Of course, Panama had more to teach than just how to play with kids and that there's little funnier than an entire village and a group of 25 U.S. teenagers gathering to help interpret a single conversation.
On the one hand, even though we had not quite left the North American continent, the surroundings were vastly different than anything I had ever seen. As I said before, we were on the edge of the Kona jungle, and massive trees grew up everywhere. A few of them were so wide that three of the group's biggest members could wrap their collective arms around it. The hills were tall as some of the mountains I had seen, and breaking above the mostly uniform green canopy great tall trees rose above. They were far enough away that their trunks appeared like slender twigs with giant pom-poms on top.
At one point, some of the villagers decided to take us out with them to hunt monkeys. (They never told us what they planned to DO with the monkeys they were hunting, but we could guess.) It turned out that we never caught any, although we saw a few small troups up in the canopy. That excited the kids, who scrambled up the trees like little monkeys themselves, but it was to no avail. It turned out that taking a bunch of noisy and unskilled teenagers on a hunt wasn't conducive to success and when one of our group leaders tried to apologize for our ruining their hunt, the man who had led the hunt just laughed. They had never expected to catch anything with us along, but they thought we might like the trip anyways. Of course, they were more than right.
(It was roughly about that time that I realized, of the two things on my bucket list - hiking in a jungle and skydiving - I had completed one item. My bucket list was halfway done, and I wasn't even 17. I have since rectified this, and I'm not sure I could complete all the items on it now if I lived to be 150.)
One of the biggest things I learned, though, was that there is one thing that everyone understands, despite the difference of backgrounds, languages, and everything else. There is one thing that connected us to the Wagandians almost immediately, and that was play. (From here, I will let out some of my inner hippie.)
I can't tell you how many times I sat with a girl about my age, stringing together beaded bracelets, or listened to enthusiastic stories from young Roberto or had tickle fights in the rain with more young boys than I could count. We hardly spoke each other's language, but we did all of these things and enjoyed each other's company nonetheless. On one day, when we were playing a soccer game in a field beside the road, strangers driving or riding along pulled in and stopped whatever they were doing to come and play, too. We were even more strangers to them than to the Wagandians, but they joined our game anyways. Play and fun was something that we could all understand. In learning about each other, we always turned it into a game. There was never any tense situations or misunderstandings because nobody took anything too seriously. While there certainly are times to be sober and thoughtful, it is just as important, perhaps more so, to know when to laugh and have a little fun.
By the end of the trip, there was not a dry eye in either group. It had been just over one week that we stayed in Wagandi, but we had felt so much at home there. No one was ready or willing for it to end, but end it must, as all things do. Perhaps, one day, I might go back there, as a Globex group leader or in some other way. After six years, I'd love to see how things have changed or stayed the same in the little village. I'd love to see those friends I made, despite the barriers we faced.
Maybe one day, but for now the rest of the world still waits for me to come and see what else it has to offer. It may mean that my life will always be chaotic and I'll never find a place to settle down, but there is so much still to see and do and learn, and I cannot stop for one moment or I might miss it.
