We spent a day with 2 young Kuna men picking avocadoes, lemons, bananas and coconuts from their family’s garden. We towed their ulu over to the mainland and then hiked for almost an hour. These guys are in great shape! For the avocadoes they climb the trees and use a forked stick to knock them loose. After about an hour we had close to 100 avocadoes. When we were done, they loaded everything on their backs for the return hike. They wouldn’t accept a tow back to their village. I think they were afraid of the grief they would get from everyone. The avocadoes were to be sold to the Colombian supply boats that come through regularly.
The Kuna with the agouti (big rodent) was pretty proud of himself. Meat is a real luxury. Their diet consists mainly of rice, beans, coconuts, lentils and some chicken or fish or canned mystery meat.
The 2 kids in the ulu stopped by with their dad to sell us some coconuts. When people show up, we always offered ice water and to charge their cell phones if we are going to be in the anchorage for a few days. There are a few cell towers now in the San Blas and most Kunas seem to have cell phones but no way to charge them. If someone has a generator or solar panels they charge $0.50 -$1.00 to charge the phones so we became real popular. The picture has some cell phones plugged in.
The last pictures are of Kuna women. The majority of the Kuna women still dress in traditional garb. When you do get married you move in with her family and she controls the money. All the sailas (chiefs) are male. Who can figure?
