Spanish/Patois/English Female MC LADYFI

This young lady is a rapper from Colon, Panama. Colon is bloody rough, and I don't recommend that any visit you make extend beyond the tourist center at the cruise ship port. You can easily find yourself in gang territory (as in Bloods & Crips), and subject to Gringo-hating hustlers & thieves.

Panama is a country of total contradictions. It is both beautiful and ugly. It is both rich & poor, it is .....well you get the point.

Colon is on the Caribbean coast of Panama, and like other Latin American cities on the Caribbean coast, the people there are 99% black (as in Negro unmixed) and typically speak three languages: Spanish (colonial language, thanks to Christopher Columbus-Colon...yes that's where the name comes from..) English  (the Black people came via Jamaica in the 1800's to Panama to work on the numerous banana plantations on the coast of Panama in Bocus Province, and Jamaicans were colonised by the British) and Patois (which is broken English (heavily influenced by Irish, Scottish & West Country pirate/master twang) and bits of Yoruba, Twe & Ga - West African languages...this is how Jamaicans plantation workers i.e. slaves spoke).

In America & Europe we only ever see white skinned Latinas, but the truth is the majority of Latinas look like this lady in the video above. She is referred to as a Negra...a black woman. Not an offensive term, purely descriptive. We Westerners cannot understand that, the mere mention of a racial term makes us want to string each other up. It is what it is.

These countries & cities have major (if not majority) black populations:

• Venezuela (in particular Caracas, Puerto La Cruz, Maturin, Bolivar, San Cristobal)

• Colombia (Very Black - Cartagena, Barranquilla, Santa Marta, Medellin, Cali, Choco )

• Brazil (Sao Paulo, Salvador, Rio, etc etc)

• Panama (Colon, Boco del Toro Island & region, Changuinola, Darien region (please do not attempt to go to Darien without a tourist group which is protected by the policia, otherwise you may end up missing), All of Panama City (caution) & sections of Chiriqui province (bliss, they wanted independance but never got it, hence they see themselves as superior anyway..very safe)

• Costa Rica (Cauhita in Puerto Limon - my favourite place in the whole world - & Puerto Viejo)

• Nicaragua (Bluefields etc...)

• Honduras (la Ceiba - where Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopez's Hoger De Amor Children's orphanage is)

• Peru & Bolivia have smaller black populations

Okay, there ends your Central American & South American semi-geography lesson.

Enjoy the video!!!