We don't know poor

Poor is a relative term.   Vialula and I have been on many trips.  Several times we have seen poor people.   Yesterday, today and tomorrow have been in stark contrast to each other and they have taken us from one end of the spectrum to the other.   Yesterday, we visited San Blas, Panama.   San Blas has their independence from Panama but still remains part of Panama.   It is a nation made up of 365 small islands.   The one we visited is about 2 or 3 feet above sea level.  It is smaller than say,  Opryland Hotel.  It has no electricity, no running water, no food, no nothing.   The residents are an original people.   They eke out some sort of living that nothing I can describe to you would explain it.   In my eyes they are probably the poorest group of people I have ever seen.   But then again, I don't know their whole story.

And so here comes this big boat full of people that have more money in their left pocket of one pair of jeans than they will see in a year's time.  We tender over to them and find narrow "streets" of packed mud full of older ladies, children, dogs, cats and some kind of native rodent about the size of a raccoon on a leash trying to hide from us.   The ladies sell their hand sewn fabrics of whatever they can find.   Can't even call it a a scarf.   The children sit there and want their picture taken with a bird on their head or a kitten in their lap for one dollar.   

And you know what......I think they know they are poor..  But the kids are all smiling and saying "hola" to every tourist that goes by.    They are laughing, running and being kids.   Not sure I saw a single pair of shoes.  Sandals, perhaps.   Or bare feet.  I have to admit that neither Vialula nor myself felt real good about ourselves when we got back on the tender to go to the ship.  None of us have anything to complain about.

We talked to some of our church folks via internet and asked them to put the kids of San Blas on the prayer list.   Amen and amen.

And then today, a mere 90 miles away, we entered into and saw an engineering marvel that wasn't made for any reason than to make it easier and less costly to bring goods back and forth to materialistic or consumer oriented places like where i live.   I am not blaming nor condemning anyone or anything.   It is as it is.   I just saw the stark differences very close together and it makes quite an impression both ways.

How the canal was made back in 1914 boggles the mind.   It's not like it was made in downtown New York.    There was nothing here.    The locks we traveled thru were the original locks.   Our boat, a panamax ship, which means it can travel the original locks, has a beam of 105.8 feet at the widest point.   It is a tight fit but it goes thru.    I held my tummy in some to help.  The first set of locks has 3 stages and each stage lifts or lowers a boat about 28 feet so that set of locks put us 85 feet higher than when we came into the channel. 

As a ship comes into the channel leading into the locks, a series of cables running from "mules" to the ships are attached.   These mules are on a rail system running along the length of the lock to keep the ships aligned so that it doesn't hit back and forth.   Their sole purpose is to keep it straight from side to side.   The ship is actually under it's own power.   Mules weigh 51 tons each and exert up to 35000 pound of tension on the cables.     Once you get thru that first set of locks, about 2 and a half hours, then you travel a couple of hours in the huge man-made lake to the next set of locks.   Man made because of the dam built there to create the lake.    The dam is almost a half mile wide at the base.   That is a lot of concrete.   We have been thru the Hoover dam too, and both are just too much to comprehend,   Both built about the same time by people who knew how to work.    The lake is needed for boat travel obviously but also because the locks lose about 52 million gallons of fresh water into the ocean for every boat that goes thru.   52 million gallons. 

So we made our way through, and in doing so, we crossed the Continental Divide, going through both the Centennial Bridge and the Bridge of the Americas.  What a day!

We dropped anchor in Panama City waters and the tender boats were dropped into the water to start our day there.  Vialula and I had a shore excursion to go see the native Embrera people.   I think Vialula is going to write about that.  She really loved that adventure and so did LeRoy.   The only thing I will say that while these people are also a native original people, they are nothing like the San Blas People.   This was a tribe you would see in the National Geographic magazine.   Age old customs, age old lifestyles without any comforts of the modern day.  And all by their choice.  A very warm and happy people.  Go read what she says.   It was fascinating.

So we are about nine days into the orbit of the big blue marble.   Both of us had loved every minute of it and we are looking ahead to Peru tomorrow.  We crossed the equator about 2:00 am this morning.   My first time!  Won't  be back north of it till sometime in March.  On to wild adventures so stay tuned.  Much more to come.   Many thanks to everyone back home who is making this trip possible.  Sister Susan is watching over the house.   I understand some cold weather and snow was making it's way in.    I looked at our forecast and I will leave it that we won't be seeing any snow!