Sandy Pocket

So, shit.

That's how I'm going to start this post because I can. And because I've reading a lot of Hunter S Thompson and got inspired to rebel against my typewriter/computer. And also, because a little bit of shit hit the fan. The fan on slow speed at least. It all boils down to the government here not paying when they said they would. Let me explain. There are these gigantic power lines that trench their way through my community that have done nothing but bring death to the forest and its fuzzies and hurt to the people whom own the land. Now Ngabe people usually don't give a flying crap about what the goes on in the world until it comes to them. Which makes sense because they are usually worried about what they are going to eat that day and which kid they are going to tell to go get the food. Anywho, there are these freaking huge power lines that tower through my community and when the good ol government put them in 5 years ago they plowed the forest over including all the chocolate farms and then erected these huge metal erections.

My community probably wouldn't complain too much if they were actually getting something from the power lines like maybe..hmmmm....POWER! Apparently it's all going to Mexico which seems silly but whatever. They did give each person a small portion of money which I thought was sufficient, but now the manure has grazed the blender. Yes Sr. the power company wants to put another line on the other side of the tower. Well this put the Ngabe into frenzy and the more organized lesser percent of them decided that if the government and the big business were going to get money out of this deal then by god they were going to too. Living here I see the whole thing as ridiculous. How the hell can you put power lines through a town and not even give them power. I do want to mention that I''m glad they don't have power. If they did I would have to invest in a large carton of ear plugs to block the terrible tipico music they play on the radio.

So here is this large company starting to put power lines on the other side of the giant towers and the Ngabes are like “Hell no. Where's are money bitch”? Except they said it in Ngabere. I have to hand to them. They had meetings. They negotiated prices with the government. They set dates and got representatives. Then when the government didn't pay them, they threw a bunch of shit in the street to block it, cooked up some hot chocolate and said it was a protest. Of course they had the typical megaphone which wasn't any louder than someone yelling but sounded cool. So here we are. After days of this malarky the government has said no word and in the mean time half my community is blocking the main road to Bocas del Toro from anywhere else in the country.

Now, I'm not going to take sides but I'm going to point out the facts. Big companies that don't give stuff to the poor people they are hurting are evil. Big companies that tear down the forest are evil. Governments that let all this happen are evil. The Ngabe expect money for everything and never pay taxes. The government did say that they were going to get the money a long time ago after negotiations and they did not deliver........sooooo.... did someone fall asleep while driving the money to the poor people living under these monstrosities. I mean not only are they probably getting all types of third world cancer from these metal beasts, but they are being slapped in the face by the government about it too. I don't know. Those are just the facts. No bias.

So what has this done to my work here. Well, Samuel, our main tour guide and the only one that speaks english has been in the protest for days now. In the meantime I have had to do the tour which is NOT the point of me being here, we have had orders for product that we couldn't send, the stickers for our product could not get through, tourists can't get through, and there is no cell service there so when Salomon goes and someone calls about chocolate anything they get nothing. Failure.

They say they are going to pay tomorrow. We will see. In the meantime a women from my community has had to leave at midnight to go to the city to sell her baskets with a government group.

I do have to hand it to the police. They know when not to screw with the Ngabe. They don't do a damn thing. In fact, they just hang out at the protest and talk to the protesters. Of course there is always only about 2 or 3 cops, but they learned their lesson against these people and that is they are tough as nails and hard as rock and they don't back down. I wouldn't screw with them, but that's not saying much.

So we have that going for us. Great stuff huh? I had to run a tour today and it would have been fine except for the fact that I had worked with the artisan group in the morning filling bags of dirt and I was extremely tired for some god awful reason only known to the worm gods living in my gut. Jesus. I got stop reading so much HST.