Sapibenega is a Kuna term meaning, approximately, ecosystem -- "The home of the beginning and end of all living things," Paliwitur Sapibe explained to me. Paliwitur is a young Kuna entrepreneur, and Sapibenega is his "eco-lodge" resort on a tiny island near his home village of Playon Chico. They properly dispose of their trash, they treat their waste, they make power from a large bank of solar panels, and they get water piped in from a river on the mainland. Guests sleep in simple huts and lounge in hammocks slung between palm trees.
But
when we arrived at the "Snug Harbor" anchorage about a mile away,
Sapibenega's guests were having a more rustic experience than they
had bargained for. This was a stop on the Bluewater Rally, and
fourteen yachts -- a large number for this small,
infrequently-visited area -- had anchored in various spots around the
Snug Harbor - Playon Chico area. Several anchored near the resort,
and one had unknowingly anchored right across their water pipe. When
they lifted anchor along with the rest of the Rally, a few hours
before we arrived, they broke the PVC pipe with their anchor.
When Paliwitur and an English-speaking Peace Corps volunteer came out to see us in the resort's launch, we and a German boat were the only boats in the area. The Peace Corps woman explained the problem, and asked if we had scuba equipment and would be willing to help. Well, of course!
After all, Britt loves figuring out how and why things are broken, and fixing them. I was happy for the chance to do something positive to help the Kuna. And in some sense it was our responsibility; since a yachtie caused the problem, it's only proper that yachties fix the problem. So that afternoon, we dinghied over to the resort with Britt's scuba gear. He'd do the diving; I'd do the translating, since the Peace Corps woman was back at work in the town, and whatever surface support was needed. Paliwitur provided a length of line, linea, and a styrofoam float; I asked for a cosa flotante -- "floating thing" -- and he eventually figured out, and told me, that what I wanted was a boya (buoy). Later we needed another one, and I couldn't quite remember the word correctly, and asked for "otro boyo". Paliwitur, who speaks about as much English as I do Spanish, looked confused. "Necesitan otro muchacho?" Apparently he thought I was saying that I wanted "another boy"!
Britt slipped into the water right where the tubo emerged, and followed it down into the deeper water. About a third of the way to the mainland, in 40 feet of water, he found the break and marked it with a buoy. It was too late in the day to continue working on it, but we told Paliwitur we'd come back the next morning to try fixing it. In the meantime he would contact Panama City and see if he could get some underwater cement shipped in on the morning flight. He invited us to stay for dinner, but the dinghy ride back to our boat would be difficult in the dark, and in any event Britt needed to get cleaned up after his dive. So we agreed to come to breakfast instead, and headed back "home" for the evening.
At breakfast we learned that he couldn't get any underwater cement, so we returned to our boat and moved it close to the break in the water pipe. In the morning, Britt dove and cleaned the broken ends of the pipe while I helped the resort handyman make a sleeve from another length of pipe, holding the ends over the gas burner in the kitchen until they got soft, then using another piece of pipe to widen them. After lunch (also at the resort), we coated the inner surface of the ends of the sleeve with some "LifeCalk" we had on board -- anything was better than nothing -- and Britt dove again, using a couple of hose clamps to get the sleeve in place.
I dinghied to the other side to turn the water back on, and everything looked like it was working -- until they turned the pressure release at the resort off. Boom, no more water. They fed us dinner that night anyway, and the next morning it was back in the water. Britt brought up the hose clamps and tied eight lengths of strong nylon cord to each one. Then, on his next dive, he reattached the hose clamps behind each end of the sleeve, and laced them together, to counter the force of the water pressure pushing them apart. This time we were successful -- a good thing, as he had pretty much exhausted all the air in our scuba tanks!
While working on the water pipe, we learned a little about the history of the resort from Paliwitur. He and a group of Panamanian partners had started it about seven years back, but there had been a lot of friction, and they had split up and the resort had closed for several years. He had petitioned the Playon Chico sahilas for the right to reopen it himself, and about a year and a half ago they granted permission. So he was working hard to re-establish the resort, publicizing it with tour operators in Panama City, but there were still very few guests, only one or two families at a time.
Paliwitur himself is a remarkable man, an educated and ambitious Kuna. He went to school in Panama City, and then to tourism schools in Costa Rica and Mexico. He works hard behind the scenes, preparing the PVC sleeve for the water pipe repair, taking the launch to town to use the pay phone to order things from Panama, doing paperwork behind the bar. Then he comes out and chats easily with the guests, mostly upper-class Panamanians from the city, a few Americans on package tours. He seems far removed from the village men in torn t-shirts who spend the morning catching fish from their dugout canoes. Yet he's still Kuna, still a son of Playon Chico: one of the sahilas, Federico, proudly told us that Paliwitur had bought a pig and given it to the village for an upcoming feast.
In fact Kuna tradition runs deeply in him, despite his education and modern career. We had commented on his name, the only non-Spanish name we had encountered among the Kuna, and asked if his surname, Sapibe, was related to the name of the resort, Sapibenega. He explained that the Kuna had been required to give their children Spanish names, and that he used to have a Spanish name as well, but he didn't like it. Because of his work to bring eco-tourism to the Kuna, and his insistence on things being done in an environmentalist manner, ten years ago the sahilas honored him with a new name, words in the Kuna language meaning "protector of the environment".
Paliwitur tells us he's working on a web page, and he'll let us know the URL when he gets it set up. Until then, anyone interested in coming to stay for a few days at a tiny palm-covered island in the San Blas can contact the resort for more information at sapibenega@hotmail.com. It's a pretty neat place, although there's not much to do other than snorkel, fish, and lounge on the beach. There's no internet connection -- heck, there aren't even any telephones. But, unless another yacht anchors in the wrong place, we can assure you that at least there is running water.