Monthly Archives: May 2009

The Police Got Juni! Part 1

Posted on May 31, 2009 by | 2 Comments

Delicious, fresh fried Bakes, an easy meal for a hungry youngster. Image thanks to Beautiful Grenada.com

Surcie bush in its natural setting.
Also known as Balsamina in Panama and
Cundeamor in the rest of the Caribbean.
Image thanks to our dear friends at
Look for Diagnosis

I had arrived at a point where I was becoming ever more aware of the relationships and commitments I was immersed in as a child and the milieu in which I lived. My experiences with my immediate family and the make-up of the community regarding my person, however, still appeared confusing to me. Continue reading →

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Racism in Panama, West Indian Panamanians

Tagged , , , , , , ,

A Mini Vacation

Posted on May 23, 2009 by | 1 Comment
image from: pro.corbis.com

We ask our readers to bear with us as we take a well deserved mini-vacation and do some needed work on our blogs. We will be back on The Silver People Chronicle next week.

Our story will continue.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Silver People of Panama

Tagged

A Westindian Story at Grandmother’s Feet

Posted on May 18, 2009 by | 2 Comments

La Boca Ferry circ. 1947. Image thanks to CZimages.com

A cuartillo or "cuatí."

This is an image of a cuartillo
or a “cuatí” as the Westindians
used to call it. It was a half of a
Panamanian cent (medio centessimo de
Balboa) which could buy you a portion of
rice, flour, sugar etc., at the nighborhood
Chinito.

At ten years of age everything I heard concerning the Westindians was of importance to me and was stored in my memory for the day in which I could put it all in a book. Or so I childishly and naively thought. However, I would have to await the advent of the technological age way into the dawning hours of our 21st century before these stories would ever get to be read in print, thanks to the Internet. Continue reading →

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Calidonia, Silver People of Panama, West Indian Panamanians

Tagged , , , ,

Taking Refuge at my Grandmother’s Feet

Posted on May 15, 2009 by | Leave a comment
I rather enjoyed washing my
grandmother’s feet not only to
see the completely relaxed look on
her face but to set the ambience for her to
talk about our family.

The emotional scars were becoming fetid by then, and it seemed like there would be no end in sight to the beatings and emotional rejection. Some kind of cure for those childhood physical and emotional ills would almost never come during those years when we most needed to see it. Dreams of being adopted by other families would haunt me so much that the urge to run away was always present. However, the hated days spent in Spanish school would make Teacher Thomas’ Westindian School look more and more enticing, although it was still located not far from where we were living. Continue reading →

→ Leave a comment

Posted in English Schools in Panama, Silver People of Panama, West Indian Panamanians

Tagged , , , ,

By the Grace of God

Posted on May 12, 2009 by | Leave a comment
This image is the closest thing
to my recollections of a Beji-nite
service, although it was taken in
Jamaica. Image thanks to our
friends over at The Photoyard
Digital Photography Club.

Being Black, Westindian and Christian had become as confusing as it was trying to figuring out my people at home. In the meantime I began feeling that the independent nature of Christian Protestantism would become an integral part of my religious life, which was the life of most Panamanian Westindians in Panama. The Beji-Nite Churches I had started to visit with my grandmother, in particular, had become the eye opening experience I needed to understand what I had come to accept as the truth about my people on the Canal Zone Silver Roll. Continue reading →

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Beji-Nite-Church, Church in Panama, West Indian Panamanians

Tagged , ,

Church

Posted on May 9, 2009 by | 4 Comments
An image of Reverend A.F. Nightengale
Rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church of
Panama.


It was on one of those nights that I sat beside my grandmother when we attended what for me was my first experience with any type of spiritual education or lecturing at one of the evangelical churches that my grandmother loved to visit. I say “visit” since she was ever wary of “organized” churches and preferred to visit all the many and sundry expressions of the Christian religion and the other unconventional ones like the “bush” churches which I will get into later. Continue reading →

→ 4 Comments

Posted in Church in Panama, Episcopal Church of Panama

Tagged , , , , ,