If you’re ever chased by a crocodile on land, run in zig zags. That’s one of the lessons you learn growing up in a tropical country. Lush green and cloudy grey Panama. High-rise PTY, red diablos buses blasting raging plena. Spanglish spoken begrudgingly due to an American invasion in 1990 to protect its economic interests. A banana Republic that had severed its cultural and political ties with Colombia, because of foreign interests to build a canal – first French and then American.
Of course, I didn’t really perceive all of this when we moved to Panama when I was eight. As a kid of an affluent family, we were choffered to school, to karate class, to check out cds at Arrocha. You don’t really walk much in a country this close to the equator. You move from one air-conditioned room to another via a closed-windowed car. My bubble was both environmental and social.
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