for a tour of a coffee plantation, and to visit the amazing Santo Domingo Casa hotel.  This latter is built in and around a ruined monastery, and includes a complex of six different museums within the hotel grounds as well as a free shuttle bus up to a look-out point near the town.  I think you're expected to buy a meal or at least some souvenirs whilst up there, but there seemed nothing to stop me wandering around with my binoculars instead looking at the Steller's jays and the band-backed wrens...

One really excellent aspect of Antigua is the food.  I had opted for a homestay and so had to eat what I was given in the house for six days a week, with only the middle Sunday to choose something from the enormous variety of restaurants in the town.  A garlicky cheese fondue, something I haven't had for some seven years, won out above the sushi and the Argentinian steak, and on other days I treated myself to local drinks in the cafes whilst I went through my homework (a Mayan recipe hot chocolate - with honey and chilli added to the mix - was one highlight!).  In the house we ate a lot of beans, cheese, chicken, tortillas and avocados, all of which I was pretty happy with.  On my final morning I visited the market, and was astonished at the fruit available - apricots, plums, cherries and strawberries from the cool highlands, and mangoes, pineapples and papayas from the hot coastal lowlands.  Orange and avocado trees in the town were dripping with not-yet-ripe fruit.  & (apparently, as I'm no expert) the coffee grown in the region is some of the world's best.  It tasted pretty good to me and I brought some back with me so now just have to add a coffee machine to the list of things to buy for the flat.