A couple weeks ago, I saw “For Colored Girls…” as a play for the first time.  There was this moment in the “green room” when  30-40 Black women needed to rehearse the closing song and in unison this entire room of women with these big, trained voices start wailing, “I saw God in myself” over and over and over. Imagine that. 

That’s what pops in my head when we—Me + Alex, Javier, and Dash (all American-born Panamanians who moved back to Panama)—pull up to Iglesia San Felipe, the Portobelo church where “El Cristo Negro” aka “El Nazareno” aka the Black Christ is housed 364 days a year. (On October 21, he’s carried around the town.) I’m nervous. And I’m not sure why. It’s like I’m going to meet someone and it’s a big deal, not like I’m going to see a statue.