Una Hora

 The Chocó had a simple society and this was demonstrated by the fact that their spoken language only had the numbers from one to five, for anything larger than five they had a word that meant 'many.' When I was still trapping birds, I was visiting the Indians in the second village going upriver on the Tuira. It was a small village but I heard stories about another smaller village inland from there where all the community farms were. They told me that there were hundreds of parrots there. I asked them how far to walk to the other city and they told me 'una hora' (one hour).
It was just after lunch, and I figured that I could walk to the village, check out the birds in the afternoon and visit with the Indians there, then walk back before nightfall. So I set out along the trail ... alone!
The trail was well worn and easy to follow. There was only one trail, no branches and no side trails. The first part of the trail coming from the river snaked through corn and then platano fields. After leaving the fields the trail wandered through secondary growth bush for a long while. Then I reached a stretch of about a mile that traveled through primary growth rain forest. After emerging from the jungle the remainder of the walk was through secondary growth bush and then the communal Chocó platano fields until arriving at the small dale with about half a dozen Chocó huts.
After walking for over an hour and a half, I came across another Indian on the trail walking in the opposite direction toward the river, from where I had come.
I asked him how much farther to the village and he told me 'una hora.' (one hour).
How could that be? That's what they told me back at the river, and I had already been walking much more than an hour.
As I continued walking and thinking about this, it finally dawned on me what 'una hora' must mean to the Chocó. Their comprehension of time must be equal to their comprehension of numbers. When the distance was too far for them to be able to calculate an exact time, they simply used the term 'una hora.' I learned this lesson the hard way as I arrived at the inland village at about four o'clock, almost four hours since I had begun my journey. Knowing now the actual time it took me to get there, and also knowing the approximate time for nightfall, I was in serious trouble!
The trip back was hair-raising. I was completely unprepared. I had no light and only a partial book of matches. Here I was alone, encountering nightfall right as I came to the part of the trail that went through dense primary growth jungle. No moonlight or starlight makes it to the floor of the jungle due to the dense canopy.
Although the trail was well worn for the most part, when it came to following any trail in primary growth jungle it didn’t matter how worn it was. If I veered only slightly off course I knew I would miss a marker and lose the trail in a matter of seconds. There was also the possibility of accidentally walking into one of the giant spider web nets that occasionally bordered the trail. I had to start lighting matches to be able to see where the trail went. Very slowly and deliberately I would light a match and walk forward, trying my best to follow the trail, until the match burnt my fingers. Then I would stop and light another match and repeat the same thing.
Suddenly I heard the roar of a jaguar, not the kind of roar that comes from the distance, but the roar that is so close that you can swear that the big cat was watching you. I knew I would have no chance to defend myself against a jaguar in the middle of the jungle.
It is interesting what a motivating factor fear can become in a moment like this. I immediately lit a match and ran with my hand cupped around the match until it burnt my whole hand. My heart was racing as fast as my feet. I was barely touching the ground and making tracks through the jungle as if I had run on this trail a thousand times before. I slowed slightly only to light the next match.
All I could see in my mind was the jaguar chasing me, gaining on every stride. Then, suddenly, it was as if I had broken through a barrier, and I emerged from the jungle into the relative safety of a platano field and the security of a starlit night.
It was one of the stupidest things that I had done while I was in Panama, but I somehow managed to survive the ordeal.
The biggest fascination for the Chocó was blonde women. When we brought a blonde woman into a village, everyone would come up to her and want to touch her hair; Chocó women and children alike. I am sure that in many cases it was the first time any of these children had ever seen a Gringo other than me, much less a blonde woman. Kim was even more of an anomaly to the Chocó. The first time he arrived at a Chocó village produced one of the most extreme reactions I had seen by the children. Kim is over six feet tall, and has red hair and freckles. They called him 'el rojo' (the red one).
The standard trip with either the tourists or the bird watchers was two days. Each river had three Indian settlements on it, and was about a two hour ride in the dugout canoe from one village to the next. We would stop at each village for an hour or two on the way upriver and visit with the Indians. The tourists would buy baskets and wood carvings that the Indians began to make and sell after they were secure in the idea that we would be coming to their villages on a fairly regular basis. We would then set up camp at the last upriver village (tents and air mattresses), and set off for home down the river the next day. The children were always very friendly and curious about us. They would help us set up camp and then sit and visit with the tourists until their mothers came by to get them as it became dark out. When traveling back down the river the women and children of each village would come down to the shore and wave as we went by.