weekend with the Chinese family

Because November is independence month (it coincides with Panama’s independence from the yoke of both Spain and Colombia’s rule), Brammy has had a lot of days off. One extended weekend, my roomies and I crammed into one of their girlfriend’s little SUV and headed 8 hours to her family’s farm in Chiriqui, on the Costa Rican border.

Chiriqui is pretty interesting. The people there possess a strong regional pride and consider themselves Chiricanos first, Panamanians second. They’ve even gone to the extent of making Chiricano passports. But somehow, I don’t think it will get you through immigration.

The area is known having the highest point in Panama – atop the Baru volcano. It’s pretty mountainous and has some of the best white water rafting and real-estate opportunities for foreigners, which is becoming somewhat of a booming industry there.

None of that mattered to me because I was intent on milking my first cow….and then having a baby calf suck on my fingers.

The weekend was a strange one. I stayed with about 30 Panamanians who were all of Chinese descent. The girlfriend’s family came over to Panama years ago, like many Chinese to work on the railroad that connected the Pacific to the Atlantic and later, to help dig out this hemisphere’s biggest functional ditch, the canal.

Her grandmother was amazing - at 89 years old, she was sharp and witty – a lot sharper than me. I couldn’t learn the Chinese she kept trying to teach me. She traversed the Pacific a good 10 years before her husband could make the trip. Talk about patience and commitment. She won the Panamanian lottery about 30 years ago. It’s a cool story: she owned a store where she’d let a lady sell lotto tickets in front. By 11:30am on ball-drop day, she still hadn’t sold all of her tickets for the noon show. She begged and pleaded and finally convinced the grandma to buy her remaining 100 tickets – one of them was good for the jackpot.

With the money, she bought a huge parcel of land with amazing views. At night, you can see the lights flashing of the Costa Rican boarder from the porch. The family built three ranches and a functional farm. Every weekend, the whole extended family heads up there for a little R&R.

I loved the cultural immersion, but I couldn’t get over this huge Chinese family speaking perfect Spanish. Some cultural stereotypes definitely fit – they were killer ping pong players. I held my own for us Americans, but was useless against their magical spin attack.