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Personal Narrative-The San Blass Islands

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There I was sitting in the tender, which has just set off from the Veendam, hoping not to

become soaking wet from the waves that barely managed to get into the small, orange boat. I was

on my way to the San Blas Islands with my family and some other tourists. It had been a long

cruise and many people, including myself, were eager to visit the natives of the island. The San

Blass Islands are just north east of the Panama Canal and I’ve heard nothing but good things

about them.

After I disembarked the small, orange tender, that was bouncing rapidly thanks to the

waves, I had to be exceptionally careful to not step in the holes in the wooden deck and break

my leg. After that, my dad got right back in line to go back to the ship. …show more content…

Plastic

water bottles and trash littered the shore. It was detestable. The village was nothing but a bunch

of run-down thatched roof houses with aluminum and plywood siding. The village people looked

like a bunch of rats in the New York City sewer. The walkway was nothing but dirt. And, there

was definitely the potent smell of dead, rotting, fish carcasses in the breeze. Everywhere I

looked, small children were holding cats of all kinds of description while others were running

rampant. The entire scene was one of chaos and confusion. (I got a sickening feeling when I

heard much later that the kittens usually do not make it to adulthood).

My mother, sisters, and I walked and looked at the items that the townspeople were selling, and they were repeatedly shouting, “one dalla, one dalla, one dalla”. (These are not

typos. This is how they sounded.) They were telling everyone that they hand knitted the scarves

or used handmade beads for the dolls, along with colorful stones mined from the island, but I

wasn’t naive. There were about 10 identical products on each table. And I guess they didn’t …show more content…

As I walked through the labyrinth of huts, I did my best not to touch the

clothes that were hanging on the clothes line, or step on the trash that was all over the ground. As

I peeked in through the door, I noticed there was nothing on the inside except an old folding chair

and a box T.V. that didn’t even work. At this time I was very confused. Then I heard it! I

overheard two employees from the ship saying that the whole island is a “tourist trap” and they

take the “Native People” to the mainland every night and the cruise lines fund the goods for the

people to sell. That took away all of the “ecstatic joy”. Now it made sense that almost all of the

houses were empty, because they weren’t houses at all.

I quickly walked back to my mom and asked her if we could go back to the ship and she

said, “Yes”. To my surprise she was holding a handful of “exotic goods”. On our way back a

little girl who was holding a doll without a head stopped in front of me and smiled strangely

while she was petting her doll. That was enough for me. Just to top it off, before we could go

back onto the tender to go back on the ship we had the use hand sanitizer to sanitize our

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