Yandup Island Lodge is a wonderful, relaxing and spiritual place to stay in the sun, just a short and cheap flight from Panama City.
The Kuna Woman
(The Kuna are one of the
many native tribes of Panama)
Story
provided by Yandup
Island Lodge; digitized by Doug Frizzle, March 2012.
“Your mother
will request you to create the art
of sowing molas. Your mother will
request for you to take care of your uncles and provide a place for them. Your mother
is proud when you give away your sweet smile from
here to my lap"
IMPORTANCE OF THE WOMAN
For a Kuna mother, a girl is a gift from
Baba (The Father God) and Nana (Mother Earth). She constitutes the
structure of the house. In many
cases she inherits lands and is left responsible for the
family. A Kuna mother considers the birth of a girl as "an agued megnoni"
(help, relieve) because once she is married the
husband will provide for her. While the
boy, once he gets married, he detaches from
his mother and will live with his
wife's family.
The girl is the center of attention inside the house and is responsible to attend his father when he comes
back from work. This implies the respect and love a girl must show to her father, mother
and rest of the family. The
education imparted from mother to daughter chases particular objectives, from early age she must be conscious of her role in the Kuna community.
All of this is progressively reinforced with all the
ceremonial rituals. The community
also participates in the upbringing
of the girl from
an early age, even before the
ceremonies.
IKO INNA
This is the first ceremony celebrated around the girl. When she is ten or fifteen days born they pierce a hole in her nasal septum so she can
wear a nose ring (olasu), they also
pierce holes in both her ears to place earrings.
The ceremony takes places in
a "surba" (sacred precinct) previously build by the family inside the
chicha house.
This is the second ceremony a girl has in the kuna society and it takes place when she reaches
puberty. It is a big affair that is celebrated with a series of rituals,
ceremonies and the preparation of the fermented chicha, accompanied
with a very special singer called "gammdur".
The girl's father carefully gathers
all the materials to build a
"surba" (sacred precinct) inside the
house. The surba, according to the
kuna tradition, is a sacred place to expand wisdom
and knowledge, to strengthen the spirit. Is where the
young woman prepares for her future
role as a wife and mother.
The girl is locked in the surba for four days. During these days the
women carry water from the
sea and an experienced woman pours
it on her. In the middle of the surba they
build a hole which will catch all the
water that falls off her.
There are two rituals that
act as a prediction to the girl's
behaviour and her marriage: the
ritual of the crab and the ritual of the
sabdur (jagua fruit).
In the
first ritual they look for two
crabs, a male and a female, if they
were easily caught that means she will have easy births. If the crabs are stubborn it means that so will be her
marriage. If the male crab fleas from the
jar he is in it means her husband will leave her. And if the
female crab is the one that fleas it
means she will later be adulterous.
In the
sabdur ritual, the first thing they do is cut the
sabdur in half, the cut must be
precise because if it falls to the
left it means she will be adulterous in her marriage and if it falls to the right it means he will be. After, they look at the
surface of the cut and if the pulp is white the
girl is virgin and innocent but if the
pulp has black marks it means in some
way she has lost her innocence. Starting from
this the parents can diagnose the moral upbringing of the
girls. All the girl ceremonies are
sexually oriented.
INNA MUTIKID
After the
puberty ceremony is over it takes a few weeks or months before the parents plan the
big chicha party (inna mutikid).
This is the only chicha that is mandatory for all girls.
It is a celebration of the culmination of puberty. Only after this celebration
the girls will be fit to carry short
hair.
INNA SUIT
Is a luxurious ceremony
filled with sacred rituals that last four days. During this ceremony everybody
drinks fermented "chicha". Its main objective is that a
"gammdur" (singer) gives out a traditional name to a girl and it's
also mandatory that an experienced women
(ied or barber)cuts the girls hair
short, after this ceremony she is ready to wed. The heart of this celebration
is the gammdur , the personas who controls the
chicha house (gammibe nega). The content of the
gammu (flute) is long and the
lyrical verses are called "igargan".
Inna Symbols
Some
of these sacred elements are:
Gamma (flute): represents the
falic Olowaibipilele.
Sianar (heater): where they
burn cocoa seeds which symbolizes the
uterus of mother earth.
Nasis (maracas): it represents the uterus of the
mother earth. And the mangos are the
symbol for girls that mother earth
gave birth.
Mete (jar): where the
fermented chicha is placed, that also represents the
uterus of the mother earth.
Number four is a symbol of
perfection. Blow smoke from a large
cigar, to perfume with cocoa fumes, scissors, maracas and other ritual elements have a sexual connotation that
is related to the spirit of the mother
earth.
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