Sam: A Tale of Heartbreak and Triumph

The following will appear in the local newspaper here in Bocas del Toro next month: 

As a Peace Corps Volunteer we get two years to live, learn, teach, and help in almost any way shape and form we can in our communities. It never surprises me when I tell people how long we volunteers are here for and they respond with gasps. The truth is that two years is very little in the world of sustainable development and is even less time to get to know all of the people, customs, and things to do in any given area. It is safe to say that I learn something new every day in my community and many of those things will stay with me forever.

Since helping start the Oreba Chocolate Tour earlier this year I had become increasingly interested in the life story of our principle guide, Samuel. Not only was this a person in our community that spoke near perfect Caribbean English, but he could build beautiful houses, confidently run tours explaining everything about organic cacao farming and chocolate making, and seemed to be a part of every community project here. Hearing bits and pieces of Samuel's history during our frequent chats only solidified the notion that here lies someone truly interesting. As people come and go in Bocas del Toro sometimes staying for one day, sometimes for months or years, they rarely get to see or hear the many stories of the very diverse group of people that have helped make it what it is today and recording the story of Samuel seemed to hard to pass up as I knew his was one of heartbreak and triumph like many other in the region. And now I share Samuel's story with you.

Samuel was born in Almirante in 1962 when the only thing around was the Banana Company. The town was different back then and as prosperity rises and falls so does infrastructure and services. As many do not know, there was a time when Almirante had a bowling ally, airport, and cheap comfortable transportation on the rail line. But things were not meant to be and as any place that relies solely on a one product company, things change and business isn't always good. Back in those days all the roads were gravel and there was only one big store called Lucky Strike. With the population being close to what it is today at 90% Afro-Antillean, Bario Frances became part of the hopping new neighborhoods and where Samuel lived with his family. The Peace Corps even had a presence in Almirante in those times constructing houses for workers and then teaching them how to construct their own. Samuel, being Indigenous Ngabe, never really thought it was strange that all his neighbors and friends were Afro-Antillean and even with racism running rampant in other parts of the world and region at that time, nothing seemed out of the ordinary for him. As he explains it, the people around him liked him because he could speak their language as many other Ngabes could not which would cause problems.

In the time before the banana business and tourism, Bocas Del Toro was sparsely populated by the different indigenous that still have a large presence today. In the 1930's, with the start of banana production came workers from all walks of life and places far away searching for good work. There were no roads in Bocas back then and nothing connecting Bocas to the rest of the country. On the coast, just past Kusapin in what is now the Comarca or “Indigenous Reservation”, boats full of mostly Afro-Antilleans coming from Colon in the Canal Zone would often stop to rest in these areas sometimes staying several days. As stories of a better life and the promise of good money came along with these people, local indigenous started to get curious. As many indigenous felt that they could not leave their communities due to age or having many young children at the time, the practice of gifting a child to passing boats in hopes of a better life became common practice. It was this practice that would eventually bring both Samuel's mom and dad to the Almirante region leaving with separate families both around the age of 9 and to never see their families again.

Samuel's father was given to a french family at first whom treated him bad and worked him hard. At the age of 10 his father worked for the family all day only to be abused and treated like an animal. After 3 years of this his father decided he had enough and moved in with another family that had come straight from Jamaica. The difference between the two households was instantaneously noticeable as the new family was warm and caring and grew to love the child. Samuel's father felt the same about the new family and was so relieved to finally be in a place where the people cared for him that he eventually took their last name which was Dixon. Traditionally, Ngabe people didn't really have last names, just a first name and the location that they came from but when the banana company told them they needed to have a last name to get paid for their records they had to pick one. Consequently, because the list to get paid was in alphabetical order many chose names such as Abrego and Becker as to get paid first. The name Dixon wasn't too far down the list and to respect his new family Samuel's father gladly took it.

As many of the indigenous soon found out, working for the banana company wasn't always an option for them as jobs were given priority to people that could speak English. Because of this the Afro-Antillean population had a little bit more money than the Ngabe back then and could pay people to take care of their farms and this is what his parents did. His father worked in the cacao farms of a local Afro-Antillean family starting at the age of 11 for 25 cents a day, 8 hours a day in 1935 and even though the work was tough, he could earn enough to save a little. His mom did the same and both learned English in their respective families and both learned how to grow and maintain cacao which would end up being the two skills that they would pass down to Samuel who would in turn use to lead the Oreba Chocolate Tour. When Samuel's parents met they found they had a lot in common. They were both young and hard working indigenous Ngabe that came from the same area and they both searched for a better life possibly working in a farm of their own one day.

Years went by and Samuel's parents had still not realized their dream. Even though they had built their own house, working in other people's farms was still necessary. Bad luck had hit the family as well and things didn't look like they were to get much better. Samuel's parents had decided to let a wealthier Costa Rican family take care of one of their babies for a determined amount of time, but when Samuel's father came back to pick the kid up the family told him that the baby had mysteriously died with no explanation. His father suspected that the family grew attached to the baby and didn't want to give it back. The next baby his mother would have turned out to be a baby girl that people had said been “touched by a witch”. The baby was blue and died at 6 months in his fathers arms. The tough times continued and at the age of 40, Samuel's father still worked the same cacao farm he has always worked, saving just enough money after putting food on the table to send Samuel's the oldest remaining siblings away in search of better work. One day after a long day working in the farm his dad went to fix something on top of the house. As many houses are still built today in Bocas del Toro, it sat on stilts and was relativity high. Tired and weak from a full days work Samuel's dad fell from the roof directly onto his head fracturing his skull and breaking his spine. Suddenly his dad was immobile and could barely move putting the entire family at risk of starving since they had no farm to grow their own food. It was at this time, at the age of 9, Samuel started working with his 13 year old brother in the same farm and for the same people his dad had been. As the older siblings had already left the house it was up to the two young boys to provide for the the family. This went on and for awhile as taking care of his dad became harder and harder until he eventually died 5 years after the accident from what Samuel described as vomiting attacks where he couldn't hold any food down. He was 45 years old.

Even though it was commonplace in those times to not go to school at all, Samuel saw the importance in it and attended. Going to school in the morning and working in the farm in the evening put even more pressure onto himself but as he says “it was worth the pain”. To make up for the time lost while attending school he would work double during holidays and weekends leaving little time to study but putting food on the table had to come first and foremost. After a couple years of working and going to school like this the family decided to move to Bocas del Drago where the older brothers had staked out a plot years before anyone else. During the mid 70's the family lived there in relative peace living off the land in finally in their own farms. The thought of earning real money soon came back in Samuel's life though as business started to pick up in Almirante with the banana company and jobs became available. Soon, Samuel and his slightly older brother moved back to Almirante to work for the large company in charge of taking off the merchandise from the large ships and putting them on trucks destined for Changianola. The work was hard but the pay was unlike anything they had ever seen before. Suddenly they were working the same 10 hours they were in the farms but they were now making a great wage of $20 to $25 per day. The best part of the job was that it was paid on a per commission basis which meant that the worth of each package depended upon how much they would get that day. If they could load the packages faster they could make more money and if the packages were worth more they got more money as well. If the packages were nothing but rice, they made less and worked harder, but if the packages were electronics it was a good day. 2 years went by working this job and even though the money was good, much of it was still going back home. After having a perfect work habit and showing up on time for years, one day Samuel and his brother showed up to work a little bit hung over. The foreman, whom didn't like Samuel, quickly told him to go home and that he was suspended for a week. Samuel never went back.

It didn't take long for Samuel to find other work for at this time he knew many people in the area. He had heard about the people that dove for lobster for money but had never tried it, so when some friends invited him to go he thought he would give it his best shot. Growing up near the ocean, Samuel was a good swimmer, but diving for lobsters that were deep was a whole different story. Samuel will never forget the first time he tried diving for lobster. At first it had seemed simple to him. You just hold your breath, dive down, and grab them. As the others jumped off the boat and dove down he soon followed. It was only a 15 foot dive which was a moderate depth for a lobster diver but when he surfaced the water after barely reaching the bottom he immediately noticed the effects. Bright red blood streamed from his nose and a bad headache and earache endured for hours. It wasn't the easy cash he had expected and the toll on his body seemed to be worse than loading boxes, but the money was good and possibility of getting better at diving was always there. Every day Samuel learned to adjust to the depths and go further and further down sometimes holding his breathe for minutes at a time. Months went by and soon the good lobster were going deeper and deeper. The divers soon following. One day there seemed to be no lobster in the shallower water. Hours went by with nothing to show for it. Soon him and the other divers decided they had to go deeper so they headed out to where they hadn't gone before. At Samuel's best guess he dove down 45 feet that day. He doesn't remember much after reaching that depth. Just that once he got back up to the surface he felt really dizzy and found that he could only swim in circles as blood gushed from his ears and nose. He felt like this for a whole week. As Samuel puts it “ in 1983 there were plenty 10 lbs lobsters” and at 1.50 a pound for lobster he could make well over $100 a day sometimes. The money was good and mostly worth the pain but after hearing about other divers dying doing the same thing Samuel decided to give it up. His family still relied on him and being dead wasn't going to help at all.

After only one year of lobster diving Samuel hung up the diving mask for good. Soon he was working for the Chiriqui Land Company loading boxes of bananas on huge boats destined for other lands. The work was grueling and when orders of 100,000 boxes were put in the men sometimes worked 35 hours straight. The men that loaded the boxes from the trucks to the boat worked in teams of 4 groups of 16 and when it was said and done, after 3 days they could get 300,000 boxes of bananas on boats with names like Winter Sun, Winter Star, Winter Moon and The Reefer. All destined for places like Germany, the US, and other first world nations. The work was more than hard as most people could not do it and many quit after only one day. As Samuel puts it “only the Afro-Antilleans and Ngabe that were used to working hard would last”. But it was worth the pain. In one month he could earn $1,000 working while only having to work 16 days a month. While most people couldn't handle one day Samuel worked this way for 11 years. In 1995 he quit and by the end of his time there he was able to work almost every single day of the month. The years of hard labor put his body to the test and during his time with the Chiriqui Land Company he had fractured his finger into a permanent L and wore down his joints badly, but he was able to support a family of 6 kids and a wife and was even able to save enough to start paying other people to work in the family farm.

Working hard loading boxes all those years left Samuel yearning for the simple life and moving to where his wife's family farm was located in Rio Oeste Arriba seemed to be the answer. The cacao farming business proved to be equally hard work with much less pay but the work days were much less and also left time to spend with his family and to fish. When his oldest child showed promise in school, Samuel decided to sell the motor on his fishing boat to pay for her to become a teacher. Cacao farming once again became the main source of income for the family as fishing without a motor took too much time. 4 years went by farming cacao but the money increasingly wasn't stretching as far it used to as prices of food and gas went up along with more and more people living in the house. The choice to search for other work again to support the family was clear and so Samuel looked to the islands once more. His sister had been living and working in the mostly Afro-Antillean inhabited island of Bastiemento so he decided to give it a try too. Samuel soon found himself leaving for weeks at a time only coming back to the family to visit on the weekends. What had once been a tragedy in his family was now helping him and his family keep afloat and send his kids to school. As it turned out, Samuel learned how to do construction during the 5 years his dad was incapacitated after the accident. Because his other brothers were older they were scared to go up on the roof or any high points after seeing what had happened to their dad but Samuel wasn't afraid at all. This meant that whenever something new needed to be built around the house his dad would explain to him how to do it. It became a great way to learn and Samuel picked it up easily. As Samuel puts it “he says he was like a monkey hanging from the rafters”. Samuel would continue to work on the island of Bastiamento and the surrounding islands helping build the many hotels and homes that are there today, but after 10 years of going back and forth between his family and the island he decided enough was enough.

When I showed up in Rio Oeste Arriba I met Samuel and instantly knew something was different about him. He seemed to have a natural kindness about him and his willingness to be a part of everything and help with any project showed me that he really did care about the community and its well being. At any given time he is involved with either building classrooms for the school, being president or treasurer of the school, one of the directors or supervisors of the Artisan group, President of the Neighborhood Watch program, helping build other structures for the community, teaching English to others, or helping run the Oreba Chocolate Tour. All this while him and his wife support the 8 people living in the 3 bedroom house of which 3 are small abandon children that he and his wife have adopted.

He and his wife had been a part of the Chocolate Artisan Group for years now and with almost no monetary reward to show for it. Never the less they showed up for every meeting and planned for the future just like the rest of the group. After I spent months planning the Chocolate Tour business with my counterpart in the community we were left with one important problem. Who could lead the tours in English. Samuel's name soon came up and after months of training and working with our now group president Salomon, everything came into place. Soon we were receiving great reviews about the kindness and knowledgeably of Samuel and our other guide Mauricio and the best part is that they loved the work. As the tour has been running for almost 10 months now Samuel continues to shine. After a particularly busy couple days where we had large groups of tourists I asked if he was tired of the work. He smiled as he turned to me said “ I used to work 35 hour days, now all I have to do is talk about what I already know for 3 hours at a time”. It's more than that though as every tour I witness him give is special to him as he always shares something new about the farm, his life, the history of the Ngabe people, or about the plants and animals that we have here. The truth is that many people are involved in working in the Oreba Chocolate Tour including the cooks and chocolate making demonstrators and they all have different and equally interesting stories to tell. 100% of proceeds of chocolate tour are shared between the workers and the artisan group so the money available for guides isn't great and definitely not near what Samuel has been able to make in the past, but it seems he has finally found his passion in sharing the great wealth of information he holds. Oreba Chocolate Tours run daily at 9am and 1pm and can be booked at the Info-Bocas kiosk, Heiki Hostal, or Casa Verde. All proceeds go to the indigenous community. Please call 664-91457 for more information. So come see Samuel and the others working hard to show each tourist what goes into making chocolate starting from growing the cacao tree all the way to grinding the aromatic beans on a traditional grinding stone in the farm to make chocolate to eat. And if your lucky, they will share their story with you.