Exotic beaches, red frogs and the tribes of Bocas del Toro

I, Konrad and Loths took a boat trip the day after we arrived. We were grouped with 2 girls from the US who work at a hospital in Panama, in a village near David. We were promised dolphins, but the season for dolphins was not at that time, so we did not see any dolphins. There were other that were luckier than us, that saw dolphins, but there are not as many around as in dolphin season. The place we went to look for them is even called Dolphin Bay. After looking, hopelessly, for dolphins, we went to a snorkel spot (after ordering food on a restaurant on stilts in the sea, for eating after the snorkeling). We were watching beautiful and colorful corals and some fishes. I have seen most of them before, because I have done so many snorkeling trips. It is surprisingly shallow around the islands. Even far from the islands, in the middle of the ocean, it was so shallow that we could stand up. It was a bit scary, because the bottom is full of corals and seaweed, and I was a bit worried to step on something that would sting me.

After the snorkeling, we went to eat at the restaurant on Isla Solarte. I had ordered fried fish with Creole salsa, it tasted delicious. They had shrimp, octopus and lobster on the meny too. When we had eaten we took the boat to Sloth Island to see some of these wonderful animals. They are hanging around in the trees everywhere on this island dedicated to them. The last stop was the Red Frog Beach where we had 2 hours to swim and play in the water. A lot of the time there are killer waves on this beach, but they occur mostly in the afternoon and from November to August. But they can occur very suddenly, so signs like this (on the picture above) on the beaches around on the islands are very common. When we were there, the waves were gentle and not so big. The beach is very shallow, so you have to go too far out to get a swim, or else you get a bit of swimming when the waves come in. The Red Frog Beach is called that because of the small red frogs that are numerous on the islands, especially on this beach maybe since it is named after the frog. The frog is poisonous, so tribes in South-America use it to poison their darts in hunting  for food in the jungle. The pictures are from the Red Frog Beach, the last one on the boat back to Bocas del Toro.

 

Above, poison red dart frog. They also come in blue and yellow and they like to stay in humid vegetation in and by the trees. 

The captain of the boat is a Ngöbe–Buglé, they were known as Guaymi before and live in Bocas del Toro and on the dry plains of Veraguas. I asked him about his culture and about their oral history, if they have any mythology or stories. And he said no. Later I was told that they do not like to talk so much with outsiders. He had his wife with him on our tour, and she never said a word to any of us. He did tell med that whhen Cristobal Colon came to the archipelago, he named it Bocas del Toro, and there is one island; Isla Colon that is named after him. I was also told that the Spanish chased off and killed many of the tribal people in the area, and so many escaped to the main land. he also told me that there are 4 "races" (he called them races) of tribal people living on the islands, and that their languages are so different that they do not understand each other. Spanish is the second language for many of the tribal people. He also told me that the women have beautiful gowns with bright colors and geometric patterns, but they do not wear them much these days. They may wear them during their festivals, and the men dress in exotic bird feathers and paint their faces with geometrical patterns in black, white and red. The Ngöbe–Buglé live in huts near rivers or at valleys on the main land, they fish, hunt, raise dogs, cows, chicken and pigs in modern days. The boat captain told me that before the Spanish came, they fished and hunted small deer, wild pigs, monkeys and sloth, now there is not much wild life left other than monkeys and sloth. And of course birds and amphibians. They are the largest indigenous group in Bocas del Toro Archipelago, forming 63.6 % of the national indian population, spread out in several communities in the islands of Colon, Bastimentos, Solarte, Cristobal, Popa and Water Cay. They still retain many of their aboriginal customs and practices, they have lovely necklaces constructed with colorful beads that originally were duller made from pebbles, pieces of bones, seeds and sea shells that they colored with homemade dye. The necklaces are called chaquira, and now they can buy beads of several shapes and colors and weave them into colorful ornaments. Another ethnic group in Bocas del Toro is the Bokotas who still use bows and arrows, spears and fish nets. You can see their round houses built on stilts, sometimes into the water (sea). Their women also wear a gown similar to the Ngöbe–Buglé, also called 'nahua' and necklaces, facial paint of black and red, and shiny hair combs. The men wear manta-sucia shirts. There are supposedly still many pure families of both tribes.

Buglere is the Chibchan language of Central America, spoken by a 1000 people in Panama and Costa Rica. Like most Chibchan languages (30 different languages spoken in Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica), Buglere is a tone language with SOV word order (S= subject, O= object, V=verb. It means that a sentence is usually built up with the words in this order; subject-object-verb. English and Norwegian are not SOV languages, but Latin, Japanese, Basque, Dogon and Hopi are among 73 (known) languages that are). Many linguists consider Buglere and Bogota to be dialects of a single language, but according the captain, speakers of the two languages can not understand each other. In Panama, the Buglé an td their relatives the Ngöbe (or Guaymi) have joined into a single Ngöbe–Buglé tribe. Most Ngöbe–Buglé live traditionally in simple small jungle settings and identify with their communities much more than with ethnicity, which in turn affects their level of national political organization. They were organized in the latter twentieth century to protect their land and culture. Their society was disrupted by the spread of banana plantations, the construction of the Inter-American Highway through their territory, and the appropriation of their communal lands by mestizo peasants and cattle ranchers. The 1972 constitution required the government to establish ‘comarcas' or reserves for indigenous groups, but this policy was not universally implemented.

The erosion of their lands caused many to leave and join Panama's migrant workforce where they were generally given the lowest paid and most physically damaging jobs. However development projects like the  Cerro Colorado mining project put Ngöbe–Buglé ancestral land in peril. This forced them to organize themselves politically.