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EXPATS PROFILE |
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In search of a dream—Paris to Panama |
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By David Young Starr MacCaman and Steve Holmes, went to High School together in California. When they headed for university, Starr to study graphic design, Steve to take courses that would lead him to a career as a pilot, they lost touch for 20 years. They married, brought up families and built successful careers, and lived within 10 miles of each other without ever meeting. Starr became an international art director and marketing executive, working for major corporations in "Silicon Valley", California, before moving to Paris. Steve became a senior pilot with Federal Express flying around the world. When his daughter wanted to improve her French by studying in Paris, he was given Starr’s address. He e-mailed for advice, and traveled with his daughter to Paris. The adult single-parents met again, fell-in love and were married in Provence. When Starr developed chronic bronchitis in the damp Paris winters they decided it was time to remove from the weather and the pressures of high end marketing. She also wanted to pursue a dream of sharing with the community some of the rewards she had earned during a fulfilling life.
They jointly developed a target list of "retirement" locations including the South of France and several tropical countries, like Costa Rica. Their final choice had to be remote, yet close enough to an airport for Steve to carry on his career. It had to have sufficient space for Starr to fulfill her dream. Panama was not on the list. It was near to a local community where they felt they could be of service, and it was a corner of paradise. In July of 2006 they moved in and the dream began to take shape (see page 28). |
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Buying a condo II |
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Ask the questions – get it in writing |
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By Steven Rich Whenever you are buying a condo, you should be asking lots of questions. What are the monthly maintenance fees and what services do they include (water, gas, garbage, sewer, security, etc.)? Are all apartments paying equal maintenance fees? Does the developer or owner plan to have commercial space in the building and what maintenance fees will they pay? Does the developer have votes in the condo owner’s board and/or elections? Who selects the first condo board of directors (the owners or the developer)? If you are purchasing an older condo, you also need to ask about any assessments (present, past & future) and the amount per unit. How much money is in the condo association reserves? Ask for a copy of the condo association certified audit (not the short income statement). Under Panama law, you are entitled to it as an owner. Total Condo Size in square meters doesn't mean measuring the interior walls. Total area space includes the outside walls, balconies, even unusable ledges! Future Assessments may be a problem in Panama City. Who will pay for the new highway expansion across Panama Bay, sewer treatment plants, Panama City road expansions and repairs, and clean up of Panama Bay? The government proposes that new condo development projects be assessed taxes and fees to help pay for all of this. That means condo developers will pass on the fees to the buyers. Canceling Contracts by developers is becoming common now that prices are escalating. Let’s say a pre-construction condo sold for $150,000. Before construction ends the market value rises to $250,000. Developers are becoming greedy. They sometimes offer to cancel the Purchase Contract and return the deposits to resell the condo for a higher price. Is this legal? First, look at what your Purchase Contract states. If it doesn’t include this event, you will end up fighting to keep the developer from canceling the contract for a bigger profit. Seller Non-performance penalties must be included in your Purchase Contract. You need a penalty clause to motivate the seller and/or developer to perform on time. Condo resale’s prior to completion is becoming a popular sport here in Panama. Speculators who bought cheaply a year or two ago are now trying to sell before the occupancy permit is issued requiring the balance on their down payments. Purchase contracts written by developers try to limit resale because they directly compete with the unsold units the developers want to sell. Too many real estate agents and developers promise that the entire condo project will finish within two years. What can you do if your pre-construction condo is running a year behind schedule? Your Purchase Contract must contain specific completion dates and strict penalties for delays. What’s included? Nothing. In Panama. New condos don't include any fixtures, appliances, air conditioners, water heaters, or furniture. Developers will charge you extra to include fixtures and appliances. A fully equipped kitchen is called "Linea Blanca" in Panama. Beware of cheap fixtures and appliances installed by greedy developers. If you are going to pay extra, make sure that the Purchase Contract lists acceptable brands, models, sizes, etc. installed by the developer prior to occupancy. If it’s not in writing, you won’t get it. That includes small items you take for granted like toilet paper holders and hand soap dishes. If you intend to install a garbage disposal, make sure the developer installs a kitchen sink with a large enough drainpipe. Verify Parking and Storage Space location and size. You need to look at the plans to see whether your parking spaces are difficult to access or too crowded. Air Conditioning is necessary in Panama. If the developer agrees to install, make sure it’s suitable central or split air conditioning and energy efficient. Materials Fee clauses like "Up to five percent for increase of materials cost during construction to be paid by purchaser". Be prepared to pay this because greedy developers will enforce this clause every time... If it’s in writing. You need to research future projects and available land that may eventually block your breathtaking views. Follow these procedures and hire competent professionals to assist you with your condo purchases. Then sit back and enjoy your new home in paradise. Steven Rich is Marketing Manager for Panama Offshore Legal Services. |
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A trip back in time on postcards |
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The exhibition of the postcards collection: "Reverse Divided: Graphic Patrimony in the Charles Muller Collection" was opened late May as part of events to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Canal I Museum of Panama in Casco Viejo.
The compilation, which occupies two floors of the museum, was donated by the British born, Charles Muller and contains more than 1100 postcards from editorial houses such as I.L. Mauro, A. Papio & Co and Alberto Linda among others. The collection also includes 100 photographs.
The subject matter of exhibits varies and goes from the Panama Canal's construction, to military parades, funerals and festivals. These cards are a significant contribution to the history of the Panamanian postcards.
The exhibition will be open until July 8 at Canal Interoceanico's Museum from 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. An annotated book containing hundreds of illustrations of cards, divided into subject, is available at the museum for $50.00.
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An international cultural center where dreams come true |
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By David Young "Welcome to our corner of paradise" said Starr McCaman when I arrived with my wife at the imposing carved wooden doors of what had once been known as a hacienda.
Under the ownership of Starr and husband Steve Holmes, the forty acre site has adopted the more modest name Finca (farm) La Maya but there is no call for modesty when listing its attributes: a stand of teak trees, fruit and nut bearers like mangos, almonds, coconuts, avocados, bananas, lemons and guavas. Fresh vegetables come from two gardens cultivated each evening as flocks of pericos settling in the almond trees herald dusk’s arrival. Fresh eggs come from a large chicken run. There are horses and trail rides, swimming pool, a Jacuzzi and even a putting green. The main house is shaded by a host of different trees including the travelers’ palm, an apt choice when you learn that Steve is a Fedex pilot, and the couple are renowned travelers.
The central house with a high gabled ceiling is furnished with items from Mexico, South and Central America, a visitor’s dream home. But for the expat owners who have established the property as a cultural oasis, pride of place goes to the classroom they have built to serve not only incoming study groups, but also the local community. Each weekend, children and adults trek from kilometers around to receive English and art classes at no cost. When the project was launched in January of this year there were over 100 children streaming through the gates to be taught by volunteers recruited by Starr, who gently refuses to take no for an answer. Adults can join the English classes. Art classes are for children up to fourteen. From nearby Coronado comes Lara Lausie, to teach English and increase the future chances of her students to obtain jobs in local tourist centers like Decameron and Playa Blanca. Further down the major highway to Panama is García Ceramics, whose owner, known affectionately to the children as Senor Garcia, gives up his time on Saturday afternoons to teach them how to make and decorate pottery, which he then transports to his own workshop for baking and glazing.
Starr, a lifelong creative artist, who spent 16 years in Paris, teaches drawing and painting. The walls of the classroom are decorated with scores of pictures by children who had never before held a an artist’s brush in their hands. While they are at work, the room is silent as they concentrate with almost ferocious determination, eased by their willingness to help each other. Hovering in the background is husband Steve, a Fedex pilot who provides encouragement and master-of-all-trades assistance to wife and children. The silence is finally broken when the class ends and the children are invited to put their works on a central table for display and a photo session. There is a spontaneous cheer, and smiles light up faces and the room, on a rainy afternoon. Before they leave there are kisses and hugs for teachers and visitors. In addition to teaching, Starr carries on an active campaign to get donations of supplies for her young charges.
Meanwhile she continues developing her program for instructors from all over the world to bring groups to study art, creative writing, music, yoga, wellness, photography or any other course. The central lodge and guesthouse can sleep up to 20 people and groups can be provided with gourmet meals prepared with freshly caught fish and food from the farm, or cater for themselves in the spacious kitchen and at the outdoor barbecue. It is also available for family reunions, weddings and business get togethers. For information or directions call 240-2840 or check the web page www.fincalamaya.com |
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A sixty year embrace brings memories flooding back |
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By David Dell
There are many thousands of stories about the early days in Panama, stories of hardship, suffering, and the struggles to make a living. This is a true story about a child born with an affliction to a large and poor family; child who could have faced a lifetime of ridicule and embarrassment – save for the intervention of a kindly stranger. Ziska Hartmann was born in 1932, one of ten children, in the mountains of Chiriqui. Sadly he was born with a cleft palatte, a condition that at the time only skilled and expensive surgery could have corrected. His father, Alois, was struggling to feed his large family as well as trying to start a coffee farm. To send his son to Panama for treatment was simply out of the question. A neighbor of the Hartmanns’s was Carl Pfeiffer. He worked in the Canal Zone, had the necessary contacts in the medical community there to help the young boy, and offered to take him to Panama City and pay for his care. Pfeiffer, a long time member of the Masonic Lodge, was a member of the Panama Canal Consistory No.1. Masons are by design a secretive society, but much to their credit, the many, and generous donations they make to society are also done secretly, without thought to fanfare and publicity. Carl Pfeiffer told the boy’s father that the various surgeries, followed by healing time, could take as long as three years. In that time he stayed at the Pfeiffer home in Panama City and became a close friend to their daughter, Lois.
Lois and Ziska soon became inseparable. As she later recalled she was almost a mother to him – a very bossy mother, she confessed. Ziska’s operation in 1942 was a success. A photograph shows him after the operation sitting on the side of the sea wall in Panama City. His face, and his self esteem restored. The Pfeiffer’s moved on and despite occasional letters, contact between Ziska and his childhood friend Lois faded with the years. In 2007 Lois Pfeiffer contacted me at the website I was running called yourpanama.com as I had written an article on Alois Hartmann, the father of Ziska. She wondered, if he was still alive. She planned a trip back to the mountains of Chiriqui to see the place she had known and loved as a child. Through my research I found out that indeed he was alive and well and living near the Hartmann coffee estate at Santa Clara near Volcan. It was a sunny May morning as Lois and her daughter Margaret set out with me to drive the twenty minutes or so along the winding road to Santa Clara. Lois wondered if Ziska would remember her, perhaps the many years that passed had faded his memory.
We pulled into a small hacienda. A slim man with a dark moustache appeared on the balcony. "Ziska Hartmann?" I asked. "yes," he replied as he walked toward the car. Lois Pfeiffer stepped out of the car and the sixty years that had separated them dwindled to nothing as they grasped each other in a long embrace. The afternoon rain was just beginning to fall, as tears rolled down the cheeks of the two long-lost childhood friends. Lois Pfeiffer tearfully said, "I didn’t think you’d remember me." Ziska held Lois in his outstretched arms, and gazing down at the daughter of the man that had forever changed his life, said. "Oh no Lois, I have never forgotten you." A small crowd of people watched the embrace that had been sixty years in the making, a heartwarming final chapter in a story that started in the dark days of World War 2, when a Panama Canal Zone worker, and his daughter, stretched out a hand of friendship to a poor Panamanian boy. |
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Panama’s oldest pictures? |
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By David Dell The dictionary defines a picture as: "A representation on a flat surface." The Castillo petroglyph, in Nueva Suiza, Chiriqui, qualifies for that – and the carvings may also qualify as Panama’s oldest pictures. Sometime, about 550 years ago, a rock carver stood in awe as the mighty Baru Volcano in Chiriqui started to blow its top. We can deduce exactly where he stood, and we know exactly what he depicted. Who he, or she was – of course we don’t know. This was a cataclysmic event and had to be recorded. They couldn’t paint a picture, so the observer did the next best thing – he or she took some rough tools and carved what was seen.
I recently visited the oldest picture collection, in the small mountain town of Nueva Suiza, Chiriqui. To access this remarkable stone you literally have to take your life into your hands. It lies ten minutes north of Volcan down a rough country road. First you have to cross two bridges made of rusting tin and rotten wood – at least these can support a vehicle (just) Then the test of your metal really comes to the fore – you have to cross a 100 foot wire-stayed bridge that hangs precariously 20 feet over the rocks of the raging Chiriqui river. My guide on this trip was local restaurateur Gladys Castillo. Her sister Olga owns the land where the rock is situated. Gladys nimbly crossed the bridge leaving me to contemplate the rotten and splintered boards that barely pass for the bridge deck. This I thought was foolhardy and extremely dangerous. Trust me these boards could give out at any minute and result in a fall onto the boulders below which surely would break your legs, and most probably kill you. Still I thought, I am a journalist - we are brave, adventurous, and most of us are crazy as a fox. Gingerly I crossed the river in pursuit of the disappearing Gladys Castillo.
On the other side of the bridge I met Olga Castillo – the sister of Gladys. She led me through a gate and up to a corner of a field where a large rock sat next to the hedge. The rock was about twelve feet in length, six feet across and about eight feet high. It looked remarkably like a sacrificial stone I had found in Nicaragua. On the North side were four spiral circles, some six inches in diameter and joined by a series of interconnecting straight lines. To the bottom left of this side were small round one inch diameter indentations. Another striking aspect was in the top right corner. Here there were several vertical striations emanating from the top of the rock. This gave me the clue that these were possibly artists renditions of lava flows. This rock was not as high as the sacrificial stone I had seen In Nicaragua – that stone was just over four feet high, this rock was twice that height. (trying to perform un-elected surgery here would be very difficult) The stone carver has made two eruption pictures, one, slightly smaller than the other. The larger carving, above and to the left, is possibly a stone recording of the main event. An explosion and eruption so huge that it wiped out the majority of the local population. The rock is in effect a three dimensional copy of the Volcano. In ancient times lava would have flowed from the summit – hence the vertical striations at the top. The circles may well represent the pools of lava that gathered and then poured stream-like down the sides and finally the small holes at the bottom would represent the many springs that are still to be found all over this huge feature. The mountain would have been both a taker of life with its scorching lava and also a provider of it with its streams of life sustaining water.
According to National Geographic there was a huge earthquake and volcanic eruption in this area around the year 1450. The lake at the top of the Baru Volcano broke through the mountainside and lava and scalding water cascaded down.
The "Castillo" stone is not in any guide book or on any tourist map, however it is accessible by those of the "crazy like a fox" persuasion. Contact Gladys Castillo at the Castillo Restaurant (on the Cerro Punta road) in Volcan, and she will happily direct you to her sisters property. Bring a camera, a good pair of hiking boots, a two dollar donation, but leave your fear of heights and dangerous bridges behind. For rock carving enthusiasts and amateur archeologists, a full collection of free pictures of this and other petroglyphs are available at: http://www.yourpanama.com/images/petroglyphs. |
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There are never "accidents" only collisions |
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In the last two issues of THE VISITOR Jorge del Rio of Ducruet Insurance has given advice on how to cover yourself for various kinds of risk, damage to your property, health, and car. But what about when the worst happens and you finally get what some would say is the inevitable "ding"…..a car accident. First off, don’t panic and be prepared for a long wait. If you are on your way to an appointment, be ready to call the person you were supposed to meet, and say you are waiting for the traffic police, They will understand that you will be there for an hour or more, and will probably suggest you re-schedule. In the meantime, these are some of the procedures you will have to follow.
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2007©. All Rights Reserved. |
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