Chicha, Chicha, Chichaaa!

Chicha. The legendary Chicha. We’d heard about it since we first entered Kuna Yala, yet it‘s mysterious nature had eluded us thus far.

Chicha, nectar bestowed by the Kuna God, is a mild alcoholic beverage made from fermented sugar cane. The sugar cane - grown on community plots exclusively for this purpose - is placed on a wooden fork, on top of which is placed the trunk of a coconut palm that is secured at one end by running through a hole in a nearby living palm. Several men hold on to the free end of the palm trunk and jump up and down , thereby extracting the precious juices from the cane. The juice is then poured into a gourd and buried under ground for a week to ferment. The final product is usually mixed with coffee before it is consumed.

Chicha is the only alcoholic beverage that the Kuna people consume and is not an everyday drink. It is reserved for special occasions (usually puberty rights ceremonies for girls and New Year’s Eve) when it is consumed by the entire community and in mass quantities. Chicha ceremonies are such an important part of Kuna culture, however, that each village has a large hut next door to its Congreso (government) hut dedicated solely for the purpose.

We’d heard that outsiders were allowed to participate in Chicha ceremonies and desperately wanted to do so, but had been unsuccessful in getting any details or the slightest hint of an invitation. That is, until Venancio, the transvestite master mola maker, visited our boat. The ceremony was in his village, Mormaketupu (literally shirt, or mola, making island) in two days time. We quickly changed course and headed that direction. We arrived as the Sahilas were tasting the batch and setting the official date.

This Chicha ceremony was to mark the puberty rights of a young girl in the village, an event which warranted mass celebration. Around mid-day, the spiritual leaders of the community entered the Chicha hut and began discussing with God and each other when the proper hour would be to begin. The whole village was showered, dressed in their best and stuffed full of yucca and fish soup, patiently waiting for the word. At roughly one o’clock the doors of the Chicha hut were opened and the village (and visitors) began filing in; men on one side and women on the other.

Chicha huts look like all traditional Kuna homes with reed walls, thatched roofs and dirt floors . The main difference is that they’re super sized; large enough to fit several hundred people and adorned with a series of crude wooden benches.

Once all the adults were gathered, more or less, and seated on their respective sides of the hut, the Chicha pots were opened and the party began. First, gumballs were distributed (the hoards of impatient children outside ended up with most of these). Then the elusive Chicha began to appear.

As the adults began gathering at the start of the ceremony, I’d stuck my head timidly past the door of the women’s side of the hut. A little old woman quickly motioned for me to sit next to her at the back of the hut. She immediately began talking to me. The problem was that she only spoke Kuna, and I didn’t. That didn’t seem to bother her though. I think she was asking me if I wanted to buy molas or her necklaces. I said “no” (or tried to anyway) and another woman asked me, again in Kuna, if I was going to drink Chicha (I got that word!) I nodded. Soon after, the Chicha gourds made their way to our corner of the hut and they made sure I got some.

The Chicha is served out of communal gourds that circulate around the room. When the gourd finds its way into your hands you’re expected to stand, maybe do a little dance, chug the entire gourd, and then spit the coffee grounds on the floor. In fact, if you do not chug the entire gourd, God will punish you.

Not wanting endure the wrath of the Kuna God, I chugged my Chicha like the rest of them. It tasted like a bitter-sweet coffee beer with a tangy after taste, punctuated by gritty coffee grounds - sort of - and left me with a mild, warm fuzzy feeling inside. It was definitely different, but I was up for more.

Kuna women traditionally wear bright red and orange scarves on their heads, and that day all had donned their finest. Feeling slightly naked on the top, I tried to communicate that I needed one too if I was going to participate. After a while the old woman went to her hut and returned with a well-worn scarf heavily scented by dust and wood smoke. Always thinking of business, the old woman asked (with the help of an interpreter this time) for $2. I gladly paid and put on my new accessory.

The women thought it was great and began talking up a storm (in Kuna of course) about what had happened. All I could do was keep smiling and laugh at myself right along with them. Then the women (again through an interpreter) asked how I liked the Chicha. I told them it was good. The next time the Chicha gourd came around, they made me get up and do the Chicha dance with them. I tramped around hunched over in a circle with my gourd in the center chanting hu-hu-hu-hu-hu-hu-huuuu, held my gourd in the air and chugged my tangy coffee cane brew. That did it. I liked the Chicha, I’d asked for a head scarf and I danced the Chicha dance. I was in.

It continued like this for a while; I sat in complete oblivion, smiling at the women and kids, laughing when they laughed at me, drinking Chicha and doing the Chicha dance. After a couple rounds, half of the women in the hut got up and left together. I asked whether it was time for the ritual hair cutting of the recently pubescent girl to begin (finger-scissors to the head is a pretty universally understood sign) and was told it was. I thought they asked me if I wanted to go, so I nodded “yes.” The little old woman promptly got up, took my arm and led me out of the hut, down the street to the house of the young woman, right past the milling crowds and plopped my down next to her on a bench beside the young girl getting her hair cut. Front row seats.

In each village there are only a few women trained to cut hair during puberty ceremonies, the “Iedies.” One is selected to do the honors for each ceremony. As I sat down, this specially trained hair-stylist -in-communication-with-God, began cutting the girl’s hair by taking a pair of scissors, starting at the base of her head and cutting the hair as close to the scalp as possible. She worked her way up the middle of the girl’s head, creating a sort of reverse Mohawk, and then moved on to the sides. As the Iedi gave the young girl a buzz cut with scissors, cocao beans smoldered in clay pots and gourds full of Chicha circled through the women.

As usual, the old woman made sure I was included in the Chicha rounds and a couple of times we were sent back to the Chicha hut to get more. I followed along, hop-skip dancing back to the Chicha hut, waiting in line to get my gourd refilled, dancing back and passing the gourd on to the next woman. It was as we were hop dancing down the street that I realized, at 5’ 2”, I was at least a full head taller than the rest of the women.

After I was finished serving the Chicha and sat back down next to the hair cutting, someone pulled out a jar of the orange paint the women paint their cheeks with. Everyone sitting around the young girl got a dab, including me. Shortly after, cigarettes began circling through the women. Like alcohol, cigarettes are something that are not consumed on a daily basis but are enjoyed in excess during Chicha ceremonies. Most of the women had been smoking like chimneys throughout the ceremony. Not wanting me to be left out of anything, the little old lady - who had been smoking continually from a pipe with a light blue plastic pen for a stem - pressured me now to take a cigarette. I started to refuse, but then thought to myself, “If there’s ever a time to smoke your fist cigarette this is it; sitting front row at a traditional female puberty rights ceremony, next to a spunky old lady with less than half her teeth, surrounded by women chattering in Kuna and decked out in their traditional dress, in a Kuna village on a tiny island in the Caribbean, buzzed on Chicha, with a red scarf on my head and orange paint on my cheeks.” So, what could I do, I accepted.

Shortly after, the Iedi decided she was done cutting hair (I think she just wanted to go drink Chicha) and another young woman took over. The old woman and I danced back to the ceremony and joined in more Chicha rounds.

From the first gourd of Chicha, the women had been asking me if I was drunk by pointing at me and asking “borracha?” It was one of the few things we could communicate to one another. By now some women really were borracha; rocking back and forth singing to themselves, dancing around in hats and black rimmed glasses borrowed from the men.

Around the time the sun approached the horizon, the young girl made her appearance in the hut with a red scarf draped over her head, her scalp apparently fully shaven. Her hands were painted black and she stood on one side of a screen holding two, mini, Siamese twin gourds. The Siamese gourds were first filled with water, which the revelers were supposed to spit on the ground. The party goers were then supposed to take four shots of a mysterious rum mixture out of the Siamese gourds from the hands of the Kuna maiden with a freshly shaven head. It all had a very funny fairy-tale like feel to it.

Things all start to run together after that point. The Captain of our boat had ceased playing blues harmonica with the oldest Sahila, and tried to get himself in a little bit of trouble. Another Sahila thwarted his efforts. The sun went down. The Chicha ran out. I danced the merengue on the street corner with two women who must have been at least 80. More candy was handed out. Mini gourds of gut-rot rum (which in my state I was calling “rut-got” rum) started making the rounds. And the dancing began.

Two musicians playing incredible music on the pan pipes provided the melody. A man wearing a necklace with thousands of thin shells or bones led the dance and provided the rhythm. Everyone else held hands and struggled to follow the dance leader as he hopped and spun around the hut at break-neck speeds. After at least 9 rounds of Chicha and who knows how many shots of “rut-got” rum, it was only thanks to years of ballet training that I was able to keep up.

It was a blast though! Women kept dragging me up to dance and I kept hopping and spinning until I was dripping with sweat and we were informed that it was time to get the Captain out of there. He was causing problems again.

Back at the boat we relived our Chicha glories and theorized about how bad we would feel the next morning. One of the other crew members, Clive, also told us that, at one point, he had managed to get a moment alone with the eldest Sahila and ask him a question without the interference of the interpreter. He asked the Sahila what the meaning of life was. Apparently, the Sahila looked directly at him and simply responded, “Si.” What a perfect word to sum up the evening. Yes. Why not? Si…