The sharp whistle of wind through trees woke me up in the dark, it was pouring outside. There was a lacrosse ball in my throat eagerly trying to escape by pressing all its rubbery glory against my windpipe. I was grossly uncomfortable, and in a semi-lucid state as the wind and rain crackled branches and forced trees into fisticuffs around the casita I began contemplating the implications of my illness. I was trying to ascertain how bad it was, how many days it might peak for, and when it might resolve. It’s Thursday night I thought, hopefully I can have this all finished up by Monday and be well enough for our trip out on Tuesday. As much as I was frustrated to be getting sick again, I wasn’t terribly surprised. At least I was glad enough to be getting sick after returning from deployment instead of just having left on one. I shook the cobwebs from my mind and realised that something felt weird, my bedsheets were damp. Really damp. Have I been sweating? Drenching night sweats is a dastardly sign, usually of Tuberculosis, and although I knew I didn’t have TB, but if I was spiking fevers overnight this was a whole different kettle of fish.

The motion sensing light outside was getting rattled so hard by rain that it turned on, spilling a milky light that lingered in through cracks in the door. Another thundering of the wind hammered the casita and I felt water hit my face. This roof can’t be leaking surely, I thought. I peeled the mosquito net off my bed and stood up in my room.

A flurry of water peppered my face, straight on, like someone had a supersoaker half a metre in front of me with aims to drown my face. It caught me by surprise and got all inside my mouth. Like an old man blinded by a spotlight I hobbled around the room, not so much acting but reacting. How is this possible? How is it raining inside my room? The mesh window that I always kept open had a two and a half metre extension of the porch and roof beyond it. The wind was blowing with such violence that it was funneling all of that rain straight across the horizontal through the mesh all over me. My mosquito net, the floors, my desk, and bedsheets, everything was wet. The next day I would wake up to find my computer open with beads of water still sitting on the keyboard. I opened the door, and the wind took it from my hands, pinning it to the inside wall. Against the lash, walking like quasi-modo after a day of drinking, I lowered the wooden covering from its chain shut the window with a bang. Hobbling back inside I closed the door behind me, before laying back in bed, which was now soaked. I felt so rotten that I figured it made no difference to bother and change the sheets. Maybe add another day to the sore throat I thought. Should be fine for Tuesday.

Friday contained another solid amount of patient related paperwork with the boss and preparations for the next week. Our next deployment was going to take us to the mountain village of Norteño. A quick boat ride and a quick drive would get us there early. One of the interesting things about Norteño is that it forms the end of a long mountain trail that stretches from the west coast of Panama to the east. Dr LaBrot told me that in the past he has seen patients that get word of medical arrival and walk all the way from coast to coast through the mountains for a consult. He recalls one instance in particular of a woman, pregnant, who made the three day journey through the pass without any specific complaint. ‘I just want to see how the baby is doing and that everything is ok’ she told him. A quick ultrasound revealed she was expecting a girl. She spent the night in the village and then set out back out the next morning. I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that if a pregnant woman can do that she’s going through a decently health pregnancy. I’m no doctor though.

The drawback of the community being a transit point meant that a lot of people passed through, not always meaning well. The team had had more issues with theft and ‘lost’ valuables in Norteño than in any other community combined. I was warned to keep my valuables close, particularly at night. Okay, I thought to myself: Duly noted.

That weekend I spent most of the time at base. There wasn’t a whole lot going on, but it gave me the chance to catch up with some friends and family. On Saturday evening Anselmo offered to take me out on the boat and try to catch some fish. Of course I obliged.

We took out a little dingy with a little engine and he brought me around the coast of San Cristobal. The island was essentially a blob shape, with finger-like peninsulas forming little bays all around its perimeter. We went out a different direction that I had ever seen before, and Anselmo talked to me about the many different species of wildlife that live on the island: pheasants, sloths, even a species of bear that lived in the swamp jungle deeper inland. I saw more houses owned be westerners, real modern achievements with clean docks and glass windows. It always shook me to see the difference between these luxury villas versus the plank wood dwellings with no plumbing that shared the island deeper in. I was surprised to hear from Anselmo that the indigenous are the owners of all those plots, and willingly sell them to the gringos for their ocean view villas. I had always felt their presence to be somewhat exploitative, perhaps influenced by the narrative I always hear back in Canada whenever anything is built on native land, but now I was hearing for the first time that this was not the case down here. This is not land sacred to them that was taken over by the state and sold for profit, it was sold by choice. For me this realisation opened up a greater internal discussion about the natives’ right to business.

Within the islands, the villages elected by vote a community representative, which became member to a senate within each smaller region, and each region selected by democratic vote a governor. Jack had told me that somewhat gone were the days of older people inheriting leadership by virtue of age or spirituality. The Ngäbe communities basically had a modern system of government which formed a greater council for their province. Nobody forced them to sell these plots to the gringos. Nobody forces them to buy American sugar or western beer and cigarettes for that matter either. The same way that the people of the Masai Mara use their position as a tourist attraction for financial gain, one has to respect that what I see as exploitation by old American money could be them just doing business. I can’t imagine that the playing field is fair, and I’d be fairly confident that if the Ngäbe had the financial means they would be the one buying those plots from their communities; but one can’t blame somebody else for having the money and the means to offer the natives so much that it makes sense for them to sell. People make their own decisions to survive. Natural selection has forged us through millions of generations to do just that. Some will win and some will lose in that equation. That’s the rule of the jungle.

I wonder if it’s somewhat paternalistic for me to come down here and tell anybody that they are being exploited, or to try protecting people from diseases that they hardly understand. I just wish that they had equal right to healthcare as the people in the cities. I want to believe that healthcare is a fundamental human right, but sometimes I’m not really sure. They have a different way of life though, and maybe that way of life doesn’t involve healthcare in the way that I see it? The lion doesn’t care if another animal starves to death or gets hit but a truck clearing the savannah, they are walking different paths, so why should we care about our fellow man? You shouldn’t have to is probably the right answer. I just happen to be one that really does.

I was surprised that Anselmo didn’t even need live bait to bring in a lovely tuna and a mackerel within the span of ten minutes. As we slowly trolled back towards the base he unwound a line from inside a bucket and dragged a hook with a little plastic tube in it by hand. The little tube mimics a large minnow he told me. Fresh fish for dinner was the result. That evening Myself, Anselmo, and Jack ate together. They told me about two Ngäbe legends that I found quite interesting: The Red Chinese and the Rabbit Indians.

The Red Chinese (Chino rojo), were a group of Chinese soldiers, mores specifically a fleet of submarines that went rogue after the war. Their existence had never been proven, but at night, particularly off the shores of villages like Rio Caña, some claimed to see the flashing lights of their submarines’ periscopes off the shore, far into the Ocean. ‘The thing about them’ Anselmo told me, ‘is that they eat humans’. Every now and then people went out to sea, to swim or fish, and were never seen again. El Chino Rojo. Wouldn’t want to mess with them.

The Rabbit Indians (Indio Conejo), were a group of natives that were divided from the Ngäbe. They lived in the many caves that dotted the mountains in the deepest parts of the jungle. They were very small, like little rabbits, due to some inherited condition of their tribe. They were tremendously secretive, and lived within a full civilization underground, including an emperor and noble classes. They were dangerous however, dead set on doing away with anyone who crossed their path. Well actually, not just anyone, it turns out the Rabbit Indians feared one thing most of all.

  ‘If the three of us went walking Juan, they would leave you alone.’ Anselmo told me. ‘They only want to take other Indians, like me and Jack. They are smart. They know that if they take a white man the Americans will come and drop their bombs on them in the mountains, and that will be the end’

‘Don’t worry Anselmo. I would never let them get to you.’ I said ‘I would stand in between. They would have to get through me first. I will be your protector!’

We all laughed.