CHOCO INDIAN VILLAGE
and the
DARIEN JUNGLE
One day at daybreak in Panama, we boarded small cayucas (kai u coo) which were waiting for us alongside the ship. A cayuca is a dug out canoe. Since we were anchored two miles away from the mouth of the Sambu River
Why the early wakeup call? The tides---it was necessary to go up river on the tide and out on the ebb because at low tide there is only about 6 inches of water in the river verses 22 feet at high tide. Timing a visit to the village is absolutely determined by the tides.Chunga means black palm, and very few visitors get to Chunga, the Choco village. There is one other shallow draft small ship that can make it, but the water is not deep enough for cruise ships. Besides the river and village could not accommodate huge crowds.
We traveled an hour and a half up the Sambu for 10-12 miles through the Darien jungle. Bugs were not a problem on the 200-yard wide river. Bird life was abundant. We saw pelicans, ibis, egrets, kingfishers, herons, and many birds we could not identify. Some of us had hoped to see the colorful toucans and parrots, but it was not to be.
Choco is the name of a province in Columbia and the Indians do not like the name. They prefer to be called Embera-waanan. As we arrived several darling children met us to accompany us over the level half-mile trail to the village. My little 13-year-old girl held my hand all the way. This tribe does speak Spanish, but at this time understood very little English. The village has only received visitors since the early 1990s. The people are very individualistic and totally apolitical. You deal with them one on one. The Choco use a flute and drum to keep beat for their simple dances. The children were happy to demonstrate for us.
Small in stature, the men wear a loin cloth and wear their hair in a Prince Valiant cut. The women wear a waist to knee sarong and paint their bodies all over in various designs with a black paint obtained from the fruit of the black palm tree. The paint fades in 6-7 days. Multi strands of seed beads are worn around the female neck and their dark hair is waist long. Their skin color is a pretty bronze.
These Indians live separately in the jungle in houses built 6-10 feet off the ground on wooden pilings. There is nothing in the house except a floor and a small cooking sandbox on 6” legs in the center. They sleep on the floor. The tribe farms and both men and women work in the fields. Women carry corn and grain, but the men carry the firewood.
Women weave baskets from leaf strands of the black palm. Some of the tightly woven baskets are watertight. The men do some rather good wood carvings from rosewood, also known as cocobolo. They also carve small figures and animals from the vegetable ivory nut known as tagua. Until 1936, 95% of all buttons were made from this nut. The nut is about the size of a small plum, hard, and rather difficult to carve. When polished they certainly do look like ivory.
The noon return trip down river through the jungle was hot, hot, hot as the only shade was what our hats provided. We were grateful not to have to be fighting bugs. Occasionally a little water spay over the gunnels of the cayuca cooled us off.
