{"id":26871,"date":"2019-10-18T15:13:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T13:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/psymedia.co.za\/?p=26871"},"modified":"2024-01-13T06:24:04","modified_gmt":"2024-01-13T04:24:04","slug":"tribal-gathering-festival-panama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/psymedia.co.za\/tribal-gathering-festival-panama\/","title":{"rendered":"Tribal Gathering Festival in Panama"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
The cheapest flight from my home country of Australia to Panama ended up being a 50-hour marathon, which was made all the more brutal by the fact that I went to the airport in Brisbane straight after Earth Frequency Festival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the time I arrived at my hostel in Panama City I was delirious but neither the oppressive humidity nor the rampaging construction crew outside the window doing their best Psychovsky rendition kept me awake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019d come to Panama for Tribal Gathering, a festival that takes place over three weeks on a beach in the Caribbean. The organizers bring in aboriginal tribespeople from all over the world to run workshops on various aspects of indigenous art and culture, as well as shamanic ceremonies using a variety of sacred psychedelic plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other non-indigenous run workshops feature during the first two weeks of the festival as well, after which there are five days of electronic music or a \u201cmodern dance ritual of the psychedelic tribe,\u201d as the festival\u2019s website puts it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a decent sleep, my two friends and I grabbed some supplies from the supermarket and caught the bus towards the Caribbean side of the country. The piles of rubbish and the obtrusive Coca Cola billboards didn\u2019t tarnish my appreciation of the picturesque landscapes we were driving through; however, the American guy seated a few rows back bragging loudly about his extensive experience with Ayahuasca and how spiritually enlightened he was to the poor bastard who\u2019d chosen a seat next to him did make me feel a little apprehensive about the forthcoming weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The steadily increasing volume of the bus driver\u2019s salsa music eventually drowned out this drivel, and any negativity I was feeling evaporated when we finally arrived at the festival site – which was stunning – and reminded me a lot of a Windows \u201998 desktop background. The two half-naked surfer guys at the gate had definitely ripped one too many billies before the bus arrived and needed a considerable amount of help locating my name on the list and fastening my wrist band.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first few days were of the festival were pretty quiet. We spent some time exploring the nearby beaches and jungle and got used to being woken up by screaming monkeys outside our tents each morning. More people arrived each day, and the atmosphere was peaceful. I was struck by the seemingly effortless harmony between the tribespeople and everyone else in the festival. The cohesion between such heterogeneous groups of individuals is something that always impresses me about psychedelic festivals, and Tribal Gathering was exemplary in this regard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was also impressed by the effort people put into building their camps; unlike other psychedelic festivals I\u2019ve been to which usually last just than four or five days, here we had three whole weeks, which meant a lot of people were bustling around industriously with machetes, dragging bits of driftwood and bunches of palm fronds back and forth and erecting impressive makeshift shade shelters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We heard rumors about snakes, crocodiles, an impending monsoon, and bricks of cocaine washing ashore from Colombian smuggler boats; however, none of these things were yet to materialize. There was, however, a persistent population of fearless and territorial crabs inhabiting our campsite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Relaxing days passed by, and I spent a lot of my time either doing workshops or lying in a hammock. I enjoyed browsing the tribal markets and learning about Kanayuna body painting, Kalingo carving, and other such things, but one of my favorite sessions was an \u201cecstatic dance\u201d workshop, which was just a group of people dancing to Goa Trance played through tiny speakers and an Israeli woman yelling, \u201cbreathe\u2026 feel the energy!\u201d into a microphone at the front of the group. After a while, she turned the music off and asked everyone to lay down with eyes closed, then walked around with a didgeridoo, blasting loud notes in people\u2019s ears as she passed by. I\u2019m not sure what the idea was, but it was entertaining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n