Humans don’t seem to handle change well. Things get worse and worse until someone has had enough. Fresh idealism, however, seems to have a short shelf life. And yet, despite everything, that critical moment when someone forces a change, is totally fascinating.
As we walked back along the Welsh clifftops at sunset, I saw a strange cloud rise up from the inland horizon. It swept vertically up into the sky, swelling and rolling, pushing then pulling, obviously not driven by any wind. The moment of incomprehension was brief, then I understood: it was a flock of birds. Stackpole Head in Pembrokeshire is a good spot to witness the natural phenomenon of starling murmurations, but you can see it anywhere in the world if the population of this, and some other bird species gets to a certain critical level. On the Amazon recently I saw millions of yellow-fronted and red-cheeked parrots do it. As soon as the sun took on the golden hues of evening, I heard them coming. At first it was just a distant whiff of smoke high in the sky, a black Milky Way strung across the heavens, then suddenly at tree-top level a great communal gasp and rising scream as aerial rivers of parrots came pouring in over the Colombian town of Leticia.
I'd been warned to make for the cathedral so I hurried there. People were gathering outside and some had taken up position in the bell-tower, but carried away by the experience, I dived into the park opposite, right under the flight path. That was a mistake. People were running from there, like they'd run from an aerial bombardment, one with a very distinctive acidic tang to it. I retreated to the steps of the cathedral and watched as thousands of parrots swirled overhead, then plunged vertically earthwards, pulling out the dive at the last second to take up a couple of inches on a crowded branch.
An ornithologist will tell you that the birds are simply gathering together and heading for an overnight roost. Safety comes in numbers. Perhaps there is also an element of assessing the group size. But how to explain the mysterious mid-air communal movements? The way a cloud of birds will suddenly bud, bulge and divide. There is no obvious leader nor follower, only that instantaneous grasp of collective will. That is why we sit on the cathedral steps and watch, marvelling.
Slowly, as the novelty wore off, the people drifted away into the street where food stalls had arrived and men were selling helium balloons to eager children. The noise of human chatter slowly became louder than the birds who were now settling down in the treetops. By the time it was dark, the human flock had forgotten all about the millions of parrots who were asleep, except perhaps one or two lookouts who watched the humans, marvelling at how the crowd moved.
Off the Pan-American highway, into the ridge of hills and mountains that runs down the spine of Panama, are the lands of the Ngäbe Buglé people. After an hour on a terrible road we reached a settlement in the forest by a river. I got out the car and walked to a bridge. Down below there was a jungle torrent, rushing down a boulder field. In deeper pools naked children were playing while their mothers washed clothes on the banks. There was a flash of blue as a kingfisher sped away downstream. It could have been idyllic, but it was not. The human impact on the environment was too disturbing: piles of rubbish everywhere and ugly shacks thrown together at speed without any artistry or concern for anything except shelter and proximity to the tarmac, the leftover waste of construction chucked to one side.
My contact was Willow, a local man who was attempting to welcome tourists to his area. Not everyone agreed with his mission. As I climbed the steps to his house, a baby capuchin monkey bounded forwards, leapt up and bit me on the arm. It was only in play, but it summed up the wariness of that welcome. The indigenous peoples of Panama, as elsewhere in the Americas, have good reason to be cautious about foreign visitors, but invasions wherever they happen, often take a bit of time to settle down: Britain, for example, has yet to get over the Norman Conquest in 1066.
Willow did his best to put on a show. His family performed a cacao ceremony and some traditional dances. Food was served. But everything felt stilted and unnatural, like we spoke the same language but wrote in different scripts. I was alphabetic, he was heiroglyphic. I was also on guard against that monkey, Toto, who seemed to regard me as the Wicked Witch of the West.
I was taken to see my accommodation. Back across the bridge to the local shop then through an open door into a large dark room. On one side was a massive flatscreen television playing some sort of soap opera series at full volume. Opposite this was a huge grubby brown sofa on which a half-naked obese youth was sprawled like a water buffalo on a day off. He made no sign of having seen me arrive. All around were piles of building materials: sacks of cement, timber, boxes of nails. In one corner was a hammock which may have contained a person. My room was next to this one. A double bed covered in a scrunched up dirty sheet was on one side, the rest was filled with possessions: cheap clothes piled on boxes. The floor was littered with the tawdry trash of modern consumerism: make-up jars, plastic bags, a pen, batteries, a phone-charger. Just to get out of this squalid box, I asked to see the bathroom. This was a mistake. It was a hole in the ground out the back, past the broken twin-tub washing machine, the chickens and scattering of discarded ash blocks and used nappies.
After seeing this, I thanked my hostess and headed back across the bridge. I told Willow that I wouldn't be able to manage the two-night option. Unfortunately I would only be able to stay for one. The truth was I would have left immediately if there had been any transport. The car I had arrived in had gone back.
Willow took this news with the resigned air of a man used to disappointments in life. "Come and sit over here," he said, leading me towards a thatched shelter, "One of our local weaver ladies has come to show you her work."
I followed after him, feeling like I'd let him down. Had I been too hasty? Maybe it wasn't so bad? Maybe the podgy youth was an amazing musician, perhaps the room was cool at night, maybe the chickens laid golden eggs. Maybe I was a privileged and spoiled foreigner.
The old lady showed me the hammocks and tote bags that she made from palm fibre. We chatted. She told me how the community was discriminated against and, despite blocking the Pan-American Highway a few times, never seemed to get much from the government. What did they want? "A better road."
Although I'd experienced the potholed monstrosity they called a road, it was not what I thought the place needed. It needed culture.
The old lady had her own. "I am a Bahá'í," she said.
I was astounded. The Persian cult, often regarded as a Shi-ite Islamic offshoot, only has around 5 million followers worldwide and I had not expected to find one here. There were others, she assured me, but not many, not like for Mama Delia. "These larger bags are 20," she said, "And the smaller ones 10."
I feigned interest in the bags, but it was the mysterious religious connections that intrigued me. "Who is Mama Delia?"
"Most of the people here follow her," she said, but the subject did not interest her. She was here to sell bags and hammocks.
I had to wait until the following day before I discovered more. Willow had taken me to a local waterfall and then to meet his mother. She was sitting under a thatched roof and looked absolutely ancient which turned out to be less than ten years more than me.
"She was there," said Willow, "When Mama Delia had her vision. You can ask her about it."
The old lady was very willing to share her experience. "It happened in 1962 when I was a young girl," she began. "At that time life here was not good. There was a lot of drinking, gambling and domestic violence. The forest and the rivers were in bad shape too. Our people had forgotten everything about our ways. All they did was drink, argue and fight. Then one day it changed. We heard that a lady in a distant village had seen Jesus come down from Heaven on a motorbike."
Willow was translating all this into Spanish and it took a few queries and explainers. Had I heard that correctly? The old lady was adamant. "Yes. Jesus came down with some aliens, all on motorbikes. Mama Delia was having the visions and everyone was flocking there to see her. We set out too. All the family."
In fact, the whole region had been sent into turmoil. Thousands were trekking through the forest to find this young housewife. Willow struggled to keep up with my questions. I couldn't understand how and why there had been such a reaction, but then I hadn't seen the desperation for change. Willow couldn't explain it either. "I think she was an ordinary woman - but I believe she may have suffered domestic violence herself."
His mother got there as the twelve days of Delia's vision came to a close. "She said that if we did not change our ways, Armageddon was coming and all the Ngäbe Buglé would die. Only the whites would survive. The aliens had gone, but there were marks on the ground that they had left.”
Once again, this threw me. So it was not a vision, it was real. "What kind of marks?"
"Like holes with ashes. Made by their motorbikes."
"So the aliens were real? Did other people see them?"
"Yes, lots. I talked to them. They'd all seen it happen."
Life for the Ngäbe Buglé people would never be the same again. The majority abandoned any previous religion and became Mama Delia followers. The prophetess had outlawed alcohol, wife-beating and polygamy. The followers did as they were told. "At first maybe," Willow added, with a meaningful look. There was renewed pride in their language, and in caring for the forests and rivers, a pride that led to the formation of the comarca indigena, a self-governing area of 7,000 km2. Now they were struggling to stop destructive exploitation of the land, particularly through hydro schemes and copper mining.
As we left I realised that I had judged things too soon. What I had stumbled upon was not a crowd of lost souls disappearing under a tsunami of consumerism, but an embattled community trying to forge a new path in a difficult world, a breakaway bid from the mad murmuration of humanity.
I wanted to know more, but Willow had already rebooked a car to take me out. I hadn't the heart to change it again. Besides the thought of some sleep was too tempting.
When I went back to the shop to collect my bag, I found the sofa and hammock empty. I shouted out the back, but no one came. There was no one serving in the shop. The only sign of life was a few dozen yellow butterflies dancing above a puddle in a ray of sunlight. I grabbed my rucksack and left, wondering if they'd all run away to witness a new vision.
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