#ngabe

If you’re reading this you’ve not been satiated by our newsletter’s intense coverage & need a li’l Bocaditos mas. Also, to you special few that overcame me waxing poetic on the subject of handwashing, I ain’t done. Below you can find a supplemental, yet still MINSA-approved handwashing charla to the primary GHD toolkit you can find a la Larry “Larrdawg” Schirmer. 

Now, you have absolutely no reason not to participate this October 15th & sit pretty on your tabla. This activity was originally a flipboard-type deal that I’ve taken the liberty to digitize (copyright laws be darned) it. It has pretty drawings for the kiddies & has phonetic Ngabe for the Padres de Familia that you can just read off. To some of you 77ers quejaring about not having any work to do, your kin, Sentel, lead one of these during his visit to our neck of the woods & he could tell you how easy, yet fulfilling of an activity it could be, especially in front of a monton of confused li’l students. Well, I’m gonna dial down my circumlocutious self down to that of an awkward, grammar school wallflower & let the pics do the talking (is this talking, really, though?):

These images are taken in southwestern Costa Rica in the Ngäbe territory. The students in the local school demonstrated a traditional dance and we had the opportunity to view and purchase some of the handcrafted bags, wall hangings, traditional dress, and dolls.

The Ngäbe indigenous people are among the poorest people in the country and until recently, there were almost no development initiatives taking place in their territories. The Ngäbe were not considered citizens of Costa Rica until 1993 and had little income, access to health care, and opportunities for progress. Many social and economic obstacles seem almost counterintuitive to progress. I think a problem the people might face is how to maintain culture while moving forward into the future. It is a problem many indigenous people face to this very day. How to move forward without compromising culture. In the case of the Ngäbe people, how can a group of people move forward when tradition prevents their daughters from succeeding?

The Ngäbe idea of success is something so distant from our Western preconception of success. It is not uncommon to see a 16 year old girl in a union with a much older man and have 5 kids by the time she turns 20. When our group visited the local high school, many of the students reached out to us, asked us questions about on going to college and starting a career. I got the sense that this generation wants to succeed, they want to help their people, but they still believe that the opportunities most American students have are unattainable. This notion deeply affected my heart and conscience… I get scholarships, opportunities to study abroad because of my indigenous heritage.

I'm about to live alone & the hot topic is how I could now bring over my bossi (ngabe for gf) & how since she's super lejos, I'm gonna have chelas (evil spirits or somethin) on me all the time. They pretty much kill alot of people at night when they're walking alone in the jungle or swimming in a dangerous river & such. I tell em how I don't care cuz they don't exist & I'd just talk to the chela & find out what's it fn problem needing to kill folk all the time. 

To further my RPG/Zelda metaphor, my host grampa told me that back in the day everybody made ocarinas & made music & all that. He also gave hilarious accounts of his days as a youth wearing cotas or those lil loincloths & one time when he outside his homeland in the latinoworld he was made to eat delicious food & held true to his Ngabe roots & refused anything except bland, tasteless banano & rice. His uncle that offered him this meal grabbed him by his cota & threw him into the ocean with such force it ripped the cloth & he saw it float away forever. Then he started wearing campo pants like errbody else (campo pants are like dress pants except the colors make one think that the wearer does not give fucks). 

Germans fleeing Europe during WWII found sanctuary in the Ngabeland & successfully diluted themselves into the gene pool of the Ngabes, escaping from their past. Until. Now! I'm going to find out these blue-eyed blond haired Ngabes speaking puro Ngabere & bring them to justice.

The Ngabere peoples sometimes believe in the religion called Mamatata. They sometimes believe that Jesus Christ came to the Comarca riding through the mountain tops on a motorcycle in the Sixties & spoke to a Ngabe about how her peoples have lost their way & should go back to their roots & turn their backs on the latino lifestyle encroaching on their own. I've heard this rumor dispelled by many a heathen, citing the fact that there's a good amount of bikers from the US that love traveling through the Panamerican to its end in Panama, & that this "Jesus" was nothing more than a long-haired hippie stating the obvious about the forgetting occurring to the Ngabere. Sometimes I believe too.