As the plane began its descent over the vast blackness of the Pacific Ocean towards the bright lights of the Panama City skyline, I was overwhelmed with a sense of anticipation. True – I’d travelled before; but never to a place I knew so little about, or found so hard to imagine.

Panama, partly because of its miniscule size, partly because of its turbulent history, is not a nation people tend to know much about; apart from the canal of course - and the hats. Hmm… so, a historical feat of water- based engineering and a slightly clichéd fashion accessory (worn by the likes of Frank Sinatra and old Cuban musicians); not a great place to start my cultural orientation.

Before I left, I’d spoken to barely anyone who’d visited the tiny country, and the only expectations I really had were the hazy images I tried to squeeze out of the black and white printed observations listed in travel guides. Panama, it seemed, was a strange blank canvas upon which I was just waiting to paint my own experience.

In the above mentioned stale travel guides, I’d read a bunch of strange facts; like that the country was at once incredibly rich and crippling poor. Like that there were numerous indigenous communities existing independently outside the mainstream Panamanian government. Like that Panama was a country that had been intermittently mauled and molested by decades of political corruption, US intervention, poverty and war.

I’d come to Panama to do an internship with an international organization, in the whimsically named ‘Excluded Populations’ department. This, it transpired, was the latest buzzword for those who were routinely left at the bottom of the pile: in Panama’s case, those people of indigenous or African descent.

Until the plane touched down, these facts were just little black and white words, organised into lines, pages and books, then sold in airport kiosks that stank of cleaning products. Before long, however, the facts would materialise; some true, some exaggerated - and I would discover whole chapters of my own to add to the unwritten novel of this bizarre little country.

"A great deal of Panama City’s suburbs can only be described as slums; economically deprived areas where large families live in tiny apartments, often lacking basic services like water or electricity."

As I stepped off the plane I was hit by that all consuming, sweet smelling wave of tropical heat, and I knew that my adventure was about to begin. With my flip-flopped feet planted firmly on Panamanian soil, I had the first of many melodramatic arguments with a ranting, pot-bellied, chain-smoking cab driver, and subsequently sped down the highway toward the towering skyscrapers of downtown Panama City.

The entire socio-economic dynamic of the country could probably be summed up in the view from the passenger seat in my first journey in that battered old cab. As we left behind the freeways, billboards and shopping malls of the city centre, a very different side of Panamanian society began to emerge out of the muggy darkness.

A great deal of Panama City’s suburbs can only be described as slums; economically deprived areas where large families live in tiny apartments, often lacking basic services like water or electricity. The houses had fallen down, been rebuilt and patched up over and over again, and gangland graffiti was scrawled all over the corrugated iron - the angry words melting in the sweltering heat.

The cab ground to a halt at the traffic lights, and I nearly jumped out of my skin as a one-legged beggar thrust a tin in my face, grinning a toothless smile, and rattling the metal can that had once held black beans. ‘Product of Panama!’ the label of the can declared with pride. It was as if this crippled guy, in some twisted parallel universe, would have been a spokesperson for Panamanian industry; this can was his very own little billboard. On seeing I was foreign, he began to dance around on his one leg, waving his crutches in the air and winking at me as the cab sped away from the slums, gearing towards the old Spanish district where I would make my home for the next nine months.

‘Bienvenidaaaa!’ he hollered at me, and I waved from the window, watching him get smaller and smaller in the cracked wing mirror of the cab. For better or for worse, I’d just received my first welcome from a Panamanian citizen. I was beginning to paint my own picture of this little known country, and the colours and faces I saw in that first ride through the slums have been embellished on my mind in indelible ink ever since.

Words and photos: Eva Baker