Chapter 8: The End of a Road / Panama

By Paul Fast

The camper is melting. It’s 35⁰C, 90% humidity and even the Panamanians are sweating. The soft EPDM gaskets have hit their melting point and are slowly slumping out of the camper’s joints. The aluminum roof pops and crackles in the evening when the sun finally goes down. It is the end of the dry season, but the rains won’t come. When a rare shower does occur, the rain hits the ground and condenses into steam, turning our giant sauna into a temporary steam room. The land itself has a fever, and every ounce of water that falls on its cracked, parched skin is immediately swallowed up and consumed.

We are travelling to the end of the road, not the ultimate end, but an intermediate one. At the far southern extremity of the country is a town called Yaviza, where the Pan-American Highway hits the jungle and stops. A sad, hand-painted sign is the only thing here that announces the Panamanian terminus of a road that starts in Alaska. The people here could care less about this point of geographic significance, and I wonder who put the sign up. Between the end of this road and Colombia lies the Darien Gap.

The Darien Gap has always existed. During the days in which the Pan-American highway was being stitched together from fragments of existing roads along the continent, the immensity of the jungle and the terrain created one particular obstacle that left the road builders scratching their heads. But technology and road building techniques have advanced, and the obstacle to this gap is no longer a technical one. The Panamanians have always been opposed to a connection with the South American continent. The official answer was a desire to prevent hand, foot and mouth disease from spreading to live stock in Central America, which was free of the disease. As usual, this simple excuse masked a number of more complex political and socio-economic reasons for keeping some distance. In the meantime, the roadless gap has been exploited by guerillas, para-militaries and drug cartels.

More recently, it has become the gateway to North America for hundreds of thousands of refugees who must cross this pinch point so they can continue their journey north. The Gap has become a treacherous, lawless place that continually spits out stories of murder, horrific violence, illness and hard, desperate travel. The trails through the gap are littered with garbage, and in some cases the bodies of those who didn’t make it. Migrants trying to make it through the gap face unspeakable horrors, and most of them are stripped of any belongings or money by thieves along the way. Muddy trails, dirty water, disease and heat are a constant. The number of migrants attempting the gap has spiked significantly in the last two years, as displaced people from conflicts in Venezuela, Ecuador, Haiti and as far away as Africa try and thread this geographic needle.

Panama has set up a special border service to patrol the Darien region, called SENAFRONT. They layer a heavy presence onto this border region, and we pass numerous checkpoints on our drive. At one checkpoint we are asked to register our passports and vehicle. The SENAFRONT guards are not your average policemen, they have the look of those who must deal with difficult and desperate people on a daily basis. The road to Yaviza is not a pleasant one. Garbage litters the shoulders, and black, hooded vultures peer at us through lidless eyes. They are ugly creatures, harbingers of death and they make my skin crawl. We encounter numerous groups of migrants, walking the highway shoulders to a Red Cross camp nearby. We are told that when they get to the camp, they are issued bus tickets by the Panamanian government that will get them to the Nicaraguan border, effectively shunting the “problem” down the line to the next country (apparently Nicaragua does the same).

Our purpose for travelling to Yaviza is not to check the box of having reached the intermediate terminus of the PanAm highway, although it’s a nice bonus. We are here to visit Einer and Girleza, contacts of Daniella’s through her work. They have generously offered a place for us to stay and get to know the area. Einer is a Christian missionary from Colombia who has spent the better part of his life working with, training and advocating for the Indigenous Wounan and Emberra people. When Einer talks about his love for these people, it is not uncommon to see tears in the corners of his eyes. He has an easy smile, and we are welcomed into the family immediately.

A few days into our stay, Einer offers to take us along on a journey to a nearby Emberra village where he is trying to establish a relationship with the village leaders. The path to the village follows a dis-jointed gravel road that goes through a teak tree plantation, and ends at the Chiriniqui River. Here we are ferried across in a dugout and make our way on foot to the village. The village is comprised of small wooden houses stilted up off the steep ground to make room for cooling breezes to surround them. We make our way up to the highest house and are invited in. Here we take our seat on the hard, wooden floor, which functions as the table, couch and living room. Over the course of the next hour we sit quietly as Einer engages in conversation with the village leaders. The room is slowly starting to fill up with people who have heard that visitors are here, and with it the temperature is rising. Our boys are doing their best, but it’s a hard situation for them to be in.

After a couple of hours, we are offered lunch. The menu option is either chicken or beef. Daniella and I have been in enough of these situations that we know that the safer option is chicken, but Jonah and Elias are eager for some “real meat” and opt for the beef. Lunch is served, and the boys are both dished up a bowl of fatty soup, with a large knuckle of beef bone that looks like it was hacked out of the cow with a blunt object. The chicken on the other hand is pretty tasty. I can tell that all of the eyes in the hut are on the white folk, and watch with pride as Jonah and Elias tuck into their dish without hesitation. They wrestle valiantly with their beef knuckles without complaint. Einer tells us later that several people told him how impressed they were that the kids cleaned up their plates so well. It is easy in these situations to feel completely out of place and irrelevant, but I am reminded by my boys that effort and intention can overcome difference. After lunch we are invited to share our story, and are able to share where our families have come from years ago. When I talk about our current journey, I find it hard to explain why we are making this trip. It feels completely irrelevant in a place like this, but we are inundated with questions and a genuine interest in what we are doing. The practicalities and logistics of how we are traveling are of particular interest, and it dawns on me that these people are used to taking long journeys through the jungle and that there doesn’t always need to be a reason to take such a journey. So in the end, we have something in common after all.

End of the road towns are strange places, and Yaviza is no exception. These towns exist because they are at the terminus of some impassable geographic feature. They are places where it was impossible to go any further, and being “at the end of the road” has quietly forged part of the community identity. These can be rough places, places where those not welcome along the rest of the line are bounced along until they end of here. Daniella and I are proud “end of the roaders”, having travelled to Prudhoe Bay, Tuktoyuktuk, Lund and a number of other terminus destinations. Over the course of the week we come to know Yaviza. Being at the end of the road is usually also tied into being a collection point for resource extraction, and Yaviza is a river port, the collection point for plantains and timber hauled out of the jungle. The sight of giant logs stacked at the edge of a river waiting for trucks to haul them out is a sadly familiar site. Here too, the jungle version of “old growth” is being cut down and carted off to foreign markets at a rapid pace.

One afternoon we stretch our legs and make our way into the town centre. Yaviza lacks a true town centre, which is an anomaly for most of the towns we have passed through, but it does have a covered basketball court and futsal pitch. The boys are quickly absorbed into a rough and tumble soccer game, which morphs into a basketball game late in the afternoon. Daniella and I are happy spectators, trading sentences in limited Spanish with the boys on the sideline. As the light fails, we pull the boys off the court and tell the rest of the local crew that we need to go home. Several of them trail us through town, keen to understand where we are staying. When they discover that our property includes a small court, the game picks right back up again. Several days later Nathaniel and I are walking past the local school, where a basketball game is in progress. Several of the players recognize him and a roar goes up. He is immediately pulled onto the court and spends the next two hours sweating it out with his new friends.

There is an Emberra family staying on the property with us, and one night Robinson, the father, invites us to go night fishing. We are told to procure fishing hooks, line and fresh chicken. Once night falls we step gingerly into the long dugout, which slowly noses it’s way into the current, the 10 horse outboard coughing sporadically into the warm jungle air. The river at night is a space carved out from the darkness of the jungle walls. It is a silent conveyor that glides us quietly through the riot of sound belting out from the darkness. The jungle is not silent, and the volume of noise being issued forth from an infinite darkness is mildly terrifying. Robinson’s headlamp sweeps the margins where the river meets the jungle, and picks up pairs of eyes sliding along this edge. “Crocodilo” he proclaims matter of factly. The boys turn back and look at me with wide eyes. We are told that the bigger the space between the eyes the bigger the croc. Fishing quickly takes a back seat to crocodile hunting and the boys and I sweep the river banks with our lights, sometimes catching the jerky motion of large reptilian bodies sliding off the bank and into the brown eddies of the river. Some of these crocs have significantly outgrown the “juvenile” category and there are plenty of them to go around. Several kilometers upriver we anchor up off the bank and handline for fish with fresh chunks of chicken. The fishing isn’t great but we manage to bring a few small catfish into the boat.

Our time in Yaviza draws to a close, and we make plans to head back to the city to prepare for shipping. In the short span of time we have spent here we have become friends with people we have only just met. We have cooked and eaten together, explored the jungle, shared stories of the good times and the hard times. We have laughed and cried together until late into the hot night and it will not be an easy good bye. Einer and his family will accompany us to Panama City, where he has an important meeting to attend to. The Panamanian government is attempting to expropriate a piece of nearby land owned by the Wounan, in order to build a bridge. They are offering pennies on the dollar, and Einer has been tirelessly advocating for the Wounan, helping them arrange legal assistance, and fighting for a people who are taken advantage of far too often. I wouldn’t want to be sitting across the negotiation table from him.

In Panama City we are invited to stay on a property owned by the local Indigenous church. This property was initially developed by missionaries as a safe haven for Indigenous people coming from the jungle to the big city to access services, and has since been taken over by the church. The property is located in a rough part of town, but we are glad for a safe place to park our camper. The Semprador Centre is a spartan, bare place of gravel and simple concrete block structures, but the heart here is in the people that run it. Once again we are taken in and cared for. Over the next week, as I duck in and out of police inspections and shipping appointments we help out where we can and pitch in on small improvement projects. Our camper has become a source of major interest, and we realize that most people here have never seen one before. One evening as we sit beside our rig playing cards, a small group of people forms next to us, glancing coyley at the camper. Eventually one of them plucks up the courage to ask if they can see inside. We oblige, and suddenly our camper is packed with a full blown house party; people taking selfies, asking questions and nodding their heads as we explain all of the different functions. This is a good way to travel they agree. In Spanish we are a “Casa Rodante” or “moving home”, and it feels good that our “home” finally has some house guests. This event repeats itself every night, and Daniella starts tidying each afternoon to get ready for our evening tours.

Finally, after much delay and waiting, we have a confirmed shipping date and the end of our time in Panama draws near. We ready the camper, cleaning it top to bottom and pack the bags that we will take on our flight to Cartagena. We are shipping RORO (roll on, roll off) because we can’t fit in a container, which means someone else will have access to our vehicle. This type of shipping is notorious for theft and break ins and I spend the afternoon boarding up the most vulnerable entry points to the camper with plywood. Early on a Monday morning I deliver the truck to the port in Colon, which turns out to be no small process. Civilians need to request permission to enter the port, must wear long pants and closed shoes, and are constantly under supervision. I watch nervously as a police dog romps around the inside of our camper. I am told that the dog will sit down if they smell drugs, money or blood. I am suddenly reminded of the three deer carcasses we carried in the back of the camper last October and break out in a mild sweat. Fortunately the dog exits the vehicle and seems satisfied that we aren’t narco traffickers masquerading as a nice, gringo family.

Panama is not a place where we uncovered a wealth of natural beauty or had a particularly relaxing time. The heat kicked our butts, the bugs ate us alive, and we lived in very spartan ways. What we did discover was a people that welcomed us with open arms. People who looked past the little bits of meat still clinging to a beef knuckle that we couldn’t quite finish, and accepted us despite our differences. We learned what it means to open the doors of your house to complete strangers, to step past uncomfortable moments and know that often a smile and a welcome can mean the world. I found myself thinking challenged to reconsider the level of my own hospitality when I got home, and embarrassed about the excuses I had used to exempt myself from bringing other people into my house.

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.” Matthew 25:31

This is the ethos of hospitality by which we have tried to live our lives. In Canada, I had always thought of myself on the giving end of this statement, and had ignorantly expected that as wealthy travelers (relatively) we would be able to continue to “give” as we traveled through places that were less developed and poorer than Vancouver. In Panama I learned a lesson, and our travel weary family found ourselves on the receiving end. We were welcomed with warm smiles, we were fed and we were given shelter. We were strangers, and we were taken in.