Panama
Crossroads of the Americas Panama might be a wisp of a country but it packs a diverse punch, says Laura Gelder
I
’m pretty sure the iguana is dead. I glance at my friend, Mick, wondering if he’s thinking what I’m thinking. He looks as bemused as me and more children gather round, excitedly poking the poor thing through the cage with sticks. “This lizard is deceased,” I hiss to Mick. out of the corner of my mouth. “No, no it’s just resting,” he retorts.
I knew he was a Monty Python fan. “This is an ex-lizard,” I say. At this point we start to fall about laughing, much to the amusement of the kids. We can’t really explain to them the parallel between their pet reptile and Monty Python’s famous dead parrot sketch because they’d never understand – the children don’t speak English and
live on a tiny island in the remote San Blas archipelago, part of the Guna Yala region in Panama. Guna Yala is the nation of the Guna people, an indigenous group small in stature but big in spirit. The Guna are one of Panama’s seven native tribes and fought to have autonomy over their land, which includes a 232-mile-long strip of the Caribbean coast from the Colombian border. Most of the Guna live in the San Blas Islands but climate change is forcing them to look shoreward where a town is being built on higher land. We’re on one of the four main inhabited islands, Gardi Sugdub, where around 2,000 people live despite it being just 400 metres long and 150 metres wide. Every inch of space seems to be filled and the houses, fashioned from corrugated iron, reeds and bamboo, extend out over the water in places. As we cross the island we happen upon two nattily-dressed Mormons, who wave
Panama
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