Rice and Shine

I was surrounded by water and forest and I loved it. One of the two native Indians was lazily gazing across the water while the other steered the engine-powered praw merely in the right direction. He pointed to the other side of the river towards "La Palma", a village some 2 km away. After 2 hours and some forks, the river became a whole lot smaller and more shallow. The propeller from the boat's engine clogged up a number of times because more and more water-vegetation made navigating difficult. Eventually we sat foot on land and the children that lived in "La Marea" came running from all over the village to see the gringos arriving.
Just like the two Emberos (one of the 7 different tribes spread throughout Panama) that awaited us in Puerto Kimba, a little harbour far into the jungle of Panama, they were dressed in a traditional manner. That meant that they dressed in a single piece of cloth to cover their genitals, wearing necklaces crossed over their chest and painted in tribal paintings from the cheekbones down to their feet. The women and the kids all wanted to be a helping hand and took the few ounces off luggage out of our hands so we strolled empty handed, followed by a stream of people through the village. Along the way we looked upon many huts built on poles 1,5 two 2,5 meters high (in the rainy season the whole village floods). Little eyes peered at our appearance which seemed to be so odd that many little hands were sucked by many little mouths. When we cheerfully said "Hola !" to everyone, nobody seemed to response which gave us the impression that they didn't speak any Spanish.
Later we heard from the chief of the village that the opposite was true: the children could hardly speak their own language anymore and amongst them they communicated in Spanish. Together with their language other things from their culture were also disappearing. They still painted each other with the fruit they used for that, but the paintings were now merely decorative and have lost all meaning over time. (you could tell someone's marital status, amount of children and many things more by their tribal paintings)...