... Made in Japan?

For a week of technical training we went and visited a small village in the Darien. To get there, we took a bus about five hours east from Panama City, transferred to a smaller bus for another twenty minute ride and then took a boat about fifteen minutes up the river. Keep in mind this distance, it will come become important later.

The women of the community we are visiting are known for owning a type of dress known as a paruma. It's roughly a sheet with colorful patterns on it that are wrapped around the waist like a skirt. They're are many patterns and some of them represent different aspects of their culture. We had a chance on our last day of technical training to purchase some of their goods. One hot item was the parumas which were priced at only $8. For a patterned design, measuring roughly 2 feet by 4 feet, it is rather amazing that they are only $8. I inquired some more and discovered that they are made in Japan. Somehow, someone within one of these communities had managed to make a connection with someone in Japan and was able to start ordering them. 

I thought it was rather odd and so I asked more questions about the subject but received no answers so I left it at that. This past week however, I met a volunteer that set out to track down the source of these parumas. The ladies in the town said that there was a guy from a shop in another town that came around selling them. The volunteer then made her way, spending an entire day traveling to this town to find out how the connection was formed. When she got there, she asked the shop owner about it and she had absolutely no idea about a vendor from Japan. And that was it. The trail ran dry. Somehow the mystery of Japanese parumas will continue to be a Panamanian mystery.