Oranges & Sugar Cane – a Darien treat
When we take trips to the villages and spend the day in the sun, a fresh sweet snack is always welcome. Here are a couple favorites with sugar cane and oranges. You might be thinking, “wait a second, those look like limes”, but in the Darien, the local oranges are green and yellow when they are ready to eat. You take a knife from the house, which are always super sharp and well used, and shave off the skins and then cut in half and then we push the insides of the oranges in your mouth for the juice.
The other treat is the fresh sugar cane. You take that same well used and sharp knife and shave off the bark to present the inner flesh. You chew on that and the cane releases this sweet water. There is some yucca here in the photo as well, which is shared from one family to another.
Much of the local cultivated foods have families that specialize in yucca, fishing, oysters, or meat and then share family to family. These networks also apply to basket materials with cultivating chunga (weave), vegetal dyes and naguala (coil). These survival and income networks work well within the Wounaan community as well as with neighboring communities.
