Clips

Tomassasina's cooking area.

Tomassasina's home in El Piro.

Waiting in line to see the Doctor. Visits to the doctor are rare events.

Three Guaymi sisters in their finest clothing. All traditional dresses are hand sewn and take up to thirty days to make.

Tomassasina Mendosa and her newborn daughter. Her birthing bed is a wood plank bed with a cardboard mattress.

Byous Photography

With tooth brushes in hand a mother and son pose for a portrait. Dentist visits are rare in the hills of Panama.

Panama Portfolio

Savannah, Georgia, USA 912-656-6541

Women wait at the El Piro Clinic. Exam rooms are open to the walkway making doctor visits a community affair.

Benita Clara, 11, and her daughter Elisa, 1, live in the province of Veraguas. Motherhood at young ages are common, as is incest. If a young girl cannot marry, her father continues their linnage through her.

Dentist Andy Abbot and is assistant Sandra Rogers work at the Canazas hospital. Locals consider tooth loss as sign of maturity. Most lose their front teeth by the age of twenty.

A farming culture, the Guaymies cultivate steep slopes where they plant crops that include rice, corn, plantain and sugar cane. Most live in tin or thatched roofed waddle-and-daub dwellings as seen at center right.

JimByous@weddingsavannah.com

James Byous 912-656-6539

Waiting to see the dentist. Some have walked four days to the clinics.

Pushing cattle down the Pan American Highway near El Piro.

A Guaymi mother and children

A thatched roof hacienda serves as a "family room" at the Mendosa home in El Piro.

A Guaymi boy from El Piro. The Guaymi who in their native toungue call themselves Ngobe live in the mountains of central Panama.

A young mother waiting with her sick child to see the doctor at the El Piro Clinic.

Downtown Canazas during rush hour.

A mother and her daughters at the El Piro Clinic.

An Affair to Remember,

Photos by James Byous

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25 years in Photojournalism