Hey, is There a Kid Stuck in a Tree?

For a few months now I've been meeting a fellow named Alex and his twelve year old son Keola for long martial arts practice sessions every Sunday. We meet at Tracy's house in La Chorrera since it's sort of a halfway point, and we practice in his carport, on the jigsaw mats that I brought from home.

Alex studied Silat for several years, so we generally do a four hour session where he teaches me Silat and I teach him Hapkido. Alex and Keola are both excellent students, very fast learners, perhaps because of their previous Silat experience.

I've found that Silat and Hapkido mesh quite well. They differ in philosophy, in that Hapkido is a modern self-defense art that offers graduated responses depending on the seriousness of the attack, while Silat is a battlefield art focused on destroying the attacker utterly. There's no restraint or mercy. It is a close-range fighting art that employs rapid blows in succession, both to the upper and lower body, and doesn't stop until the attacker is crumpled on the ground at odd angles.

So it might seem that the two are not compatible. But the interesting thing is that many of the techniques are quite similar. A classical Silat punch defense looks very similar to a Hapkido defense, but where a Hapkidoist might move inside for an elbow strike or a break and then walk away, the Silat practioner would move inside with the identical elbow strike then follow up with other strikes, then whip the attacker's head around one way then the other to cause whiplash or fracture the neck, then throw him while trapping his leg so that he falls badly.

When you add Hapkido joint locks/breaks to Silat techniques (or vice versa), it starts to look scary!

Anyway, I digress. What about the kid in the tree?

Right, so we were practicing last Sunday, and I suddenly realized that I could hear a child crying out, and it had been going on for some time. It didn't sound like a happy or playful cry. It carried a note of fear or distress. It sounded like, "Mama! Mama! Mama!"

I stopped and looked across the fence to the neighbor's property. The neighbor has a sweeping expanse of grass, then the house and a shed, and behind that the land drops down to a stream gully, with tall pine trees all around. The cry seemed to be coming from behind the shed, or perhaps from the stream bed.

Alex and Keola came to the fence to listen as well. "What does that sound like?" I asked.

"Sounds like a kid in trouble," Alex said. We looked all around, but we could not locate the source of the cries. There was no one in sight.

Alex vaulted the fence and began crossing the neighbor's property. As he neared the shed, a woman came out of the house. She and Alex had a conversation and she pointed up into one of the tall pine trees near the stream.

Alex turned to us and shouted, "The kid is stuck in a tree!" The woman touched his arm and pointed up to the tree and they talked some more. Then Alex came jogging back, shaking his head.

"It's a parrot!" he said. "A parrot in a tree."

The neighbors have a few young children and I'm guessing that the parrot has heard them calling for their mother, and has learned to imitate them.

We continued our practice and the parrot continued calling, "Mama! Mama!"

Tropical Bytes, Part One

We're thinking of adding a few extras to the house, including a utility closet, a yard trash incinerator, a cistern, and an outdoor bathroom for the gardener. We were strolling around the outside of the house just before sundown, talking about where we could put these things, and suddenly I noticed several noseeums clustering on my legs (I was wearing knee-length shorts).

"Oh my God!" I said. "We've got to go inside right now!"

Nothing puts me in a panic like noseeums gathering for their evening feeding frenzy.

Watermelons are in season. Everywhere along the InterAmerican Highway are makeshift fruit stands, piled high with hundreds of sweet watermelons. And sweet they are, like red candy. No such thing as seedless down here, though.









I've been holding irregular Hapkido training sessions here in my home, with Nico the craft seller and Eric the apprentice electrician. Both are Panamanians, locals from here in El Valle de Antón, though Nico is originally from Panama city and it shows in a certain toughness that he exhibits. I've noticed something different about them, compared to martial arts students in North America, which is this: they do not complain or make any exclamations of pain.

Some of our Hapkido techniques are painful, and I know that Nico and Eric feel the pain, but they never say, "Ow, that hurts", or "Ok, take it easy", or "No more, please!" - All of which I have said on many occasions when training. When we're doing crunches or pushups, I am always the first to quit as I exclaim, "Ay, I can't do anymore." When I apply a joint lock to one of them, I have to really cinch it and work it to make him tap.

I attribute this to Latino machismo, which does not allow a man to express anything that might make him seem less manly.











I went to Penonomé for Jum'uah prayer today, and Laura and Salma came along for the ride. I've been missing Friday prayer because the city is just too far for a weekly daytrip, but Penonomé is closer, so I thought I'd give it a try. None of us have been to Penonomé before, and I was worried that I might not be able to find the masjid, so we left early.

The drive west is unremarkable, mostly lightly treed pastureland. We passed through the small towns of Rio Hato and Antón, and arrived at Penonomé in almost exactly one hour, quite early. Locating the masjid was easy - it is a large building with a minaret, right on the highway before you get into town. Since it was early for prayer, we went to El Machetazo, a sort of department store at the outskirts of town. We bought some snacks and a pair of white shoes for Salma.

Laura dropped me off at the masjid and went with Salma in the car to explore Penonomé. There were about 20 men in attendance for prayer, and a few women. The Imam was Egyptian, judging by his accent, and all the worshippers were Arabs, unlike Panama city where most of the congregation is of Indian origin. The khutbah (sermon) was in Arabic, and I was able to follow it fairly well. After prayer several of the men introduced themselves to me, and asked a few questions about where I was from.

None of these men spoke English, but all spoke both Arabic and Spanish, so I found myself in the unenviable position of having to choose between two languages in which I communicate poorly. I chose Arabic, because most of the men were clearly more comfortable in Arabic, with the exception of one young fellow named Akram who spoke Spanish like a Panamanian. As I spoke with them, I found that whenever I tried to remember an Arabic word a Spanish word would pop up in its place. I had to push the Spanish word away and retrieve the Arabic word from the depths of my brain. I think I'll have to brush up on my Arabic - isn't that funny!

After prayer, as I waited outside the mosque for Laura to return from her jaunt into Penonomé, the Imam approached me and encouraged me to come more often. I probably will, just because it's much closer then Panama.

On the way back we made three stops worth writing about. You can read about them in Part Two, perhaps tomorrow.

Just Me, Li'l Fishy and the 'Puter Makes Three

Friday afternoon and Adam's crew is off until after Christmas, as are Rosa and Listo. It's quiet here, just the insects buzzing outside, the neighbor's dogs barking occasionally and sometimes a rooster crowing. Li'l Fishy sits by the window, watching the geckos and wishing I would open the window so she could climb the screen to swat at them.

I went out in the car today to run a few errands and Mancha (spot), Teresa's dog, was sitting in the middle of our street. I honked at her and she looked at me but did not rise. I shouted, "Mancha! Muevate!" I honked the horn again and moved the car forward just a bit. Mancha looked at me with concern, but still did not get up. Finally Teresa, who must have heard me, came out and called the dog home. I think Mancha believes that I'm a nice guy, that's the problem. All these fools think I'm a nice guy!

Don't they know that I am a mean, bad-ass fighting machine? Don't they know that I have a temper like a junkyard dog on speed? I need to let people know how mean I can be, that's what. Watch out El Valle. This is a joke, by the way. Not to be used against me in any future court cases, please.

I saw Niko and asked him how the tour went. He told me he had taken Eric to La Piedra Pintada (the painted rock, an old rock with pre-columbian hieroglyphics), and El Nispero, the local zoo, and maybe a few other places. He said, "You are going to teach me, right?"

I said, "I'll teach you what I know."

Niko glowered and said, "Good! Because I want to learn!"

I'll show him how mean I can be. No, that's bad martial arts. That's wrong mind, not no mind.