Missing the direct bus to Panama City meant I had a much longer journey ahead of me. I took the ferry to the mainland, where while waiting for the bus I met a local boy named David. He was a black kid who was really excited to talk to me. He loved where he lived (it’s like paradise), and told me you don’t even have to work, really…if you just want something, people will just give it to you, at least other black people will. Panama is a very interesting country…it’s more diverse I think than any other country in Central America. There’s a good black population (mostly from the West Indies who came here to work on the canal), several different indiginous tribes, a smaller white population, and then, of course, the biggest of all, the Mestizo population, which is just mixed indiginous and european. But within this mestizo population, people range from really dark to really light and all in between…this is more than I’ve noticed in any other country (maybe Costa Rica is similar). Anyway, I’m always curious to know about race relations in all of these countries between all the different cultures. It seems that usually the indiginous populations have the most struggle, and more often than not I’m told that there are fewer problems for the black cultures. Apparently, however, this is not exactly how it is in Panama. David told me a great story about how he went into some store (this was in a different part of Panama, where apparently there aren’t many black people), and the guy told him he couldn’t be in the store…no black people allowed, because they are all theives. David came back a while later with three paychecks, something amounting to about $550 (by the way, they use the US dollar in Panama, which I think is weird..American bills and both American and Panamanian coins, and the Panamanian coins are the same size and value as the US coins), and he told this man he would pay him $550 for every black man they found in the jail. If there was none, he would get $550 from the store owner. They went to the jail and there was not a black man to be found; David collected his money and was also then allowed in the store. Good for him. Continue reading this entry »
Tania