Things I'll miss about Panama

I arrived back in Pennsylvania a little less than a week ago, and I slipped back into my previous life almost like I'd never been away.  I mean, I had to unpack a bunch of things we'd boxed up and stuck in the basement, and there are changes to buildings or roads that are completely new to me, but there's much that feels so familiar. So like home. 

There are things about being home that I appreciate all the more for not having them (cool spring days, and cooler nights!  Sidewalks!).  But of course, there are amazing things about Panama that my little Lancaster town doesn't have, and so here's a retrospective of the things that most wowed me about my nine months on the isthmus. I wrote much of the words below while I was still there, so words like "here" mean Panama, not Pennsylvania.

Birds:

Seeing them and also hearing them. I was not at all a birdwatcher (or a bird listener, either), but here they are so ever-present that I've gotten to know many of them by sight and some by sound.  The clay thrush woke me every morning. I recognize the cricket-like sound of toucans, which lets me gaze at the trees where they hide and then occasionally get a glimpse as they fly from one tree to another.

Walking around in Panama is like being at the movies and hearing the soundtrack that says you're in the jungle.  There are So Many Birds, and so many different songs all at once.

Yellow-backed Oriole

Trees

So many, such a variety! I love the showy parts of the trees, as well: the many flowers, fronds, tangled and visible roots.

The Panama tree: looks like a space rocket.

Guayacama in full bloom.

Ylang ylang: smells soooooo good.

The iron grillwork

And all the decorative aspects that come with guarding a beautiful house in an equally beautiful way.  Although we don't generally have bars on our windows back home, I do appreciate how such window covers save the lives of birds.  

The buses! 

They're certainly not perfect -- they are not on a Swiss-like regular schedule, but they are Panama regular. I usually wait at most 15 minutes for a bus, and the longest I've had to wait is slightly over a half hour. That seems like a long wait out in the hot sun, but I suspect that's still better than what would happen if I showed up at some random time at a bus stop in my home town.  The buses here are clean, relatively quiet, easy to use, and cheap.  

Bus pass that took me all over the place.

El Canal es Nuestro: "the Canal is ours"

A city with views of tree-covered hills. 

From many points in the part of Panama city where I've lived, I'm only blocks away from dense forest.  The hilliness means when I get to the top of a crest I can often see the sky scrapers of downtown and also the forested Cerro Ancón; toward the bottom of hills there are sometimes rivers with frogs, herons, turtles, lizards, and cayman crocodiles. 

Feeding Crocodiles

They eat mangoes, watermelon, bread, and chicken bones,
but not spaghetti.  Just so you know.

The fruit

Since I love eating locally, I know I'm going to miss bananas (so many varieties), mangoes, papaya,  pineapples. Don't get me wrong, I love Pennsylvania apples, peaches, cherries . . . but I'll remember the Panama fruit fondly, too.

Mangoes growing all over, now that May is here.

Uncomplicated national pride.

In the U.S., flying the flag is often meant as a divisive or quasi-militant statement these days.  But in Panama, the flags are a point of unifying pride. I love seeing people here of all ages take delight in wearing traditional clothes and dancing traditional dances.  The sense of community spreads beyond national unity; lots of events have people dressing in similar t-shirts that feature their company/church/organization.  

And I love how happily people suit up with halloween costumes and Christmas bling; the self-consciousness that stops many U.S.ians from doing the same just isn't a deterrent.

People who've taken unconventional paths. 

Here, we've met a variety of really interesting people who have done such amazing things.  Because of its location and low cost of living, there are people from all over the world.  When I attended a welcome-to-the-church gathering for newbies, there were 20 or so of us in the room representing seven countries: Panama of course, the United States (not just me), Columbia, Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Honduras. So many different countries coming together in one small room!

John and Judy Collins, eating breakfast with me!

The people who come to Panama have often taken big chances or made bold, unusual decisions in the past.  My host in Panama started her own non-profit math outreach foundation.  I met (and walked with, and made breakfast for) Judy and John Collins, the wife-husband pair who invented and organized the Ironman Triathlon!  My husband found a bike buddy who, at the age of 50, had retired and bought a boat that he lived on while sailing around the world for 20 years before selling it and settling back on land.  Our AirBnB host was a former aerospace engineer who'd run his own treasure hunting company and had done lots of spear fishing, then turned his home into the most vibrant AirBnB I've ever stayed in. Another of our hiking buddies chose a new name in his twenties, and considers himself (with good reason) to be refugee from the racism in the U.S.  One of the Embassy folks I met was born in Jamaica and has lived all over the world (when the pandemic struck, she left India to return to Colombia).  

Warm feet:

I have not-great circulation, and in Pennsylvania my feet are so constantly cold that I wear closed-toe shoes in the summer.  In Panama, I can sometimes walk around barefoot! And I haven't had my toes ache from being cold at all.  It took a short trip to Chile to remind me how lovely it has been to ignore the temperature of my feet while I'm in a tropical country that makes the rest of my body quite dewy all the time.  

Speaking Spanish

This is an interesting one. Before I went to Panama, I geared up in lots of ways for the language transition: I audited Spanish literature classes, attended a discussion group, and mentally prepared for being lost in conversations.  But I didn't think at all about what it would be like to then come back.  

It only hit me after I returned to Pennsylvania how much I miss switching into another language. I live in a neighborhood with a lot of hispanic neighbors, and when they greet me in English, I feel odd twinges of regret.  When am I going to get a chance to give a math talk in Spanish again?  Share the silly jokes I learned?  

What was it like?

Lots of people understandably ask me, "What was Panama like?", and I have to say, I'm still processing. There are so many aspects to my time there---it was so multi-dimensional, you might say--- that I'm still having a hard time trying to boil the description down into something that is representative but doesn't ramble on for an hour.  I'm sure there are things that ought to have made it onto this list that I've neglected . . . 

One of the things I am most grateful to Panama for, though, is how the whole extended travel experience makes me appreciate my non-Panama life.  When my sisters and I were little, we did a lot of traveling with my parents, whose work took them all over the world. We all agreed that we loved taking trips, but that the best part of a trip was coming home. And this is no different; everywhere I look now, I see familiar comforts that I have renewed appreciation for. 

Going to Panama sharpened my appetite for travel; it taught me so much about the natural world and about different ways of looking at culture and community; but it also reminded me of things I might take for granted if I hadn't been away from them. It's a delight to be here.