While exploring the amazing Panama, I was longing to meet the indigenous people. It was a strong desire to know who were the people that Columbus found here, what was their culture, what were the things they believed in, what was their life before and what changes they had to learn to live with.

Without knowing these people, I felt a connection with them, beyond any logical understanding. Early in the morning of the day I visited them, I was eager and curious to finally get to know this indigenous community. I had that feeling that something big was going to happen, something that would change forever the way I used to be. All I could think about was how little did I know about the things that are different from me and from the place that I belong.

So I opened my heart and my mind and I let myself immerse into the unknown, ready to learn and receive all that my soul needed from the experience. I forgot my prejudices, I forgot what I have ever learned, I forgot my thoughts, my beliefs and I became a happy child ready to learn a new way of being. Then I went to visit the Embera Community of the Tusipono Village on Chagres River.

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I arrived there by a dugout canoe

The moment I saw the village up on the river bank I became emotional. It was an image out of my kind of fairy tail

The men gathered on shore and welcomed us by playing some of their traditional music

Deep into their village, I became a child in time

Walking barefoot among their houses, I felt waves of positive energy

My heart was full of beauty and innocence

They use this kind of pillar as a ladder

The face carved on top is meant to protect their homes from the negative energy some visitors might bring (they call it soul sickness).

I found heaven in the middle of the jungle

The Embera people have a deep respect for the nature; the Sun and the Moon indicate them today as they did from ancient times, the proper time to plant and to pick their plants

They have their medicine man, whose knowledge passes from generation to generation, though they are almost never sick

Their ingenuous smile melted my heart

Their home lands took my breath away

They are pure joy

I’m sure they could really help us be humans, stay sane and breathe life again

They have a really mystic way of cooking

I had an appetite that still amazes me; that day I felt again the joy of eating that made every atom of my body sing and dance

They are always barefoot, but you never see them sneeze. They don’t wear clothes, but they never catch a flu and their skin is clean, without bites from insects

I might say that for a day I felt on my skin “the lightness of being”. For me this was “the return to innocence”, it enriched my soul

I left them there, up on the river bank, with tears of joy in my eyes and the promise to myself that I’ll be back again on that Heaven on Earth

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