19 Here and There

I turned 19 in a shitty, hopefully clean, hostel bed; away from home and friends and birthday candles. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It felt like divine timing that I had my birthday right before the end of my trip, acting as some sort of worldly validated seal to close in all I had learned. Not that I needed worldly validation to know, to feel, to breathe, this newfound zest for life. It was already in my bones, growing day in and out as I connected to more people, more places, and more of myself. 

Panama was an experience I could never have predicted. It was something that challenged me in a way I’d never been challenged before. Being away from home at college was one thing. It was hard, but I still had the comfort of culture, which I had never really recognized as being so. Then, once away from home alone in a different country, I recognized it. Because it was hard and I had no comfort at all. 

That might have been my fault because I didn’t research and had no idea I was heading for a small island with one tiny mercado and three restaurants. I was more so envisioning the nice beach resort I had been at in Costa Rica the summer before with my parents. Thus said, my arrival was not glamorous. I was sludging too much stuff in an inexplicable humidity, hangry and without sleep from my red-eye, replaying the man at Custom’s words in my head. “Over a month, alone, in Panama?” He had asked me. Not that I needed some random airport worker’s validation, but hearing it out loud, in reality and not in my head from my air conditioned bedroom, sounded different. It sounded like something I really might not be able to do.

I don’t cry much because I really just can’t. It’s a rarity that seems to only occur at the most untimely of times. In my first shower on Isla Carenero, I think I cried enough tears to power the next day (Carenero’s only water source is the rain). I was a damn downpour. And that was my lovely introduction to the people who would be hosting me. A chickenpox-adjacent face (when I cry I get red dots all over) trying to murmur, “Todo estoy bien…No sorry…Todo está bien.” I had been practicing my Spanish for months prior and there I was messing up the conjugation for one of the most common verbs there is. 

Alex, the owner of the homestay and surf shop where I would be working, and Olga, his girlfriend, both hugged me. Alex told me in Spanish and English, so that I really understood, “As much as I was there to help them, they would help me too.” Olga made me a bowl of pasta and we ate outside on the deck. I was so hungry and tired and overwhelmed, trying to have a perfect basic conversation in Spanish and also not eat like a caveman, while still retaining the information I was receiving. Olga, Germany, 20…. everything was too much. Just like my Spanish, nothing was gelling. Because writing and reading and studying was different than an actual conversation just as photos and ideas and dreams are different than reality. 

But practice is there for something, right?

I believe it is, because that night, against my desires, I still followed through and wrote in my journal in Spanish as I had the past few months. I wrote I was scared. I wrote I wanted my dogs and Popchips and to be able to throw toilet paper in the toilet. I wrote I would give it two weeks, but it didn’t end up even needing that long. Time flew by. Little by little I picked up the new ways of life on an island, although I did have to reach in and snag my toilet paper out more than I’d like to admit. 

I learned how to call the boats and make sure they don’t overcharge me because, well, soy gringa y Americana! I learned how to light his stove with the lighter and where to put the compost and to always use the hose on my feet before going inside. 

Once I gave up the glamor, the glamor of my expectations, and started taking each moment as it was, things changed. I was learning, maybe learning things that would never serve me again and were uncomfortable to do, but still, I was learning something new. And when was the last time I had been able to do that? Learn a completely new life? Not since diapers and object permanence. 

I had only before traveled in Americanized zones and lived in Colorado or California. What I began to find was that I needed to perceive the difference without judgment because if I stuck to the initial thought that what I was accustomed to was best, I would have been miserable. I would have missed out. 

An example. I brought my Sambas (which had become a mere extension of me at that point to be honest) but, to my surprise, no one on the Island even wore flip-flops, let alone fashionable sneakers. So I stowed them away in my suitcase where they were not brought out once and tried to keep my face scrunching to a minimum as thick smelly mud squashed beneath my bare toes. It felt unnatural to truly be dirty in the childlike meaning of the word. It sounded an alarm, for you wouldn’t often catch me trudging barefoot with mud stains on my stomach through the Cal Poly campus! But then, I realized the alarm was just noise and even with it I could still do whatever I wanted. And after doing that, the alarm stopped and I found an appreciation for what I’ve never known. In this case, an appreciation for being more connected to the earth than I’d ever been before.

I came across so many other cases too, with cultural customs mostly. And it wasn’t just the culture of Panama I was adjusting to; it was so much more. Like postcards, I collected my fair share of destinations being in Bocas. People from Germany, Italy, London, Scotland, Ecuador, Columbia, Spain, Uruguay, and weirdly enough, very little from America. 

It actually baffled me how different everything was. 

The men could dance and said things like “Sin amor, tenemos nada.” They weren’t afraid of fear itself. 

Walking alone was “Hola, ¿qué tal?” with people still sticking around for the answer. 

Dinner was long and late and made with so much love that the taste didn’t matter, although it was usually delicious. 

Phones were in bags not pockets, given we had them at all.

Invitations were spoken with the intent to follow through, sober or not, and man were they abundant.

Abundant is about the right word. Or it is more so the right feeling, of what I’m trying to encapsulate. I find, myself included, Americans tend to look at other countries through a lens of superiority. We feel bad for places that we think lack what we have. But maybe we shouldn’t, at least not in the aspects most people do. Maybe other places don’t want our new high-tech shit because it isn’t necessary. In Panama I learned to live without so many things (Shoes, Popchips, greek yogurt ice cream bars, high-speed internet, good water pressure) to name a few. These became afterthoughts because I already had the feeling I wanted those to give me; satisfaction. It was inside me. 

Where in the US I feel I constantly was and am looking for things to make my life better; newer models with bolder promises and faster results. On this tiny little island, I never felt compelled to look. My life was abundant with the feeling all our extras aim to provide. Because as Americans we may have an abundance, but we don’t live with abundance, even though we arguably have the most to go around. 

I thought about this when I was on a completely deserted Island where truly there was no abundance, but still the people around me would have offered up their leg. It is a way of being I experienced in Panama, and it goes beyond just sharing food and sunscreen. It’s an energy; made from knowing you yourself will always be enough without bells and whistles. Knowing love will always carry you forward and wholeheartedly wanting others to keep up too. I believe this feeling comes from a place of abundance and not a place of lack, which is where America falters a bit. People become so focused on what they don’t have, what they could have, that they create a world where bells and whistles are necessities and it’s you vrs. the rest. I believe our brains have made this our reality—that everyone can’t be happy, that there has to be winners and losers and definite right ways to do things and definite wrongs. 

Somewhere along the way of developing an extremely successful economy, we regressed psychologically. We regressed to the time of cavemen where people had to fight to live, but it is no longer your family or the neighbor cave who survives the winter. Yet still, we look coldly at our neighbors. Our abundance became the root of our issue, stripping away the only naturally abundant thing we have. Love. 

I learned so much in Panama without trying to learn anything at all. It happened because the best way to learn is to listen, and when you have no idea where to go or what to do or at times what is even being said, you really got to listen. So I did, ear on the ground, for the whole time I was there. It’s funny because typically you assume friendships are best found in similarity, yet I discovered some of the most beautiful friendships in people who couldn’t have been more different. If difference doesn’t separate us, and instead acts as what is truly is, a teacher, then well, we all could learn a lot more. We all could listen a little better.

Of course, my little trip and reflection isn’t an answer to the pro-life, pro-choice, guns and no guns, or God’s existence. It isn’t supposed to be a critique of the US either. It isn’t supposed to be anything. No aims, goals, ganas. Just what I learned and what I think. Take it or leave it!

So yeah, I turned 19 in Panama. I may not have had my favorite four layered Ice Cream cake and a beautifully wrapped present, but I got to experience my birthday with a newfound kind of love. That is something I will forever be grateful