We had the opportunity while in Bocas to visit a Ngobe (pronounced NO-bay) indigenous village called San Cristobal which is just about a 10-minute boat ride from Bocas del Toro. It is a Peace Corps site where a great volunteer named Piper is working on a tourism project with a group of Ngobe women. We had a guided hike through the jungle where the woman's group leader, Esperanza, explained to us the traditional uses of a bunch of native plants. It seems that there is a great need for treatments for fever, stomach aches, "bad spirits" and everything having to do with childbirth and labor. The red plant pictured here is used to mark the property lines of each Ngobe family's farm plot. They don't have communal land as some other groups do - families farm their own plots and pass them down to their sons when they die. The red plant also marks the boundaries for burial plots.
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