Frankly, my dear

¨Cati, how much do you weigh?¨ Julio arrives at my fence, hangs his arms around it, and waits for my answer.

¨And why do you want to know?¨ In Panama, you can ask anything of anyone, and it´s okay, but I like to maintain a lady-like sense of decorum when at all possible. It so rarely is.

¨Just wondering. How much?¨

Some days I am too tired to put up a fight. I tell him.

¨What!!?!?!¨ Julio falls backwards.

¨Why, what did you think,¨ I asked.

¨You are much taller than me, Cati.¨ Julio is 5´4¨ and weighs 168 pounds. ¨I thought you weight at least 200 pounds, probably more.¨

A lot of times, candor is refreshing. In the United States, we spend a lot of time avoiding questions or dancing around the truth without even realizing it. In Panama, when you are calling attention to someone, it is perfectly okay to refer to them as ¨the old one¨ or ¨that fat one.¨ If you have a scar, a scratch, a pimple, whatever, someone will probably ask you what it is or where you got it. It´s out there for the world to see, why not talk about it? One time in the supermarket, a woman called to her colleague, ¨Oye, gordita!¨ Hey, little fatty! No one ever minds, and being gorda isn´t a bad thing. My community wants me to get fatter. They encourage it because it would mean I am thriving and being taken care of.

Commenting on people´s appearances is one of the first places you notice the candor when arriving in Panama, but it extends to virtually every corner of conversation. Mothers, for example, have no shame about telling you they got pregnant just so they could have a baby of a particular sex. None of this ¨I just want it to be healthy,¨ mumbo jumbo. She wants a daughter, dammit! One day, my neighbor Seña came to pasear. We always talk about her kids, and she started talking about her eldest son, and how he had fought with his father the night before. ¨I hate that, Cati, when he is upset. I love him the most.¨

¨You love him the most?¨ Maybe I misunderstood. Declaring favorites? Also a no-no in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

¨He was my first! I like the other ones just fine, but I love him A LOT. Way more than the rest.¨ She admits this as her three youngest children play at our ankles. Don´t worry kids, she loves you too, just not as much as number one!

Then there´s the impromptu emotional confession. This happens less often, but still with considerable more frequency than in the U.S. People will air their family´s dirty laundry (threatening men with rifles, sisters who won´t share recipes, mothers and fathers with lovers on the side) with very little prompting. One night, I was writing in my journal, and a visitor came by. I asked how he was, and he responded, ¨Sad.¨ I asked why, and he came back with a four-minute monologue about the burden of his father´s illness, the responsibility that he has taken on, and how his youth has been sacrificed as a result. He sees other boys his age hanging out and having fun, and realizes he never got a chance at that care-free time to be young. Have you ever answered ¨How are you?¨ with so much honesty?

While in many ways, the Ngobe people are much more reserved than most cultures, once some level of trust is established with certain people, they´ll tell you more than you asked to know about their hernias, land disputes, and everything in between. This is certainly the exception to the rule in my community, and only the people who I know well share with me this way, but goodness, once they open up, you hear it all.