 The path to Panama
  The village of Panama is snugly
located about 12 kilometres, south of Arugam Bay is attached to the last
point of the road towards the Yala National Park. It is only during the
dry months where it is easy to travel and navigate along the road.
Pronounced ‘Paanama’, here lies a Sinhala village that has been
preserved in its originality. The people can be friendly.
On a sunny afternoon, you have good chances to see huge crocodiles on
the sand banks in the small rivers that come here to sunbathe. An
incredibly colourful birdlife inhabits the lake about three kilometres
west of the village.
Panama is a village in transition from a hunter-gatherer social
structure to one of settled agriculture or fishing. The large majority
is of mixed ethnicities speaking Sinhala and Tamil. There is no ethnic
problem here as integration takes place naturally.
Muthu Banda for example, the lay custodian of the Okanda shrine, is
of mixed parentage and is related to most of the people in Panama.
The Panama villagers who farmed Kudumbigala were self-sufficient and
lived off the land and the adjoining forest. The centre of their worship
was Okanda. The bhikkhus and villagers fled the area when terrorists
attacked and killed some of them in the early 1990’s. But now, there is
significant change and development in the area with the dawn of peace.
-ND
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