1/31/02 | A visit to Caledonia

in the village

After a few days in our mostly-quiet anchorage, it was time to pay a visit to Caledonia. As we rounded the island of Coetupu (which holds the airstrip that Kevin would eventually fly out from) in our dinghy, the village came into sight. From the water, all we could see were wooden huts with thatched roofs, each with a wood-and-thatch outhouse hanging over the edge of the water.

We were immediately swarmed by children, and approached by several sellers of molas. The children, on our request, led us to the school, a low concrete barracks-like building. (School is out for two months, their equivalent of a summer vacation. This is the dry season, when it is cloudy and windy but rains only in the mountains; the rest of the year, it rains constantly all over the coast.) Here and there we saw other concrete buildings, including one which according to the sign on it was a hotel (the blue and white building in the photo below) but which seemed to be just an unoccupied shell, and there is a fairly nice concrete basketball court in the center of town. But for the most part the buildings in Caledonia are traditional huts.

The biggest hut is the congreso, the equivalent of City Hall. We stopped in to pay our respects to the sahila, and show our receipt for our payment of the visitor's fee. (At that time, the sahila had discovered that we (and the town) had been swindled, but we had not yet been visited by the "canoe tribunal".) The chief sahila and the other town elders all reclined in hammocks in the center of the room, and indeed it was quite pleasant in there, cool and shady. On a shelf near the back door sat several dozen trophies, which we stopped to inspect; apparently Caledonia is quite a power in the local Kuna basketball league. (Although they'd never make it in the United States. The Kuna are wiry and muscular, but very short. At 5'4" I tower over all the women and many of the men. Next to the Kuna, Britt and Kevin look like absurd pale giants from another planet.)

Near the congreso hut is the dock. On one side was the Navy patrol boat, on the other a Colombian trading barge. Colombian traders visit the San Blas islands, particularly these southern ones, much more frequently than those from Panama. They bring gasoline, cooking oil, sugar, flour, and of course money, and trade for coconuts and bananas. It has to be a rough and difficult trip, especially on the return, but it must be lucrative or they wouldn't do it.

adornments

Despite the women calling to us from every alleyway, I was not especially tempted to buy more molas. Both Kevin and I had bought some from Atalicia the other day, and since we would be in the San Blas for several weeks, I wanted to spread out my purchases among the islands. But since Kevin would be leaving from here, he wanted to buy a few more as souvenirs, so I looked over his shoulder as he examined the various designs. They ranged from the traditional (parrots, butterflies) to the modern (three abstract bottles labeled Pepsi - Coca - Cola), all very colorful, none exactly cheap. The squares are not just for selling to tourists; nearly all the women of Caledonia wear traditional blouses with mola panels.

But by one group of huts, which turned out to be the local store, I saw something more to my taste. In addition to the mola blouses, Kuna women wear intricate and colorful beaded bracelets and anklets, sometimes extending nearly from wrist to elbow and from knee to ankle. When a woman held up a selection of small bracelets, I pointed to her ankles and mimed a question. She smiled and nodded, took me by the hand, and led me to a chair in front of the store. She went inside, then came out with a rolled-up cloth with two different sets of beads wrapped around it, and I made my choice. The price, set after a quick conference with her husband behind the store counter, was $5. A dozen children crowded around as she quickly and expertly wrapped my ankle with the beads, weaving back and forth until the pattern was complete. It's only an inch or so wide, not quite as elaborate as the ones the Kuna women wear, but I think it looks nifty. Besides, I found out later that the win, as it is called, is not just decoration -- the Kuna women put them on to indicate that they have borne their first child!  Oops.

Afterward we went looking for Julio and Atalicia's house. One of their children was in the crowd at the store, and she led us back to her house. Julio was at work, but Atalicia, hard at work sewing molas, greeted us pleasantly. There were several women and girls there, including Julio's mother and a somewhat modern Kuna teenager who lived in Panama City and was visiting family. We had come to deliver printed out copies of the pictures we'd taken of our lunch together, and they all crowded around and giggled at them.

We had noticed over the past few days that several of the Kuna women had what appeared to be black tattoos on their noses, usually simple vertical lines with a few small crosshatches. The teen from Panama City, Jessica (who giggled with amusement when we told her that hers was a popular name in the United States; and come to think it, she probably spells it "Yessica") also had a nose design, a few stylized flowers and lines. As she spoke very good Spanish (the older Kuna women don't speak Spanish, nor do the younger kids who haven't had much schooling yet) we asked her if it signified anything. "Oh no, it's just for adornment. Do you want one?"

"It's not a tattoo?"

"It comes off," she assured me, and with that she spoke with Atalicia, who quickly produced a little bowl of black stuff and a tiny stick. Within a few minutes I had my very own funky barbed-wire nose paint. I admired it in the mirror, but as I was really hoping for some flowers like Jessica's, and thought the black paint on my paler skin looked a little odd, I took soap and water to it back at the boat that night. I might as well have tried to wash off my freckles. I guess "it comes off" means something different than "you can take it off". Later I was told that it wears off in a week or ten days. Until then, I've got a barbed-wire nose.