Panama and its Canal
The latter-I vividly remember reading of. Little did I know then, that I and my wife’s thumbs were probably made from clay from there? Let me explain. You know, a favourite cousin of mine used to say to me ‘an debo kasarka ma daga Chan’ whenever I told her I just came back from any […]
The latter-I vividly remember reading of. Little did I know then, that I and my wife’s thumbs were probably made from clay from there? Let me explain. You know, a favourite cousin of mine used to say to me ‘an debo kasarka ma daga Chan’ whenever I told her I just came back from any particular country, which roughly translates to ‘the clay from which you are made of includes some taken from there’. It is her belief, rightly or wrongly, that one has to step on all lands from which his/her clay composition is made of before returning to their creator.
What I still haven’t asked is whether the number of trips to any particular country is directly proportional to one’s clay composition. In which case, I pray that my thighs, or indeed both legs are made from clay taken from Saudi Arabia, and my little fingers are made of some from Lap land/Zambia or Zimbabwe. I will tell you why. Saudi is obviously for spiritual reasons, Lap land is to experience two hours of sunshine or darkness in a day [depending on the season], and as for the 2 Z’s, this is about the third year I would plan on going to see the Victoria Falls from either the Zambian or Zimbabwean side, but couldn’t make it. Besides, next year is also not looking good, as my sights and mind are now focused on the islands of Brunei/Sao Tome and Principe.
Will keep you posted ‘duk yadda ta kaya’ [whichever way it goes] insha Allah. It will be good to mention that you can always fly into Panama city with a valid American visa, but the catch is, you will have to fly into American territory first, and take off from there. The idea of going to Panama was first mooted in Malmo, Sweden last December. It was there my daughter’s elderly school mate [Zuhaira] extended the invitation to attend a concert arranged by her husband to celebrate black history month on the 8th of July, which also coincided with his sixty eighth birthday.
The moment we made up our minds to go, I turned to my friends as usual for help with logistics. What can I do without them? Ambassador Bello Ringim took care of American airlines flight bookings from D.C. to Panama City, while my big brother Bashir el-Rufai, who sometimes doubles as a friend, graciously took care of the flight to America. We left these shores precisely on the 2nd of July.
On arrival in New York, we met a driver who pleasantly spoke excellent Hausa, sent by the then Nigerian Consul General [Ibrahim Awwalu], to pick us. We went directly to the Consul’s house in Scarsdale, an extremely good uptown area of New York. To give you an idea of how good it is- let me just say, Jay- Z and Beyonce Knowles live in the neighborhood if that will mean anything to you. We proceeded to Washington the following day with Acela train, but not before passing by a long lost friend’s house [Attahiru Dogondaji] whom we last met in Niamey over 10 years ago, in order to re-establish contact. We met him, his wife and a few toddlers whose arrival we weren’t even aware of and caught up on old times.
Our son, Nura Nasiru Aboki, picked and took us to Amb Ringim residence in Maryland. We left the house early the following day to catch our flight to Panama via Miami with American airlines. With a little time in our hands after checking in, we strolled around and ended up picking a few items at the Smithsonian shop, which I tell you offer good and generous discounts.
The flight to Miami was full of Spanish speaking Americans; which reminded me of Kabo or IRS airlines last flight to Kano from Lagos full of Hausa speaking passengers. The pilot took off in a real American way, taking turns on the runway with speed as if he was driving his automobile, and landed in Miami with a thud, like an American cowboy barging into a salon in the ‘then’ wild, wild, west.
With a two-hour transit in our hands, we figured there was enough time not only for window shopping, but for lunch. The meal, which wasn’t that tasty, became so after being spiced up with good old local pepper [yaji], which I didn’t know my wife was carrying in her bag. I remember protesting when I saw her packing some before we left, not wanting to carry any substance that may raise suspicion in a territory so notorious for drug trafficking. Little did I know that my protest had been over ruled, and the yaji would be of immense benefit, to me in particular, not only in Miami, but all through out the trip. We used it practically in almost every meal.
Now, this is one of the advantages of travelling with Hajiya, or her partner, or indeed any of her partners, in case you happen to have more than one or two, or the legal limit, three. The flight to Panama was bumpy. You know the Caribbean with its hurricanes, tornadoes and lots of rainfall. For some reason, I always consider myself in the belly of a fish when such turbulence occurs, so I turned to Prophet Younous prayer for solace. The pilot behaved the same way with his colleague from D. C. — taking off with speed and landing with a thud. Panama city airport’s standard can be matched with any modern airport, and gives a very good impression of what to expect in the city itself.
We weren’t disappointed. Now, being the only Africans I could see around the airport, and with my wife elegantly dressed in a starched Malian deep blue Ganyila with beige scarf/ wrist watch to match [don’t bother about how I was dressed], you would expect us to attract admirable attention, and we did. At a point, some immigration officials came to curiously enquire from where we were, and on mentioning good old Naija, demanded to take and go screen our passports, which I vehemently protested against. They gave up eventually after tossing and turning them several times over, only to return in order to try again after entry permits and a 30 day comprehensively covered insurance had been issued to us.
We then queued for baggage screening [all bags going out of the airport have to be screened]. This brought back my apprehension about the local pepper [yaji] and some ‘danbu’ [soft shredded chicken] along with incense which we had in the bag as gift to our hosts. Luckily, the machine didn’t bleep and the bags weren’t searched. We came out into the warm embrace of Kabir/ his wife, waited a while for Manuel [a new revert to Islam] to bring the minivan graciously arranged for us from the car park.
He was the driver we were to use throughout out five day stay, and what a gentle/patient young man he turned out to be. As soon as he came round we took off for the hotel, but not before stopping over at a local fish place to have a taste of their local delicacy, which they couldn’t wait for us to sample. The fish was much like those tiny ones at kwanar Bagauda or Wudil, but theirs is served like an ice cream, in a cup, instead of an old newspaper, origin of which you have no idea of.
From there, we drove to hotel Benidorm, owned by a Spanish immigrant family, in the middle of the downtown, where the event we went for was to take place. It [the hotel] wasn’t so bad, but the event we went for turned out to be so good, if you will allow me to put it this way.
Breakfast the following day was pancakes/omelet spiced with Hajiyas yaji, and very good tea named Duran. Kabir arrived later with one of his daughters named Fatima. She went out with my wife to pick a few essentials round the block and we went to his barber’s shop which was about 4oo meters away, along the way passing by some heavily armed policemen, all with bullet proof vests.
This told me we were in a territory awash with lots of casinos, guns and drugs, and where probably shoot outs between rival gangs may not be an uncommon occurrence. This was confirmed by Kabir. There, another daughter of his named Saajida, who was to act as our guide, met us. She proved quite useful as our official interpreter because of her near perfect English, albeit with a heavy American accent, which made me to nick name her Gringa [which she protested to]. Manuel, who was to meet us there, came late because of the heavy cats and dogs downpour.
When eventually the rain subsided, we went round the block to pick my wife and Fatima, then drove round to get a general feel of the city. And what a modern and beautiful city we saw. We started from Mira Flores, the canal viewing platform closest to the city and ended up at a restaurant along the Causeway.
The Causeway is the most beautiful entertainment place in Panama city, with a wide variety of restaurants, the best view of the Panama Canal pacific entrance, the French quarter, and the city’s skyline. The food at the restaurant was great, to say the least, but the killer was the drink, a mixture of some exotic fruits I had hitherto no knowledge of, served at the right temperature. That done, we drove down the Causeway to the duty free Amador, where you find the best name brands, entrance of which is surprisingly, or discriminately, only reserved for tourists.
We picked a few souvenirs C.D’s, literature, and of course a Panamanian hat for me. You can’t go to Panama and come back without one. At the end of that day, we decided to set out early the following day for Colon, a city that houses a free trade zone with over 4000 shops almost an hour drive from Panama City, and then view the canal from Gatun, which is the farthest of the three locks that make up the canal. O. k. now that we are in Panama, a few statistics about the country and its famous canal should be in order here. Panamas population tops three million people of diverse origins; descendants of Spanish settlers [like Jose Carlos Blanco, our hotel proprietor], of the black Nubians [our hosts], Indians who live along the coast and mountains, west Indians who came to dig the canal, north Americans, emigrant families of European stock, Chinese and east Indians, and a large number called Mestizo in Spanish, whose origins have been so mixed up they cant be given a specific name.
The country also offers scenery as varied as all these people mentioned—majestic rain forests [it rains almost nine months in a year, with amazingly rarely a day that the sun refuses to shine], sweeping hills and valleys formed by slumbering volcanoes, peaks towering to 11,000 feet, and about 2000 islands. Can you believe that?
The whole country is between fifty -120 miles wide [about the length of Istanbul city]. Sea-level temperature is 27 degrees C most of the year, cooling down freshly in the evenings. How about that? As for the canal, it’s more than just a canal—it’s much more. I will tell you why. It is the biggest engineering project ever undertaken, and is the number one on any tourist or sightseers list when in Panama. The world knows no engineering work of comparable magnitude.
Designed at the turn of the century, and operating since 1914, but which still copes with the chesty demands of 21st century shipping. Prior to the construction of the canal, ships from the west coast of the United States had to go all the way down to the southernmost tip of south America and take a turn before coming back up to go to Europe.
So you can see the savings in terms of cost and time when eventually Panama was split, in order to allow ships cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans and vise versa. We were privileged to witness the crossing. Will attempt to explain how the canal works later.
But, the construction is not without its tragedies and great lessons to be learnt by young entrepreneurs. Let me share with you a little history of how the project was conceived. It all started after the inauguration of the Suez Canal in the 1800’s, Ferdinand de Lesseps, its builder, who was by then a universally well-known figure, was contacted for the building of the Panama canal. It was he who decided at a congress held by the Paris Geographic Society in May, 1879, where the canal should be built.
On 1st January, 1880, the first symbolic shovel-full of earth of this gigantic project was dug at the mouth of the Rio Grande on Panama’s pacific coast. However, work did not seriously get underway until two-years later. By 1884 over 17000 workmen, mostly from the Caribbean islands, labored to dig the huge trench that would house the canal. The project was so ambitious and involved so many French engineers, including Gustave Eiffel, the designer of the tower that bears his name in Paris.
His involvement and that of Ferdinand in the project made thousands of French people to buy shares in ‘Canal Interoceanique’ [the company saddled with the project] in order to help finance the works.
The successful construction of the Suez served as enough guarantee for thousands of those small investors, but alas, they didn’t reckon with the tropical weather which is not the same with the dry, almost desert climate of the Suez. The tropical jungles protect a very fragile soil that crumbles away after prolonged rainfall, so in a few hours, work of entire weeks, even months can be destroyed.
This prolonged deadlines and made budgets higher, eventually taking the company to bankruptcy. As is usual, the outraged shareholders accused the project managers of corruption.
By 1890, there were not more than 1000, out of 17,000 workers at site. In 1894, the company was revived by the French in one final attempt to restart the project. This time, apart from lack of financial resources, deseases, such as malaria and yellow fever decimated the work force, such that by 1903 there were barely 700 workers left. From the beginning of the project in 1882 to 1903, the French had removed over sixty million cubic meters of earth, built many bridges, railway lines, ports and hospitals and made navigation channels at both entrances to the canal, and unfortunately dug close to 7000 graves of technicians and workers.
This probably qualifies it to be the project with the biggest casualty ever undertaken. I don’t know, but, it’s the one I know of, as of today. To cut a long story short, eventually the Americans, who wanted to open up Nicaragua, but jettisoned the idea due to sheer pressure from French shareholders and a savvy Wall Street lawyer named Nelson Cromwell, opted for the project, and all is now history after several treaties. This is the lesson I spoke about, Perseverance.
Now, back to where we were. After that pancake/omelets breakfast, of course spiced up with—-, [I wasn’t bold enough to sample any other thing in the menu] we took off for Colon. Almost half way into the trip, we ran into a police patrol/check point. As expected, they all had those bullet proof vests and were heavily armed.
But not only that, they wore very serious faces and looked sterner than those in town. The kind of face late Mallam Lawan Kalarawi so aptly described seeing at the entrance of Dodan Barracks, on a visit to former President Babangida.
They collected our passports, Manuel and Saajida’s ID cards and went away without as much as uttering a word. Or maybe they did, but we were too scared to notice. Saajida said they were going to check in their data base to see if anyone of us was in their wanted list. After what seemed like eternity, they came back and handed the documents back to us. Now, this is what I call a check point.
Looking at those policemen, you yourself ‘kai da kanka’ will know, that you dare not even ask for as much as a compromise, in case there is a problem with your papers, talk less of ——-. Fill in the blanks. We surprisingly passed by an Islamic community within a beautiful estate with a mosque at the entrance.
We stopped to pray, but unfortunately the mosque was under renovation. On arrival in Colon, we went straight to the Gatun locks of the canal, paid the entrance fee, went up to the viewing platform and waited for an approaching ship about to cross. Talk about luck. We arrived just at the nick of time. The platform was swarming with tourists mostly from north, south and central America.
Before getting to the seats, the person saddled with explaining how the canal works over a very loud speaker, asks the country from which you come from. As soon as he got talking, I noticed he would mention the presence of visitors from so and so country at intervals, and there would be spontaneous uproar from those whose country was mentioned.
Suddenly, he mentioned that they were glad to have visitors from Nigeria. I didn’t know he had asked my wife. I am so sorry to report that the uproar or shout that followed the announcement was really shrill, despite co-opting Saajida to shout along with us. I mean, there were only two of us.
The process of how the canal works is really complex and to try to explain it here fully will take a whole lot of space [as if I am not already doing that]. I will try to simplify it for you, but the real solution is to just go see for yourself. When you decide to, I can help chip in with some logistics.
The Panama Canal operates 24 hours a day, all year round. For the ships to cross from one ocean to the other, a set of artificial lakes about twenty six meters above sea level had to be created. The flow of water from the Chagres River into these lakes are controlled by a set of giant metal gates/locks that open up to collect water when a ship is approaching and drain and close up when it passes.
You know both oceans are at the same level, so the locks have the single purpose of raising the ships to the level of the lakes and then lowering them into the other ocean in a reverse operation. The ships are pulled by a set of small rail carts on both sides mechanically, Simple. I hope you understand.
But if you don’t, don’t worry, I didn’t either, until I saw. Like I said, you just have to go see for yourself the amazing processes through which giant ships cross. That done, we drove to the shore line, a place similar to the water front in Cape Town, where we came face to face with a cruise liner at very close range, picked a few dresses for the kids at one of the several shops lined up, and took a souvenir photo with a Red Devil.
The red devil is a nick name for the equivalent of their Molue. They usually come in mostly reddish colored paint, giant hooters, lots of decorative lights and grotesque graffiti. A man dressed as a masquerade in such colorful attire to attract tourists is nick named a red devil also. You can get a picture with him, or her, [had no idea who was inside the masquerade] for two dollars, I think.
Our last port of call in Colon was the free trade zone. With up to 4000 shops and unbelievably low prices, one has to pick a guide. We got one in a black Panamanian called Edger. That kind of place needs a whole day, kai, maybe a whole week because it closes everyday at six.
You need to just be stationed in Colon, for you to do justice to that market. It’s quite a big and beautiful town in itself. Lots of the shops are wholesale though, but Edger helped navigate us to the few retail ones closest to our entrance point. At the close of market, we dropped my wife and Saajida at McDonalds and went to pray at the heavily guarded central mosque.
But here, the policeman pleasantly managed a smile and even allowed a souvenir photo, surprisingly. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the number of people trooping out of the free zone at close of work that day. Talk about providing employment, or an enabling environment by government for people to be gainfully employed.
We left Colon well after7pm. Manuel surprisingly veered off onto a narrow desolate road, right through a dense rain forest just before we reached the outskirts of Panama city. The scenery was breathtakingly beautiful, but it still got me thinking- why didn’t we follow this ‘kungurmin daji’ in the afternoon? In case of anything, nobody, and I mean nobody can hear our shouts from here, I kept thinking.
Everybody was quiet, so, I also kept quiet and prayed. Little did I know then that Manuel took that road in order to show us the bridge of the Americas? How nice of him. I regretted suspecting that he would put us in harm’s way.
We immediately decided the bridge would be our 1st port of call the following day because of its imposing structure. The bridge of the Americas links one part of Panama to the other and ships pass under on their way to cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific and vice versa.
It is an engineering feat in itself. Just by the bridge is a nice monument built by the Chinese to commemorate years of relationship with Panama. Knowing the Chinese, I am sure they are preparing to enter. We picked a few souvenir items and left for Gen Manuel Noriega’s house, which we had to see.
The house which has been empty since his forceful abduction and imprisonment in the United States has obviously deteriorated over time, but I understand the government wants to now turn it into a museum after several attempts to sell it failed. From there, we drove to old Panama City with lots of ruins left to attract visiting tourists, and drove round the streets where Saajida said they grew up in.
Late afternoon, we took a break at ‘Subway’ for their generous sandwiches, and got back to the hotel late evening to prepare for the dinner/concert. It turned out to be a real ‘night of fun’, as tagged by the organizers. In fact, Kabir, who happens to be a very good musician/vocalist, is known by the stage name, ‘Mr. Night of Fun’. The concert took place in a modest hall at the hotel.
Kabir told us to stay put in the room, and that he would give us the signal to come down when all guests who bought tickets had arrived, in order to have a grand entrance as special guests. At about 9pm or thereabout, he called.
We came down dressed in traditional attires only to meet Kabir similarly dressed in the kaftan I had sown for him as a gift, in the midst of a family and close to 30 additional family friends. After introductions, we were led to the high table and everybody took their seats at the well decorated dining tables spread across the hall.
His wife, Zuhaira took the floor and made some speech about how we met through my daughter Fatima in Sweden, how sad she was that we couldn’t come along with her, and presented us with a plaque from the Malik family to commemorate our visit to Panama.
I in turn took the floor and mumbled about how imperative it was for me to stand up and say something after coming from this far, [it took us almost 3 days, including transits], in addition to thanking them for the wonderful hospitality and brotherhood showered on us.
Kabir and the wife serenaded us with a few English/Spanish songs before dinner, which fortunately turned out to be a variety of steaks, salads and rice which didn’t need Hajiyas yaji. It was wonderful.
Thereafter, Kabir who took a room in the hotel just for that night went upstairs to change. Two musicians filled in for him with hot renditions of good Caribbean music. I was tempted to join some few good dancers on the floor, but dropped the idea knowing that Hajiya wouldn’t have joined me, even for a million bucks.
He came down to a thunderous applause looking more like James Brown in a glittering stage attire, shuffled and took the floor to perform. At the end of the show, that old school electric, woogie woogie woogie song was played and almost everybody partook in the dance in a shuffle, except—-, of course.
What a night of unforgettable fun it turned out to be. The next day I went to the barber’s shop for a special old school hair cut by Kabir himself, and then picked Hajiya for final mop up shopping at a very modern mall called ‘Multi Plaza’. I later tagged it ‘abattoir’ after coming out literally dripping in blood because of the cost. It was like an encounter with armed robbers or ‘yan sane’.
On our fifth and final day, Manuel came early and took us to Kabir’s house for Panamanian style breakfast, after which the family including one grand daughter escorted us to the airport for an almost tearful goodbye.
It was at that moment I remembered not going into ‘super 99’, a supermarket chain spread across the city belonging to the current Panamanian president. Just to see, if not for anything.
Our flight back to Miami again took off with sp— and landed with a thu—. What do you expect? It’s American. Back in the U.S. we spent a little over a week more in D. C. resting, with nothing dramatic happening except occasional outings with Ambassador Ringim and Kabir Mukhtar Muhammad who was there with his family on vacation.
It was during one of those outings I strolled into ‘Lens Krafters’ to change my glasses, and it turned out to be like purchasing a new set of eyes.
I tell you by the time they finished and I tried the glasses on, I said to myself, ‘it’s a miracle, I can see again’. I will recommend them to anybody any day. A day before our flight back to Nigeria, Abbas Balarabe Isa, a highly resourceful young man working in D. C. graciously drove us to New York, to spend one more night a discuss throw away from Beyonce.
As if that’s any big deal. All said and done, this trip turned out to be one of the most enjoyable and memorable, if not the most, in our modest experience of travel. As we sat back in the aircraft on our way home I thought about the pilots advise, which says ‘Sit back, relax and enjoy the rest of the flight’ and decided right there and then to apply it in this our short sojourn, albeit with a little modification. That’s in this life; one should ‘Sit back, relax, pray, worry not and enjoy life as it unfolds’.
See you in Brunei insha Allah.