Take it Easy

One thing that I’ve always struggled with is the idea that I need to constantly be doing, achieving, advancing. I mean I know that’s not true, that sometimes it’s good to just be still, but often it seems like it’s true. As you can imagine this has been even more of a problem living in rural Panama with a community of farmers. By now I’d say I’ve gotten used to the whole perception of time thing. As in how “after breakfast” is as specific of a time as you get. Or waiting for three or four hours at the port to hitchhike on a canoe to get home, and being okay with that. But it’s still difficult to deal with just how long it takes to get anything done.

 

Time moves at a different pace here

All my projects and seminars go
through Lilio- the village chief.

Thinking about how efficient and productive North Americans are is pretty incredible. I mean they can work eight hours a day without hardly taking a break, they meet all kinds of deadlines, and schedules are always packed. Here it’s well, a little different. Working all day takes too much energy. If projects have a deadline, it usually ends up being pushed back to a more convenient date. Honestly I think it has a lot to do with the climate (or lack of climate control). There are some days where it’s all I can do to get myself to leave the protective shade of my house. A few minutes of walking in the sun feels like running a 5k… in a sauna. Sometimes it’s so hot I can’t even think. I just lay on the floor of my porch and sweat, only moving occasionally to swat at mosquitoes. This is really great advertising for people thinking about visiting the Darien, I know. The humidity is just draining. Finding the energy to be active and accomplishing things can be a huge challenge.

I’ve already written about meetings and one of the Embera people’s favorite pastimes – talking. But that’s another example of things taking way longer than they should. Sometimes getting our entire water committee to have a meeting feels like trying to get the Muppets back together for one more show. I’ll spend an entire afternoon trying to find each person (Alberto? He’s off in the jungle somewhere, haven’t seen him in a few days) just to tell them that there is a meeting tomorrow, hoping that they’ll show up. It’s amazing how busy people become once they here about a meeting or a seminar. All of a sudden there will be an urgent trip to the farm to check on their plantains or see how tall their rice has grown. Certain tactics work better than others for convincing them to attend. Bribery with juice and cookies works most of the time.

You can spend a lot of time watching plantains grow

I don’t write these things implying that Embera are lazy people. Not at all. If lazy is filling a bucket with 40 pounds of water and carrying it up from the river, swinging a machete for hours just to mow your lawn, building all your own furniture by hand, or harvesting and hauling boatloads of plantains out of the jungle to try and make enough money to send one of your kids to high school, then yes they are very lazy. Really it’s just a different perspective on life. Being as efficient and productive as possible isn’t high on the list of priorities. I guess I could learn a thing or two from that perspective.