Island Time

Woken by this morning’s flight leaving at about 7:30, dozed a bit then got up at 8:00 – breakfast time. Breakfast today is a pancake with maple syrup, coffee and cereal, a good start to the day. Our meal is interrupted when a puffer fish is spotted, we all wander over to have a look before resuming eating.

We’re having another lazy morning, Florence has a massage booked for 11:30, we need to find something to do until then. The hammocks are calling, lay there for an hour reading, dozing and writing diaries. Then decide to go for a quick swim to cool off. There is a tiny beach on the edge of our island so we go there, the water is of course warm; we discover some coral right off the beach and quite a few fish too – this changes my plans for the afternoon.

Florence returns glowing and relaxed from her massage, we return to the hammocks until lunchtime. Lunch today is a green salad, plantains, beans, coconut rice and papaya.

The next activity is a boat trip to the mangroves at 15:30 but we’ve decided to do what anybody in a tropical paradise with a few hours to spare would do – booked a private visit to the cemetery.

We’re taken by boat back to the mainland, only a ten minute journey. We then walk the length of the runway which becomes a footpath after the one flight of the day has come and gone. At the end we take another path into the jungle and up a small hill. There’s a great view over the island community and to our resort island beyond. After a few more minutes we reach the cemetery – it’s a very unusual site; there are makeshift looking shelters everywhere, cooking pots, fire embers and hammocks. Our guide Domi explains the burial process briefly: the body is laid in a hammock at home immediately after death, after a few days it’s brought to the grave yard and laid to rest in a deep hole in the ground, still suspended on a hammock. Some possessions, eight sticks representing the eight levels to be passed through on the way to heaven and a model boat to help the soul on its journey are also placed in the grave. It is then covered at the top with wooden slats and on top a plain mound of earth. The graves are all unmarked.

Hammocks are very important in Kuna culture. Babies are placed in them as soon as they are born, most people sleep in them and most people are conceived in them hence their importance in the burial process.

Each family has an area of the cemetery, this is what the shelters cover. It is up to the surviving relatives to decide where a body should go – with the parents or spouse’s family. The women from each family regularly visit the cemetery, between 8:00 and 12:00 each morning. There is a cooking area for them, as well as small fires throughout the site where they have been making food earlier. Domi has some helpful drawings to explain the process further. It’s a fascinating place, very different from anything we’ve seen before. There are however elements from other cultures creeping in: Kuna people who live in Panama City often bring plastic flowers when visiting relatives’ grave and one grave of a Kuna who adopted Catholicism had a headstone with a name on it.

Walking back down the runway we pass the local medicine man. Kuna believe in using medicinal plants as much as possible. We return to the island just before the Mangrove boat leaves. This is announced like all excursions and meals by a conch shell being blown. Florence goes on the excursion, it’s an enjoyable boat trip with some interesting wildlife – kingfishers, a white raccoon, starfish and a sea-cucumber – and a chat from Domi about how they hardly use plastic yet it is polluting their lives.

I stay behind to snorkel on the coral around the island, just off the beach there are so many different fish – the strangest is a stripy red one with huge eyes – a Longspine Squirrelfish.

Dry off in the hammock, just time for one more swim before dinner.

Days doing very little seem to pass very quickly here!