Ben Fogle meets the former couple who had three children together AFTER they broke up and now live in a remote part of Panama so that they can ‘control’ their family (and each has a separate island to live on)
- Dashaina, mother-of-three, followed children’s father to remote Panama island
- She raises and home-schools Aurora, Bellatrix and Carcanyon by herself
- Admits can be controlling and adds doesn’t like children to play with other kids
- She and her ex-partner have not been romantically involved since 2007
A former couple who decided to have children together because they couldn’t find anyone else who shared their values have opened up about their unorthodox off-grid lifestyle.
This week’s New Lives in the Wild, on Channel 5, sees Ben Fogle travel to Panama where he meets inventor Jaimie Mantzel, 44, who moved there from the US with his ex-partner Dashaina in 2015.
The pair first met in 2007 and soon separated because they were like ‘oil and water’, but while dating other people they failed to find partners who weren’t focused on their careers or partying.
After joking about having children together, they decided to take the plunge and are now co-parenting Aurora, Bellatrix and CarCanyon, who are home-schooled by Dashaina.
The two adults own five islands in Panama, and each one lives on a separate island while raising their children, who rarely interact with others because Dashaina feels that their behaviour goes downhill after playing with the locals.
In this week’s Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild, the adventurer met with mother-of-three Dashaina, who followed her children’s father to a remote island in Panama. Pictured: Ben with Dashaina and youngest son Carcanyon
Jamie Mantzel, 44, an inventor from Vermont, left his life behind to move to Panama in 2015. Pictured: Dashaina, holding Carcanyon, Ben, Jamie, Aurora and Bellatrix
In a conversation with Ben, the mother-of-three admits she prefers when her children are surrounded by adults.
‘To be honest with you, I find that their behaviours are much better when we have adults here, they thrive more,’ she says.
‘I find any time they are with the children, for a couple of days, I’m having the residual effect of maniac children.
‘They don’t want to listen, they don’t want to follow any kind of directions, they have more tantrums, and it’s because they observe that behaviour with the children that come. They see them falling on the floor and go “Wow, that’s what we should be doing”. And it’s totally not.’
Jamie has a relaxed approach to parenting and says that his family just ‘do what they want’ while they enjoy an off-grid lifestyle in Panama
Ben asks: ‘What then happens when they are young women and they’ve never experienced some of the kind of things that you’ve protected from?’
But Dashaina doesn’t share his view, replying: ‘At what age would you image them getting into a car and then going off with complete strangers to you, because you don’t know that kid’s parents.’
‘For me that’s not worth the risk,’ she adds.
‘Like, I’ve put enough energy into building these beautiful human beings to risk the million dollar question of “Yeah it’ll be OK this time, but what about next time?”.’
The mother-of-three admits she can be ‘controlling,’ and likes things done ‘just so,’ which Ben thinks she applies to home-schooling.
Dashaina admits to Ben that she can be controlling, but insists that she doesn’t want to risk her children’s welfare
‘It was a very intense chat about home-school, mainly because she was trying to over-justify it,’ he says in an aside to the camera.
‘I understand why people would home-school, home-educate, especially when you’re in a wild remote part of the world.
‘But the fact that she wants to control her children and their education and who they’re playing with, who they’re around, that certainly doesn’t match my parenting style.
‘I personally think they need to be around other children, they need to make mistake, they need to see naughty children.’
Inventor Jamie, pictured with Ben Fogle, decided to escape the responsibilities of his life in the US by moving to Panama and buying islands
Former Hooters hostess Dashaina shared inventor Jamie’s desire for a simple life, and followed him to Panama after conceiving eldest Aurora and little sister Bellatrix.
Tired of life in the US, Jamie and Dashaina moved to Panama after buying five islands, the cheapest of which cost $5,000, although it’s not made clear how he financed the purchases.
Inventor Jamie from Vermont, paid his university loans as soon as he could before moving to the North American wilderness for eleven years.
After the pair had two children together, they decided to leave everything behind and moved to Latin America.
Even though they’ve dated in the past, Jamie and Dashaina, who met in 2007, are not longer romantically involved.
Struggling to find partners that could understand them, but both yearning for a family, they decided to have children together, but are not in love.
Dashaina describes their unconventional arrangements as a parenting partnership, and says it shows their children their are no ‘cookie cutters’ for relationships.
Dashaina and Jamie are no longer romantically involved, and live on separate islands, but co-parent their three children
‘I was kinda weird as a kid, introverted, I spent a lot of time in my room building robots, that’s started when I was really young,’ Jaime tells Ben.
‘After I graduated from university, I paid off my loan as fast as I could, within a year,’ he adds.
‘I kept saving money, and then I bought a bunch of land in Vermont.’
‘I remember the day I quit my job, put all my stuff in my car and drove up there up to Vermont and walked up into the mountains and pitched a tent on my land and I just camped up for a month,’ he adds.
‘It was so amazing because it was the first time in my life where I just severed the chord behind me of things coming, responsibilities that I didn’t want to deal with.’
When Ben asks him whether he would consider himself to be ‘socially awkward,’ Jamie says he’d rather been known as ‘socially uninterested.’
‘I don’t like small talk that much, that makes it difficult to interact with a lot of people,’ he admits.
Because the pair live cut off from society on their islands, Ben wonders whether their way of life has pushed the mother to become more controlling.
He goes one: ‘And then when you look at their lifestyle on an island, it’s very easy to control life on an island: take yourself outside of conventional society it’s much easier to be controlling it.
‘So maybe it’s not so surprising it’s their approach to education, because it’s their approach to life as well.’
However, Jamie, who says he ‘doesn’t have a schedule,’ has a more relaxed approach to life, insisting the family just ‘do what they want.’
Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild airs tonight at 9pm on Channel 5.
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