{"id":3266,"date":"2025-03-31T19:14:21","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T19:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/?p=3266"},"modified":"2025-03-31T19:14:58","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T19:14:58","slug":"glasses-for-the-san-blas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/glasses-for-the-san-blas\/","title":{"rendered":"Glasses for the San Blas"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A little while ago, I wrote about giving out cheap reading glasses to the older Guna women in the San Blas islands of Panama. These are the indigenous people who live a simple life on these tiny islands very much as they have for 500 years (ever since the Spanish, Colombians, and finally the Panamanians drove them off the mainland.)<\/div>\n
It is a matriarchal society, and a central part of the culture is that the women sew their beautiful and intricate Molas – which is why they need glasses.<\/div>\n
No sooner had I posted this than a reader offered his drawerful of old specs – and now I have found someone to distribute them. If anyone else has a bottom drawer full of glasses they no longer wear, please let me know and I will pass on the address.<\/div>\n
Note the guy at the back with the pale skin proudly wearing his glasses. Inbreeding has resulted in a high incidence of albinism, and it was amazing to see this lad suddenly looking at the world as he had never seen it before.<\/div>\n
For the record, during a lunar eclipse the albinos are the only ones allowed to leave the hut – to chase away the dragon which is eating the moon…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A little while ago, I wrote about giving out cheap reading glasses to the older Guna women in the San Blas islands of Panama. These are the indigenous people who live a simple life on these tiny islands very much as they have for 500 years (ever since the Spanish, Colombians, and finally the Panamanians … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3266"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3268,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3266\/revisions\/3268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}