(continued from last post)
It is observed in every society that some of its members do not grow up, so to speak, but remain in a child-like state of irresponsibility. So, the aforementioned “awareness of consequences”, though valuable and necessary, does not seem to be a quality that is evenly distributed amongst the population. And it doesn’t appear that it can be “grown into”, in the ordinary course of events, by every immature person. This particular power of attention is available to some people as an inborn trait.  Can it also be cultivated in those who do not appear to have it?  My personal experience leads me to conclude that it is indeed possible to develop this kind of attention in a systematic, measurable and predictable way.

This is how I observed attention being applied by TM -practicing convicts, in contrast to non-meditating ones: After meditating for some time, as little as one month in some cases or for more than a year in other cases, certain individuals spontaneously improved their behavior; in dramatic contrast to their behavior before learning to meditate. Many of the other meditating subjects displayed more subtle changes in behavior, but again spontaneously and enduringly. In interviews with these subjects, I found a consistent thread of reasoning behind all of the changed behaviors: they knew, while contemplating a course of action, that loss was available as an option, rather than only gain. An instinctive sense of avoidance of loss was beginning to be incorporated into their awarenesses.

Before learning meditation and during the first weeks or months afterwards, their reasoning for action seemed to include only the prospects for gain. It was as if the reality of consequences was an illusion, despite being aware of them on an intellectual level. It was like how we regard hell; it probably exists but we aren’t going to end up in there because we are not that bad. Another kind of awareness appeared to be diminished within the subjects before they learned to meditate: the value of time; of reward gained over time rather than instantly. Immediate gain after an action seemed like the most efficient means of fulfilling desires. And in the absence of “instinctive” awareness of possible loss, this was the only acceptable way to progress.

The attention span of these subjects seemed to become expanded. The usual way that we look at this is by measuring how long one can remain focused on something without being distracted. This utilitarian kind of change may have been due to the calming effect of TM that has been universally found in meditators. In addition to that, I noticed a different kind of expanded attention being displayed: an awareness of future prospects accruing from a behavior that, on its face, appeared to offer no immediate reward. An example would be the simple act of following a house rule that the subject used to break obsessively before he meditated. A growing appreciation for delayed gratification of desires was demonstrated by, for example: giving up some immediate pleasure, such as controlling the TV, in exchange for an indirectly implied and unspecified future privilege.

Desires must be fulfilled for one to feel satisfied in life; that’s a universal law of nature. To comfortably forgo actual fulfillment of a particular desire, an enduring sense of general fulfillment must be present within ones awareness in order to counterbalance the sense of loss (absence of immediate fulfillment). If that “general sense of fulfillment” is not caused by the actual fulfillment of that desire, then it must come from some precursor to “experience”: a non-active level of mind -pure consciousness, by definition.  My conclusion is that a kind of “knowingness” of “potential fulfillment” has filled the psychic void caused by delaying actual fulfillment. Maharishi has described pure consciousness as a “field of total potential”. Nothing exists there, no objects, no actions, no thoughts; but “all possibilities” exist there in an unmanifest state.

If these meditating convicts were contacting that field with their attention, then they were in touch with the fulfillment of previously manifested desires; but that fulfillment was in an undeveloped or abstracted state. Their experience was “as if” the desire was fulfilled before that fulfillment actually became manifest. The void of loss was simultaneously filled by a sense of gain. Analogously, this kind of experience might be routine for those people who invest conservatively in the future. I think that the difference between us and “them” (the convicts) could be regarded simply as a difference in degree of “investment savvy”.

A subtle, abstract sense of fulfillment is not as useless as it might appear; it is the basis for hope. Hope is the driving force behind mighty efforts to overcome obstacles to achievement of ones goals. Hope can influence one to strive, to be patient and to minimize risk. Crimes are committed by those who lack patience and risk-aversion; they strive alright, not in hope, but in desperation. This displays a kind of attention that is limited to the immediate and proximate results of an action. It is the attention of a gambler; and some people are not in a position to gamble with their lives in every decision that they make. The odds are against winning and there is little room for hope. The result is more anxiety for immediate gain and less appreciation of risk and loss.

To sum this up: the convicts who continued to practice TM regularly began to behave more like normal people. A unique and special feature of the various measured and unmeasured improvements was that the subjects developed from within, rather than from without. This is important because they had a sense of authorship of their new insight, so it was “real”. They owned their world-view, rather than merely borrowing it from therapists’ concepts, or from theologians’ beliefs; borrowed just long enough to b. s. the system.

This “creator mentality”, I believe, correlated with another feature of the effects: the durability of the changes over time, despite the absence of reinforcement after the subject was released from jail. This indicates a growth of psychological self-sufficiency; which may have contributed to that same quality in the behavioral arena: facilitating financial independence and avoidance of risk (of criminal behavior). The long-term results for these TM subjects included a dramatic reduction in the rate of recidivism compared to the control group of non-meditating convicts.

A couple of quotations may give this subject some perspective:

“Dreaminess is the great barrier. But most of human consciousness even in this world is in a sort of waking-dreaming or somnambulistic state…The more I have studied the problem, the more I have become convinced that it has been a great mistake to concentrate so much attention upon evil. The real difficulty is the almost universal somnambulism in which men pass the bulk of their lives, some spending many lives without leaving that state at all. It is, in effect, a hypnotic sleep, and the real problem of religion is not the saving of human souls from evil but a dehypnotizing of the mind.”
–-Franklin Merrell-Wolff, 1936

“The newspapers report that I teach a method to help the people to get to sleep; what I am doing is teaching them how to wake up.” —Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, San Francisco, 1959

“Transcendental Meditation is the prisoner’s only friend.” –-Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Hawaii, 1958

(continued from last post)
Attention has been a lively topic in psychology in recent years, what with the sudden proliferation of ADD (attention deficit disorder), especially among the youth. ADD is being blamed for so many behavioral problems that it sounds like the latest medical fad. In a more general sense, attention is what consciousness does. The undirected becomes directed by virtue of the intellect: the decider. But we can’t blame intellect, or lack thereof, for criminal behavior because clever people as well as stupid people commit crimes. Therefore, the ultimate origin of error could not be the decision level itself, although the decision is the error. Some mental status antecedent to deciding has to be deficient: the quality of ones attention; that which cannot be manipulated, but can only be uncovered.

If we humans are generally comparable in our range of expression of mental potential, then full mental potential should be fairly equal for everyone. Let’s assume that human attention is potentially infinite in scope: that it is possible, under the right conditions, that one could be aware of anything and everything. This level of information would enable one to make error-free decisions. (Infallibility is implied in the Vedic definition of enlightenment; a state of consciousness that has a long recorded history.) In conceding that we are not infallible, we can admit that the difference between us and them (convicted criminals) is only by degree, the degree of attention applied to thought and action. In other words, the number of future consequences that can be known, resulting from a particular action, would affect that decision to act. In business it’s called “doing due diligence” before making a deal; it’s just using common sense.

Since Nature demands that all actions, both “positive” and “negative”, be ultimately progressive (evolutionary), then any decision will suffice in the long run, as is the case with animals. When people act without regard for consequences, then they are acting like animals. Society should show these ignorant humans at least as much compassion as they show to animals caught acting within their nature. It is ironic to see people protesting against the treatment of animals in captivity while ignoring similar treatment of caged humans. This “quality of treatment” consideration is more applicable to humans than to animals because we have the capacity to improve, whereas animals do not.  As humans, we have free will and the power to alter our destinies, to erase karma. But we have to become aware of karma in order to deal with it; not merely intellectually aware but instinctively aware.

This instinct is an aspect of the power of attention. Most people have had some experience with instinctively avoiding danger, or of knowing something without actually witnessing it. Fear is a useful instinct, as is shame or embarrassment, in stimulating avoidance behaviors. The extent of ones awareness of possible future outcomes, and of past experiences, seems to be a factor in the decision-making process. Intellectually, one could recall plenty of facts that would influence a decision, but even smart folks make mistakes; so intellect can’t be the prime factor. The “hows” and “whys” of past events, present circumstances and future consequences cannot be comprehended by the intellect. Maharishi once stated that “Karma is unfathomable, even by the enlightened.”

To avoid error, what is required is a general awareness of the collective effect of the virtually infinite variables of karma; a kind of knowingness that is not limited to any particular point in space and time. This would not be attention given to a single object, but to a field of objects simultaneously. That is the very description of transcending: Attention moving from action to silence, from a limited point-by-point focus to unlimited awareness of an infinite field. That state is usually experienced as quietness and peacefulness in its earliest manifestation; and that’s good enough for our present consideration. The most important factor is to allow the mind to be exposed to such a state. After that, nature takes over and provides whatever is needed at that time.

What makes us different from them is our more expanded level of awareness of possible consequences resulting from action. This advantage is something that we are born with rather than taught. A person born into a life-damaging environment, if equipped with this advantage, can more easily rise above those external influences. A life-supporting environment makes this advantage easier to sustain. On the other hand, we have seen or heard about people from the best families go “down the tubes” because they were not born with enough of this awareness, despite having a life-supporting environment. This consideration of awareness is not meant to suggest that genetics determines behavior because the influence of karma extends well beyond genetics.

As normal people, we take it for granted that our decisions are fairly safe and will result in some progress, either in the short or the long term. The consequences of mistaken decisions have been relatively mild for the most part. A certain level of error is deemed acceptable because we believe that the future is not totally in our hands, but determined either by a higher power or society or global political/ economic trends. I contend that the convicts I worked with were thinking just like this before they were caught in crime. Afterwards, they felt bitterness, self-pity and denial over their punishment for “one mistake”. They thought that they were making progress; but that experience of error-plus-consequence did not improve their level of awareness and no lasting lesson was learned. This is why most return to jail again and again. For a very few inmates, fear-based avoidance behavior (negative reinforcement) may alter their future course of action and keep them out of jail.

The suggested “normal” perspective, described in the preceding paragraph, does not facilitate the same results for everyone; so the perspective itself is not to blame for any shortcomings experienced. The breadth of ones awareness, which precipitates that perspective, is to blame. For example, a child playing in his crib possesses that same normal perspective, but it is based upon a limited awareness of the real world. We cannot say that he is wrong for feeling secure and hopeful, even impetuous, in his decision-making. But from our expanded world-view as adults, we would question his bravado and scrutinize his decisions. We are obliged to protect him from possible unforeseen consequences resulting from his acting out of an illusion of invincibility.

The level of consciousness that society embodies is like that of the adult, in relation to the child-like consciousness of its less responsible members. The criminals who end up in jail are like the children who are confined to cribs provided by their protectors. The misbehavers who have not yet been caught are like kids who are supposed to stay in their back yards but decide to play in the street, despite knowing that they become eligible for the crib. As we know and have personally experienced, kids do grow up and expand their awareness of the world; eventually becoming adults—supposedly the epitome of advancement. (To be continued)

According to Marcel, the “mooch factor” is the litmus test for the condition of society. He had said that, in Haiti, one could be solicited several times a day, every day by the poor in the streets; whereas in Colón he encountered beggars only a couple of times in three weeks. I have an update for him: in Casco Antigua (the Old Quarter) I get hit up by beggars every day. Sometimes it’s just a story of an emergency, actual or not, that must be resolved immediately; like Tavo’s, but in his case he wasn’t an absolute stranger. Several times the sob story routine was used on me simply because both of us spoke English and that created a “bond”; once it was some grungy-looking expatriate gringo and the other times were with Jamaicans. Tavo’s middle-aged son stopped by to ask if his father was here and promptly asked me for a few bucks, supposedly based on our “bond”. Another interesting experience occurred at a local cafeteria when an imposing woman, who looked and talked like she was from one of the Caribbean islands, tried to trick us into paying for her meal by telling the cashier that we were paying for hers also.

I pay for the little favors that are extended to me. When I was trying to buy the bottle of LP gas, the Chinese cashier told me to pay $27. A young boy was in line behind me and he told me that it only costs $24, so I corrected the cashier and walked out with $3 extra. I thanked the kid for the tip and gave him 25 cents, even though he did not ask for it. It’s good PR, even necessary PR when you are perceived as the rich neighbor. Speaking of favors, we had not seen Tavo in a week since we fronted him $20 against his future labor for us. On top of that, we had not received the foam we purchased through him two weeks before, or even gotten a receipt for it. That equals $40 in his pocket at one time; something that is probably very rare for him.

We will withhold judgment until we see him again; or if we see him again. I would hate to think that this constitutes his big con of the year. If it is, then I would chalk it up as a lesson and move on. At the same time, this would indicate to me the actual level of desperation in this society. Tavo would be giving up perhaps hundreds of hours of work over the next few months and much more over the next few years. He knows the extent of renovation this building needs. This behavior reveals extreme short-sightedness on his part; and a level of desperation that I had not anticipated because he talked a good game of keeping his house in order.

Sure, this is a crime (or would be if he indeed blows us off). But, what more does it represent? When I was involved in the Vermont Prison project for the TM organization, I got to see up close how the criminal mind works and how it can be changed. What causes these people to commit crimes? And what causes them to stop committing crimes? This, of course, is an age-old question asked by virtually everyone and which has not received a satisfactory answer. I imagine that in some quarters it is considered unanswerable. From my understanding and experience I believe that this question has indeed been answered, but far too few listened.

After observing some long-term “before-and-after” behavior patterns (of up to three years) in meditation subjects and in matched “controls”, I speculated on what caused the mysterious absence of bad behaviors in some of the meditation practitioners. What I noticed was that “evil” was not a factor in the inmates’ bad behavior. Now, there probably are instances where pure malevolence is at work and crime is committed as a result of that kind of influence; but the ordinary course of bad behavior seemed to me to lack that personal characteristic. We, as therapeutic interveners, deliberately avoided opportunities to influence the inmates’ opinions about their behavior, or their beliefs in general. No counseling-type relationships were developed. No rewards were offered. Yet behaviors changed, they improved.

The average inmate, I believe, did not want to make trouble for no reason. Even when the object of a particular action was to prove how “bad” they were, I don’t think that the motive was to be evil. From a karmic perspective, bad behavior causes suffering. Ordinary people do not seek to suffer because that experience is not life-supporting; it is life-limiting, even life-extinguishing. The natural goal of all of our actions is to support life: to enhance our lives, to get ahead, to progress. But when progress is not the immediate result of our action, what is at work here? Because we 1. Have free will, and 2. Are not omniscient, we therefore have the ability to error. Some errors are small and go unnoticed by those around us; some errors are so great they cause us to be removed from society for the protection of our neighbors. This “8th degree of freedom” learning level, called prison, is the most restricted. Why? In order to promote focus, to lessen distractions, to cultivate good habits and provide balance in life. That is, if it is operating in its ideal capacity as an educational habilitation institution.

The whole range of human action encompasses a sliding scale of amount of errors. We are all errant to some degree. And it is a matter of degree: “they” are not fundamentally different from “us”; the inmates who got caught committing crimes are ourselves, but taken to an extreme degree. So, what is different between us and them? Let’s look at the similarities first: they desire to have more, to enjoy more, to live more (and longer), to satisfy their basic needs and to accumulate things. Sounds like us. They are impatient and want their desires fulfilled ASAP. They are not satisfied with less than they think they deserve. Sound familiar? The “whats” seem to be universal here.

The difference between us and them is not in what we want but in how we get it. “How” implies action and that originates in thought. That’s it! They must think different than us. But no, the desires listed above, similar to our own, are thoughts; so we don’t really think that differently. One body of opinion holds that they are insane, to varying degrees, and we are the sane ones. The results speak for themselves: they are locked up and we are free. Another body of opinion holds that they are damned by God, for a variety of reasons, and are lost; so throw away the keys to their cells. These opinions represent superiority/inferiority defense mechanisms used by insecure power mongers; they contribute to the illusion of a fundamental, irreconcilable difference between ordinary humans.

If criminals’ actions are different from ours only by degree, and their thinking is not much different, then what is different? We must of necessity go beyond action and thought to find some difference between us and them, (please, find some difference!). Since a person’s “pure consciousness” is the source of conscious and unconscious thoughts, then perhaps the quality of that state of being, of liveliness, constitutes the difference between us and them. But how can we identify such a state of consciousness? It is something so abstract that it is not even directly detectable, let alone measurable. We must observe subsidiary functions of consciousness in order to get a glimpse of its shadow. One mental function that is universal in humans is attention. (To be continued)

Of course we deserved to be spared from an awful burglary; if we didn’t deserve clemency, then we wouldn’t have gotten it. We must have accumulated more good karma than I thought. Ordinarily, this situation would have been a slam-dunk for local thieves, even without keys. But we must fix this “old key” mistake and replace those flimsy balcony doors ASAP; how often does one get a second chance? You can tempt fate too much and get slapped down. I remember someone asking Maharishi if it’s OK to fly a hang-glider. His response was that, “It wasn’t prudent to place ones life in the hands of so few laws of nature”. There’s that “free will” thing again. We walked over to Tavo’s place to check out his story, but he wasn’t there; one of his older sons told us he was out working. So we took off up Calle Central to get an ice chest, ice and some food to put in it.

On the way we met Domingo sitting on the steps at his usual spot near our building. He told us of what was reported to him early this morning: the night-watchman told him that someone was hanging around outside of our building trying to look inside. How a story grows! Tavo was sitting on the curb, waiting for us when we returned to the apartment. We thanked him for calling Nadja about the incident. He had no explanation for the difference in his story and that of Domingo. Sudarshani thinks that Tavo wanted us to return and continue working on the apartment so he could make some more money.

We did get back to work the very next morning. I resumed replacing the ceiling and Tavo did some more wiring and shopping for odds and ends that we needed for repairs. It felt good to get my hands dirty and build something. The cheap Chinese electric drill broke down the first hour that I used it. That’s the last time that I buy bargains recommended by Tavo. I managed to fool around with the switch all day in order to get something done, but it was slow and frustrating. Using a drill with only one speed—fast, is not the way to install drywall screws. I ruined two Phillips bits doing it.

The next day Nadja picked us up in her brand new KIA 4×4 diesel mini-SUV. It’s a beauty all right; the old one looked just fine to me. She was going to sell us the 10 year old KIA but she wanted way too much for it and we were re-thinking the whole vehicle option by then anyway. We drove around town looking for new doors for the balcony. I had already settled on the door and modification that I wanted to use but we had to check out the options. Since the door size is non-standard, everyone wanted $340-$460 each, to make custom doors. Forget that! My idea was to get solid wood exterior doors for $35 each and cut them down to size. Then buy a couple pieces of sheet metal cut to fit and then screw and glue one to the inside of each door. That way, the outside looks natural and at the same time, it could not be kicked in.

There were other errands to do on the phone, such as: call the water utility to get our water supply fixed; call the electric utility to turn on our power. We wanted to find someone to change the chip in our old cell-phones so they could operate with a local service. I hate to throw away $100 phones, especially since they are the dual transmission style: they are both digital and analog and so are more useful for when you leave the city and travel or live in the mountains. I don’t even know if “duals” are made any more.

Down here you waste a lot of time trying to get anything done and the lack of progress was frustrating. I was glad to get back to work on the ceiling the next day, at least I can see the results and know I am one day closer to finishing the job. Nadja lent us a drill and electric saw so I don’t have to buy new. The toilet and shower drains are very slow and need to be “snaked”, or at least chemically cleaned out (if the blockages are dissolvable). Of course, Tavo said that he could do it but I feel that I have to do some of these things myself or they won’t get done properly. He doesn’t even have a snake so I have no idea how he would attempt to clean the pipes. I am less inclined to follow his ideas because I think that he is creating work for himself that he cannot do correctly. For instance, he had said that he could fix the street valve; instead, he messed up the pipe sleeve and it leaks worse now than before. The utility should be concerned because the loss is on their side of the meter.

Tavo didn’t show up for work today because he is busy at court trying to keep his 18 year old daughter out of jail. She had beaten up a neighbor lady and was thrown in jail. Her two minor sisters were taken in as well because the mother (of the young ones) was not at home. Tavo was able to retrieve the two minors but could not take the 18 year-old home, so he tapped us for $20 in an advance in order to pay her bail. We thought that she should sit in jail to learn her lesson, but Tavo couldn’t let his “precious child” suffer. He did stop by later on to ask for more money for a lawyer but we declined on principal. He had never mentioned two other teenaged daughters before; maybe he has three families. I still have work for him to do and he has 18 hours to work off, so I had better see him soon.

Nadja said that she has a snake that she will lend to us. What doesn’t she have? We were inquiring around about the whereabouts of a laundromat because our few clothes are used up. Again, Nadja took them and will return them washed and dried tomorrow. She sure has been good to us but we don’t want to become dependent on her, so we will lay low after one last trip to get doors and foam panels. If the toilet drain cleans out OK, then we may not need to buy a new toilet, as recommended by Tavo. On top of all this, I have to get working on my resident visa; the visitor visa may have run out and that would complicate things.

We did not want to inconvenience Tavo again, so yesterday we walked over to the internet café and youth hostel to ask if we could buy some shower time. Juan, the manager of the hostel let us use their shower for free. Their water pressure was not much better than ours, and our shower stall was a lot cleaner; so that is why we decided to use our own the next day. In fact, we may try to clean up a shower downstairs, where the water pressure is better, and use that one if its drain is not plugged up. We had mentioned that we were looking for a small two-burner LP gas stove and sure enough, Nadja had one that we could borrow because they only use it for camping and that is a rare occasion. I went to a local Chinese market around the corner (I have four to choose from on that block alone) and purchased a five gallon bottle filled with LP gas for $24 ($4 for the gas—only from now on). Now we can cook, and with the ice chest we can preserve perishables; I’m ready for a better diet.

As slow as the water is, both Sudarshani and I took our first showers today. I first had to use some wire to bust out a little opening in the drain; just enough to handle what little water the shower head put out.

We received a call from Nadja, who had gotten a call from Tavo, who had talked to Domingo, (an old-timer who seems to live on the sidewalk near our apartment in San Felipe) who had talked to a night-watchman who said he saw someone coming out of the front gate of Raul’s building at five in the morning, carrying a black bag. Nadja and Aunt Rosa drove over to the building to see if it looked like it had been broken into, but it looked normal to them. They advised that we return to Panamá city to go into the building and verify if there was a break-in during our eight day stay in Colón.

I immediately thought of the keys to the building. Maybe someone had gotten a copy of one or more of them, perhaps from the former owners. Sudarshani did not know if Raul had re-keyed the locks after he took possession of the building; and from the look of the keys, I didn’t think they looked new at all. What a plan, I thought: Don’t go through the trouble to break in, just buy the old keys and waltz in and out at your leisure. After all, there are four units in this building and people might think that a new tenant had moved in, only he is taking empty boxes in and full boxes out. We had just loaded all of our belongings into the building and took off the next day for who knows how long.

We decided to take a bus to Panamá right away and began packing what we needed in a knap-sack and a canvas bag (I now wish that I had taken a bag of my favorite foods as well). It was a quiet trip and I was in a depressed mood, thanks to my ingenious theorizing. The movie was lost on me; it wasn’t that good anyway. Thoughts of my karma drifted through my mind, sometimes re-assuring and other times depressing me; but paramount to all of the rationalizing was the idea that we all deserve what we get and that whatever happens will be the result of the sum-total of our collective decisions in the past and there is no value in whining about it.

After the bus pulled into Calidonia we flagged a taxi to San Felipe. I was steeled to take whatever was dealt to me and I tried to feel neutral about what I suspected I might see. The city looked especially ominous today and Sudarshani commented on the bleakness of barrio Santa Ana as we passed through it and into our barrio. As Nadja had said, all looked normal from the street as we pulled up to our front gate; but I wasn’t assured. The gate was locked, the upstairs security gate was also locked and the front door was locked. Now, I wouldn’t think that thieves would lock up all the doors as they came and went, just the front gate; so I felt a little better.

We walked into the front room and saw that the balcony door was shut and locked and there was nothing strewn about the room, OK so far. Upon unlocking our bedroom door we saw that everything was lying about as we had left it. We proceeded to the rear of the apartment, to the storage room where all of our unopened boxes of good stuff were. It was all there just as we left it and I heaved a sigh of relief. We were spared; especially when we did not deserve to be–considering the neighborhood, the general knowledge that the rich Americans had just stashed their stuff there and our hasty departure without securing the balcony doors, the weakest link.

Regarding mosquito bites: In spite of precautions, we were bitten by the dreaded coloradilla but not as many times as before. The repellant may have helped because I only had six welts and they were not as big or itchy as the first time I got them. I had earlier hypothesized that the local Miguelenos must have developed immunity to the bite of these creatures and didn’t even notice them. Both Sudarshani and I seemed to have reduced reactions to the bites, so maybe we gained a little immunity since our initial exposure.

Marcel, the Frenchman from Haiti who we met at the internet café, called us at Wilma’s; we had missed his last call while we were in Panamá. He had moved into the city of Colón, not four blocks from us, so I immediately invited him over. He walked in an hour later and we had a good visit. He shed his rental car and relied on taxis to get around. At only 75 cents a trip, he was saving a lot of money. Also, the local hotel charged a lot less than the one in the suburbs. He had been making many contacts in the garment trade and had lined up over fifty potential customers for his cousin to negotiate with when he arrives Sunday for a ten-day visit from China.

He says that the most difficult period is before one makes the first contract because one does not have a track record to use as a referral. The buyer thinks he is taking a chance and so he wants a special discount to cover the additional risk. But the offers that Marcel has been seeing are so outrageous that he has to have his cousin come over to straighten out the buyers. Marcel should learn a lot by watching the action. He expects to go to China to see the production side of the deal and get a better grasp of actual costs and prices. This business is a long way from his work on oil wells in South America and the Middle East. His former occupation involved filling the hole outside of the drill casing with cement in order to stabilize the oil pipe for thousands of feet. He knew about the properties of cement.

This subject came up because I had mentioned the high cost of cement in Panamá, despite its extensive use in construction. Marcel knew a lot about Portland cement, which is the largest export of Washington State and is used all over the world. I told him about the use I had for it in my burlap-reinforced/cement wall idea—to save lots of money in construction costs. Since he dealt in fabrics, I asked if he could find out how inexpensively I could buy burlap. He did not recognize the word (I subsequently found out that the fabric is called sisal in Spanish) so I will get him a sample of burlap to show his cousin. He indicated that perhaps there is a cheaper source of Portland-type cement available in China. These traders are always looking for an opportunity.

The first time we met we had talked about gov’t corruption and about the system of botella (political patronage) here in Panamá. A TV news show interviewed an expert on gov’t who stated that we had over 100,000 parasites in civil service who were being paid for working at jobs that didn’t exist or for occupying actual jobs that the “payoff recipients” did not show up for. In a country with the population of San Diego County, around three million, this kind of waste of resources is difficult to hide. On the contrary, it is not hidden, but is accepted as the price of democracy. This indicates that the citizenry is just as corrupt as its gov’t. Marcel stated that the current situation here is nothing compared to what is to come: just observing what is going on right now in Haiti and Dominican Republic will show us the future of Panamá.

Early the next morning we prepared to hike out of Miguel. Lazarus had arranged to put Wilma on his horse and walk them to Gobea. We would hike along with them. I was wondering if we could keep up because this was a stroll in the park for Lazarus and he can walk pretty fast. As it was, we did fine and walked as fast as he did. I lost time to the horse on the uphill but made it up on the downhill. We did not take the extended beach route because the tide was up. But several times we took to the beaches as part of the regular road. In spite of having to climb more hills, we made the six mile trek to Gobea in 1 ¼ hours, which is good time in these parts.

Again, we rode in a canoe across the river to get to the town itself and then walked to the town store to wait for some ride to go to Rio Indio. As is our custom, we gave a little money to whoever extended their hospitality to us. People don’t have much and a little money goes a long way towards offsetting their expenses. We gain a reputation of paying our way and not mooching off of people. As we were waiting by the Gobea store, I noticed the food that a delivery truck was unloading. It was processed crap, some imported from the USA. It is such a waste of scarce money to buy those empty calories but I guess that anyone with a TV is bound to be brainwashed into buying whatever the marketers tell them to.

According to what Ping said on our first visit, the small rural retailer makes $10 profit on each case of Atlas beer, the most popular brand in Panamá. This little Gobea store had 750 cases of Atlas alone, not counting all of the other beers and soft drinks for sale and all of the basic foods. Even if they restock only once a month, the profit made on the sale of just this one item may amount to $7500 a month. That is huge money in this country; no wonder the Chinese are so successful here, and envied for it (the locals have no idea of the actual profitability of these stores). Stores like this serve an entire region surrounding a village like Gobea. Everywhere I traveled I have seen little stores run by Chinese families. There are a lot more Chinese here than one would imagine; and I rarely see evidence of intermarriages.

We got a ride in a mini-bus that was offering competition to the regular bus system. It was successful because the big busses generally do not run into Gobea, although some drivers dare to try in the dry season. The news was everywhere about the bus accident the day before. Theories abounded about how it happened. The loss of brakes was a fact. What happened to the bus exactly? It turns out that the driver was more of a hero than a heel: the bus had lost its brakes while traveling downhill on a road with sharp curves. Usually such a vehicle would leave the road on an outside curve and go over the edge into the canyon. But this driver steered his bus into the outside of an inside curve, up against the hill; the bus went into the ditch and up the other side, causing it to roll over onto its roof. This threw the passengers into a pile on the ceiling causing some of them to get injured, such as the girl we encountered earlier. The injuries could have been much worse if the bus had rolled down into the canyon.

In Rio Indio we caught the next bus heading into Colón. The driver showed us the exact location of the accident and the evidence proved the above scenario to be correct. If the bus could have made it around one more curve before losing control it would have been able to stop in the valley on a long stretch of straight road. As it was, the bus was pulled out of the ditch and towed into that very valley. As we passed it, we could see that its roof was crushed from being flipped upside down. Aside from the passengers’ suffering, the driver is out of a livelihood unless he can afford to fix his bus. I don’t know if the busses carry insurance but I would bet against it. Victims go to the public hospitals and get what care the state can extend. Civil suits? Forget it. These drivers are definitely judgment-proof.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. The stop at the locks was entertaining as usual. This time I saw a shorter freighter joined by a sailboat and a tug boat in the same lock; no valuable space is wasted. The sailboat had to be drawn by a “burro” but the tug proceeded under its own power—it was probably part of the canal system. I read in the paper about the design for the “Panamax” project (for the new locks). Being 50% longer, 50% wider and 50% deeper, the new locks will handle ships of twice the displacement as the existing locks. On the Caribbean side, the new locks could be built alongside the old without disrupting service; but the Pacific side has a narrow channel and I don’t know how the new locks can be built without destroying at least one of the two lanes of the existing locks. More than likely they would radically widen the channel on one side while the existing locks continued to operate. Gatun Lake cannot feed the larger locks so there is a water-saving design built into them. Instead of the water being flushed down-hill from a lock and dumped into the ocean, as is currently done, it will be pumped uphill to reservoir channels next to each lock. The weight of the ship being lowered will push the water uphill, so no separate pumps will be needed. Then the water can be recycled, perhaps indefinitely.

Now it was off to Lazarus and Adi’s house to watch TV (can’t miss the novelas!) I was tired and dozed off. I was surprised that Wilma was still alert and intent on seeing her favorite shows because she had such a tiring journey. While we were there, Shelley brought over the local school’s principal. He had held that position for five years and loved it here. This was a perfect marriage of “backwater punishment” and personal preference. Anyway, he was trying to reconstruct the history of the Miguel school; no one seemed to know anything and there are no records, not even of how old the school is. He was advised about Wilma’s visit as “an important person was in town”, in reference to her history as both a student and a teacher in Miguel. She talked with him for a while and told him that she would send him some things from her personal records.

As it turns out, the school has its own hymn, which Wilma composed in 1941. She doesn’t remember the hymn but one of her students from that time has the hymn memorized, so Wilma will get in touch with her to write it down. Another incident that is not generally known is that Wilma and her students scavenged wood from the beaches to build a new, bigger school house in that same year. The old one was falling apart and was too small. Wilma’s mother was a teacher who worked at the Miguel school before she met and married Wilma’s father. Wilma’s father’s father was also a teacher and taught at the Miguel school, so that lineage may date the operation of the school to 1890 or earlier.

The village of Miguel de la Borda appears to be pretty old and Sudarshani’s family goes way back there. The sensibilities of the place remain old-fashioned in many ways but modern problems are becoming apparent. There is not enough money in Miguel to warrant serious marketing efforts, yet the drug dealers are here to take every last dollar that they can get their hands on. When something is declared to be illegal it becomes rare and precious, as a result the profit margin is so huge that it pays to sell in even the most inefficient markets. This is how the drug business has invaded everywhere—with the help of govt. I was stopped by the national police in Rio Indio while waiting for a ride. It seems that drug runners were dumping packages overboard to be washed ashore and the receivers were supposed to retrieve them on the beach. The cops were on the lookout for strangers who might be the suspected recipients.

I only had my California driver license for identification and that was not good enough. So I could have been taken away on suspicion, except that I was with my Panamanian wife and her mother. Not even a wife’s presence is enough to deter the cops but the risk of upsetting the aged mother caused them to restrain themselves and they let me go. We had just been talking about copying my US passport and carrying it, but we spaced out on it; bad timing. My visitor visa was good for three months (I think) so I’ll have to pay a penalty for a late extension. Isabel, from the expat social, said that we don’t need a lawyer to do my residency papers because I am married to a citizen. We can just carry the papers through ourselves because it is a much simpler process. Our lawyer had not done a thing for us as of yet (guess they are so loaded that they don’t need our business) so we don’t have to pay her anything.

Sudarshani and I went to sleep in the same house that we did the last time we were in Miguel. Last time we were bitten so badly by the local mosquitoes that we swore that we would not sleep there again without netting. Well, we bought netting and use it at Wilma’s but we failed to bring it with us because we thought that we wouldn’t stay overnight. It was supposed to be a quick inspection and turnaround in the same day. Well, you already know how quickly our trip began; so we stayed overnight again. This time we brought some organic insect repellant to rub onto our skins and I closed the unscreened window in our bedroom as soon as I arrived at their house. Hopefully, we will be spared the suffering that we endured the last time.

Immediately, various residents hailed Wilma as she walked in. She lost all memory of her fatigue or sore feet and visited with everyone who recognized her. I think that most of the residents were amazed that she had walked in, more than anything else. She was in town on business, and after sitting and talking for a few minutes, she headed to the family home to inspect the progress. It was not encouraging; the old roof was torn off but only a stick frame of the new roof was finished. It was obvious that the rains had drenched the insides, especially the Judicial Offices. Nonetheless, we toured the site and got caught up to speed by Tiburcio, who was working on the roof as we arrived.

He seemed pleased with himself, despite being six weeks behind his own schedule. I asked if the roof would be finished before the big rains arrived and he said that it should be done in a week. Now that is believable if it would just happen. He followed my plans reasonably well but had gotten rid of a lot of the original framework because he claimed that it was bad wood. I wasn’t around to inspect, so I had to take his word for it. He did good work, I couldn’t fault him for that; he’s just slow and used no helper, which made him much slower. Wilma had already agreed to contract Tiburcio to replace the door and window frames and fabricate new doors and shutters. He agreed to do the job on the eleven units (6 doors, 5 windows) for $200 plus $65 in local hardwood.

new roof

I guess we like the guy. There are just some things that you have to account for here, and one of those is slowness. I hate to characterize it as sloth or lethargy in order to avoid appearing cynical, but even the good workers are slow. If acceptance of that cultural trait is necessary to get the job done, then sign me up. In honor of my cultural enlightenment, I must report that we offered Tiburcio the ever-elusive project of replacing the termite-damaged wood flooring in Raul’s and our apartments in San Felipe. This would be after the roof job and before the window job. We had wasted a lot of time trying to accommodate the alleged floor craftsmen in the city; only to be left empty-handed with “no-shows”. As long as Tiburcio shows up, we will be happy; let him take his time.

After taking care of business, we saw Shelley, Sudarshani’s cousin who works for the building’s tenant. She informed us about the new electric service to the house. A problem with the installation is that the wire support will cut through the new roof and cause a leak. People do not cut holes in their roofs down here because it rains too much and too hard for the roof to sustain breaks in its coverage. Everyone else had gotten their electric service wires fed into the houses from under the roof eaves. Of course, Shelley was suggesting that this mistake was our responsibility to fix. We countered that since the gov’t contracted for the installation of electric service, it was the customer’s responsibility to negotiate with the utility for correction of a mistake. Case closed.

We got hungry so we stopped at the Chinese store for beers and ordered the famous Chinese fried rice for Shelley and Wilma and Fish dinners for us at the eatery next door. The bill was only $1.75 apiece. Ping was out of town but his sweetheart of a wife was manning the cash register at the store and we exchanged greetings. Their two daughters were there and in my halting Spanish I asked after their school careers. They are in the third and fourth grades and are learning no English, although their Chinese is great. As I was eating, some little kids visited and we exchanged English/Spanish drills as I ate. Naturally, they wanted some of my food and I gave each of them some fried plantains.

alternative road to Miguel

Aboard our substitute bus was a young girl, crying hysterically. She was a victim of an accident on the road behind us, towards Colón. She was fading out and closing her eyes. Sudarshani advised the girl’s mom to keep her awake so that she will not go into a possible coma, so they shook the girl awake and she resumed crying. We dropped her and her mom off at the next Salud (public health center) in pueblo Chagres. While stopped, we saw an ambulance and an empty bus fly out of there, heading east. We were finally informed that the earlier east-bound bus, the one that had passed us while we were stranded, had gone off of the road in the hills. I’m glad that none of us decided to return to Colón at that time. After dropping off a few passengers, we continued on to the end of the line, bus-wise, Rio Indio.

Throughout the day, while we were waiting for a ride out of Rio Indio, we heard more news of the bus accident. These busses are known for driving fast, probably in order to make more trips per day and more money. So we thought that finally, one went too fast for the road and the driver lost control. As far as we heard, no one got killed but plenty were injured and some were sent to the hospital in Colón. We waited for a half hour in Rio Indio for a ride to the next town. Finally a small pickup truck took us the next six miles on the very rugged and hilly dirt road to Gobea. On the way we met people walking fast on the road in the opposite direction; they were heading to Colón to see their relatives who were victims of the accident. The pickup driver collected a dollar from each of us and deposited us in front of the Gobea store. While we waited for a ride to Miguel we heard that the bus had lost its brakes while on the winding hillsides going up to the Gatun Locks. I imagined the bus rolling down a hill into the canyon below.

After waiting another half hour we got the word that no one was driving to Miguel that day, Sudarshani looked around for a horse and leader to rent for the grueling six mile trek. But there were no horses to be found in town. Only one option remained: to hike in. Now, that would be no problem for Sudarshani and me but Wilma was another story. At 84, she did not appear to have the strength to do it. But she wanted to go to Miguel, no matter what. So we started walking west out of Gobea until we got to the shore of the river, at its mouth where it flows into the ocean. We spotted an adolescent boy with a dugout canoe who was in the water playing with his girlfriend. For a dollar he took us across the river and then we started slowly hiking down the beach, accompanied by two young men who were carrying big bags of things purchased in the city. They could have left us in the dust but stayed with us instead, in order to show us the best paths to take to get through the jungle.

Wilma was slow, but we marveled that she was able to walk the trail at all. The soft sand of the beach was difficult to walk through and she wore only thin slippers, not having planned to hike that day. We left the beach after about a quarter mile and headed up steep muddy slopes to follow a horse trail over the highlands of the next point that was jutting out to sea. We found the vehicle road and walked along it while skirting the bogs. There was a lot of uphill and downhill hiking , so we stopped regularly to allow Wilma to catch her breath. Finally, the road became so steep and slippery that we switched to the beach and walked that for a mile or so until it became impassable due to cliffs rising right out of the surf.

Wilma was holding up well, although she was working hard. She had made this trek many times since she was a child and all through her adulthood. It used to be twice as long when the road ended in Rio Indio. Psychologically, this may have seemed to her like another walk in the woods and no big deal. Heading back to the road from the beach, we encountered the last two hills of the point before the river valley of Miguel de la Borda. We got on either side of Wilma and pulled her as she was pumping her legs up those hills. We stopped for breath halfway up each one before continuing on. Finally, we could see the trees over Miguel in the distance as we descended the last muddy hill. One last trek on the beach for a mile and we were there. We did the hilly six miles in a little over 2 ½ hours and we arrived before sunset; mission accomplished.