A restless head woke me just before my alarm. In the black of night, with only the whistling wind as my companion, I got up from bed and fumbled around in search of my headlamp. After a few seconds, now with the teal coloured strap around my skull casting a beam in front of me, I made silent, drowsy calculations. I had made the same calculations a few times over, before bed, and likely in my dreams. Quiet lips mouthed the trajectory and timing of what would be my next 28 hours. It would depend on a few things, weather, traffic, and timing, but in theory the math checked out.

I think this can work, I thought to myself.

With preoccupied thoughts trying not to linger on things outside my control, I moseyed to and fro, bunkhouse to bathroom, to dock, and back again a time or two as I returned all things borrowed from different parts of the base and left my trinkets for those who’d stay after I left.

The only thing worrying me at this point was the threat of rain.

As I wandered out towards the edge of the base for Anselmo’s cabin, I wondered for a second whether he’d actually be there to meet me, or if he maybe thought it was all a joke. When I came to him so late the night before, I talked so quick it probably made little sense.

‘I’d have to leave around 530,’ I had told him, nearly panting. ‘Can we make that work?’

‘We can go in my lanchita, but only if it doesn’t rain,’ he said stroking his chin. ‘If it rains though, we cannot sail.’

‘Well then lets hope it doesn’t rain.’

Of course I never truly doubted him. That man had never failed me since I first got here. Much to my anxiety, it had rained sporadically all throughout the night, and so I worried that he’d have something to say about it when I came to him now. I found him standing in silent darkness with a flashlight, draped in his cloak-like rain jacket.

‘Listo?’ he said softly.

‘Vamos.’

With one backpack wrapped in a garbage bag and another in its rainproof cover, I plopped my gear down onto his little fishing boat. A sky devoid of stars from cloud cover welcomed us, and without much said, we peeled out into black across the water.

We motored for a time, at one point Anselmo slowed the boat and turned into a small canal splitting the islands before coming out the other end. I could see the glow of mainland in the distance from here, with a dulled luminescence that dampened the horizon. That was Almirante, where I would catch a bus with the many workers heading out at dawn to the banana plantations and get off in Changuinola before heading for the Costa Rican border. As we approached the glow, the rain started, merging with the ocean sprays that peppered the boat to wet me well with salt and water. As we finally came up to dock, I shared an embrace with Anselmo. I remembered last time I left, his was also the last face I saw, and it was fitting that he’d be the one to Sherpa me to my next journey.

‘Anselmo my friend. Thank you endlessly for tolerating my nonsense. My only regret was that I failed to spend as much time with you as I had liked,’ I said.

‘Of course Juan,’ he answered. ‘I was looking forward to Christmas together, but that’s okay. When will you be back?’

‘It may be a few years now, but I’ll be seeing you again.’ I answered

‘Safe voyage my friend.’

‘The same I say.’

Without much pause, I turned away and weaved around the shipyard before coming to a bus stop and hopping on the first one heading towards Changuinola.

Once I arrived, the sun was rising and I met with Totin, my driver with ash coloured hair and expressive eyes behind delicate spectacles. He was a friend of a friend of Kevin, and picked me up in an oddly painted car with some suspect body work. From there, we drove to the border crossing at the Rio Sixaolo and parted ways. As he stepped out of the vehicle, he pulled a large battery the size of a small child out on a dolly from the trunk.

‘What’s that for?’ I asked.

‘We’ll use this to start the car on the other side,’ he said.

Right, I though. Of course. (??)

After doing border control on foot and crossing the river, I met back up with Totin, now in a different car. This one seemed more likely to pass a safety inspection than the last one. Progress.

From there, we drove. We got to chatting, and once he found out I was heading for the World Cup Final, the ride took on a different quality. We spoke about futbol, my work with the Ngäbe, and he told me of his own life running a tour bus business, as his relationship with Panama and Costa Rica, and the nuances of raising children in a border town. We became friends quickly.

After the first few hours of driving we stopped at a small municipal building where he met a woman for unclear relations and we changed cars again, now into a smaller four door sedan. I was beginning to wonder how many cars were in circulation here.

After a while back on the road, it became clear the drive was going to be patchy. Despite the distance only being around 300 kilometres, we’d spend most of it on two lane mountain roads, with the looming threat of getting stuck behind a bus, or landslides, and construction choking traffic at unpredictable times. Through my window I appreciated the change in vegetation from the swampy threadiness of Panama to the more dense foliage of the Costa Rican rainforests. Our drive took around 7 hours all told, and by the end we came up on San Jose airport with time to spare. I thanked Totin for the trip. Over the next several days, I’d get a series of messages from him asking how I was doing with the many legs of travel.

From there the journey was fairly regular. A tired backpacker sleepwalking through airports both in Costa Rica, and then Madrid, would arrive in Doha some 18 hours later. One or two personal articles lost in the process, followed by a subway trip and 10 minute walk to the hotel would lead him to his family awaiting his arrival at 2am the night before the match.

I think it’s worth addressing the irony of my position. Here I am claiming to serve the under-served, and then once settled in Panama doing exactly that, I took off, spending a small fortune in the process to get myself halfway across the world to the cradle of privilege in order to watch a sporting event with my family. Maybe it would have been less hypocritical to stay in Panama and see out my last week, but at the time I didn’t care. I took off without thinking twice. It’s a luxury that few people on the planet have, and there are millions, no actually, billions of people around the world who would have given everything to be in my position. I truly am the most fortunate person who has maybe ever lived, and I am all of that just because I happened to be born in the right place to the right people. For the first quarter century of my life and more, all I’ve done is consume energy, affection, education, and resources to produce what I am now, and for that I am forever indebted to this universe. Nobody deserves to be as lucky as I am. I count my blessings every day. Believe me.

Arriving at the stadium when the time finally came, a sea of blue and white flowed with beating drums and endless singing in all directions. I got to hold hands with my parents up the steps of the stadium to the upper decks, running on pure adrenaline. As for the game itself, well. No amount of words could ever.

In my adult life I have only cried a handful of times, when a friend died, when the darkest depths of covid collapsed my mental health in a moment of crisis, and twice in that stadium in Qatar. The national anthem, the singing, the blur of Albiceleste that had the French in utter calamities before Didier Deschamps made two changes in the fortieth minute. When Angel Di Maria scored that second goal, the crispest connection of one-touch futbol on the biggest stage ever, I turned to my left and hugged my dad. We both cried like I was 6 years old again in the arms of the only person who could comfort me during a thunderstorm. Then I hugged and cried with my brother, my mom, and my sister. After that first half of watching some of the best team play I have ever seen, the stadium rang out in song as an arena full of 40 million Argentinos put their weight behind 11 men. When the French drew 2-2, I’ll be honest that I didn’t suffer. In a weird sense of cosmic clarity, I knew that the universe was fitting, that we would have to suffer along the way, but I never doubted the result. Even when Messi pulled ahead in added time and the French drew level again, I felt in my soul the outcome would be okay. When it all came to a head, as Montiel’s penalty put 36 years of waiting to rest, again the tears fell, this time buoyed by an overwhelming sense of peace, like for a moment all the struggles my country has and will continue to suffer just disappeared right then and there. The togetherness I felt with those around me both close and far away, it was community, that same love for the tribe I witnessed so closely with the Ngӓbe, that took precedence over everything, if even for a moment. This is why we do medicine, I thought. So that people can enjoy this. This is why we live.

So my trip ended in a way that was far from expected. I took away something different than I thought I would to be honest. I got the chance to rekindle relationships with some amazing people and meet some new ones. In reality, I learned less about the practice of medicine and much more about the purpose of it. It was only through the time I spent adjacent to the clinics, as opposed to within them that I came to a more potent realisation about what it means to serve communities. Health is a term that I think the modern landscape misunderstands to mean the performance of your vessel. However, I would argue that for many, the meaningfulness of our relationships is our fundamental reason for living. Without that, the vessel means nothing at all. As I embark on my journey to help those underserved find better health, I feel like I have more to learn from them about meaning as I have things to teach about blood pressure, blood sugar, and healthy living.

For those of you still reading, thanks again for being a part of this journey with me, and for being my fundamental reason for living. Thank you for being my community.

Until next time, with all my love,

Pez