Panama: Sight-Seeing and Customs

Franklin Durado
Yes, not many people would include a picture of a hardware store in their collection of "sight-seeing" pictures, but mine wouldn't be complete without "The Big Orange."

We spent a lot of time at this hardware store. Not to disparage Paulette or anything, she had entirely too much on her plate, but we got to know the insides and out of "The Big Orange." Eerily similar to a Home Depot in color and design (despite Patsy Willimon referring to it as "Lowe's," but so much more different than any hardware store I had ever been in. They had everything from your general hardware and home improvement items, to exercise equipment, athletic equipment, and musical instruments.

The Pacific Ocean

Since the country of Panama runs West-East (or, East-West the way we first traveled), the southern coast is their Pacific Coast. We stopped here on our way to David for a nice 3-hour lunch. The scenery was beautiful, every picture that I took turned out amazingly. As Laura said, "It's kind of hard to screw up a picture of something so beautiful."

From what I could gather, this was a bit of a resort area where there seemed to be many Panamanian people at the beach as well as a good helping of international vacationers.

Old Panama
This is a picture of a now ruined Cathedral in Old Panama, one of the first settlements in the country. Tragically, the location was not as strategically located as the founder would have liked and the city was sacked in the early 1600s, I think.

One of the neat things about this ruin is that apparently seven different orders of monastics lived in this area. I don't remember which ones were there, but it was stressed to us be the 'Tourist Police' that this kind of thing doesn't usually happen. (I know there are at least a few monastics out there in the blogosphere, so I'd appreciate any extra information on this and their relationships.)

Panama City Skyline
From a distance, you can see that Panama City looks much like any other major city in the world. However, of all of those high-rise buildings, only one existed more than ten years ago.

Much of this has to do with the changing leadership of Panama, after years of oppression by Noriega, their current leadership actually cares about improving the economy and the lives of the Panamanian people. Also, with the changeover of the Panama Canal, and it now being in the control of the Panamanian people, much more money is being pumped into the economy than ever before.

Despite the urban renewal and the growth of the city, as with any major city, the poor were getting the shaft. As older buildings were being bought up to be restored (none could be torn down or even have major external work done), the poor who were living in them were being "relocated." I wasn't clear on where they were being relocated to, or even if the people were being treated justly. But, it did seem that there was more thought put into this than many of the renewal projects un the U.S.

In addition, as with the beach, Panama is now marketing itself as a major tourist destination, especially with eco-travel in mind. Just about every person we talked to about Panama as a vacation spot mentioned at least once about how many birds there were in Panama. Apparently, in a country the size of South Carolina, there are more species of birds than in the whole U.S.

Panama Canal: Miriaflores Locks
Growing up in the Tennessee Valley, I'm no stranger to locks and dams. However, that made the Canal no less impressive. The Miraflores Locks are in Panama City, making them the final set of locks that ships go through before continuing their journey to the Pacific Ocean. (The locks on the Caribbean side are in Colon.)

Being the nerds we are and proving our dependence on TiVo, Laura and I had set the TiVo to record anything having to do with Panama in the months leading up to our trip. This turned out to be a good thing, since it not only helped us be more familiar with Panama and its history and culture, but it also was the only way we knew anything about the locks. There was a really neat museum and even aquarium there at the locks that had a lot of information about the Canal. But, the major source of information was a film that was shown to all visitors.

As a final proof of how short an attention span Bishop Willimon has, we were made to rush through the last 1/3 of the museum tour so that we could see the film - only it was in Spanish. Every 20 minutes the film would alternate between being shown in English and Spanish. Apparently, the Bishop had become bored with the museum and was ready to go. So, we hurry and go in, see the film (I slept through it), and got ready to leave. Only we stayed there for at least another hour, plenty of time to have seen the film in English at least twice.

Customs
As seen in other posts, there was a picture of a "Hello Kitty" pinata that was burning. As we were driving along the Pan-American Highway, we kept noticing life-sized effigies of people on the side of the road. This turns out to be a Panamanian New Year's tradition in which they create a representation of their favorite (or least favorite) person. On New Year's they gather around the stuffy-guys, fill them with fireworks, hold a mock-funeral with a reading of said person's Last Will and Testament, and then set them on fire, watching for them to explode.

Not wanting to be outsiders to their culture, and wanting to understand more about the people we were working with, we decided to to create our own effigy of Bishop Willimon. You can see in the picture "Bishop Kitty" holding a sign saying, "8 Districts or Bust," in reference to our upcoming called Annual Conference. The stole was expertly crafted by Amanda vonHermann, guaranteeing that her husband, Peter, will be appointed to the Roanoke District once he graduates from seminary.

Fortunately Bishop Willimon took this in great stride and had a good laugh about this. Although, I fully expect to hear this in an upcoming sermon from him about how the young clergy of this day are so radical that they have no respect for authority. We all got a good laugh out of it, especially the Last Will and Testament, created by Brandon Harris. (I hope to get a copy of it to post here soon.)

Conclusion
Of course this is only a small representation of the sights that we saw there in Panama. The countryside was beautiful as well as the coastal area. But, like anywhere, there was evident disparity between the haves and the have-nots.

Overall, we were welcomed by the Panamanian people as we wandered through their country like the clueless gringos we were. This was somewhat surprising, considering how the U.S. had contributed in no small part to the economic and political struggles the country has had in years past. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't have been so friendly to people from a country that had invaded mine over 20 times in the last century. Despite this, the people were extremely kind, welcoming, and ready to show how proud they were of their country.