Street games festival free to all
By Margot Thomas

IF YOU grew up in an era when a length of rope, stick of chalk, a bat and ball were sufficient tools to initiate a street game with the other neighborhood kids, and “friends” meant real people and not some unknown digital  persona on a social network, you will enjoy an upcoming event this weekend.

 It’s free to all and you might re-discover the art of meeting live folks face to face.

Parque Andres Bello in the heart of Via Argentina will be the venue for the 3^RD  Annual “KERMES” family game festival Saturday  and Sunday  May 23-24, Noon to 6 pm under the general sponsorship of the Panama Canal Kiwanis Club. 

Admission for kids, parents, grandparents and everyone else to all 15 “street games” is free. The Park is about  700 yards from the new Via Argentina Metro Station, and is in easy reach of subway/Metro public transportation.

“Kids sit around with their I phones,  with video games, they sit in a room, they text their friends all day and all night, and sociologists tell us that the interaction and outdoor activities which build better educational and family outcomes are now threatened,” said  Kiwanis Secretary  Henry Sanchez, one of the main movers behind  Kermes Kiwanis in Panama.

The name coming from the Dutch, popular in Europe and many Latin American countries  it combines the ancient church and community fairs and festivals of competitive games, with a return to the “street” games needing little, if any  equipment or uniforms.Visitors will find traditional Panamanian games but will recognize they were the same or similar to the Hop Scotch, Jacks, Pan Queso, King of the Hill, Burro, stick ball, Double Dutch Jump Rope, marbles, and other games played in communities around the world for many generations.

Volunteers from local high schools will help supervise the games, and children will get some modest prizes. Mark Scheinbaum, President of Club Kiwanis Canal de Panama said, “Watching parents and grandparents laughing with their kids and grandkids, playing the old time games, and just enjoying time with one another, is the greatest pleasure I get from the Kermes street games.”

In planning the third annual Club Kiwanis Canal de Panama Kermes, sociologists working with Kiwanis International, which like the Panama Canal is celebrating 100 years of service, found current video game trends troubling. A moderate use of games and technological entertainment seemed fine, but levels of delinquency, drug and alcohol addiction, and even incidence of mass violence in the news recently may have had a component of young people isolated in a video world.

Reuters and other news agencies reported last year that in the

 South Korean ferry tragedy which killed more than 200 students, some students initially thought the unfolding disaster was funny and texted and tweeted and even sent videos to friends about how “it was like being in the movie Titantic” and joking about what was happening. Sadly, many of them died.