Bocas del Toro

I saw this horse on two different visits to Isla Bastimentos, in Panama’s Bocas del Toro archipelago.  Drawn to the salty taste of the surf, it would wade into the water and then mostly stand still, letting the occasional wave slap its face.  After maybe half an hour it would then return to the beach and slip silently back into the jungle.

It was a captivating scene: the clear and vibrantly colored water, the jungle-green backdrop, the horse maintaining such solid focus on its salty bath.  Its life didn’t seem that bad.  Certainly it was less stressful than many of its ancestors would have known, given that for much of human history horses have been instruments of war.  Since before 3000 BC they've been ridden in battle, and a training manual for chariot horses was in existence as early as 1350 BC.  It wasn’t until after the time of Christ, however, that the paired stirrup came onto the scene, revolutionizing yet again the tactics of war.  The English travel writer Colin Thubron, in his book Shadow of the Silk Road, explains its spread and significance:

The heavy stirrup was a Chinese brainchild as early as the fourth century AD, it seems, and as it travelled westward, stabilising its rider in battle, it made possible the heavily armoured and expensively mounted knight.  To this simple invention some have attributed the onset of the whole feudal age in Europe; and seven centuries later the same era came to an end as its castles were pounded into submission by the Chinese invention of gunpowder.  The birth and death of Europe’s Middle Ages, you might fancy, came along the Silk Road from the east.

Yes, this beach-loving Panamanian horse had it pretty good, as did the rest of us on the island.  We had put our shirts and stirrups aside, and the history of war felt rather remote.

In the Panamanian island chain of Bocas del Toro, theft is a problem on some beaches.  During the week of my visit, one couple described being approached by two young men who “asked” for their wallet.  They carried no weapon, but their demeanor was intimidating enough—and the travelers sufficiently isolated on their secluded stretch of sand—that they handed it over.  The couple did, however, ask if they could keep the non-cash items in the wallet, which the thieves amiably agreed to.

The theft happened on Wizard Beach, which is sometimes patrolled by police.   In this photo a policeman on the beach talks with an Israeli traveler, likely wishing to assure her that he’d keep a good eye on her belongings.  Later the officer would tell me that she was “very beautiful,” an observation with which I could not disagree.  He also answered my question about the ship that had been anchored offshore for two days: it was waiting to pick up a load of bananas.  (The province is home not only to pretty beaches but also the Chiriqui Land Company, which brings you Chiquita bananas.)

Bananas and beauty aside, one of the most provocative descriptions of theft I’ve ever read is in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner.  Here an argument is made that thieves include more than the two opportunistic men on Wizard Beach:

“Good,” Baba said, but his eyes wondered.  “Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one.  And that is theft.  Every other sin is a variation of theft.  Do you understand that?”

“No, Baba jan,” I said, desperately wishing I did.  I didn’t want to disappoint him again.

…

“When you kill a man, you steal a life,” Baba said.  “You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father.  When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth.  When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.  Do you see?”

The official currency of the Central American nation of Panama is the U.S. Dollar.  If you buy a house, a book, or a stalk of bananas, you use the dollar.  George Washington’s body may have been laid to rest in 1799 in Mount Vernon, but his image lives on in countless nooks and crannies of the world – including in Bocas del Toro, Panama, where this photo was taken.

One of the most powerful aspects of travel is that it introduces people from one socio-economic level to those of another—something that, unfortunately, doesn’t happen often enough back home.  Through these interactions people sometimes even become friends.  But what does deep friendship look like between people who inhabit starkly different socio-economic worlds?   Friendship can seem easy and uncomplicated on a surface level, but when a person with little access to money has to decide which of his children to put through elementary school (while all of yours will go to graduate school), has to watch his spouse suffer from an ailment that you would not because your insurance would cover the thousand-dollar medication, or can only imagine through your photographs and stories what a week-long holiday in another country would look like, what is friendship?  How does friendship navigate the economic chasm between two people?

Though this is just a playful photo, I thought it symbolic of how money can separate people, even people who wish to be friends and in many ways are.  And it reminded me of a quote I read many years ago in an obscure book entitled Missions and Money: Affluence as a Western Missionary Problem, by Jonathan Bonk:

It is humanly almost impossible for a wealthy family to share a deeply fraternal relationship with a family whose material and economic resources are a pathetic fraction of their own….