![\"Ecuador_Guayaquil_Haengematte-1-1024x768\"](\"http:\/\/panamaholic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Ecuador_Guayaquil_Haengematte-1-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAnyway Imagine the most original thing from your country is said to be from another country, although it\u2019s totally clear that you \u201cown\u201d this thing, idea, story\u2026 Imagine the Baseball Cap<\/em> was called Nicaragua Cap<\/em>, imagine Scotch<\/em> was called French.<\/em><\/p>\n Repeatedly, every Ecuadorian you talk to will tell you: The Panama Hat is NOT from Panama. It is from Ecuador. The finest Jipijapas (that\u2019s the original name of these straw hats) are produced here, along the coastline of Ecuador\u2019s Provence Manab\u00ed<\/em>. In Panama, there were just the right people with a lot of money in the right moment of time, who made hat dealers export their products to the canal. This art of hat-making, however, you find only in Ecuador. Nobody seems to notice. And here we find ourselves just in the middle of Ecuador\u2019s soul: A small, not really important but tremendously beautiful country that fights to be noticed as something more than just Galapagos and bananas. Hat-makers in Ecuador live in small houses in small villages. They don\u2019t earn much. Again and again they explain visitors how Panama Hats are made, in order for their craft to be the choice and not the cheap machine-made plastic hats.<\/p>\n The sparkling colourful showroom might not transport the long long story of the hat-making craft in Ecuador. Yet, every single Panama Hat is 100% handmade. Even the straw is carried by donkeys if the weather doesn\u2019t allow for heavy machines to be used, if the pick-ups get stuck in the mud, for example.<\/p>\n It has been raining heavily for a week. That doesn\u2019t really disturb me in the breath-taking humid heat of Guayaquil. But it disturbs the production. The volume of water which has rained down on Manab\u00ed and trickled down through roofs and into the earth, has stopped the straw drying and bleaching processes. Some orders won\u2019t be sent in time.<\/p>\n A little of the ever more difficult climate conditions \u2013 talking about El Nino, for example, – I see when I stand next to the Ecua Andino Hats team. In their sandwich position between clients \u2013 hat dealers all over the world \u2013 and hat weavers working in cooperatives they constantly have to mediate.<\/p>\n They sometimes can\u2019t deliver in time, because the hats have just not arrived. Clients need to be contacted, hat makers as well. What is the problem? When will they deliver? Are there any alternatives? But what can be done when there is draught or when it rains twine so that the straw does not dry but rot?<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n