An excursion to a troubled Naso country

My friend Malcolm Henderson lives in Panama. We have known each other off and on since in the Army together in the 50s. He has a property on the island of Bocas del Toro off the northern coast of the republic. I had accepted his invitation to visit him for a couple of weeks, and before leaving England he had made an interesting offer which of course I accepted and which I need to tell you about.

Panama has seven indigenous Indian tribes of which the Teribe (pronounced teribay --- and also known in their own language as the Naso) is one, and it mainly lives in small villages scattered along the banks of a river of that name to the northern end of Panama. The Teribe River had just had the worst floods in living memory with reportedly 40 inches of rain there in only 15 days. The area had been devastated. His suggestion was that we should accompany a missionary on a visit she was shortly to make up the River Teribe and meet King Santana, the last king of an Indian tribe in Central America.

Malcolm met me at Panama City airport on 8 February prior to flying on to Bocas the following day. The mainland coastal town opposite Bocas island is Almirante which had once prospered as the foremost northern port on the Caribbean coast for exporting bananas, one of principal products of Panama.

It was to Almirante that we took the 6.00 am water taxi early on 10 February. It was a wet half-hour journey and tropical rain showers fell throughout that day making it quite humid. Almirante turned out to be a ghost town with high unemployment and, particularly in the rain, depressed and with people doing very little about the place. The once prosperous banana export business was now almost at a standstill. Panama has a minimum wage policy and the European market had changed to purchasing Ecuador bananas instead since they were cheaper there where there is no minimum wage policy.

At Almirante we met the missionary, Bettie Moodie. She is a vivacious and notable person. She is Panamanian, speaks English well, and I suppose she may be about 28. She trained at the Global Mission Fellowship, an international ministry based in Texas I believe whose aim is simply to mobilize churches, pastors and lay people to plant new churches throughout the world. At a later date she told me that she once dreamed the words of Psalm 2 :v 8 three times running and that is why she became a missionary. I say Bettie is notable because she has formed two Christian churches in two villages of the Teribe villages in the last two years. With Bettie came Glenda McQueen. Glenda is a bit older and was ordained as an Anglican minister last year. Both are presently living in Almirante. Glenda has vast experience in many countries of the world and speaks many languages. She is also Panamanian and was coming partly to act as interpreter. Also in the party were Bettie's sister, Linda, their mother, Ian the son of an American friend of Malcolm's and another woman whose name I have forgotten. With Malcolm and I this made eight in the group.

The Teribe exist by the produce they grow from their banana, fruit and other plantations along the sides of the river between it and the rain forest through which it flows. (I noted with mixed feelings from a guide book that the current is "too swift for crocodiles though one might see iguanas lounging in the jungle trees.î I may say I was fairly pleased I saw neither).

The flash flooding of the river had destroyed all the banana and other plantations as well as a number of dwellings in the villages along it. The Teribe people face a desperate situation with little food and none to come from their normal sources until the next crops could be planted and grown. This would be some 9 months from time of planting at the earliest. There are about 3,500 members of the Teribe tribe living in the area --- too small a number to warrant much publicity and the government representative had only managed to travel a short way up to see what had occurred. Our small expedition was to get as far up as possible in a day and be in a position to report more fully as well as take up a few supplies.

\We all left Almirante in two cars which had been loaded with 100 pound of rice, chlorox (for cleansing), sugar, nails and soap. I think this had been arranged by Bettie or Malcolm more as a gesture to make to those families we were to meet up river, and as a foretaste of what we hoped would come in the near future.

After another hour we arrived at the end of the road, at this point more of a cart track, at the little village of El Silencio. From here the only way forward was by cayuco (a dugout canoe with a powerful outboard at the back). There were two waiting for us with two boatmen in each, one to operate the engine and the other with a pole at the front for measuring the water depth, to act as additional steering, and on this trip to ward off the occasional floating tree or other debris. And very adept they all proved to be. Indeed where the main means of transport is by water it was considered an achievement and an honor to be selected as a cayuco man.

Even at El Silencio it was apparent that the flood damage was obviously of disaster proportion with the banks a sea of mud and the river flowing very fast even a month after the flooding. No trees stood where we were told the jungle had reached the water's edge only a few weeks previously.

Before leaving El Silencio we were privileged to meet the King who had come down from his tribal village and was that day attending a government representative meeting in Changuinola the nearby major town of the area. With Glenda's assistance as interpreter, I was able to present to him a plaque of the Tree of Life wrapped in a tea-towel picture of St. Albans Abbey which I had brought with me for the purpose. The plaque had a description in Spanish gummed to the back and he seemed very pleased, if a bit overwhelmed.

In the next four or five hours we traveled a considerable distance up river and back and visited two of the Teribe villages.

There were four of us in each cayuco and we kept in sight of each other all the time. The flood damage was cruelly evident for the whole journey and especially poignant at the two villages where we stopped and spoke with the villagers. Neither had any crops whatsoever. At Bonjing a very wide area stretching back some 800 meters or more from the river bank had been totally stripped of its banana and fruit trees and the village was for a large part covered in mud and slime. Trees were uprooted and although it all looked very desolate this did not appear on the faces of the men, women and children whom we met and talked with through Glenda and Betty. Our visit was I think anticipated because we were all given a dish of delicious chicken and rice in welcome. None of our hosts took any but I was told that it would be thought insulting not to eat it. We distributed the pathetically small packets we had brought, talked, played with the children and were genuinely made to feel at home in the central hall of this village.

At our next stop was at Solom, a village of about 40 dwellings some 30 minutes further up the river. Here we were invited into the house of the head man. An actual church had been built at this village where Bettie's missionary work had also been successful. The design had included a thick solid concrete floor and heavy wood beams etc. All we could see of the remains that had not been carried away in the flood were some chunks of broken concrete. The roof and beams had been destroyed and, together with about ten houses in this village, had also been carried away. The villagers had laid out a pink string in the mud and wreckage in the area to denote where the church had stood. Needless to say it was a very poignant sign as well as an unspoken cry for help.

The headman of this village was 71 and as fit as someone 20 years younger. Like all houses along the river, his was built on stilts and comprised two rooms. The larger, about 25 feet square had a table and a smaller room behind was where the cooking was done on an open fire. Many of his sons and daughters lived there --- about 15 in all.

As at Bonging we were offered rice and chicken in welcome and we spent an hour with them and also visited his eldest son in a nearby hut who had been injured and was wheel chair bound. Through Glenda and Bettie we conversed with them. As in Bonging at no time did we hear complaint or self-pity among these people.

We returned downstream to El Silencio in much quicker time than we had taken upstream earlier in the day and were invited to the house of the political representative. He was not able to say in any detail what the government would be able to do about assisting the 3,500 Teribe Indians over the next nine months to get them food and stocks of seed to enable them to become self sufficient once more.

My thoughts at the end of that day have not changed now, three weeks later on. The scenes along that river were not unlike some of the pictures many of us have seen on TV of the aftereffects of the tsunami, another disaster of much greater proportion but of perhaps similar proportion to many of the poor people involved in each. How can I help?

Before leaving for the return journey to UK a week later I met Bettie Moodie once again and she was able to let me have a copy of the representative's report on the Teribe. It is a pathetic document one page long listing only four villages with the names of a total of 18 families who have lost their homes, together with a very short list of nails and iron sheets needed to rebuild them. Neither Solom or Bonging are among the villages listed.

Since my visit, Malcolm and Bettie have met with the governor of the province of Bocas del Toro to acquaint her of the situation. She was grateful for their report and has promised what help she can. Some clothing, school supplies and candy has been sent to Bettie by the Global Mission Fellowship and the Governor detailed the police to transport these to El Silencio.

There is no doubt in my mind that there is an urgent immediate need for money. Money is needed to purchase food to ward off immediate starvation, to purchase seeds for new crops to be sewn urgently, to provide regular food supplies until the crops can be harvested and to obtain transport to move supplies into the villages on a regular basis for up to nine months.

I have therefore opened a bank account and will be in a position to transfer all contributions to it to Bettie Moodie for immediate initial relief. I have full confidence in Bettie's integrity and ability and know that the monies will be used in the manner intended. In addition, the transactions and expenditure will be monitored by Malcolm and advice given as necessary. In tandem with this appeal, he is bringing the matter to the notice of local people in Bocas.

In the longer term, it seems to me that some affiliation for Panama bananas with the Fair Trade Foundation needs to be explored and I will follow this up with that organization in due course.

What is needed now is cash and if you can make a donation it will be greatly appreciated. Checks should be made payable to Teribe Appeal and forwarded to Malcolm Henderson (507) 649-2108.

Post-script: Since writing the above, I have heard from Louisa Jones who was traveling from Costa Rica to Panama at the time of the flood. She told me: "We were caught in the flood whilst we were trying to cross the border.... It was an unbelievable experience, seeing the amount of devastation that water could do to an area and peoples homes was very humbling. We had to walk about 10 miles with our big rucksacks along the road which had been practically destroyed by the flood. The tarmac resembled icing the way it had just been ripped up and moved. In places we had to cross large sections of waist deep water where all the road had been washed away. We walked past everyone's homes seeing the waterline from the day before up to the second floor and seeing people being evacuated from further down river by helicopter (1,700 in total). Unfortunately I don't think I have the words to fully describe what it was like, but I'm sure you can imagine."

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