Nothing changes your perspective so much as the passage of time. After our first few days at Suletupu and Caledonia, I was excited and happy, although a little exhausted from the effort of so much social interaction and so much Spanish practice. A few days later, and I was depressed and bitter. Here I was, thinking that I'd actually made friends among the Kuna, and instead all they did was ask for money, candy, canned food, coffee. I retreated into a shell, no longer inviting visitors aboard, refusing to even hang out and talk, with the convenient excuse that "mi esposo está enfermo." (Which was true. Britt had gotten an infection and felt crummy, preferring to stay in bed while waiting for the antibiotics to work their magic.) But a couple more days passed, and after a few encounters which were more pleasant, I managed to shed my cynicism and return to, if not my former naive enthusiasm, at least a more balanced view.
When we first anchored at Suletupu, we were visited by a small number of people, mostly children. All seemed very curious about our boat, asking lots of questions. We knew that yachts are a rarity in these waters, so if we were not busy when interested visitors appeared, we invited them aboard. To inhabitants of modern houses in modern cities, a cruising boat looks like a skinny, compact apartment. But to people who live in palm-frond huts, who cook over wood fires and get around in dugout canoes, it looks like a spaceship from another planet.
A rich planet, too. We have whole shelves of books, we have two bathrooms, we have electricity and a gas stove and running water. We don't go out and work the land every day. When Julio and Atalicia were over helping us cook a group lunch, Julio noticed our trash bag containing empty cans and bottles. I told him it was trash, and he was amazed. "The bottles are worth 15 cents in the village. For kerosene." I told him that if he wanted them, he could have them, and put them into another bag for him. Later, after Atalicia and I had fried up the breadfruit slices, I started to go pour the excess oil -- no more than a few tablespoons -- overboard. Julio immediately stopped me, and asked if we could save it and he'd bring a container later. I poured it into an empty bottle for them.
So, what is he supposed to think? Obviously, we've got so much that we can afford to throw away valuable stuff. So he wants some of it, and starts in on us immediately. "It's hard for us to eat three meals a day. We don't have enough money." "Everything is so expensive here. The Colombians who bring sugar and rice charge so much." After I blandly console and agree, he steps up the pressure. "There was a boat here last year, from England, with a woman named Juana. She was very nice, and gave us gifts of money." After Kevin flew back to the US: "Kevin told Melvin [Julio's son] that he would give him a gift of money. But he forgot," followed by a hopeful shrug. "Thank you for offering to take us back to the village in your dinghy. But you will need to use gasoline, which is very expensive, so if you want to help us, you should instead give us money."
At this point, things were already quite strained, and I started to get angry. "We will take you back if you want, we will not take you back if you don't want. But nothing more." We didn't see them for several days after that. Then they reappeared, after the arrival of two other boats in the anchorage; I suppose they didn't want to miss the opportunity to bum things off of new people, and they couldn't just ignore us, so they stopped by for another visit. We were cordial, but not particularly friendly. Julio asked for something, and I said, "Look. I used to think we were friends. But then you always asked for things, for gifts, for money, asking all the time. I think that is not friendship. Do you understand?" He said he understood, and stood there a while longer, gripping the edge of our boat. Then he pointed to one of the other boats. "Do you think they will buy molas?"
I guess things ended up with a fair exchange. Julio and Atalicia showed us two ways to cook breadfruit and explained how to cook otoe, a potato-like root vegetable. They provided breadfruit and green bananas for our group lunch, and gave us a stick of sugar cane, a plantain (which was rotten and we threw it away), a couple of coconuts, and a couple of otoes. Atalicia painted my nose and cheeks with Kuna makeup, and later gave me a small mola headband. We had a pleasant lunch (and an uncomfortable dinner, two days later) with them. I had thought that Julio had helped sort out the matter of the stolen anchorage fee with the sahila, although later he told me it wasn't him, he didn't want trouble with his friends, and that it was actually several of the kids who had visited us that day that had identified the thief and agreed that we had indeed paid.
On the other side, we provided some food for the group meal as well, in addition to feeding them dinner another day. (We had thought it was going to be another collaborative meal, as they had essentially invited themselves over. Silly us. We made rice and beans with a little ham. They were not impressed.) We gave them some cooking oil (I gave Atalicia another cup or so of new oil, in addition to the little bit of used oil they requested) and a large can of beef, a bag of candy, a length of rope, four small metal cleats Julio wanted, four empty glass bottles, a magazine, and five printed-out photographs of them on our boat. Kevin gave their son Melvin a very nice baseball cap. Kevin and I also bought a total of $52 worth of molas (embroidered and appliqued panels of cloth) from Atalicia.
The situation with Mandi, the young teen we spent some time with, also got strange, mostly on account of his father. After he took Britt and me for a nice walk up to his parents' farm plot, where we saw their newest canoe under construction, we stopped by the village on the way back to our boat and met his parents. For the next two days, Mandi came by our boat accompanied by his father, not alone or with a younger brother as he had before. Mandi said nothing each time, staring off unsmiling into space, letting his dad do the talking...which was mostly about how we should give him things. Mandi's father also asked that we take Mandi to Colon with us, "so that he can go to school there," but we explained that it was impossible. Finally, the day before we left, Mandi came back to visit along with his little brother, and we had a more comfortable visit. We traded him a bagful of cookies for two coconuts. And he smiled as he paddled back home.
So we're not trying to be friends with the Kuna anymore, but we are happy to enter into a business relationship. When kids come by and ask if we have candy, we say, "Yes, we have candy. What do you have to trade for it?" When the women paddle by and try to sell us molas, molas, and more molas, we say, "No, we are not buying molas, but if you have bananas or breadfruit we will buy some." We are happy to talk to people, to answer their questions about where we are from and where we are going, but we don't invite them aboard. But it's a loss, because I have to say I really enjoyed it. Showing one curious young man how our roller furling sail works, watching a little kid pick up our VHF mike (turned off) and say, "Hola! Hola! Hola!", learning how to cook food we've never even heard of...the good times have been wonderful.
We deliberately went to the less frequently visited east end of the San Blas island, thinking that the less touristy the islands, the more likely we'd come in contact with "real Kuna culture." Well, I guess we did. Real Kuna culture is striving toward the twenty-first century, just like people do everywhere else. We are now told that since the people on the more-visited islands get cruise ship passengers and the occasional resort guest, they don't try to get money from skinflint yachties. We'll see.