Friday Naitafon

Naitafon = Night of fun. Comes from the days when a neighbor would throw a party and charge an entrance fee and where bands played music and people danced and partied all night. Comes from the Atlantic side of Panama.

Friday night was gearing up to be a dud. I had called on everyone to go out, have a beer, smoke a bud, or whatever and pretty much everyone bailed out on me. I was left alone with my urge to go out into the night. I took a shower, logged on to facebook and up popped a message from G. wanting to know what I was doing on this fateful Friday night. I told him how I had been abandoned and was now in pj's without a plan. He was in the same boat, but we were both lazy and had no specific place to go so we left it at that. Ten minutes later M. pops on to the chat and asks me what are my plans for the night. By then it was midnight. I mentioned that I had wanted to go out, but no plans were made. She said, "I have weed but no car" and I said "I have a car, where are you?" and that is how I skipped out of my house at midnight on a Friday night.

I picked up M. and she pulled out a lovely little baggie with wonderfully pungent sticky fresh bud, packed it into a bowl and off we went to pick up G. We drove to La Casona, but were informed that they were charging 5 dollars which we weren't in the mood for paying so we walked around aimlessly and decided to skip on out to the next block when the sound of congos started reverbrating in the nearby buildings. We followed the sounds to a small shack with the name of the Baños Publicos. We walked in tentatively and were greeted by a five man band who were playing old Puerto Rican salsa. We sat down and watched in awe as the congo players hands flew over the drum in repetetive hits and taps; hypnotized by the sounds, the movements, the words I spoke very little. A couple of drunk gringos swayed with the sound, tapping their sandaled feet and dancing lazily.

We stayed entranced for a bit until the salsa group ended their set and then walked out in a daze into the lit plaza. From that surreal experience we went to Casablanca down a couple of beers and gossip about this and that. We ended the night at 3 a.m. and I drove back home in a happy sleepy daze. Flopped on to my made bed where the images and sounds of the salsa vieja invaded my head and lulled me to sleep.