How are things going with ya, Family?!?
I pray all is well with you and your families.
Here’s the latest update of what’s been going on and happening since I last wrote…
So here we are back in Panama City…it’s pouring rain, not quite dark yet, and we’re planning to go grab a bite to eat shortly…something you could never do on the islands we were on for the last nine days. To be honest, I missed not being able to just walk to the store…not being able to walk anywhere, except to the other side of the island…
But…it was all good. Being surrounded by the saltiest water of my life, sand, bamboo houses and trashy shorelines was an amazing experience. Why? You’d have to experience it yourself to know why. Nights on this island, if not cloudy and raining, consisted of stars overhead, lightening in the distance and peals of thunder resounding across the skies, vibrating thoughout the narrow ‘streets’ of this island. Usually it was pitch black and there was always the sound of the waves of water rushing and crashing into the shoreline.
As amazing as all of this was, the people were the funnest thing about this island. At first, for me, it was a little tough. The people seemed quite fearful of us, not trusting of us, not approving of us being there. In my heart, I started out with all kinds of doubts and concerns about being here on this island. It wasn’t like we could just up and leave at the drop of a hat. The travel in itself was somewhat treacherous…FUN…and long, plus we had just entered a place that is so tiny with only its race of people. Why should they trust us?
I mean…look at all these smiles and innocent faces. Anyway, we entered the islands and although the kids seemed apprehensive at first, running away with fear-gripped faces, some bursting into tears as we approached them, some looking at us with the straightest faces that said, “I have a wall that you will not penetrate!”, some looking in awe that there were people who looked quite different than them and were somewhat taller than them…despite all of this, they quickly warmed up to us.
We soon found out that things were somewhat expensive: gasoline and water being the main things. Gasoline was $5 a gallon and a gallon of water was said to be somewhere around $2.50-$3. Crazy I know. So a water and toilet paper run was made on the first day and we had somewhere around 8 1-gallon jugs of water to last us until we ran out. A few days later when all the water was gone for the people, Seth and I took a boat ride with a few of the Kuna people to a nearby island for a water run. It was already dark and there were somewhere around 25 5-gallon (more or less) jugs to be filled, plus we had our own 8 1-gallon jugs. So we thought, hey, it shouldn’t take long. We were sadly mistaken. It was about 1.5 hours later and super pitch black away from the islands before all these jugs were filled. They used a water hose to fill each jug and the pressure was very low. It took about 6-7 minutes to fill each jug.
This water was used by the people on the island to cook, clean, to wash clothes and dishes, to bathe (if you didn’t use the salty waters surrounding the island), to do whatever needed to be done. Three of our team members needed to go back to the mainland (Panama City) after a few days to take care of business and Jeanette left her steripen so that we could sterilize the water. After using it a couple of times, this question rolled around, “Does this steripen really do anything or do they want you to think that it does?” So, not really knowing if this pen was REALLY sterilizing the water, we decided, ‘What the heck…let’s just go hardcore with this water.’ So we just prayed and decided everything would be alright. River water couldn’t be all that bad…
I mean… what could be so bad about this water??? Seriously? The guys told us that it comes from the mountains through some kind of pipe system that leads all the way to the islands so that they could have water. All the floating particles in it wasn’t that big of a deal…but we did find it easier to either close our eyes while we drank it or look in some other direction…
For some reason particles floating reminded us of things like: back-wash, parasites, bugs, contaminated water with any contamination that makes the water impure/brown, pee-water…whatever. We tried to think happy thoughts, which worked for the most part. The other bonus was that they sold Coca Colas and other flavored sodas!!! So we managed to survive off of carbonated drinks and river water! Fun times! Gotta love it!!
These are some of the preliminary things that went on while at the same time we were working towards gaining a trust with the people, accomplishing this effort with the kids and adapting to life on a small island of 900 people who spoke either Kuna or Spanish…but mostly Kuna…which is completely different from Spanish.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Kuna Yala Island experience for Team IGNITE…
Much love to you all!!
