tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89158335943934533772024-03-13T13:58:35.913-07:00On the Road with William WalkerBill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.comBlogger82125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-34092415115858470382010-09-24T15:14:00.000-07:002010-09-24T15:23:21.620-07:00Darien Gap IV: The Devil's MathematicianThe port secretary called us to the launch one by one. Our packs were weighed in turn and the boys competed for the right to toss the double bagged bundles into the rectangular bow. Passengers loaded back to front, the smoothest ride went to those in the in the rows closest to the engine, each row forward experienced more amplitude as the hull rode up and down over the waves. As one of the last names on the manifest, I found myself on the front bench of passengers just behind the luggage pile.<br />
<br />
The short and wiry captain in an oil stained yankees cap stood at the stern and tilled the twin outboard engines as he guided us through the choppy waters of the inlet. The front of the narrow launch elevated with each wavelet and slammed down hard on a surface that felt like concrete. Each jolt was a punch to the tailbone that coursed up my spine and rattled my clenched teeth. There was nothing on the wooden bench to cushion the blows.<br />
<br />
The first stretch out of Turbo had been protected by the curvature of the gulf. The horizon undulated in the open sea ahead of us, where the winter winds had blown for months without interruption. As the gulf widened into the Caribbean, the snaking horizon foreshortened, then vanished, as the chop gave way to five, six, eight foot waves that broke over the starboard bow, trebling the merciless pounding. I closed my eyes to shield them from the stinging spray and found myself drifting back, way past the usual daydream fare--women I could have had, women it all went wrong with, the sweet moments that made all the frustrations worthwhile--back to a safe place, the source of my earliest daydreams. <span class="fullpost"><br />
<br />
While my second grade classmates experienced their dinosaur phase, I prefered the nearer enchantments of classical mythology. Not all the metaphors were digestible then, sex was still a fuzzy concept and death too far off to cast a convincing shadow on a nine year old. Hades I got all wrong. I imagined the River Styx a calm stream of odorless blood, the passage across smooth as the contrails of wandering shades. Closer now to the death horizon I can see its snaking tumult, and I know the ferry to the underworld was not an environ of wistful reflection, but a prelude to the punishments waiting on the other side.<br />
<br />
Hades stayed up late with the devil's mathematician devising infinite combinations of prime numbers for the wave lengths beneath the hull; there was no anticipating when the elongated craft would end a string of smaller impacts over the tops of the whitecaps and plummet towards the depths. Then earthly laws suspended, in time marked only by the mortal migration of stomach to larynx, as our flesh slipped away from their grip. We paid for the moment’s freedom, both Hades and gravity are jealous gods. They reached up for us hapless escapees at the time they thrusted the launches skyward, so that the five foot drop doubled on impact. The only reprieve from this ceaseless and irregular pounding came when the swells rose high enough to obscure the horizon and the boat was forced to crawl up one slope of water and skitter down the next.<br />
<br />
The Czech couple next to me had forgotten their temporal squabbles, their faces blanched of argument and color. The woman seated between me and her partner had braced herself on each of our knees. She cried and begged for respite from the lashing. She lurched forward with a wimper gargled by mush and bile and then collapsed into the saltwater that stirred her upturned breakfast on the hull. After minutes that seemed like hours the captain idled the launch. The boat reeled backwards in the driving surf as he cleared a space for her on the gentler aft bench.<br />
<br />
I was worried about my back, a source of pain even in the smoothest of times on days I neglected rigorous stretching and exercise. I remembered my uncle who graduated from the pounding of jet skis to cortisone shots and disc surgery. I did everything I could to energise my core, to distribute the impact of the blows through my muscles. Bump bump bump bump SLAM! I pictured Ana Cabana, DVD pilates instructor, clinically perky tits and saccharin smile, and tried to direct the shockwaves through my stomach and my thighs. Bump bump SLAM! Sometimes, before there was time to recollect from the last blow, the hull came down like a hammer fall on the tail bone. The hundred bucks I might have saved by not taking the sailboat through the San Blas was not going to cover disc surgery.<br />
<br />
Bump bump bump bump bump bump bump bump,WHOOSH! My legs, tensed to absorb the next blow, misfired just as the hull was dropping away. The involuntary recoil sprung me from the plank as the launch fell into the eight foot trough. The next turquoise wall yielded to a sharp azure sky as the horizon titled back and left me unsure if I’d land on wood or water.<br />
<br />
The landing was both soft and dry as I came crashing down into the lap of the Swiss woman behind me. She screamed and I imagined her held at machete point on the dark streets of Turbo. I could not tell if the sloshing in the side of my head was ocean or eardrum liquefied by her piercing shriek. She thrust an elbow into my back and I tumbled from her lap into the pool of puke-water sweeping back and forth along the hull.<br />
<br />
The Swiss soon got her revenge. A few dozen or hundred slams later I felt a chunky warmth splashing the back of my neck. The bilious gruel crusted on my shirt at the only angle my body wasn’t drenched by the stinging spray. Another hour of pulverizing blows and I gave in, I went loose and let the impacts throttle my spine with each drop. Acquiescence did not slow the time down, the seconds dripped the way months pass in the safety of home.<br />
<br />
The craft turned landward and surfed atop the rolling waves to a thatched village that appeared on the bright yellow sands fronting emerald green jungle. It had been well over the two hours I had heard advertised for the trip. A wave of low grumbles splashed with pathetic whimpers spread from the back benches forward. This was not our dock. We were only at Acandi, the half way point between Turbo and Capurgana. The height of the waves and the strong winds and current had doubled our projected voyage time.<br />
<br />
A single couple got up to disembark and I could feel the rest of the gringos thinking the same thing: Acandi, good enough, let’s get the fuck off this boat. I could feel every bone and every joint, I couldn’t take two hours of more pounding, not one more jolt. I didn’t have an extra day for Acandi. I had to be at the border tomorrow, and once I put my feet on land, there was no way I’d be getting back on a boat anytime soon.<br />
<br />
I thought about Johanna’s ride through the swamps and rivers of the Choco, of her possible journey up the gut of the Darien, a trip that for the day at least couldn’t have possibly been as unpleasant as this white-capped roller coaster on the gringo trail. Where and when would she imagine she had taken the launch up the Caribbean with the other tourists? I pictured her on a forced night march led by the lucky militants who hoped to turn her captivity into ransom, jungle thorns shredding her clothes and ripping chunks out of bird bone thighs. The better story, but even hers had been done before. I had taken the right boat, no way in hell I’d be backtracking to Turbo to find out.<br />
<br />
All things must pass I reminded myself over and over as the violence of the slamming hull stretched out the hours. Sometime just after noon, the sun almost directly overhead, we again turned landward and took aim for bright blue waters protected by breakers at the edge of the bay.<br />
<br />
With two feet on the pier I did my best to forget all the promises I made to the gods I no longer believed in. For a moment I basked in the glow of safe passage and savored the illusion of land tilting beneath my feet. Though sunburn blistered my arms and I was sure I had done permanent damage to my lower back, the pain seemed too far away to negate the relief that came with knowing I was just a few miles, land miles, from the border. I might have kissed the sand beyond the pier had the soldiers who had gathered to look through our gear not fingered me for inspection. As they cut through the garbage bags containing my luggage, I was amazed to find the sea spray had penetrated both layers of plastic and soaked my polyester backpack.<br />
<br />
I walked off the dock alongside the Czech couple whose bags had also been inspected for drugs. In another context we might have sought to team up and negotiate for a better deal on a room, or at least gone out for a beer. We had seen close up the minutiae of each other’s humiliations, the cries and curses and bodily protests of the morning’s passage. It would take some time before I could sit down and look either of them in the eye. It would take some time before I could sit down at all. Better to forget.<br />
<br />
With the Colombian holidays over, I had my pick of guest houses. I settled on a place run by a friendly couple from Medellin. They were eager to accommodate, only three of their their twelve rooms were occupied. I could see their disappointment when I told them I only had a night to spend. I explained how tomorrow was the last day of my visa, and they urged me to get my exit stamps before the customs agent shut the immigration office until Monday.<br />
<br />
I peeled off my jeans before the bathroom mirror. My ass had been replaced by two large welts, bright red where the flesh was stripped bare. Short of rubbing alcohol, I sterilized the wounds with a shot of aguardiente from the bar, and put on my dryest pair of boxers. Still well before nightfall, I passed out face down on the bed. </span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-967494919785613372010-09-17T10:43:00.000-07:002010-09-17T10:43:40.130-07:00Darien Gap III: The Launch not TakenThe receptionist recommended I be on the docks as soon as they opened at 5:30 to ensure a place on the launch. The water taxis out of Turbo all had a single daily departure around 7:00 AM. I got to the dock at 5:30, but the office was closed and I had another look around the main intersection of town. I found a vendor selling shots of sugary coffee and sat with the locals watching the roosters yield their ground at the last possible second to passing motorbikes. <br />
<br />
I got back to the dock at fifteen to six and found myself twenty spots back in a queue that had quietly formed in front of the office door. It was an almost even mix of Colombians and gringos, the first I had seen since leaving Casa Carlos. <br />
<br />
I felt the vanity rising up again as I waited in the purple gray of the pre-dawn hour. I couldn’t help but feel a little crestfallen that in the filth and fecal breath of backwater Turbo, Colombia, I was just one of a dozen foreigners taking the less traveled route to Central America. Why else would a person with other options visit this hole of a town if not to feel he was something more than an ordinary tourist? <br />
<span class="fullpost"><br />
The couple in front of me were locked in a bitter quarrel over who packed the bug spray next to the tin of sardines, or whatever it was they were going back in forth about in Czech or Polish as the young man rearranged the contents of his pack. At least the language barrier allowed me to imagine they were fighting about something exotic like the poisoning of canned fish products. <br />
<br />
When I approached the counter there were two passenger logs, one for Capurgana, my destination, the other for Unguia, an inland town reached by water across the Gulf of Uraba and through the rivers and swamplands of the Choco. Unguia was just a name in my head. A smoldering village at the end of the earth that evoked respect and foreboding, a Colombian Mai Lai I’d visit only with the aid of books. <br />
<br />
Unguia was the last settlement before the Darien Gap, or, depending on one’s direction, the first Colombian village reached along the old footpath through the Darien, a trail now contested by guerrilla soldiers and their rivals in the drug trade. Robert Young Pelton was one of the last men to cross the Darien back in 2002. The author who penned the series the World’s Most Dangerous Places, the journalist who discovered John Walker Lindh in a truckload of Talibani prisoners, was fortunate to survive the trip in one piece. Pelton and his associates were kidnapped a few days into the Panamanian side of the Gap and were marched south by the AUC to be held captive on the outskirts of Unguia. Upon release the paramilitaries stated they had been protecting the journalist and his entourage. Given the catalogue of potential dangers on the way, it was not an outlandish claim.<br />
<br />
The most direct route north has only gotten worse in the intervening years. This is why Donaldo mapped an alternate route for me, first along the coast, and then east over the mountains and down to the rivers flowing back towards the Pan American north of Yaviza. By the message boards I keep tabs on, there were still people out there who sought advice for the traditional route despite the known dangers.<br />
<br />
As expected, the gringo names filled the Capurgana side of the ledger. As I logged in for the trip I glanced at the Unguia column, and noticed that the third signature bore a Teutonic script and surname. Who was this Johanna Klein?<br />
<br />
Tourists do not travel to Unguia, a village without hotel or restaurant, whose single refrigerator is fed by diesel generator. Perhaps Frau Klein was an aid worker, or maybe a biologist set to rendevous with an expedition in search of more undescribed frogs and fish that have recently made news in the region. I imagined the scientists who hired a boat to Unguia did not do so without some kind of escort. Perhaps she was going just because it was the Darien Gap, a notch on the belt of the truly insane adventure travelers. She could have contacted the FARC and the AUC, and on some unlikely pretense, negotiated safe passage. Maybe I could tag along. A German planning an adventure so far afield would at least have excellent maps. <br />
<br />
I had to find the reason this single woman was venturing to the edge of the most lawless region of the hemisphere on her own. If so, I had less than a half hour to get her story before the launches loaded and set off in different directions across the bay.<br />
<br />
From the office I stepped onto the dock where I was swarmed by a half dozen kids selling heavy-duty garbage bags in exchange for a few coins. The other passengers were busy double bagging their belongings inside the plastic to keep them safe from the spray and the waves breaking over the bow. I bought a bag each from competing vendors and packing tape from a third and the four of us did our best to make my possessions waterproof.<br />
<br />
A few gringos sat in pairs along the dock. A larger group huddled around a kiosk, hanging on the words of a Swiss couple who took turns telling their tale of being robbed last evening by a machete armed teenager. None of their faces matched my mental image of the woman who signed across the column from the rest of us foreigners.<br />
<br />
There was one gringa sitting by herself near the end of the dock. This wisp of a woman, spectral in the pre-dawn light, sat erect and motionless while staring out across the muddy water to the mangroves on the other side of the channel. There was no good way to approach her since she was centered at the dock’s end and there wasn’t proper space for a stranger between her and either of the end posts. The best I could do was sit with my back to one of the piles and try a conversation from over my shoulder. My double-sacked backpack slid from my fingers and thumped onto the planks. The noise did not break her trance.<br />
<br />
“Buenos Dias.” It was all I could get out on my second intrusion on her sunrise meditation.<br />
<br />
After a short moment she craned her neck and I got a full look at her face. I took a breath so as not to shudder. Though she looked anorexic from behind, wraithlike in profile, I still wasn’t prepared for glassy grey eyes, sunk deep into charcoal sockets flecked with sickly greens and blues, and blanched lips indistinguishable from her translucent skin. With so little flesh covering her bones and only a the few centimeters of plaque yellow hair atop her head, it did not take imagination to see how the hollows of her skull might look as a future anthropology specimen, homo sapiens sapiens, on display behind a glass case in a natural science museum.<br />
<br />
“Buenos Dias.” she replied.<br />
<br />
For a second time in as many seconds I had to take control of my breathing so as not to shiver. Her voice was as thin as her bird bone fingers, there was no room for sound to develop body within the confines of her angular frame.<br />
<br />
“Where are you headed?” <br />
<br />
“Choco.”<br />
<br />
Her answer revealed little. Choco was the department on the frontier with Panama, an area that included both the towns along the coast to Capurgana and the region surrounding Unguia. Surely death had many errands in that part of the world. Her vagueness confirmed my suspicion that she was headed further into the interior.<br />
<br />
“Interesting. You work for an NGO?”<br />
<br />
“No.”<br />
<br />
Just as the conversation had its first momentum, she shut me off with a sharp look. Or maybe it was just how her face had focused while delivering the syllabic response. The pointed nose and protruding cheekbones, the severe cut of jaw over a steep ridge of collar bone, the accusatory shoulder blade--she had much sharpness to offer.<br />
<br />
I turned my head back down the dock and watched the Swiss man pantomime last night’s assailant. After a few minutes I shifted back towards Johanna, hoping she might offer her story. She was ready for the jungle, her legs swallowed up in the boots now dangling over the edge of the pier. I asked her about them, her answer was polite and efficient and left no space for a follow up. At twenty to seven, I tried another tack. <br />
<br />
“There can’t be many foreigners who pass through Unguia. Did you have to speak with the DAS official? They must keep count on travelers so close to the border.”<br />
<br />
“No. Excuse me. I’m going to check on the launch,” she said.<br />
<br />
And so I lost the thread. Most people love to talk about themselves, the lazy fact I relied on to get their stories. This woman did not want to reveal herself, and I had neither the time nor the angle to draw her out.<br />
<br />
I admired the strength hidden in her stringy limbs as she sprung up with the pack-in-trash-bag that was several the diameter of her torso. She walked twenty feet back along the dock where the first boat was tied, a long, open craft with a squared off bow and twin outboard engines. <br />
<br />
Why was this mysterious German (Swiss, Austrian?) headed to the border of one of the most dangerous and lawless stretches on the planet? I would not get any more details so I was left to imagine the motivations behind Frau Klein’s voyage. She was taking the land route to Panama along the old trails through the Darien, to see the teeming rain forest and cloud kissed mountains, a land that would always be without roads. She welcomed the dangers, drug runners and guerrillas, mosquitoes weren’t quick enough at this point to do her harm, over a last dreary winter in Berlin. She had nothing to lose. The doctors gave her six months, that was back in August. She laughed when they advised a last ditch treatment regime that would have sentenced her to spending her last days in the hospital fighting the inevitable. Now every day that she could rise above the pain was a delicious gift.<br />
<br />
The boys who had been selling the garbage bags scrambled to help load the front of the launch to Unguia. In the chaos of flying garbage bags and a heated argument between the captain and the port secretary, the other passengers took great care with the foreign guest. She was offered a back bench, the smoothest ride on the boat. Two men approached her side as she stepped down into the craft. She twisted away to elude her would-be assistants, and her elbows seemed to pass right through their waiting arms. Once seated, she stared straight ahead back at the dock. Locals filled up the the remaining spaces on the launch, and with a yogi’s posture, Johanna rose a full head higher than the brown and black bodies around her. <br />
<br />
It was too late to change my ticket and wedge into the crowded, river bound craft. I lacked the supplies, the time, even the desire for such a trip. <br />
<br />
This time I would take the road more traveled, a launch across the open sea to the last sliver of Colombian coast before the border. Capurgana was a destination in its own right, for the last few years the sleepy fishing village had been free of guerrilla incursions and was now on the cusp of a tourist boom. This of course would soon nullify the town’s chief attraction, the elusive travelers’ grail of undiscovered paradise. <br />
<br />
Then I could always push further, pursue the footsteps of this will o’ the wisp, or simply imagine her, hoping one day to come across her story and compare it to the specter in my mind. </span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-73424621626072621442010-09-09T12:55:00.000-07:002010-09-09T17:53:17.986-07:00Darien Gap II: On the Frontier of BananastanIn the morning I boarded a truck for Turbo, Colombia’s most northwestern Caribbean port, from where I would have the choice of catching a boat to the coastal villages that straddle the Panamanian border or a launch up the rivers and swamps to the southern edge of the Darien. I was lucky, or perhaps it was a deliberate courtesy to the foreigner that landed me a seat in the air conditioned cabin. Several passengers had to endure the bumpy ride on a back bench fitted across the truck bed. The day burned hot over the interior lowland, no amount of sunscreen would have protected me from scorching under the afternoon sun.<br /><br />A few hours past Monteria the blacktop ended and the ranching plains gave way to the wax-leafed monotony of banana fields. This marked a frontier of sorts, the historic lip of American dominance over the Carribbean Rim, where for much of 20th century national sovereignty yielded to the extensive acreage of the United Fruit Company, and to the lurking presence of the US Marine Corps on the seas beyond. It is an old, much repeated story, with regional variations, all the way up the Mosquito Coast to the Banana Republics of Central America, where all roads drained to the sea.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />The story of rapacious tycoons who worked with the State Department to puppeteer obsequious local governments has been reduced to a cultural meme, as filtered through the anti-imperialist lens casting soft focus on all American involvement in the Caribbean since the Monroe Doctrine. On the micro level, parsing the facts reveals more nuance than polemics care to recount. On the macro scale, the larger forces shaping the hemisphere push perfidious governments and sinister corporations into auxilary roles. "Blame it on the invisible hand!" somehow does not satisfy. Not on the Colombian coast. This was the wrong jurisdiction to launch the post revisionist rebuttal.<br /><br />Cienaga, further down the edge of Bananastan on the coastal plain near Santa Marta, was the site of the Banana Massacre, where in 1928 United Fruit was at least tacitly involved in the decision to send soldiers in to break a workers’ strike. The Colombian army set up machine gun nests on the buildings surrounding the town square and opened fire upon the Sunday crowd who had assembled to hear an address by the governor. Reports wildly disagree on the devastation wrought by the rain of bullets. The Colombian military initially claimed responsibility for 47 victims.<br /><br />Gabriel Garcia Marquez describes some 3,000 slaughtered in a fictionalized account where the magical bleeds from the realism and the horror of mangled bodies and broken bones is compounded by the snuffing of collective memory. The resurrected consciousness of the events has come to embrace something closer to Gabo’s account. Colombian historians now place the number of victims in the slaughter at over 2,000.<br /><br />United Fruit was officially renamed after its longstanding Chiquita mascot in 1990, but the Latinized rebranding of the colossal fruit grower became tarnished with the revelations of Chiquita’s seven figure payouts to the AUC in exchange for protection of corporate executives. The US government fined Chiquita 25 million dollars last year as a penalty for bankrolling the terrorist outfit. <br /><br />Chiquita containers were stacked along the road that upgraded to concrete for the last stretch into town. Turbo unfolded, chaotic and dirty, corrugated roofs and smoking trash piles compacted between the mono-culture of banana fields and mangrove lined channels.<br /><br />I had been cautioned by many Colombians to steer clear of Turbo, a town with a reputation as a shipment center for drugs and illicit arms in the veil of bananas. There were only a couple of paved roads through Turbo; the truck dropped me off at their intersection a block from from the docks with the passenger launch services. On the landward side off the channel were the lodging choices, a sagging two story building of sun bleached wood under peeling paint and a three story story concrete box bare save for the tangle of wires running from a single satellite dish.<br /><br />I picked the latter establishment, as it looked the better bet to sell rooms by the night and was one lot further removed from the shit smell of shoreline garbage and the festering scum crusting the shipping canal. The Afro-Colombian receptionist gave me a slow once-over as she asked me for my passport. She warned me to be back in the hotel before nightfall.<br /><br />With only a backpack in tow, I bought things as I needed them, and gave away what I no longer needed when articles became dead weight on my back. Starting tomorrow I would need jungle boots and a machete, items I did not want to wait to risk bartering for in tiny Capurgana. Turbo did not look any more promising at first, the storefronts lining the packed earth streets were little more organized than stalls the last afternoon of a picked over flea market. A scan down the mishmash collections of junk revealed nothing with obvious uses in the jungle.<br /><br />With the afternoon draining away and the warning of the receptionist clear in my mind, I stumbled upon an old man in front of a hovel built of plastic-lined crates and shipping pallets. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; border-collapse: collapse; ">He sat by a collection of knives arranged by size on a blanket, the last three were full-on machetes</span>. I picked up the newest looking blade, and realized how ridiculous I would look with a knife I did not know how to use hanging from my waist, that I had a hard enough time slicing vegetables without a cutting board, that jungle foliage was likely to put up more of a fight than the carrots and onions of my stir fries, and that anywhere I needed a giant blade for walking I’d best have a local guide to do the cutting for me.<br /><br />My hesitation made a good bargaining tactic, the price of the blade fell steadily as I imagined myself hacking into my shin while still within sight of the last beachside hotel. I thanked the man and laid the knife on the blanket. Despite the missed sale, he was kind enough to direct me to the street where I might find jungle boots.<br /><br />This second alley stall was on the way back to the port road. The assortment of shoes, mostly in pairs, piled on the ground with a few set on low benches, looked like they had been salvaged from a Target-bound Chinese container thrown from its ship about a decade ago and left to fester in the mangrove swamps of the surrounding bay. The boots were set apart from the motley discount collection, lined on the back wall of the store. All the pairs were rubber, which meant they were probably FARC cast offs. One of the few sure fire ways to distinguish ideology in the jungle was by the material of the militant’s foot wear. The leftists settled for the cheaper material, though the flimsy insoles at least had the requisite holes for water to drain should I find myself fighting the muck in the Darien swamplands.<br /><br />The rail thin shopkeep with caramel skin and wiry curls let me try on the largest pair along the wall. I could not even hook my foot into the boot, they were at least a couple sizes too small. I wouldn’t find a bigger pair in town, she insisted.<br /><br />She gave me a couple of plastic bags and told me to put them over my socks and then try to slide my feet past the heel. Maybe it would have worked once, but the thought of walking for miles on clubs of severely constricted swollen flesh, the possibility that I’d have to cut myself free of the damned things at the end of trail, did not seem worth the protection. I at least enjoyed the idea that my feet were two sizes larger than the ex-guerrillas of the Choco, a fact that was not going to help me should I encounter a patrol of their more dedicated comrades while wearing slip-on walking shoes.<br /><br />Without good boots I would have to approach the border along the Caribbean, but I hadn’t put too much thought into my alternatives once in Panama. Did I really want to be the sort of braggart who treks through the jungle begging for completely avoidable dangers, just to say I’d been there? If so, I’d be the braggart doing it in Eccos, a versatile shoe for globe trotting assholes.<br /><br />Zero-for-two on my Dr. Jones provisioning expedition, I found my way back to the concrete road and the dock-side businesses. A red sun sank into the bay as I returned to the hotel. I asked the receptionist if there was a place to get dinner by the water. She shook her head, her look telegraphed exasperation and consternation--we had been over this before, how long was a gringo going to last here who could not figure out Turbo was not a place to wander around at night? She picked up the phone and took my order for a pizza to my room. </span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-46050786218668512842010-08-24T18:43:00.000-07:002010-09-09T15:45:10.933-07:00Darien Gap I: Monteria and the AUC“Open your eyes, man!”<br /><br />The ferocity of tone more than the words themselves startled me awake, but I could not open my eyes. My lungs were locked, body frozen, and something pressed into my gut. The consuming panic for air and vision was compounded by the intimidation of an unseen commander whose directions I could not follow.<br /><br />I did not surrender to the panic. From deep inside the darkness I told myself this was just a rebooting error, that I had awoken before my brain had the time to release my muscles back to voluntary control, and that even militants were unlikely to do violence to the unconscious.<br /><br />The checkpoint, the barking sergeant with the rifle muzzle poking my gut, everything I imagined while my lungs and eyelids stood locked and shuttered, was all wrong. When my eyes finally opened the van was still moving. No one was looking in my direction, but forward. The other passengers were wide awake with expressions ranging from anger to fear.<br /><br />Another voice, less forceful but with grave clarity, said “It’s ok if you need some rest. Pull over, take a nap if you need to. But don’t risk our lives if you are too tired to drive.” <span class="fullpost"><br /><br />Sensible advice. There were enough dangers to worry about in Cordoba without your driver falling asleep at the wheel. The driver sounded defensive, though his response was unintelligible. He stopped at the next village and we took a coffee break at a thatch-roofed store.<br /><br />No one was in the mood for talking. We drank coffee from tiny plastic cups and took turns eyeing the driver as he drank one, then another of the sickly sweet caffeinated shots, gauging for signs that he’d be able to get us to Monteria without another nap.<br /><br />I looked around at the sullen group for clues as to who they were and where they were going. If they were rich they’d have driven, if poor, they'd have saved a few dollars and taken the much slower bus service. That was all I came up with, that my fellow passengers were likely of middle income, a decidedly narrower band than back home. Beyond that I drew blanks. A few of them regarded me with similar questions on their faces. What was this foreigner doing on a mini van to Monteria? A plump woman in her late forties took meditative bites from her arepa as she stared at the notebook I had taken from my bag. “Well,” I imagined her eyes said, “hope this one is not a journalist.”<br /><br />Me too. I hoped that my habit for reading the papers, talking to strangers, and suspicious scribbles in a little black book did not qualify me for the country's third most dangerous profession. Braver men than I were doing the job. The reports coming out of Monteria--daylight grenade attacks, assassinations reminiscent of the worst cartel days, thousands of displaced people flowing from upturned villages into the regional capital--illustrated trends running counter to the rest of the country.<br /><br />Colombia on the whole has experienced a dramatic reduction in murder rates over the past eight years, though on the ranching plains of northwest Colombia, violence was again on the rise. New cartels were flourishing, the papers said, and were responsible for the cocaine shipments flowing through the porous Venezuelan border and on as far east as the African coast to dodge American surveillance on traditional routes through the Pacific and Caribbean. Of course by the time drug strategies reach the papers they are are likely obsolete, but they hadn't hit foreign wires as of yet. While still in Barranquilla, I typed a few lines to this effect to a friend and Washington editor. He asked me if I thought I could write these things up in a dispatch and offered to introduce me to a colleague at the New Republic.<br /><br />Sure, I said, I’d look into it. Cordoba was unavoidable on my way through to the Panamanian border. I was excited about the opportunity to write for a real publication, flattered that my second hand observations might be worthy of a dispatch. That was over a month ago. Part of the reason I had put off leaving Barranquilla for so long, Rosa’s fish stew had set back my departure another week, was that my stomach churned every time I thought about nosing around a lawless drug town asking questions about the men who make sport out of threatening journalists, trade unionists, and any politician not already on the payroll.<br /><br />And for what purpose, to reprint in English that a new crop of cartels have filled the vacuum left by the decimation of the FARC and the disbanded paramilitary groups, whose rank and file have been absorbed into the emergent criminal networks? To say, look here, there is still a Colombian cocaine trade?<br /><br />My fears mixed with the dissonance from an earlier conversation.<br /><br />“You can do better than that William,” Maria said from our balcony table safe from the flower sellers and the touts down on the plaza San Diego. “All the world hears about is the drugs and violence here. There are so many other stories you can tell about Colombia.”<br /><br />So said the young doctor from Bogota whom I had met in line on the cobbled streets of Cartagena while waiting to hear Martin Amis tell me I was interested in the wrong revolution. (If that’s so, Martin, why did your arguments wither against the residual Catholicism of this wealthy daughter of the capital?)<br /><br />She was right, people want to hear about drugs. By the time I hit fields of Cordoba, the question was already settled. This was not an ethical stand, rather, I had waited too long to conduct any worthwhile investigation. I was down to three days left on my visa, the last week lingering in Barranquilla had killed the possibility of any serious reporting on the way through to the border.<br /><br />Even if I convinced myself in time that I was eschewing professional opportunity for some nascent personal code, this was also the latest in a series of missed chances, failures with a chronology that traced a line back along the geography of my route home. Of course it was an inescapable coincidence that the route also happened to course from the country of primary cocaine production to the land of consumption and all the trans-shipment points along the way and that anyone with eyes and ears and a knack for economics sees the effects of supply and demand and the violent forms of competition that accompany any lucrative and addictive product on the black market. I had a feeling that no matter how many times I played professor at the party with my grating little dicho "No hay produccion sin consumidores" (There is no production without consumers) there was no escaping the story of drugs on the land and sea between Colombia and the United States. I was sure I'd find room. Failure and drugs go well together, after all, regardless of the revolution that consumes you.<br /><br />Back in the van with a caffeinated driver. I remembered Henry’s comment that you know when you have entered paramilitary country because there are no more checkpoints. I had assumed at the time this was either was bravado or passed down wisdom from an earlier time. But now it had been over an hour since the last checkpoint, where an officer approached the driver’s window and asked us to produce our documents and alight from the vehicle where we were each patted down in turn. <br /><br />No one seemed to mind the searches. Soldiers under the Uribe regime do no ask for bribes, and regular checkpoints alone have nabbed hundreds of rebel soldiers on their way to and from their families and their jungle outposts, there were less than 14,000 FARC guerillas fighting the government forces. Most of these plastic booted troops have been pushed from Colombian soil. The major guerrilla forces now operate from bases inside the boundaries of Venezuela, Panama, and Ecuador.<br /><br />Here on the ranching plains of Cordoba, the guerrilla forces had been beaten back even before Uribe’s campaign to restore national security. In the late 1980's the paramilitaries began to assert control in the countryside. Despite the fact the first massacres occured at the inception of the movement, like bloody focus groups for a new brand of violence and social control, I still met conservatives who maintained the paramilitaries were a good idea gone awry. <br /><br />The country was abuzz early this the year with the publication of “The Gates of Uberrimo”, a book by Ivan Cepeda and Jorge Rojas documenting the history of the paramilitaries in Cordoba and the nexus of guilt by association of President Uribe’s extensive ties to the region and its paramilitary leadership.<br /><br />The story starts with the rich men who ruled the immense green pastures sprinkled with gold leaf trees, the men who organized private militias to confront left-wing terrorism in the countryside. These outfits in turn evolved into internationally recognized terrorist groups themselves. They funded their operations through extortion and drug trafficking while they massacred thousands of peasants, many times with the complicity of the regular army, in the guise of eliminating the Marxist threat.<br /><br />The career of Salvatore Mancuso personally illustrates the paramilitary phenomenon. According to local legend, the son of an Italian immigrant was just a wealthy rancher walking his property with a couple of his farm hands when he spotted three guerrillas approaching through the fields. Mancuso took a rifle from one of his men and waited for the soldiers to approach. They had come to take him for a ‘meeting’ with the local commander, which could have meant anything from a shakedown to kidnapping or even execution. As the guerrillas drew near, Mancuso raised his rifle and pointed it at the chest of the lead soldier.<br /><br />“If you want to take me, you’ll have to haul off my dead body,” he said. “And before that happens, I am shooting this rifle. So, why don’t you tell your commander if he wants to hash out our differences, that’s fine. But we’ll do it right here.”<br /><br />The guerrillas would have been wise to shoot him. The looks on their faces inspired the mantra he used time and again to rally his troops, “the enemy is also afraid.”<br /><br />The year was 1992. Mancuso spent the next 15 years on a path to second in command of the AUC, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, the nation’s major paramilitary organization. Mancuso became the strong man behind a movement with aims beyond the safety of rural landowners and organization of the drug trade. Mancuso sought to consolidate the paramilitary movement into a political force that would secretly reshape the leadership of the country. In 2001 he convened at his estate outside Santa Fe de Ralito with 50 prominent Colombian politicians and emissaries who signed a clandestine pact promising a new social contract for Colombia.<br /><br />When the political tide turned against the paramilitaries, Mancuso helped negotiate the demobilization accords that left him temporarily unassailable in a government designated safe zone that encompassed his Santa Fe de Ralito estate. He could not escape justice entirely. Mancuso was the commanding officer over at least three major massacres, and by his own confession, delivered with the surreal professionalism of an 87 page Power Point presentation, hundreds more assassinations. In exchange for his confessions as part of the peace process his prison sentence was capped at eight years. Then in 2008, the Armani suited prisoner was suddenly extradited to the United States to be tried for drug trafficking. Mass murderers, it seems, can side-step the law in Colombia, so long as they don’t ship their cocaine into the United States.<br /><br />Mancuso was only the the second most famous land owner in Cordoba. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, the elusive figure of the Gates of Uberrimo, owner of a sprawling estate of the same name in the fertile Sinu valley. As Governor of Antioquia, he avidly supported the militia-like security forces known as Convivir ‘coexistance’ who absorbed into the paramilitary networks when the Colombian courts deemed it illegal for private security outfits to possess assault rifles and other heavy weaponry. Many of the signers of the secret pact at the Mancuso estate would become influential ministers and ambassadors in the Uribe administration when he took office the following year. Cepeda and Rojas lead the critics who have noted the web of connections associating numerous paramilitary figures to Uribe and his cabinet, though they are unable to place the smoking gun in the hand of the president whose father was killed by FARC guerrillas in a botched kidnapping turned shootout. If such a gun ever existed Uribe did a good job of hiding it. From the beginning of his first term as President he set about disbanding the AUC with tireless force and energy while at the same time waging unrelenting war against the FARC.<br /><br />So in theory, the right-wing militias were disarmed in the middle of the decade. On the ground it is less clear this is the case. The paramilitaries and the guerrillas had filled the void left by the disbanding of the Medellin and Cali cartels in the 90’s, and creating another opening in the drug business made it difficult to snuff out these groups entirely. Many of the AUC combatants were recycled into criminal networks still active in the drug trade and perpetrating the selective assassinations and displacements that have taken the place of massacres as the preferred method of intimidation and control in local governments and throughout the countryside.<br /><br />Any lingering thoughts I had about my own half-assed investigation of the resurgent underworld in this remote cow capital extinguished when we reached downtown Monteria after nightfall. The other passengers got off the van before the city center. Had I known better I would have joined them.<br /><br />I gave the driver the name of one of the two hotels I had found listed for Monteria in the national road atlas and tried to remain confident as he wove through the downtown streets that seemed to grow progressively darker with each turn. Few of the sparse street lights functioned, and unlit or heavily curtained buildings rose like dark monoliths blotting shadows onto the sky.<br /><br />My view was bound to the twin cones of the van’s headlights. Street level shops were shuttered, the streets deserted, a few stray dogs nosed through the trash heaped onto street corners. I hoped the driver was taking me through some disused section of city on a shortcut. On a block as dark as the others, he slowed, then slalomed down the center of the empty road so that the angled headlights might reveal my hotel’s address.<br /><br />The driver pulled to a stop. Either he counted the streets wrong or the atlas was mistaken, the Colombian address system is among the most efficient in the world. An address consists of three numbers, street, cross street, and the number meters from the intersection to the door. There wasn’t a door 40 meters from what he insisted was the corner of 3rd avenue and 5th, just roller shuttered shopfronts with no signs of a hotel on the floors above. He suggested my guide had the wrong street, and experience led him a few blocks to the only establishment that did not require the aid of headlights, a lone bulb was sufficient to illuminate the garish sign with uneven pink and black stenciling, all spelled out save a rabbit in tux and tie. A couple of high heeled loiterers of determined profession if indeterminate gender prowled the concrete within the parabola of yellow light.<br /><br />He tried convincing me this was the place to stay in Monteria, but I refused to get out of the car. I was not going to pay by the hour for a night in a love motel, or risk mugging by the Amazonian hookers on the way to the door. The driver shrugged, then returned to the first address where he told me to get out, he was done for the night.<br /><br />I offered him several thousand pesos to take me back across the river to the suburb where he had dropped off the others. He said no, he was not a taxi service, that he was going home in the other direction. As I thought of the words to beg him for some kind of help, the number for a taxi in this deserted city, he switched on the interior lights and I when caught sight of the festering rage in his bloodshot eyes I could only scramble for the door with a gracias senor and a buenas noches. I jumped to the curb with my backpack and without a plan.<br /><br />The city was darker than any other urbanscape in my mind, though it was far from the pitch black I had imagined from inside the van. Light did spill from the upper windows of the mid-rise buildings. A working street light at the corner of the next block gave definition and measurement to the space in between and would illuminate anyone approaching from that direction.<br /><br />More startling than the darkness was the quiet. I could hear the van for blocks after it motored away from the curb, it was minutes before the purr of the engine finally receded into nothing. There were no trains rumbling in the distance, no hiss of steam or exhaust from the buildings, no gurgle of generators, no voices or footfalls, the city was more than asleep, it was entombed. The only sounds were an intermittent breeze rustling the garbage and a far off punctuation of the dogs’ bark and reply. At least it wouldn’t be easy for unheard robbers to sneak up across the undisturbed vault of sidewalk, I decided, as I shuffled up the street.<br /><br />Not more than twenty paces from where I started there was an unmarked door wedged between the rolling shutters of the neighboring storefronts. The address, blocked from street view by a small overhang, matched the one from my book. Perhaps in the darkness the driver misjudged the distance. I rang the bell and a young man answered the door. Yes, this was a hotel, he informed me. Yes, of course they had room.<br /><br />The receptionist took my information at a desk crammed into a hot and narrow passageway in front of a clear plastic door to stairs leading up to the guest rooms. The doughy young man had the tips of his hair frosted and a hint of glitter on his face, an unlikely look in a cowboy town. I could tell by the way he looked at me after I began to speak that he wasn’t accustomed to seeing gringos, and that he welcomed the change. When I handed him my passport, he glowed beneath the glitter.<br /><br />“Oooh, jess! I want to go to USA!”<br /><br />I asked him where he wanted to go.<br /><br />“New York...Miami.”<br /><br />I asked him if he liked Monteria, and what there was to do in the ranching capital of Colombia. He gave an exaggerated shrug.<br /><br />“Well,” he said, “Nothing happens here. But there are worse places.”<br /><br />It was true, there were worse places than the dark and garbage piled corners of this regional capital, evidenced by the displaced families, unseen and unheard, but who according to the papers arrived daily from the surrounding towns and countryside.<br /><br />I asked him if there was a restaurant in walking distance. He looked me up and down, rolled his eyes, shook his head.<br /><br />“Better if I order you a pizza to your room.” he said.<br /><br />I took his advice, unsure if the streets of Monteria would have been any less terrifying with functioning street lights.<br /><br />I felt safe in the tiled eight by ten foot room in a city faceless save a flamboyant hotel clerk and a mustachioed pizza delivery man. The window opened into an interior air shaft, so I had no light to contribute to the ink blot skyline, nor could I look out and listen for pulse on this comatose city. Monday morning was a few hours away, and surely the streets would be gridlocked with cars, the sidewalks thick with vendors and pedestrians so that tonight would seem like some half remembered dream. </span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-12110636027061674922010-08-11T17:53:00.001-07:002010-08-16T13:40:58.328-07:00Barranquilla XVII: Mourning JoselitoDawn was just breaking and was she was already in mourning. Nancy sat alone--not even Ruiz was up yet--pensive at the courtyard breakfast table in a black satin gown. Fat Tuesday on the Colombian coast is a denouement, still a party, but with a theme well suited to reflection. <br /><br />The final send off parade was not another manic celebration along the wide open swath of the industrial corridor, but a funeral procession within the narrower concrete banks of the Calle 84. <br /><br />Within hours of the last revelers staggering home, or falling on the wayside of the once a year phenomenon of streets turned open air nightclub, women in black veils lined the raised sidewalks to weep for Joselito. <br /><br />According to legend, Joselito was a coach driver who was found passed out drunk in his carriage the last day of Carnival. His friends put together a make-shift coffin and toasted Joselito with cane liquor before drawing his coach through the streets. Thousands of last-legged celebrants, laden with the guilt of their own overindulgences, stricken with grief for the unknown man whose fate was worse than hangover, fell into line unaware of the joke being played. Hundreds of years later Barranquilleros still recreate the mock procession. No one mourns more devoutly than Nancy Meyer.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br /><br />I made my own coffee in the kitchen and joined the somber matriarch. She attempted a smile, but her mouth could not push back at the wrinkles weighing down her cheeks; her eyes were dulled with sleeplessness and the recent humiliation of her dethroning in the bleachers. Her face was a mask of somnolent reflection betraying the tens of thousands of hours at trial before the mirror, in cross examination of every new blemish and imperfection, the accumulated testimonies in the case of beauty versus time. I noticed what seemed a new flaccidity of jowl, a new ring on her neck recording her sixty fourth Spring. The coming year would leave her a half century past her reign as Queen Carnival.<br /><br />I hadn’t returned to Villa Meyer until yesterday evening, and had yet to hear what happened to Nancy and Diego after their scuffle in the stands at Saturday’s parade. The sergeant at the police tent had assured me they were not in the habit of arresting the elderly. Nancy seemed to have enough on her mind without me asking about her ignominious departure.<br /><br />“Diego has returned to Bogota.” Nancy said.<br /><br />“Is he alright?”<br /><br />“A papaya given, a papaya taken,” she said. It was a Colombian expression, with so many uses I was never sure of the meaning. In this case, an admission that she had allowed herself to play the fool, or perhaps there was another papaya.<br /><br />We sipped our coffee and listened to the breeze blowing through the mango and almond trees, ripping at the dead palm fronds and rustling the plastic on the trash heap the next courtyard over. In the distance I could make out the churn of river-stained surf.<br /><br />We lingered in our thoughts as the grey light of dawn gave way to morning sun that rose hot and sharp over the coastal hangover. As I thought of the words to thank my host for her hospitality, I saw the confidence rebuilding in the grooves of her face. She put her cup on the table and took my hand into hers. What power those eyes must have held forty years ago. The old puma’s stare no longer mesmerized.<br /><br />“You know there is room for you here, my love.”<br /><br />She squeezed her hand to feel for Diego’s replacement. Why wouldn’t she entertain the possibility with the lost gringo, out of step with time and reason, on a sojourn to understand a place where she fancied herself royalty. I was an older man for her after all, Diego was seven years my junior.<br /><br />Clasped in the dry scales of her hand, I entertained the possibilities of lingering at the Villa Meyer--Irene’s outrage, Ruiz’ redoubled looks, the upstairs bedroom. Had Diego made love with the woman five decades his senior? It seemed implausible that the shadow of a boy was capable of such a delicate production as intercourse with a sexagenarian, but then I could not have imagined the unannounced explosion of energy that propelled him off the bleacher and into the gut of his foam spraying antagonist, or his furious protest at his and Nancy’s arrest on the parade grounds. <br /><br />The spell was broken when the doorbell rang. Irene was at the front gate, she had either crashed with someone in town or stayed up all night. By her red eyes and flushed face I guessed the latter. She grumbled morning and went straight for her bedroom. <br /><br />Moments later a guttural roar shook the house. Irene burst back through the bedroom door and headed straight for the computer where her sleepy eyed youngest daughter was watching a video. She grabbed the child’s arm and began shaking her. <br /><br />“Everything is a mess. What is wrong with you? I didn’t raise you to be a pig!”<br /><br />The little girl, who couldn’t have been awake more than a few minutes, protested her innocence. Irene slapped her across the face.<br /><br />“Don’t talk back to me. You need to learn how to act like a girl.”<br /><br />I ducked into the room which looked about the same as it had on the first night when five of us shared the two mattresses. The mess, dirty clothes and empty DVD boxes on the floor, an overflowing ashtray by the bed, was mostly Irene’s. <br /><br />By the time I reemerged with my backpack, Irene was finished with her youngest daughter. The little girl whose name I had already forgotten, children are an afterthought during Carnival, was curled into a ball crying in the corner. I wondered if she was old enough to know that mommy’s cocaine addiction and not anything she had done was responsible for the outburst. <br /><br />“You are a good girl. You are a very good girl.” I said it several times as I patted her on the head. It was all I could think to say.<br /><br />I paid my respects to the matriarch in mourning, thanking her for everything. I would not have experienced Carnival had it not been for Nancy Meyer. I tried to give her the press pass she had insisted so vehemently I get, but she smiled and shook her head. <br /><br />“That is for you, mi amor, so you’ll remember to return to us.”<br /><br />She bid me a speedy return, in time to celebrate another Carnival. <br /><br />“When you do, I have a niece for you. She is a good girl, she will make a good wife.”<br /><br />I returned to the city in time for a family lunch at the Najar’s, Rosita and Elena were eager for a report on Carnival with the Meyers. The two families were plausibly within concentric circles of gossip, so I spared the salacious details. It was scandalous enough to the old maid and her ancient mother that an old and single woman like Nancy was still out on the town in any capacity. Elena smiled and shook her head whenever I mentioned the elder Meyer. <br /><br />“No, no, no” she said as she chuckled into her lap. The joke would have been funnier if she had known about Nancy’s twenty something lover, or their parade exit in handcuffs. The comedy for her was a woman who did not know when to accept the limitations of age. <br /><br />With the whole Najar clan back, stuffed into their living room, there was not enough couch space to accommodate the toll of sedation induced by mama’s fish soup. Rosita must have sensed my hesitation before the long road to Monteria. Since their Carnival renters had left that morning and they did not have a new tenant, she suggested I take back the apartment. <br /><br />“Wee-liam! Stay! As long! As you want to!”<br /><br />My eyelids were too heavy to contemplate the next move, though the journey had been condensing in my mind for weeks. Across the jungle to Panama, up the spine of Central America to Mexico and Texas, from New Orleans to Natchez and finally the Trace home.<br /><br />First I needed a nap. I handed Mama the bills meant for the bus ticket and shuffled into the tenant’s apartment where I fell back into the uneven mattress and afternoon dreams of death and lost time. </span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-42695224375692513552010-08-09T13:39:00.000-07:002010-08-09T13:39:27.941-07:00Barranquilla XVI: Calle 84Our thirty odd travelers and four Colombians absorbed into a tributary of celebrants two blocks from the main channel of the street party. Traditional wood-benched Chivas buses, rented by well heeled <i>Barranquilleros</i> as bars on wheels for Carnival, stalled in the party-clogged streets. A few of the riders jumped down to coax the foreign girls onto their buses while their girlfriends splashed us with handfuls of flour. <br />
<br />
The stream bottlenecked between two trucks of out of town policeman parked just beyond the reach of the street lamps on the 84. I could not make out their faces in the shadows, whether they were good cops or bad, relishing another opportunity to grab the batons and riot shields stacked inside the vehicles and bludgeon through a wall of drunks, or just happy to be drawing wages on a balmy Caribbean night, listening to the dance beats over the murmuring crowds. <span class="fullpost"><br />
<br />
The stream thickened then coagulated as we neared the sidewalks and parking lots along the main strip of the <i>zona rosa</i>. The scene on the raised banks of sidewalks along Calle 84, the now dry riverbed for one of Barranquilla’s fiercest arroyos, was reminiscent of the Venetian Carnival, where the flesh managed to pack to within centimeters of the canals without spilling over into the water. Slow moving cars with open windows and trunks doubled as sound systems, blasting competing notes of salsa, meringue and vallenato up into the crowd. A slightly older set emerged from the cabs and pushed through the wall of bodies to the doors of the night clubs, which seemed like madness, unless by experience they knew the interior passageways were less crowded and sweat soaked than the street party outside.<br />
<br />
From a distance the crush of people along the 84 appeared as writhing chaos. Closer in, the atoms of individual parties were distinguishable within the larger celebration elemental. A Doctor Fernando type held the center of each nucleus. His arsenal of booze kept the dancing electrons bumping back to within arms length so that he could pour rum and aguardiente straight from the bottle and down their throats. More surreptitiously, slender vials passed between the fast moving particles along the edges. Flirtatious friction further charged the outer valences as dance partners jumped back and forth from neighboring parties. Occasional free radicals in twos and threes slashed through the outer rings, young men spraying their foam cans in the air and mashing handfuls of flour over heads and faces in the crowd. <br />
<br />
Covered in flour, filled with powder, the unbroken mass danced a grind to the proximate rhythms, shouting epithets in honor of Carnival gods.<br />
<br />
We wormed our way down the edges of the party to where Carlos knew a spot on a less crowded block fronted by a deep parking lot there were still pockets big enough to accommodate our group. The little Colombian pumped his fists in the air as he rode atop the shoulders of Shawn and the even more enormous Bruno, a rugby prop from France who with his free arm poured streams of aguardiente down his own throat. I trailed with the rest of the Irish contingent in the wake behind our twin crowd breakers.<br />
<br />
When we arrived to our destination at the tail end of the street party, a trio with flour bags and foam cans sliced through our group. The guys received the customary handful of flour to the face, though the women got more thorough treatment; the temptation of real flesh in this land of surgical augmentation was too much to resist. I noticed the lead flour man, short and muscular, didn’t bother with Sarah’s blonde hair. He kneaded his flour covered palms into the burgeoning symmetry of her chest. <br />
<br />
The Irish boys also noticed the display. Mark shielded his girlfriend and both he and Liam grabbed the offending groper by the wrists. The little body builder lashed free, and after another dip in his bag he jumped up to slap a handful of flour into Liam’s head, and another in Mark’s face.<br />
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Shawn, now alerted to the chalky hand prints on Sarah’s chest, set our Maestro to the ground and wrenched the flour tosser around to face him.<br />
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“Fuck’s wrong with you mate? Keep your hands off the girl.”<br />
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“<i>Tranquilo, es Carnaval</i> (Easy, its Carnival),” The flour man replied. He then ripped at his bag and as he mashed two last fistfuls of powder into the Irishman’s face his fat fingers dug into Shawn’s eye sockets.<br />
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Shawn grabbed the the flour man and flung him backwards. His head pin-balled off elbows and thighs on his way to the concrete.<br />
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The two accomplices sprang between Shawn, and their downed comrade, shouting and gesturing at the bigger man who stood seething beneath his fresh mask of powder. Liam and Bruno, whom the Irish lads hadn’t known more than a couple of hours, stood shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with Shawn.<br />
<br />
<br />
The downed man sprung up from his ignominious dive. The combination of cocaine and public humiliation had popped out the veins on the little body builder’s neck and at his temples. Rage bulged his bloodshot eyes and flared his nostrils as he pointed his finger at the Irish boys. <br />
<br />
“Are jew crazy, <i>gringos locos</i>?” he shouted.<br />
<br />
Then he turned and pandered to the crowd behind him where a dozen young men now flanked his associates.<br />
<br />
As quickly as the crowd grew behind the Colombians, the foreign ranks thinned. Our only common link was to our little host whose entire body screamed danger. Bug-eyed and hands trembling, he hopped along the back line of the crazy gringos and tugged Shawn, Bruno, and Liam at the elbow, repeating over and over, “We go. We go. We go.”<br />
<br />
Liam turned halfway to Carlos, and then back to Shawn, waiting for a cue from his friend that it was ok to split. Though Liam’s face was expressionless, I was sure the worst case scenario was locked on repeat in his mind. He didn’t get the out he was seeking. The other two lads ignored Carlos and focused on the other short Colombian in front of them.<br />
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The remainder of the disparate travelers heeded Carlos’ alarm and resisted the temptation of spectacle. We melted away in twos and threes. I grabbed the girl next to me, another wandering San Franciscan named Veronica who was transfixed by the coming showdown. I whisked her to the far side of the parking lot where we could watch from a perch of concrete embankment just beyond the arc of street light.<br />
<br />
We turned to see the little body builder strut between the rump of the Carlos crew and crowd behind him. He continued his taunts in English so that the foreigners could be sure of the stakes.<br />
<br />
“Fucking Americans! Don’t you know you’re in Colombia? We are going to keel you tomorrow. We are going to fucking keel you fucking gringos! <i>Tu puta madre me la chupa</i>!”<br />
<br />
For many Colombians in the interior of the country, Gringolandia was a vague, transnational supercontinent that encompassed most every nation in the non-Latino, European derived world. I have told Colombians I am from the USA who enthusiastically replied they had relatives in Paris or Sydney. Among <i>costeños</i>, like their neighbors on the Caribbean rim, gringo had more specific associations with the United States. It takes a far higher level of language skills than most locals possess to pick up accents in a second language. The English speaking foreigners became American by default.<br />
<br />
But the Irish guys didn't know this, and Bruno, still at Shawn’s side, could have only caught snippets of the heavily accented vitriol. Not that it mattered. Both sides were sufficiently powdered, inside and out, and any insult from the muscle man was enough fuel for a fight.<br />
<br />
“What’d the little cunt call me?” Shawn asked, turning his head back to whom he assumed was Carlos and the rest of the hostel at his back. In fact he had turned on the only empty space on a sidewalk elsewhere thick with bodies. After his frantic attempt at intervention, Carlos had melted away along with the rest of us. Even Mark had disappeared, wisely escorting Sarah into the anonymity of the crowd. Only Carlos’ cologned drenched business partners stood at a distance behind the gringos. With no need to fear the impending race war, they could afford to be spectators. They did not make any signs of alignment to the gringo cause.<br />
<br />
Liam, still stoned out of his mind, clenched a bottle and made an awkward chopping motion with the intention, so he claimed, of splashing the Colombians with the remainder of his beer. He didn’t judge the distance between himself and the opposing line, and unfortunately the taller sidekick leaned forward just in time with the downward snap of Liam’s hand. The lip of the bottle smacked across the bridge of the Colombian's nose.<br />
<br />
Silence. A strange silence, because music still pounded from oversized speakers and in every direction the party churned on. Yet for a long moment, what must have seemed an eternity to the three Europeans, a whisper would have been enough to break the spell. Everyone within 50 yards of the confrontation stood hushed and still, enraptured by the insanity of the gringos either too crazy or too stupid to turn and run.<br />
<br />
“You threw a fucking bottle at my head?” The tall flour man stepped forward and asserted himself in Liam’s face. Then he turned to Shawn, then back to Liam. He swiveled a third time and threw a sucker punch that landed square on Shawn’s jaw. The attacker coiled to launch a sprawling hook. Shawn easily ducked the second punch. Only then, with an open shot on his attacker, did he seem to appreciate the scenario. Instead of leveling his assailant he grabbed at the shirts of his old friend and new acquaintance and the three took off in a dead sprint for the street.<br />
<br />
The mob waited for a second, then their little Napoleon shouted, “Kill the Americans!”<br />
<br />
The crowd at the edge of the sidewalk parted for the honorary Yankees. Sympathetic revelers waved them forward as if they were runners on the home stretch of a marathon. As the boys jumped down into the street, a taxi driver attuned to the situation opened his back door. One after the other they dove head first into the back seat. The French giant was still airborne as the cab cut away from the curb.<br />
<br />
Bruno’s legs dangled out the back door, providing the opening for two Colombians to jump into the moving cab and grab at the bodies in an impossibly crowded backseat. The second attacker could not get enough of his torso in the car and his dragging feet pulled him out onto the curb. After a brief scuffle the second attacker tumbled out backwards onto the concrete.<br />
<br />
The street was too clogged with bodies and cars for the taxi to make a clean get away. With a half dozen men closing on the traffic constricted vehicle, the driver swerved into the oncoming lane and screeched a u turn that narrowly missed sideswiping the crowd filling out to the edge of the opposite curve.<br />
<br />
Surely such a scene would have drawn attention from the police, but I couldn’t see a uniform in either direction. Neither did the mob. With Liam, Shawn and the Frenchman out of the way, the pack of taxi chasers scanned the crowd for another target.<br />
<br />
<br />
“Where is the other one?” shouted the muscle man, scanning up and down the sidewalk for the boyfriend and the blonde with the powdered chest.<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
At first I couldn’t see what he was pointing at. Not Mark and his girlfriend, they should have been long clear of Calle 84.<br />
<br />
Then I saw them. A flour besmudged couple made their way up the channel of the road.<br />
<br />
Were they insane? <br />
<br />
No, apart from North European ancestry, the two foreigners edging along the street only superficially resembled the Irish couple who had wisely fled the scene. The man was too short to be Mark, too gangly, and even at 100 yards it was evident his woman lacked the measurements worthy of a street riot. But they had the same coloring as the Gaelic pair. With the competing sound systems and the thousands of wasted revelers spilling out of the lots to the edge of the sidewalks above them, the approaching Canadians were completely oblivious to the half-dozen cocaine riddled beserkers flying in their direction. <br />
<br />
The sequence slowed down in my mind. The wheels of justice turned. For a moment I enjoyed the illusion of fleeting equilibrium in our rapidly expanding universe. The wheels of justice were grinding, and I was in perfect position to watch the scumbag editor’s moment of reckoning. <br />
<br />
As the pack closed to within 20 strides, probably still shouting kill the Americans and something about what they would do with their grieving mothers--I was well out of range to hear the particular epithet--I watched it dawn on Ian McKay that he was the target of their venom and that the Maple Leaf sown onto his day pack was not going to save his ass this time.<br />
<br />
There was no time for mediation, to plead a case of false identity, nor was their honor in his last moments. He made no move to protect his lovely girlfriend. He had probably just been pouting about her pulling him from the safety of their comped hotel room. He just threw up his hands and lowered his chin into his chest. He twisted towards the curb and lowered into a half squat so that the whole of his body reflected his existential terror of the oncoming plow. <br />
<br />
Only one detail, or lack of one, saved Ian from more than the humiliation of soiled shorts and the initial blow from the wedge of attackers. The lovely Vanessa had just a hint of convexity under her tee shirt. It was such contrast to Sarah’s bosom, that no man, tit man, ass man, straight or gay, could have possibly mistaken the two blondes. The pursuing general, noticing the disparity, called off the attack. The danger had passed I walked closer to the scene so as to get more details of the aftermath. <br />
<br />
I hugged the distraught Mrs. McKay. She hugged me back and whispered something in my ear as the bystanders peeled her shell shocked husband off the concrete and sterilized his wounds with searing splashes of cane liquor. <br />
<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
Alas, Barranquilla is not a city of Justice or Karma. After the heroic cab driver threaded the needle’s eye and delivered the Irish boys to safety, the mob petered out. I imagined the rest on my solitary walk back to the hostel. Veronica had found what she had been looking for, a smooth faced and quick-footed Colombian whose ostentatious dance moves were superfluous to his going home with the 26 year old American.<br />
<br />
Back at the hostel, the Irish-French contingent were the heroes of the night. They recounted the play by play of the fracas between congratulatory shots of rum and and pulls from bottles of Aguila beers, the same label which had nearly induced a lynching.<br />
<br />
"He left himself open,” Shawn said as he shadow boxed on the sectional couch. “I could have dropped him after that hook, but then they would have killed us."<br />
<br />
“You’ve been in a few fights in your life?"<br />
<br />
“More than a few,” Shawn grinned.<br />
<br />
“Where did you go?” another of the vanishing spectators asked Mark.<br />
<br />
“Me? I’m too pretty to fight.”<br />
<br />
With every angle of the street fight hashed and rehashed, it was wasn’t yet 2 AM. Bruno, who remained stoic throughout the glory session, suggested there was still time to hit a nightclub. <br />
<br />
I mentioned Frogg’s Leggs. The Irish lads were in, even Mark was up for it. Sarah, our Helen of Troy in the near riot, had gone to bed. The Colombian boys, still a touch too fragrant, offered to drive. Maybe Carlos was there ahead of us. No one had seen him since the confusion of Calle 84. Shawn asked me to tell him once more about the pre-pays and again we ventured into the night. </span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-76693365921721258352010-07-17T16:40:00.000-07:002010-07-26T18:09:58.127-07:00Barranquilla XIV: The Second Casa CarlosThe Battle of the Flowers concluded several miles to the southwest as the last comparsa danced into the sunset. At street level it was already dark. The last glow of fast fading tropical twilight concentrated in the western sky.<br />
<br />
The side streets teemed with Carnival goers in a languorous flow away from the river and the spent expanse of parade route. The concrete was refinished with a sticky carpet of overindulgence: beer cans meshed with candy wrappers, corn shuck woven into mangled straw hats, florescent colored flyers advertising restaurants and nightclubs cross hatched with several thousand green pamphlets explaining the personal power and exaltation, the godliness achieved with man’s defeat of the reactive mind. The police who manned the barricaded entry points to the boulevard had handed out these last pamphlets, no telling what or how the Scientologists paid for this tacit sponsorship.<br />
<br />
The words of L Ron would proselytize in the matted garbage until the first deluge of April or May invoked arroyos which would run counter to the slow moving herd. Brown rapids scrubbed the surface filth and carried it along with anything without foundation-- dogs, children, cars, shanties--into the Magdalena. The city without a drainage system was a seasonal garbage disposal, and not just for the mundane. Toxic waste trucked clandestinely from as far away as Medellin and Bogota mingled alongside more conventional garbage in anticipation of the seasonal flow. When the rains fell and the rapids formed it would all go gushing into the muddy river and blossom a shit brown plume into the sea.<br />
<br />
Toxic waste and deadly rapids would wait for the hangover after the party that would continue into the night, the morning, and the next week on the streets-cum-riverbeds of Barranquilla. <span class="fullpost"><br />
<br />
Even the most euphemistically named barrio held its own block party, most with their own stages and line-ups of musical performances, where whispers of a Shakira appearance were de rigueur. The rumors themselves were a sign of respect, appreciation that Barranquilla’s brightest star has not forgotten her hometown. Students, out of towners, the posh set of Barranquilleros flocked to the zona rosa along the Calle 84 where the din of competing baselines rumbled through the bodies crammed onto every inch and elevation of banked sidewalks and parking lots. The corner lot of last night’s street battle with the cops was where I agreed to meet Ian and his wife.<br />
<br />
The crowds thinned as I turned north into Prado Viejo, the old money neighborhood where villas set back from street had collected their favored strands of the early 20th century immigration, facades flush with flowery Churrigueresque of Spanish Baroque fluttered alongside the grounded geometry and soothing repetition of the Levantine tradition. Everywhere the walls were splashed with Bougainvillea and assorted blooms so vivid as to seem artificial. Gnarled roots of ceiba trees cracked the sidewalks and rows of tapering palm trees reached for the sky. The Prado Hotel stood like a fortress on the neighborhood’s flank, its block-long neoclassical walls shielded the old world neighborhood from the high rise apartment blocks to the north and west. Though designed for the city’s affluent, collectively the towers reminded me of the drab concrete worker hives ringing the charming centers of Prague and Ljubljana.<br />
<br />
The high rises began on a subtle upward slope of irritated follicles across a twenty block mosquito bite on Barranquilla’s concrete skin. What was subtle to the eye was obvious to the storm rains, the gradient inspired bright yellow and black warning signs posted every two hundred meters depicting an upturned car floating atop a river of curving black lines.<br />
<br />
The security guard did not look up from his television as I entered the aluminum gate into a narrow courtyard and out of my imagined exile. As I walked through groups of fellow travelers who stood on the steps and sat along the low wall, a psychic wind was stirring, its vortices tickling at the back of my mind. Then a gust. I could feel it tearing away the months of inertia. Suddenly I was surrounded by familiarity, a setting dense with texture, texts and sub-texts, I could readily interpret. I was starved of social fluency, an essential vitamin complex for any higher order primate. The depletion had caused my self to atrophy. For the first time in months, shirts weren’t just shirts, nor backpacks backpacks. The hairstyles and piercings, smiles and postures, and most of all the words--English was the default language of all but one of the clusters--were all steeped in meaning.<br />
<br />
I found an empty section of wall to sit and watch and listen. And no one seemed to mind. It was unlike the those-in-the know hostels where the new arrival was immediately sized up for membership. Here there were no intimidating glances, no silent hostility from a jaded in-crowd with the menacing territoriality of middle school cliques and cell block gangs. In part because there were no veterans here, everyone had arrived today or last night, and everyone thought of themselves as a friend of Carlos. It was a Democracy of gap years and Peace Corps, next year’s law schoolers and committed wanderlusts, good timers and aspiring novelists, murky pasts and and opaque futures, all smoking and drinking and planning procurements for the all-night party ahead.<br />
<br />
Was I back on the gringo trail? A matter of perspective, like the Cold War joke about a railway platform in Warsaw where the westbound Russians marveled at the bright city lights alongside eastbound Germans who could not believe a capital lay shrouded in such darkness. I had ended a self-imposed exile from the far reaching tendrils of the guidebook-destination travel complex. But the second annual Casa Carlos was hardly an established outpost. It was a five-night phenomenon, an ethereal agglomeration too fleeting for the pages of the next Lonely Planet or Rough Guide. What better place to re-acclimate? I was getting back on the trail soon, after all. I had been delaying my trip north for weeks, and just eight days left on my visa. I needed a weekend at Carlos’s fun house. I could stop being a shadow on the streets of a wasteland city and pass out in company for a change.<br />
<br />
The energy was good in this courtyard. For the backpackers Carlos had drawn from the seedy alleys of Getsemani, his insider’s invitation to a city-wide street party had been a revelation. Carlos knew his audience--the budget travelers who couldn’t afford the charms of old-town Cartagena, a UNESCO site among the most beautiful cities in the world. They had gotten stuck in the dingy hostels off the Calle Media Luna, where the cocaine dealers and hookers jostled for space in the doorways beyond the fortified walls that bounded the old town’s fairytale and astronomically expensive tourist zone. Travelers could lose weeks there, mired in a drug binge or waiting for a boat to Panama that never materialized. Carlos filled his four apartments on a single visit to Cartagena’s backpackers ghetto. And every traveler here loved him for it. For twenty bucks a night, by far the cheapest rates in a town with no vacancies, Carlos had given them Carnival time in Barranquilla. A reaffirming experience after a week wandering the cobblestones of magical consumerism.<br />
<br />
I knocked, then gently pushed the door open, remembering last year’s flophouse with mattresses blanketing every inch of empty space save the desk wedged into the corner of the room that doubled as the office for Carlos's fly by night enterprise. The sleeping quarters were elsewhere. This year Carlos had the use of a furnished apartment to serve as a living room for his guests. A beige sectional couch wrapped around a glass coffee table centered over a white tile floor. A canopy of waxy jungle ferns rose along the walls behind the couch. A pair of potted pygmy palms framed an LCD television atop a black cabinet with gold trim. Barranquilla’s ghetto good version of Miami.<br />
<br />
Three early college age Barranquilleros, local friends of Carlos, residents of the apartment, sat on one side of the couch positioned to watch the television and the door. They each wore pressed shirts unbuttoned halfway down their chests. The two with straight hair combed theirs straight back. The third had his curls under the lid of a Yankees cap. As I leaned forward to shake their hands I did well not to grimace. They may as well have bathed in the cologne that burned through my nose.<br />
<br />
The young men wrung their hands as they watched and waited. Casa Carlos had transformed their living room into a landscape formerly accessible only through Hollywood and the internet. They were voyeurs in their own apartment, a brave new world where girls, the good girls, smelled of sex the way the boys reeked of perfume. Girls free to act like boys, to flirt and fuck without a thought of tomorrow. Carlos had stocked their building with young women from across the globe, some of them traveling alone. The boys knew enough to know that if they played it right, these exotic women were capable of doing things tonight, and more, that they might not get from the local girls, the good girls, after many persistent months of pursuit with promises of marriage.<br />
<br />
Conservative mores in Colombia had so far held up a counter weight against the global tide of sexual revolution. Not that the cracks weren’t showing. Gay culture was remarkably open in contrast to a hetero world where young couples were forced to meet at underground sex motels. Part girls navigated the murky every man’s land of the prepaga and the disco, where girls acted like their first world cousins for (and at) a price. Good girls were by and large reactionaries. What was left to bind them to this old world? Catholicism? These young women went to college, parties and bars. They wore their skirts cut high and their tops low and were immersed in the same do-it-now advertisements from the rapid frame global media. They lived in the same world where the rest of us were second and third generation beneficiaries of a movement that had long divorced sex from marriage, love, religion. Yet unlike these boys, they mostly lived at home.<br />
<br />
<br />
With their ironed shirts and waterfalls of cologne the young Barranquilleros had prepared themselves for the onslaught, the long-past revolution drawn suddenly inside their door. But how would they act on this opportunity, the four more nights of uprising? Could they riff off the irony soaked words flying through the courtyard or decode the outfits that designated hipster from raver from granola from post-post punk? By what language did they navigate these daughters and granddaughters off the barricades and onto the mattresses?<br />
<br />
They twisted their hands in terror at the prospects of the girls who, despite all the misunderstandings and lack of conversation, would still choose to come home with them. Because what then?<br />
<br />
We sat and watched the Europeans, the Commonwealth Anglos, the Latinas who had grown up in the States, we sat and admired their short-shorts and cleavage baring tops as they came and went through the apartment looking for Carlos, their new friends, their stashes of liquor.<br />
<br />
Carlos was out. This worried me, Carlos was not one to leave guests unattended. He spent the year planning, living for and off of this makeshift hostel. It would have taken a crisis, say Nancy and Diego’s misadventures at the police station. The boy in the baseball cap claimed not to know anything, the others nodded in silent agreement. I thought to explain I was a friend of Carlos, but then everyone here was a friend of Carlos.<br />
<br />
So I waited in the living room where for the next four nights I was the native and they were the foreigners, their collars galvanized in cologne, parsing the runes of near future feminine advances. </span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-50144764135483733822010-05-05T15:00:00.000-07:002010-05-10T16:31:15.521-07:00Barranquilla XI: Saturday Morning<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I had slept off the worst of the hangover, I thought, until I tried to sit up and my neck buckled with the dead weight of what may as well have been a taxidermy head. So I lay on the mattress and listened to the chorus of breathing and snores on the bed above me, Irene the bass, the two child sopranos, and a tenor I did not recognize. Carlos had left the day before yesterday to set up his Carnival hostel. There was a new adult in the room.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Nancy was the only person awake. She sat at her courtyard table sipping coffee and looking over the wall towards the sky above the sea. She was dressed in flowing white linens, the only costume I had seen her in during my stay at Prado Mar. She either owned a closet full of matching gowns, or she hadn’t changed since Thursday.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">“Today is Battle of the Flowers, the best parade of Carnival,” she said as I sat down at the table, “All the best </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">comparsas</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span"> march today.”</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> A </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">comparsa</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span"> is similar to a New Orleans crewe, a group who enters a float or a dance group in the parades. They also serve as social clubs throughout the year. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Comparsas</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span"> practice their dances for months and can be seen training in parks throughout the city from November through February. All but the most established crews must compete in lesser events to make the cut for the final weekend, as hard as it is to imagine that a six-hour long parade does not accept all comers.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span></span></div><span class="fullpost"></span><br />
<span class="fullpost"><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Soon after I sat down a slender young man about 26 came down the stairs and joined us at the breakfast table. Dressed in knee length shorts, a snug fitting ironic t-shirt and top tinted aviator shades, Eduardo dressed the part of Natalie’s international DJ boyfriend I heard about from Irene. Nancy took hold of one of his soft hands as she drank in his smooth face and Old World features. I looked around to see what looks Ruiz might be giving the boy who had just emerged from his daughter’s bedroom, but this morning Nancy’s manservant was nowhere in sight.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">“Good morning mi amor!” Nancy said. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">With two younger men at each side, neither of whom was her 27 year old boyfriend, the matriarch glowed. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">“It is a pleasure to host young men with such class,” she said, turning from Natalie’s boyfriend to me and back again. “I can see you both come from good families.” </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">She took a series of slow, deep breaths, as if to savor the young flesh and old money. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">After some more flattery about the class of her guests, she reached out and took Eduardo’s hand in hers. “Amor...”</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Sure of her new tack, I pushed back from the table yielding right of way for Nancy to make her pitch to the son of the Venezuelan elite.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">At first I had been taken aback by Nancy’s request for money since at the same time she was adamant that I was her guest. But I was a stranger here, a friend of a friend with no connection to the Meyer clan. So it was not unreasonable that Nancy ask me for rent even if she had invited me to stay here. Now, in front of my eyes, Nancy was asking for twice as much from her daughter’s visiting boyfriend. So it turns out I got a great deal at the Villa Meyer, except that I was sleeping with the wrong sister. I wondered if Diego paid rent. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Irene came out from her room as if she had sniffed out the transaction. Her look turned from annoyed to incredulous as the situation sank in. She stormed towards the table.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">“Mother! What are you doing?” </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Nancy had already folded the bills and pocketed them inside her linen gown.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">“Fernando picks us up at 11,” she snapped back, “You need to get ready.” </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">“You can’t take money from Natalie’s boyfriend,” Irene shouted. By this time Eduardo had disappeared from sight. “And I’m not going to the parade!” </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Irene stormed back in the direction of her room as if she might have considered going before watching her mother extort pesos from her sister’s boyfriend. Irene had told me yesterday she had no intention of joining us in the city. The old Carnival Queen turned her chin away from her retreating daughter to emphasize she was the one ending the conversation.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I spied Eduardo at the top of the stairs. He shrugged and cracked a furtive smile. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">A moment later a younger version of Irene appeared in the courtyard to say hello to Nancy. Nancy introduced me to her granddaughter Nina. It was the first time I had seen the girl so I assumed she was the tenor. I asked her if she lived in the city.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">“No, but I am only person who works around here,” she said in English with a thick Jersey accent. “AND I go to college.”</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Nina had grown up in New Jersey and moved back to Colombia with her mother when she was 16. It was a rough transition for her. She thought her Spanish was good while growing up, and it was a shock when she couldn’t even understand the math teacher in her first month at school. Now she was 21 and loving her life in Colombia. Her native English skills qualified her for teaching jobs in the same University she attended. She was full of questions: why I was here, how old I was, where I was from, and where I had been living in town. She chuckled when I tried to describe the Najar’s neighborhood. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">“Over there is ghetto good,” she said.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">“Ghetto good?”</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">“You know, people have nice things, they think it’s something better, but it’s still ghetto.”</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Short of Prado, Nina reckoned ghetto good was the best descriptor for a city like Barranquilla. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Her curiosity satisfied for the moment, Nina turned back to her grandmother, gave her a peck on the cheek, and bolted for the front gate before Nancy could rope her into any Carnival commitments.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Diego, Natalie and the rest of the crew slowly gathered at the courtyard table, each in turn placating Nancy as 11 o’clock came and went without any sign of the doctor. The girls got out their phones and after a few calls determined no one was coming by Prado Mar to pick them up. At first Nancy refused to process the news, it was unimaginable that the Carnival Queen of 1960 was left unaccounted for on her biggest day of the year. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Nancy was adamant we find another neighbor to give us a ride into town. Natalie rolled her eyes, and convinced her the only way we could get to the city on time was by taxi. Fury bubbled up into Nancy’s face, but we managed to get her to walk with us out to the main road in search of a taxi. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">While we were waiting, Nancy jumped into the street and flagged down a motorbike. The biker looked confused as the old woman held out some pesos in front of his helmet and ordered him to go to the store for cigarettes, cola, and a bottle of liquor. The young man pocketed money and continued down the road. I wondered to myself how many times such boldness had worked for Nancy, and if so, how long ago. Did this 74 year old woman--with a boyfriend almost 50 years her junior--realize that her long faded beauty could no longer command whimsical acts from men she plucked off the street? Or maybe he would return.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Diego rubbed Nancy’s back as we waited for the taxi and the possibility of a motorcycle delivery. A taxi pulled up before the motorbike returned, and as Nancy negotiated the price the six of us piled into the tiny car. Nancy blanketed Diego in the front seat as she continued her back and forth with driver, Eduardo took what had once been my place underneath Natalie’s perfect curves, and Natalie’s friend Violeta, to whom I had just been introduced, reluctantly squeezed in on top of my lap The driver shook his head, we were so stuffed into the little cab that he had to wag his disapproving finger out the window.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">“Too many,” the driver repeated several times, still shaking his head. He refused to leave with more than four in the car. A chihuahua might not have fit into the airspace left in this two cylinder ride, but Nancy was determined to get her way on something this morning. It had been her idea to take one car, though I was sure Eduardo and I would end up splitting the fare. Eduardo must have realized this too, he mumbled from under his girlfriend about paying for a second cab while Nancy barked directions into the driver’s ear. Her assertiveness did not have its intended effect. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">“Get out!” the driver yelled.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Then Natalie put a hand on the driver’s shoulder and from her position doubled over into the space between the two front seats, she made a soothing plea into into the driver’s ear. The driver kept shaking his head, but he stopped shouting. Natalie was angled so that a quarter turn of the driver’s head would have given him a perfect view down her low cut top. After a long moment he put the car in gear.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I could not see Diego from behind the two women on top of us, though he somehow managed to hand back a plastic bottle filled with cane liquor. The girls took nips and then leaned forward so that Eduardo and I could take pulls from the bottle. Though I had sworn off liquor just last night, I figured a swallow might help with the heat of the cab and the weight of the girl who made no effort to be delicate on my lap. I closed my eyes and drifted back to the ride with Natalie in Fernando’s car a few nights before.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">The cab let us out a few blocks from the route, where the crowd in the street pushing towards the parade route was too thick for traffic to enter. The side streets leading to the main parade were lined with tents where the pungent smells of grilled meats and fried corn meal mingled with the dust and stink of sweated alcohol. Vendors swam against the tide competing to sell cans of soda and ice cold beers. Every quarter block six foot high speakers drowned the crowd in competing bass lines. Masked revelers attacked Carnival goers with handfuls of flour to the head and face and with cans of foam spray which according to the papers had been banned along the parade routes because of their potential for inflaming respiratory problems. A few groups ahead of us an angry mother sought to enforce the no foam rule. Her effort backfired as the party minded crowd responded with laughter, mock applause and handfuls of flour as the culprits redirected their noxious spray on the would-be vigilante. Otherwise the scene had all the tranquility of the first Friday of a Spring Break beach exodus, we were all brothers here to drink and broil together under the tropical sun. </span></span></div></span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-56364570838218979512010-04-08T15:26:00.000-07:002010-04-12T09:30:40.863-07:00Barranquilla X: Bride Shopping<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I walked from the abandoned pier into Puerto Colombia and caught a bus for Barranquilla. I had agreed to meet Henry and serve as an accomplice for his story on international brides. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The old Blue Bird school bus was striped with Colombia’s national colors: yellow for the land, blue for the sea, and red for the blood of the people. The paint scheme was reminiscent of the brightly colored wooden Chiva buses that still operate in remote parts of the northern Andes, though the throw back sleighs have reincarnated in urban areas as party buses that deliver tourists on night crawls to the local dance clubs. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Though Puerto Colombia marked the end of the line and the bus wasn’t due to depart for another ten minutes, there was hardly any standing rooming left when I boarded. The aisles were packed in with families and groups of revelers headed for the parade that unleashed four nights of insanity on the Caribbean coast. Following the advice that body counts on the passenger casualty lists posted at all major bus terminals in the country heavily represented passengers in the front half of vehicles, I weaved my way through the crowd to the back of the bus.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The Carnival chant I would hear once an hour for the next four days,</span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Mamo Ron</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mamo Ron</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, blasted through the sound system. The cabin was steamed with sweat and alcohol, and the rusted windows wouldn’t shimmy open more than a crack.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I found myself wedged between two student groups who took the cue from the music and embarked on a competition to drain their bottle of aguardiente faster than the others across the way. As was beginning to seem the custom, each group was lead by a captain who held the bottle and a single plastic cup to distribute shots to his team. When one of the female crew members on the seaward aisle charges refused her turn by slumping her head into the seat back in front of her, the captain offered me her shot. Either to match the gesture or maintain competitive balance, the landward captain also offered me a drink. I could feel the clear liquid burn a course down into my gut. The successive drinks weathered what was left of my social reserve; it didn’t fit to stand aloof on a commandeered party bus. I can do anything for four days, I thought, as I yielded to the transient camaraderie. </span></span></span></div><span class="fullpost"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span class="fullpost"><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Team seaside had a worthy drinking captain. The beer bellied twentysomething wore a whistle on his neck and a </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">marimonda</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> mask atop his head. He pressed with a friendly yet forceful hand when administering the medicine. The liquor burned a bit less with each each swallow. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">My mind wandered back to rugby drink-ups, the one place where I pulled weight on the team. I had convinced myself cheap keg beer was just flavored water so that the only obstacle was how quickly I could swallow. To this day I guzzle a pint, water not keg beer, each morning, out of mindless habit that once kept me in form. Cane spirits are swallowed with a single tilt of the head, and they do not sit like flavored water in the stomach. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">By the time I removed myself from the drinking competition the damage was done. The bus hadn’t started rolling until after the fourth shot, and my head was spinning by the time we passed Prado Mar. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">As city lights announced Barranquilla, I realized I had missed another tropical twilight. The glow in my head began to assert its own gravity. </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"></span>My inner revolutions were not in sync with the bumps and jerks, the lingering heat, or the afro-Caribbean beats blasting through the school bus. I tried closing my eyes, which only made the spinning worse, and made me more vulnerable to the pickpockets who make a living off of the amateur drunks at Carnival. </span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Fortunately the bus let me off at my destination, a posh mall near the northern city limits where blocks of high rise apartments abruptly gave way to the slopes down to the delta marsh and mangrove bordering the sea.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Henry had lived in Colombia long enough to to pick the right setting for an interview with a potential Colombian wife. In Barranquilla the mall was the place for nearly all social interaction. It’s where families came for outings, students to study, lovers to date, evangelicals to proselytize, and for women of all ages to show off the bandages from yesterday’s nose job. Where else would they go? The only movie theaters were at the mall, so were all the best fast food outlets and supermarkets. As one of the few air conditioned spaces in the city some people came just to sit by the indoor fountains and escape the heat. Neighborhoods have come to be named after their malls and when people gave directions they reflexively started them from the parking garage of the nearest shopping complex. Only when the mall closed did the locus of activity shift to the nightclub. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Hard at work on his article, Henry had been meeting hopeful wives all day. In a measure to prevent stalking and to keep his dates separated from each other, his schedule had rotated between the Metrocenter, Prado, and here at Buenaventura mall. I saw him waiting for me inside the front entrance. I waved but did not risk opening my mouth as I made a bee line for the restroom where I made an offering of aguardiente to the porcelain throne of the gods of commerce. Post sacrifice I took stock in the mirror--not too bad, considering. Though my eyes were glazed and sunk behind swollen cheeks, I had kept the garlic fish sludge from splashing onto my shirt. I dabbed some water on my face and combed fingers through my hair a couple times, not that I wanted to look too presentable. It’s better a bride knows up front what she’s getting into. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“I can see you aim to make a good first impression.” Henry said when I returned to the entrance. He offered me a piece of gum which I declined.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“No, I insist,” he said with the charm of a drinking captain.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It wasn’t yet seven. Per custom, the girls would be at least a little late, so I had time to catch up on Henry’s day of interviews. The strongest contender so far was Yamile, the young cosmetologist in training who had brought her mother, father, four sisters, two brothers, and a baby niece along for the date. Her family in rapt attention, Yamile assured Henry that with her training in massage and the facial arts she would provide him a life of relaxation and physical bliss. Henry had a hard time relaxing or contemplating her definition of physical bliss with the twenty eyes on him sizing up their potential in-law. It was not the only family date he had stumbled into, and it had gotten expensive. The day’s tally of overpriced mall coffees and ice cream for seven dates and 32 relatives had set him back more than he’d make selling his article. It also put a crimp in his Carnival budget, though lucky for him his girl friend was arriving tomorrow from Bogota.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This was his last scheduled meeting of the day, a twenty year old named Katherine. After the Yamile episode, he requested by text she bring a single friend and no extended family along for the date. Katherine hailed from barrio Beautiful Coast. Beauty is relative, but her neighborhood was located nowhere near the coast. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Henry spotted two girls on the other side of the entrance hall, the angle was such where we could just see them through the triangle of space under the escalators. They were huddled near a store window, the shorter of the two cupped her hand to the corner of her mouth as she whispered to her friend. They had probably been there scouting us for a while. They hadn’t run away, so Henry and I approached to see if they were our dates.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Katherine was a lanky girl with thick black hair and dark caramel skin. Henry explained he was our translator and then made our introduction. Katherine introduced her friend Soledad, a short and heavy set girl a few shades darker than Katherine. After the introductions we silently agreed to get on the escalator and head for the ice cream shop in the food court because that is what people do on a first date at the mall.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Seconds after we sat down, I felt my stomach sinking. It wasn’t the aguardiente, this time it was something worse, my conscience a step ahead of me. A depressing reality was unfolding that this was one of those encounters only funny in the abstract. It seemed like a hilarious idea yesterday that I go along with this charade for the sake of Henry’s story. At the time I had a sweating can of beer in my hand and a new friend to impress. Now the joke involved Katherine and her friend who had traveled an hour on some equally insane bus ride through streets filling with crowds from neighborhood block parties. Now they were here in an empty shopping mall on the the first night of a party </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Barranquilleros</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> lived the rest of the year waiting for.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Katherine’s radiant smile and hopeful eyes somehow made the set up all the more awful. Couldn’t she see that the promise of </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">gringolandia</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> wasn’t worth a guy who could barely hold what was left of his lunch down on the escalator? </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The trace of glitter on her cheeks and eyelids made Katherine look younger than her twenty years. She was wearing a purple halter top with the word sexy airbrushed in yellow stars on her flat chest. The girls from this wealthy neighborhood might have snickered at her cheap plastic heels and lack of a boob job had they bothered to notice her at all here. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Henry started the interview by explaining to the girls that he had put the classified ad in the paper on my behalf, a 30 year old American from San Francisco, California. He told them that we would start with me asking her some questions. My stomach turned over again. I had no idea what to ask this girl. I didn’t want to ask her anything, nor did I want to be here in this climate controlled palace of commerce, teasing this poor girl with a chance for a membership into the first world shopping club. It was too late to run, at this point I had to play along.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“What kind of a wife will you make?” I asked lamely.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Henry began the translation, but Katherine cut him short. She understood the question, and had practiced a response in English.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“I make good wife,” she said with pauses between each word, “I work hard. I like the cooking. I love the children. I love English. I want speak good English.” </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“What places would you like to visit in America?” </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This time she waited for Henry’s translation. She looked at Soledad and then back at me. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“New York.” she said.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I put this question to every young person I've met here and have noticed a pattern. The rich and poor almost always choose New York, while every middle income Colombian answers Miami and Orlando. Most children of the wealthy have been to all three cities. They have relatives in Miami and New York, and daddy took his little princess on the obligatory pilgrimage to Disney World. As young adults they know New York is the cultural capital and the ex pat city that confirms their worldliness. My guess is the middle income kids were aware that their better off cousins took the trip to Orlando and still fantasize about going themselves, with a trip to South Beach to round off the vacation. Poor girls like Katherine answered New York because that is the city they have heard of, perhaps through a distant relative or because a brother or uncle followed the Yankees. Disney does not market to her demographic. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Katherine answered the rest of my questions with a politician’s positive. I felt a little less fraudulent by the end. Even if I wasn’t the gringo from Henry’s Clash of Civilizations classified, I was single and open to possibility. However unlikely it was that I’d fall for a waifish girl from the Barranquilla slums, I like to imagine that anything is possible so far from home.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> I would have felt better still if Katherine hadn’t seemed to be enjoying the interview so much. So far, other than showing up drunk, I hadn’t done anything to make it clear I was not her prince charming. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Henry picked up on my inward turn and asked Katherine if she would like to ask some questions. I resolved to bomb her half of the interview and get out of there. She gave me the opportunity straight away when she asked about my family. Family was the most noticeable difference between Americans and Colombians in the daily experience. The Colombian family is a twenty four seven experience, even teenagers hang out with their friends in the same room with their parents. I could have told her how close I was to my family--I saw them two or three times a year. Or I could have told her how much I loved children and how I didn’t want to spoil that love by having any. I could have gone anywhere with the question. What popped into my head was my roommate’s fantasy about our San Francisco household.</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“My family life is very special, and very important to me. That’s why I am here, to grow my family, but my family might not be the kind of family you think of here in Colombia," I said, then waited for Henry to translate. "In San Francisco we have a lot of gay people. I live with two other women, they’re both lesbians, and we have a special relationship. We’re looking for a third woman to live with us and have our children. We would all have a relationship together, like a marriage. You would be married to me and two other women, and we would all be parents to the children.” </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Henry flashed the prurient look of the Channel Four documentarian even as he faithfully translated my words. Soledad also looked scandalized, but the grenade fell short of its mark. Katherine didn’t blink or break smile. Her posture exuded confidence and graciousness as</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc33cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">she gave a thoughtful response the dazed reporter could only paraphrase. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“She says she has a big family too, and is used to living with loads of people under one roof. A man with such kind eyes must have a loving family that he cares for deeply. The children will be very lucky to have so many people who love them.” Henry raised his eyebrows as if to say. “Next question, mate.”</span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This wasn’t my idea, I thought to myself. But that didn’t make me feel like any less of a schmuck. I had agreed to be here. That Katherine seemed ready to walk away from everything she knows and join a man with kind eyes who is taking her to a polyamorous household in a foreign land, made it all the worse. </span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">If the coarse alcohol hadn’t been tightening viselike at my temples, I might have appreciated the cult forming possibilities Katherine's case presented. I had drunk too much cane liquor kool-aid to imagine myself the reverse Jim Jones, snatching the girls out of the jungle and back to San Francisco. No, I felt like a run of the mill sex tourist. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I answered the rest of her questions as succinctly as possible so I could go find another bottle of fire water and a hole to pass out in. I couldn’t make eye contact with either of the girls as Henry thanked them for traveling across the city to meet us and wished them luck on their long ride home. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Katherine told Henry that we were both invited to her birthday party next Tuesday. She wrote her phone number and the closest coordinates to her house-- households often lack proper addresses in the barrios-- on the back of a napkin. Henry said we would try to make it. </span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 15.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Later I’d discover I was just another subject in a mock reality that so often passes for the way things are in the BBC or CNN version of the world. Put a camera in front of a situation, and see if people act the same; send a writer out for a story, see if he doesn’t come up with a story. At least I would be the butt of the joke. Henry wove a yarn about a Yank journalist representing the Ethical Traveller while binge drinking and bride shopping his way through Carnival. And fortunately, he published the article in Spanish.</span></span></span></div></span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-76481788832597074322010-04-01T17:28:00.000-07:002010-04-02T15:41:44.323-07:00Barranquilla IX: Oscar, Prepagas, and the Pier at Puerto ColombiaEven before I opened my eyes I could feel them hovering over me.<br /><br />Diego, Ruiz, Irena, Natalie and three girls and a guy her age who I had never seen before were crouched down around the perimeter of my mattress.<br /><br />“<i>Mamo Ron, Mamo Ron</i>!” they chanted. When I opened my mouth to speak Ruiz pressed a bottle of aguardiente to my lips. Other hands pinned my arms and pushed my head back into the pillow. The chant turned to cheers as I followed the literal instruction of the words and suckled liquor from the speed pour in the bottle. That is how a guest wakes to Carnival in Villa Meyer.<br /><br />There was something to this little initiation. The cane spirits burned through the fog in my head and kept me on course--64 more hours to lent. Now that there was a goal in mind, I would either keep up with the party or I wouldn't.<br /><br />I followed the celebrants out of the bedroom door then snuck into the kitchen for a few glasses of water. I rejoined the crew by the pool where Ruiz administered the fire water a dose at a time from a plastic dixie cup. Nancy sat apart from the revelers, though I could tell by her glow she was enjoying the warm ups as she took breakfast in the courtyard.<br /><br />I joined the Carnival Queen of 1965 at the breakfast table.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />“Good morning, <i>mi amor</i>!” she said and before I hit the chair, “Where is your press pass?”<br /><br />I told her it was in the room.<br /><br />“You must get it! You must wear it everywhere! So people know who you are.”<br /><br />A Colombian host adamant that her guest announce himself as a journalist at every juncture. How this country had changed.<br /><br />She insisted I get the pass from my bag before I took my coffee.<br /><br />Ruiz took a break from the aguardiente to bring us a plate of arepas and plantains.<br /><br />I thanked her again for her hospitality.<br /><br />“You are welcome my love. You have manners, I can see you come from good people. You are always welcome here.” she said.<br /><br />She blinked her eyes a couple of times and then leaned towards me.<br /><br />“Please, amor, we want to provide everything for you, if you could just give me, 10,000 pesos for the nights you are staying here.”<br /><br />I produced the bills from my wallet, slightly embarrassed that I hadn’t already offered anything more than the bottles of aguardiente I brought from the city. She folded the bills and kissed me on the cheek.<br /><br />“Let me know what you want, <i>amor</i>, anything you want.” she said.<br /></span><br /><div><span class="fullpost"> The doctor was picking Nancy up to go secure seats for the Friday evening parade. Nancy invited me to join her, but I declined. I had spent enough time in the city of baking dust and cement, and I was already meeting Henry early in the evening to pose as an American on wife safari for his story about the marriage market. Nancy looked disappointed, but there where plenty more parades, each day from Saturday through Tuesday, and excepting the last parade, they were all similar enough for the casual observer. I opted for lunch with Irene at the beach and an afternoon with Natalie and her entourage around the pool.<br /><br />The hotel down the street from Villa Meyer was the only stretch between Prado Mar and the pier at Puerto Colombia with a relatively clean and safe beach. The hotel was run by Irene’s childhood friend Oscar who had also spent time in the USA. When Irene introduced me as a foreign journalist--I was starting to regret indulging Nancy on that point--he insisted on giving me a tour of the grounds. He was proud of his place, and deservedly so. If not quite a luxury resort, Hotel Prado Mar was among the best weekend retreats from Barranquilla this side of Cartagena. The main building housed second floor rooms with balconies facing the sea. Bungalows flanked both sides of the hotel, their roofs matched the thatched sunshades on the beach. Shade was a necessity under the relentless tropical sun, though a few folks who had not gotten the word about skin cancer lay out broiling on the dark sand. Oscar was tolerant of the local surfers and allowed them access to the break off a rock outcropping on the eastern end of his property. On a flat rise of ground above the surfer’s rocks he built an open air lounge for dj’s to spin on weekends and holidays.<br /><br />Oscar worked and studied to become a chef in restaurants in Miami, New York and Montreal. After five years in the States he returned to take over the family business. His restaurant training was obvious, the open air kitchen fronting the beach was a professional operation. On Oscar’s recommendation, I ordered fish bathed in a sauce of garlic, peppers and local spices. It was the best food I had eaten in months.<br /><br />Oscar had been back 16 years now, and like every repatriated Colombian I have so far met he was happy to be back in his motherland. He believed Colombia was a better place for family and offered a higher quality of life than the States.<br /><br />“And the LEE-tul things,” he said in a way that made me prepare forced laughter at a version of the well worn Pulp Fiction monologue. With his gold rimmed aviator shades and brass beads on a nest of chest hair exposed by his Hawaiian shirt, Oscar was more Al Pacino/Scarface than a pony-tailed John Travolta. And fortunately, his material was more original.<br /><br />“Once in New York I pay 200 dollars for a woman. Then when I touch her, She say, ‘no, no, no! You only pay for these!’” his fingers drew a box around his crotch. “ You no pay for these!” his hands groped the pair of not-included tits.<br /><br />“In Colombia, it's not all business. She will have a good time with you.”<br /><br />Irene was not impressed. She scowled, her eyes almost squinting, probably focused on his wedding ring. I was not ready for the show to stop, so I blurted the first thing I could think of to cut off her attack.<br /><br />I asked him what a gringo had to to get a girl's attention at Frogg’s Leggs.<br /><br />‘You say, 'Hola, baby I'm from United States.' That's all you need with <i>prepagas</i>!”<br /><br />“What’s a <i>prepaga</i>?” I asked.<br /><br />Oscar’s smirk and Irene’s scowl spread over their faces in Yin-Yang harmony. Then Oscar sat down at our table to give me a lesson in prepagas. He confirmed my suspicions about the shades of Colombian prostitution. Irene rolled her eyes and clicked her tongue but didn’t interrupt our host.<br /><br /><i>Prepaga</i> literally means 'pre-pay', yet they are not prostitutes according to Oscar. <i>Prepagas</i> are party girls, and unlike the good Catholics under the thumb of their families, they will actually go home with a guy at the end of the night. She knows the man she goes home with is never going to call her again, so she figures she might as well get something out of a good time. This works well for a happily married man like Oscar who would rather pay for a one night stand than have some crazy girl calling his cell phone over and over when he is home with his wife. It also works for many students who use the weekend nights to help pay tuition.<br /><br />“You have fun, then no worry.” Oscar said as he made a show of wiping his hands clean.<br /><br />Irene shook her head at the performance.<br /><br />“If she takes your money, she’s a whore, Oscar.”<br /><br />Oscar gave me a conspiratorial look over the the top his sun glasses. <br /></span><br /><div><div><span class="fullpost">After Oscar went back to the kitchen, Irene pointed out a couple of bald men in their fifties sitting under a thatched shelter with three young girls.<br /><br />“You don’t have to go to Frogg’s Leggs to find them.” she said.<br /><br />“But they could be their daughters,” I said.<br /><br />“Daughters my ass. Look at the way they are sitting, almost as bad as mother and Diego.” she said, squinting and shaking her head again.<br /><br />“Your mother and Diego? Natalie’s boyfriend?”<br /><br />“Natalie’s boyfriend?” For a second she looked as confused as I was. Then the misunderstanding sunk in for both of us. “Jesus Billy, are you blind? Diego is with mother. How long have you been staying with us?”<br /><br />Only two nights, but it made sense when she said it. Diego was always at Nancy’s side like a puppy. I had just assumed he was trying to stay with Natalie by keeping in her mother’s her good graces.<br /><br />“Not bad for the Carnival Queen of 1965.” I said.<br /><br />“And lying about her age,” she said with more grunt than exclamation. “That was Nineteen six-oh.” She almost smiled before a fresh wave of disgust wrinkled her face. “Maybe she has her eye on you now. Oh God.”</span></div><div><span class="fullpost"><br />That meant Nancy was at least sixty three years old. Still, forced to choose, I might have taken the Carnival Queen of 1960 over her oldest daughter.<br /><br />“She is really embarrassing herself.” Irene said.<br /><br />I wanted to say that it was fashionable of her, taking a younger man. But with the look on Irene’s face, I checked myself.<br /><br />“I don’t see how she does it in front of Ruiz. You know he’s one of her ex husbands. And Natalie’s father.”<br /><br />Villa Meyer was starting to come into focus: Diego’s listlessness, Ruiz’ unspoken hostility, Natalie’s flirtation. I had nearly ignored the girl on Diego’s account, though maybe it was best I had on account of Ruiz.<br /><br />“Natalie’s boyfriend is flying in from Spain this afternoon.”<br /><br />By trying to react casually, I am sure I gave away that I had been thinking about her sister. Was I that transparent? I shifted my attention to the surfers paddling their boards out the break and slipped further away into the refuge of daydream.<br /><br />After lunch I suggested we walk to Puerto Colombia to see the pier. Irene declined as I expected--it was a three mile walk to town and then the pier extended another half mile into the sea. So I had the afternoon to myself, free to mull my land trip home, the upcoming madness of Carnival, and how exactly I telegraphed my stream of consciousness on the beach.<br /><br />Stiff winds blew into my ear on the walk to the pier. <i>Brisas</i>, the local term for the winds common in January and February in this part of the Caribbean, had been lashing the trees and screaming through corrugated roofs for a week. Eight foot swells might be good for surfers, but I was already thinking ahead to my boat ride I must take next week to get within striking distance of the Panamanian border. The old pier was taking a beating by the sea. Spray from the waves broke over the worn concrete, and the deep grooves that once housed rails for cargo containers now looked like little aqueducts coursing with water.<br /><br />The pier did not look like it had seen any renovations since its construction in 1893. Thousands of immigrants from Germany, Lebanon, Italy, Spain, and Jews from across Europe first set foot in America by walking down this half mile structure while rail cars loaded with coffee and bananas rolled the other way to the ships ready to steam to the USA or back to Europe. Now it was just me and a couple of old fisherman who sat in the shade cast by a pair of abandoned two-story buildings, ruins built on ruins near the sea end of the pier. No one could tell me what was once housed here because they had sat empty and crumbling for as long as anyone could remember.<br /><br />I took the liberty to imagine one of them was the passport control for the men and women who had chosen the promise of South America over their known discontents in the Old World. We think of ourselves living in a global age, and its true, but it was just as true for those new arrivals at the dawn of the 20th century. International trade did not again reach pre-1914 levels in real terms until the early 1970’s, and arguably no continent was as stunted by the collapse of the pre-war trading regime as South America. Argentina after all was the fifth richest country in the world the year Gavrilo Princip shot Franz Ferdinand and Europe spiraled into protectionism and conflict. Right here, on the Colombian Ellis Island, new immigrants walked onto a shore that would see its own century of bloodshed and suffering. After all of it their great-great grand children would still be proud to return and call Colombia home. </span></div></div></div>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-57927433657665488682010-03-26T20:57:00.000-07:002010-03-29T12:17:23.251-07:00Barranquilla VIII: Frogg's LeggsPress passes in hand, Henry and I set out for the opening ceremony at the soccer stadium for the crowning of the People’s Queen of Carnival. The venue was fitting. Though Colombia is as soccer mad as the rest of the continent, beauty pageants rival sports in popularity and press coverage. The crowning of the Coffee Queen in Manizales dominated the national news for a week in January, and reporters and news crews from all over the country had gathered here to watch contestants from the barrios perform choreographed dances in groups of ten to twenty, an emcee explaining how the acts and costumes corresponded to traditional carnival themes. The competition was punctuated by musicians struggling to become the next Shakira, hometown superstar and pride of Caribbean Colombia.<br />
<br />
When the girls introduced themselves at the end of the night, sections on the field behind us exploded in cheers and waved banners with the names of their respective barrios, names like Path of Roses, Eternal Hope and Beautiful Coast. An inverse relationship existed between the superlative in the name and the time it would take for a wandering gringo in that barrio to be stripped of his wallet, cell phone, and in these hoods, his shoe money.<br />
<div><br />
“Imagine the reporters who have to treat this as a real assignment.” Henry said at the end of the contest. “They have to get real quotes from the girls.”</div><div><br />
We followed the rest of the press corps backstage anyway. Devastated fans also stood aside as the new queen flanked by a retainer of runners-up were thronged by media from all over Colombia. I calculated the odds that I would have another chance to interview a contestant in a South American beauty pageant, then opened my note pad and approached the first girl I could find whose stage makeup wasn’t streaked with tears. <span class="fullpost"> My subject was polite, but her eyes were far off and her voice did not register above the background noise of the stadium. Not that I asked any good questions. I had no idea what were the relevant points in a beauty competition, though I had picked the winner. This year’s popular queen was clearly the most charismatic of the bunch.<br />
</span></div><div><span class="fullpost"><br />
Henry didn’t have to get quotes, but his camera drew attention from some of the passed over queens backstage. They must have calculated the odds that they would have another chance to appear in a foreign publication. They plastered falsetto smiles on their faces and posed for his photos.<br />
<br />
We decided the interviews were good practice for Frogg’s Leggs where we decided to test Nancy’s theory that our credentials would get us access to anywhere in the city.<br />
<br />
</span></div><div><span class="fullpost"> The most famous of Barranquilla’s nightclubs was in a northern neighborhood just a few minutes from the apartment I had rented from Rosita and Elena. I walked by the club several times on weekend evenings; even the posher crowds in this hard working town restricted the party to Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. Occasionally I’d pause on the sidewalk opposite the club behind the scrum of taxis dropping off passengers and competing for fares. The party spilling out the door--chiseled guys in half buttoned designer shirts stalking for opportunities to light cigarettes for girls whose impossibly large breasts threatened the fabric of their perfectly taut dresses--was sufficiently intimidating to keep me in the shadows.<br />
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</span></div><div><span class="fullpost">I’d like to think that cowardice was only part of the explanation for why I had never been. within fifty feet of Frogg’s Leggs. When it comes to security concerns, Colombia gets a bad rap, but the reputation has some merit. A reasonable traveller can navigate this country in safety with a few caveats--avoid remote jungle areas home to FARC remnants and motley para-narcos, leave the union card at home, and steer clear of anything that whiffs of the drug trade.</span></div><div><span class="fullpost"><br />
Sounds simple. It is for the most part. Though abiding that last rule is too much to ask of most of the Euros set to blow their way through the country. Cocaine in a Colombian nightclub is like steroids in professional sports. Almost everyone partakes for similar reasons. The average player can juice and have a chance at stardom or stay clean and languish in the minor leagues.<br />
<br />
Every hostel in the country has a bleary eyed British backpacker lounging in a hammock just waiting for you to say hello so he can tell you the tale of how he stumbled into arrest at a nightclub in Cartagena, Cali, or Medellin. The story is so uniform it has the ring of an urban legend. The Brit (maybe Irish, Australian, French Canadian, though he’s usually English) went to a nightclub with a fellow traveller. Within minutes they were approached by a guy who wanted to share some of Colombian’s finest with them. Better than anything they can find off the street, he assures them. They agree, sniff, sniff, and then ask to buy a little off their new best friend. <br />
<br />
The next night they come back to the same club to find their guy, this time with money from all the other party people in the hostel. After they make the transaction, they notice a policeman at the door heading straight for them. The cop finds the drugs as if he knew they were there. He puts the two idiots in cuffs. Meanwhile, their new friend, who must have tipped off the cops, has disappeared. Perhaps he’d pre-arraigned a cut from the 1,000 Euros the foreigners are forced to cough up to the arresting officer in exchange for their freedom.<br />
<br />
The threat from the drug trade is not always direct. That sultry beauty leaning against the bar? She may be single, or she may be one of several girls a Cartel player brought out that night. He will not take kindly to some gringo chatting her up. Since she is probably feeling neglected and bored, she might not bother to warn him.<br />
<br />
Yet to visit Colombia and forgo the night life would be like going to Argentina and not eating the beef. In the six months I had logged in this country, I had visited two clubs, one in Medellin and one in Cali, I felt obliged to sort the claims both cities make that they host the most beautiful women and the best night life in the world. Barranquilla made no such boasts, though on the former front, the European and Middle Eastern immigrations grafted to the older Spanish creole and African bloodlines has produced some exotic results. With a reliable wingman--Henry did not seem the type of Brit to fall for the cocaine hustle--it was only fair to see how Barranquilla matched up with her more acclaimed sister cities.<br />
<br />
Henry was our point man at the door. He walked to the head of the line and explained we were here for a BBC piece on Carnival week. The bouncer was suspicious of his camera bag, after a thorough search and pat down he said he would let us in for 5,000 pesos, a nominal two dollar cover. And no waiting. <br />
<br />
Frogg’s Leggs was tiny compared to the night spots in Medellin and Cali, and it was not the full on sensory assault one experienced in the bigger clubs. No geodesic dome throbbing with laser lights or rooftop deck with panoramic views; no costumed performers or international circuit DJ flown in from Spain or California. Just a long rectangular hall with a bar up front and a dance floor at the rear, the length of it insanely overcrowded and buzzing with Red Bull vodkas and Andean marching powder. The ten dollar import beers were familiar.<br />
<br />
Henry steered towards the bar while I pushed through to the dance floor. All those salsa lessons--culture nights at the Slovenian bars with their bizarre post-socialist agendas that mixed self-improvement and booze, quiet evenings in Central America where a dance instructor was cheaper than a beer, premeditated second dates with the girl who had also travelled south of the border--what a joke. I wouldn't be kidding anyone with my locked up hips and total befuddlement of rhythm. Yet the dance floor was less all-or-nothing than a pick up move at the bar, and as far as I knew there were no codes about dancing with the cartel man’s second girlfriend.<br />
<br />
I didn’t have the technique nor the raw energy to keep in time with the beat. I figured a clean nosed gringo’s best play was somewhere between cultivated detachment and ironic incompetence. Not on the dance floor, it turned out. The first two girls I approached gave me the same withering look they might have given someone’s retarded older brother who pulled his penis out in the living room.<br />
<br />
I edged my way to a side wall where I could watch without being noticed. As I passed through a crease in the dancers at the edge of the floor a girl with a round face and almond eyes flashed me a smile. I looked again to make sure, and for a second our eyes met. I motioned my head back towards the throng of gyrating bodies then extended my hand.<br />
<br />
“You’ll have to lead. I’m a gringo,” I shouted into her ear.<br />
<br />
She smiled. She didn’t need to play the part of dance instructor. She guided my arms around her waist then enveloped my knee with her fleshy thighs. From that point on I was along for the ride. I could feel the rhythm of the dance through the motions of her body.<br />
<br />
“What’s your name?” I asked after the beat changed. The pace intensified, perhaps some sort of meringue. Americans do not dance meringue. The Dominicans had to invent a slower dance beat called <i>Apambechau</i> so the lead footed American soldiers could keep up with their partners. <i>Pambeche</i> was the name of the coarse cotton Dominicans wore which had a similar look to the finer cotton of American khaki, looks like the real thing but is a sad imitation. <br />
<br />
“Katerina,” she said. She pulled me in tighter as if to speed me up to the beat. My cheek pressed into her matted hair and my shirt dampened where it touched her sweat drenched body. It must have been a long night for Katerina. She had a fragrance of cane alcohol over cigarettes butts mashed into urinal cakes. <br />
<br />
Henry was nowhere to be found, maybe he had sought out another interview for his wife hunting article. It was nearly two, the time of night those looking to go home with someone make their move. I did not want another dance with Katerina. I pushed my way through to the door. <br />
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None of the taxis in front of Frogg’s Leggs wanted a part in a drive out of the city. These were the five nights of the year when the streets were flush with out of town fares with no idea of the prevailing rates. I finally hailed a driver on the road out of town who agreed to take me, or at least didn’t drive off when I stated my destination and what I knew was the rate for a late night ride.<br />
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The back seat smelled like the last customer had soaked the floor mats with aguardiente, a substantial improvement on Katerina’s acrid musk. It looked to be a quick ride as the driver was not much bothered by stop signs or traffic signals. The sleepy looking driver hunched over the wheel in a daze until he approached an intersection. Then for a second he sprung up, opened his eyes half an inch further, and flicked his brights a couple of times as the car was already accelerating through the intersection. I didn’t demand he stop the car because I knew this was the only cabbie in the city willing to run an hour long round trip at such an effective loss. I wished I had a beer, and a seatbelt. <br />
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There was a roadblock just past the the turnoff for the Puerto Colombia road. A DUI checkpoint, something I had never seen or heard about before in Colombia. The cops asked us both to step out of the car, and when they did I sniffed out that it was the driver, not the taxi, who was soaked in cane liquor. The cop produced a breathalyzer. Without pause the driver obediently blew into the machine. The device then made a series of accusatory short and sustained beeps, as if spelling out drunk in Morse code for the other machines who couldn’t see or smell the man who now leaning against his taxi.<br />
<br />
“0.18,” the policeman informed two colleagues who had been drawn by the sound of the failed test. My driver had blown twice the legal limit for anywhere I had had a driver’s license.<br />
<br />
What was I supposed to do, ten miles from the city and nearly as far onto Prado Mar? The only drivers bound for the coast at this hour were sure to be as smashed, and I doubted the cops were going to offer me a ride.<br />
<br />
Two of the officers then grabbed the taxi man under either shoulder and escorted him away from the road. <br />
<br />
“Where are they taking him?” I asked the cop who wasn’t propping up my driver.<br />
<br />
“To the other machine.” <br />
<br />
I followed the cops to a shed that looked like a little league concession stand. It was a concession stand, an open air convenience store selling drinks, snacks and cigarettes, though I did not see any donuts. I asked for a couple of beers, half expecting the cops to say something before the attendant opened the refrigerator. They were all preoccupied with the second, larger breathalyzer. I was told it was more accurate than the first device. My stupefied driver, again without protest, blew into the machine. A second passed before the machine beeped.<br />
<br />
“0.16” one of the cops said.<br />
<br />
“Your first Carnival?” anther cop asked to me.<br />
<br />
“Yes,” I said, figuring that’s what he wanted to hear.<br />
<br />
No one stopped the taxi driver as he started his shuffled back to the car.<br />
<br />
“What’s the legal limit, for alcohol?” I asked.<br />
<br />
It was 0.20, one of the highest legal limits in the world. Granted, few people would lose consciousness at .20, though stupor was the word most commonly used on the BAC charts when describing the affect of 0.20.<br />
<br />
“You want to try?” the first cop asked. He held out the blow tube attached to the corroborating machine. <br />
<br />
I looked back to road. The driver did not appear to be in a hurry. He could probably use a nap after expending so much effort with the police.<br />
<br />
“Sure.” I said. For effect I pounded the rest of my open beer.<br />
<br />
I blew. The machine made a single beep.<br />
<br />
“0.15. With beer in your mouth. If you were a <i>Costeño</i> we would arrest you!”<br />
<br />
It did not sink in immediately. Cops making sobriety jokes at a DUI check point was a new experience for me. He meant they should take me in for not celebrating enough. I was about to offer to drink my other beer to get back in their graces, but the break time was over. The lights from the next coast bound vehicle were bouncing along up the road.<br />
<br />
The gate was chained when I arrived. Ruiz took his time answering the bell on the second ring. I got the sense he was keeping an eye on my whereabouts as he followed close behind me on the way into the house. I guessed that meant Natalie was home. No one else seemed to be. Carlos was still in the city, it was the first night of his make shift Carnival hostel. Irene must have still been out. Only the kids were asleep beneath the overworked air conditioner. </span></div>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-39992576370873356312010-03-17T10:36:00.000-07:002010-03-17T10:36:56.978-07:00Barranquilla VII: CredentialsI arrived back at the Najar’s just before noon, only 16 hours since I had left for the movie.<br />
<br />
“Wee-liam!” Rosa saw me at the gate. “Where did you go? Mama was worried!”<br />
<br />
I told her I had run into an old friend and that I had been invited to stay with the Meyers during Carnival. <br />
<br />
“Nancy! Nancy Meyer!” <br />
<br />
Rosita knew Nancy. Barranquilla might be the smallest city of two million people on the continent. <br />
<br />
I told them about the villa at Prado Mar and how she had invited me there for Carnival. <br />
<br />
“They don’t have any money!” Rosita yelled. Elena slowly shook her head and chuckled to herself. It must have been preposterous to them that Nancy would take in a guest on the one week of the year people would pay anything for a room within striking distance of Carnival. <br />
<br />
“I’m sharing a room with some others,” I explained.<br />
<br />
Rosita made me promise to come for lunch before leaving Barranquilla. I sensed she wanted more details about Villa Meyer. Still, I was happy about the prospects of Elena’s sedating fish soup before the eight hour bus ride to Monteria.<br />
<br />
I arrived at the compound known as the Carnival House just before three. The front gate opened to a spacious courtyard abuzz with activity. Lines formed at various unmarked tables set at intervals along the interior walls. Several news crews interviewed producers and participants for the upcoming pageant. Volunteers skittered about with printouts, some with sprocket holes from ancient dot matrix printers. I couldn’t remember seeing as many busy people in this city of tropical languor.<br />
<br />
I found the door marked press office where I was met with a friendly but slightly frazzled assistant. <span class="fullpost"><br />
<br />
<br />
“Press is on this list, who do you work for?” <br />
<br />
I hadn’t had time to arrange anything. I had only done a couple travel articles to date, and I didn’t want to burn any bridges in the off chance someone checked up on my lack of paperwork. I still had delusions that I might make a career out of this sort of thing. <br />
<br />
So I gave her the name of a magazine where they had done the bridge burning. A few months back I submitted a cold pitch for the online edition of a travel magazine I don’t care to name in print. The editor responded and told me they’d take it on spec, which means they’d have the option of accepting or rejecting the story after I submitted it.<br />
<br />
I submitted. Weeks passed, a long time in the world of online content, and I hadn’t heard a word about the article. I assumed that meant rejection. Out of curiosity I checked to see the stories they had gone with instead. Front and center on their homepage there was a link to my story. Except that I hadn’t written it. I wrote the editor again to see if they were still planning on running my story. A few days later I got a reply back, that yes, they were still running it, in fact they had decided to make the story into a series. A few days after that I got another mail asking if I could make a few tweaks to my article. The tweaks constituted another story, naturally, since the duplicate had covered all the same ground as my original. I needed the clip, but who was to say he wouldn’t steal the next one too? I checked with a friend who had been a freelancer for years who told me that yes, this was a screw job and no, I had no recourse, probably better that I drop it entirely. So this was the outfit I was going to represent this long weekend. With Carlos and Nancy’s crew in tow I planned on being a real ambassador for their publication.<br />
<br />
I gave the name of the magazine as I debated whether to feign anger or astonishment over my omission from the list. Anger was my idea of the Latin way to handle the error, though I wasn’t sure I could see that ruse through, as attentive as this girl had been.<br />
<br />
<br />
“Let’s see, here,” she read the name of the magazine from her list. and the name beside it, “Ian. McKay”<br />
<br />
Ian McKay, that was him. The douche bag editor was here in Barranquilla. Out of all the travel writers at all the carnivals throughout the Catholic world the guy who stole an article from me must have also made the choice for this afterthought of a city. In moments like these I believe in a creator, the one who reached out to Adam from his cloud top and said, “pull my finger.”<br />
<br />
In the shock of the moment I had neither confirmed nor denied that I was Ian. She handed me the list and pointed to the name.<br />
<br />
“No, there must be a mistake, my name is Moss Williams.”<br />
<br />
She asked me some more questions. Since truthful answers would not have helped my cause, my Spanish deteriorated. Playing dumb, that was something I was confident I could see through.<br />
<br />
“This one doesn’t speak Spanish, and isn’t on the list,” the girl informed an older woman who was handling a registrant at the other end of the counter. The woman told her to go and find a translator. She looked around the room and then out the window. Then she handed me a form and led me through it with a game of charades. <br />
<br />
While the press volunteer went to find a camera to take my picture, a red haired gringo walked into the office looking for his credentials. I leaned on the back wall of the room and wondered if this was Ian. On first impression I hoped it wasn’t, the way he joked and flirted with the assistant, this was a guy I would have a hard making enemies with. Fortunately not, his name was Henry, a photo journalist based in Bogota. He was no more prepared than I was, though with a precise and rapid fire Spanish he charmed his way onto the press list. The assistant returned with a camera and offered to take the pictures that we were supposed to send in with our registration forms.<br />
<br />
She told us to come back at five for our credentials. With time to kill and nothing else to do, we introduced ourselves and decided to go look for a drink. Barranquilla is not known for its bar scenes, and in this neighborhood the best we could hope for was a corner store with a working refrigerator. A market across the street fit the bill, old men were sat out front playing dominoes and sipping from sweating beer cans. Younger men circled around a guy shaving elaborate patterns into the skulls of customers with a straight razor. <br />
<br />
Henry had been in Colombia for over a year. As a freelance photographer, he took full advantage of his foreign press status. He had secured credentials to Bogota’s best soccer club, a second rate outfit by South American standards, so from the press box he enjoyed the games for free. He claimed this was one of the more organized events he had seen in Colombia. Most of the time his red hair and the giant lens on his camera opened the back door to most events.<br />
<br />
Henry had come to town for Carnival, but he was also here working on a story about dating services. The press assistant had been unable to find the translator for me because Henry had locked onto her in the courtyard. The woman worked at one of Barranquilla’s famous marriage agencies, and Henry was looking to shadow her for a couple days at her work. She was dubious about the proposition, Henry had to convince her he himself was not looking for a wife. <br />
<br />
The marriage agencies of Barranquilla are a major industry, each year thousands of older men from Europe and North America arrive in search of second and third wives from the endless ranks of beautiful and economically desperate girls from Barrnaquilla’s outer barrios. Henry had planned to get his story over the next two days, he already put out adds in El Heraldo, the city’s largest daily, where the classifieds have not been much affected by the rise of the internet. He had to rewrite his first attempt, judged too raunchy by the editors, though they consented on a second draft where he proposed that Barranquilleras looking for a gringo husband “get together for a clash of Civilizations.” Even his toned down add seemed to be working. Henry’s phone rang every five minutes as we sipped our beers and watched the domino games and shaving artists at the make shift barber shop. <br />
<br />
“Con quien hablo? (with whom am I speaking)” Henry answered.<br />
<br />
“You don’t know who you’re speaking to, Henry?” I could hear the English voice on the other line. It was Henry’s girlfriend, who had moved to Bogota a few months ago.<br />
<br />
Henry’s girlfriend was flying in Saturday morning to join him at Carrnival. This was the reason he had to finish the research for his story by then, he hadn’t yet told her about the subject matter.<br />
<br />
All signs pointed to Henry meeting his self-imposed deadline. His phone did not stop ringing, and all the girls he spoke with wanted wanted to meet him as soon as he was available. He jotted down their vitals: age, occupation, neighborhood in the city, then booked a few for Friday evening. He then proposed that I come along on a few of the dates, pretending to be the guy from the ad. Henry would play the role of translator. <br />
<br />
It seemed a little sad, interviewing some desperately poor girl who believed she had a chance to get away from her hellhole of a barrio with a young, non-obese American. Henry’s mission reminded me of the Channel Four documentaries I’d seen while living in London where an investigative journalist visits a swingers’ society in the middle of Nebraska. By the end, no matter how pathetic the lives of the fat bodies piled into the hot tub, the swingers come off as decent souls trying to enjoy something in life as they freely over-share with the journalist who lampoons them in whispered asides at every opportunity. It all reeked of mean-spirited better-than-thou voyeurism. <br />
<br />
Maybe there was a bit of the prurient private eye in Henry. He was also a funny guy, and with all the language and the culture barriers here on the Colombian coast, I hadn’t gotten a good dose of humor in months. I wondered if he was prepared for the awkwardness when confronted with desperate girls who were ready to come to America or Britain tomorrow if we asked them. If I played the wife hunter, I’d be the one doing the walking away. I didn’t mind a little awkwardness in the sake of a good story, besides, I’d craft some poison pills that no good Catholic girl could swallow. <br />
<br />
At least Henry was in search of a story. What the hell had I done with my months in exile aside from waking up on the concrete floor of my apartment to an empty bottle and another hangover? </span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-36467097105180877312010-03-08T14:55:00.000-08:002010-03-11T12:06:19.706-08:00Barranquilla VI: Villa MeyerI awoke to the hum of an overworked air conditioner. To one side and a step below me Carlos and Irene were sleeping on a double mattress without a box spring. I tried to roll over, but couldn’t, a polyester tiger blocked my progress. The stuffed animal was just one of my bedmates, the girl who had opened the gate last night and a boy about her age were on the other side of the bed. <br /><br />Out the bedroom door it was only a little warmer than the air conditioned room. Most of the space under the roof of the villa was open to the outside air, trellis work allowed passage of the sea breeze through the house. <br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3UfdVmbjyg8/S5WFVycPykI/AAAAAAAAAF8/5sbMqQD3Qkg/s1600-h/Villa+Meyer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3UfdVmbjyg8/S5WFVycPykI/AAAAAAAAAF8/5sbMqQD3Qkg/s320/Villa+Meyer.jpg" border="0" /></a>The surrounding courtyards betrayed the dilapidated state of Villa Meyer. Weeds sprouted in the cracked walls and uneven masonry, and the mosaics were pockmarked with missing stones. A few hammocks drooped to the ground under overgrown mango trees around a pool dyed green with algae. <br /><br /><br /><br />A narrow path ran through a low wall to an empty lot in the direction of the sea. Brown waves were visible through an iron gate, though its rusted lock and heavy chain barred passage to the beach. What should have been prime real estate was nothing but tall grass and waist high drifts of plastic bottles, rotting wood, and rusting metal. Whether the garbage had been dumped into the yard or was deposited by the surf was unclear. Perhaps a little of both, I recalled Diego throwing an empty bottle over a side wall at the end of the night.<br /><br />It looked as if the Meyer fortune ran out at least a generation ago. This backwater Grey Gardens was their last connection to the local aristocracy. <span class="fullpost"><br /><br /><br />The village, like this estate, had seen better days. In the first half of the 20th Century, Prado Mar, which means “Prado by the Sea,” was named after the wealthiest neighborhood in Barranquilla. This stretch of coast had been the weekend getaway for the elite. Now that Barranquilla boasts an international airport and a divided highway running to historic Cartagena, the wealthy have better options than a beach lapped by brown waves of filthy delta plume--Prado Mar sits just a few miles from the mouth of Colombia’s longest river. There were still a few villas here hidden from the road and from one another by high walls and dense tropical brush. A friend of Irene’s ran a hotel on the beach where surfers gathered for the break and where fat and balding businessmen brought their college-aged mistresses.<br /><br /><br />Nancy was the only person from last night’s crew already awake. She sat at a table set along the open wall to the patio, the folds of her white cotton gown billowing in the breeze. A tall man in his mid fifties, with a thick mustache and salt and pepper stubble, brought her a coffee. As he turned from the table Deja Vu cut through the mist of my hangover. <br /><br />His name was Ruiz, Nancy’s houseman. We found him passed out in a hammock when we arrived from the city last night. Within minutes of our arrival he had taken up the role of Fernando the doctor. He rustled up a bottle of aguardiente, firewater of clear cane liquor, and took turns administering us shots from a tiny plastic cup or simply pouring it into upturned mouths. In between stints of filling glasses he retreated to a hammock in the shadows where I felt him keep an eye on the newcomer. Diego showed no such concern, not in the car, not the few times I got Natalie to laugh at my Spanish. She had hardly noticed me otherwise since the ride home, probably a good sign. Though she didn’t notice Diego either. The thrasher took notice of no one save Nancy, who for a time came downstairs and sat with him on the couch. He found no takers for the joint he spent a good twenty minutes rolling. He smoked until the slits between his eyelids resembled those of a sleeping lizard. <br /><br />Nancy invited me to join her for breakfast. She explained in a rich costeño accent that this was the best fortnight of the year. Nancy lived for Carnival, she had been going to all the parties and had tickets in the grandstands for each day’s parade. Tonight was the first official Carnival event, the night the popular queen was elected from among the representatives of all of Barranquilla’s outlying barrios. Eighty contestants were to compete in a pageant style event that included dancing, public speaking, and of course a swim contest. Five finalists were chosen, the queen, her runner up, and three princesses. These girls would represent the lower castes of Barranquilla during the week-long festivities.<br /><br />Her eyes grew distant. She explained that in addition to the popular queen, a Carnival Queen is selected from the ranks of Barranquilla debutantes. It was a year long duty for the deb, and as the most coveted role in high society, the selection was no doubt spiced with scandal and intrigue. <br /><br />I could tell Nancy was lost in one of those years at the moment.<br /><br />"What was it like when were you the Queen," I asked her.<br /><br />She smiled at me in a way I hadn't imagined a grandmother could smile. For a second I could see back through her eyes to the woman as foxy as Natalie, and more confident.<br /><br />"That was another world," she said.<br /><br /><br />Now the Queens are chosen from women in their early twenties, but in 1965 Nancy was barely fifteen years old.<br /><br />"Fifteen is too young, you must have more maturity, especially these days.”<br /><br />Nancy went on about the customs of the week. I told her I might write some stories about the event.<br /><br />“Are you a journalist?” her eyes lit up.<br /><br />“Yes.” She was so excited I did not want to disappoint her.<br /><br />“You are international press! They must give you a press pass!” <br /><br />Nancy, ecstatic about the prospects of having a journalist in her entourage, bid me to go to the Carnival House. She explained that a pass would give me access to the parade route, and to all the events associated with the week long party. She pinched an imaginary pass in between her thumb and forefinger and waved it in my face. <br /><br />“With this you can go anywhere in Barranquilla, just say international press, and they will let you go anywhere.”<br /><br />At this point there was no way to explain that I didn’t have the slightest interest in attending another Carnival. I meant to be on the road this morning, to clear out of Barranquilla before the city temporarily doubled in size. I had fought through the crowds to see the parades last year, and I didn’t have the stamina for one hundred hours of non-stop partying at Carlos' Carnival flophouse. <br /><br />“It would make a nice article,” I said slowly, searching for an excuse “ but I haven’t made any reservations here, my plan is to go to Guajira.”<br /><br />“You can go to Guajira anytime. You will stay with us here, we’ll be going into town everyday,” Nancy replied. <br /><br />I looked up through the railing atop the staircase and saw Natalie emerge from her room. A long tee shirt just covered the tops of her thighs.<br /><br />“That is a kind invitation.”<br /><br />“An invitation you must accept, mi amor.” Nancy said.<br /><br />Nancy insisted again I go at once to the Carnival House to sign up for my credentials. I had to go back to town for my backpack anyways, and the address she gave me was not too far from the Najars. Mama and Rosita were probably wondering where their gringo disappeared to on his last night in town. </span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-4639195419535645922010-03-04T13:47:00.000-08:002010-03-11T13:00:51.060-08:00Barranquilla V: DetourWhen the winds pick up and the traffic dies it is finally pleasant to be outside. Winter nights are delicious in this city. It was nearly midnight when I crossed a concrete slab that could have been an ancient sewer bed as well as a deserted thoroughfare running through this northwest quadrant of old Barranquilla. At any moment in the rainy season this roadway could become a turbulent river; tropical downpours have nowhere else to go but over these concrete channels. Everything not bolted to a foundation is sent whipping through brown rapids eventually into the river.<br /><br />I hadn’t noticed the changes to what had been a vacant building on the corner of the intersection. Under the floodlights the white stucco and blue windows looked impossibly clean in this city of garbage and dust. This Greek villa was the only business still open on the block, and dozens of people were milling about on a porch raised to make a second embankment a couple of feet above the sidewalk.<br /><br />“Beel! Beel! Beel!” came a shout from up on the porch. I recognized the voice, though it seemed impossible I could know anyone on this nameless block in a nowhere city. A short, balding fellow came running out the front door to greet me. It was Carlos, my first forgotten acquaintance from Barranquilla.<br /><br />Carlos acted as if we were long lost friends and introduced me as such. In fact I had known him for less than 24 hours over a manic night and day last Carnival. He was the proprietor of a fly by night hostel in a building twenty blocks from here. He had rented a few apartments for the week and lined the floors almost wall to wall with mattresses. Either he didn’t remember our last interaction, or in the context of a week-long coke bender, the confrontation had not been a highlight. In any case, he hadn’t lost our passports in the streets of Carnival, and for a moment I played the role of his good friend from Tennessee. <span class="fullpost"><br /><br />Carlos was heavier, his face more bloated than I had remembered. At the same time he looked more healthy. His eyes weren’t bloodshot, and he didn’t seem amped on anything other than booze and the excitement of a chance encounter.<br /><br />Carlos led me through a crowd to the back of the new restaurant. At the bar he introduced me to Nancy, a silvery blonde in her early to mid 60’s. She had the airs of the proprietress as she stood with an elbow propped on the bar.<br /><br />“Do you like whiskey?” she asked.<br /><br />“Yes, I like whiskey.”<br /><br />She snapped orders to the bartender and gave me a long look over. She handed me a glass with an ice cube floating in six fingers of scotch.<br /><br />I joined Carlos who was standing in a circle with Nancy’s two daughters, Irene and Natalie. Irene had hard lines on her face and a smoke cured voice. Her brusque manner fit her stocky build, her husky New Jersey accent and the large tattoo on her upper arm —Irene was clearly a woman not to be fucked with. Natalie was half her sister’s age, and a stone cold fox. She was well aware of the tight curves on her compact body. She looked everywhere but in my direction as she flicked strands of raven hair back to her shoulders. Her fierce black eyes hinted a temper a twitch away from combustion.<br /><br />I couldn’t make out Diego, a metal thrasher type with dirty blonde hair longer than Natalie’s. He did not fit into context with this group. He was too young for the older daughter and too scruffy for the fox. His eyes were dead-red stoned beneath droopy lids; he did not engage in the conversation. When Nancy rejoined the circle she draped an arm across his shoulder. A third man introduced as Fernando the Doctor was in constant motion back and forth from the bar, attentive to his patients rum glasses.<br /><br />It was past midnight when I joined the circle, within minutes Carlos invited me to go to the Meyers’ place in Prado Mar. <br /><br />“Prado Mar?”<br /><br />“Eats only twenty me nuts,” Carlos said. “Eats nice. Tomorrow we go on the bitch,” on the beach.<br /><br />I was just one finger into my oversized whiskey as I mulled the invitation. Nancy had anticipated this. Before I could answer she motioned to the waiter and signaled for a go cup. I took a few long pulls on my drink so that the remainder would fit in the smaller plastic glass I was promptly issued. Nancy marshaled her crew out to the sidewalk.<br /><br />Fernando the Doctor pulled up to the curb in a black Mercedes. He had not looked any more sober than anyone else staggering through the restaurant. I whispered to Carlos if he thought this was a good idea.<br /><br />“Is ok, he's a doctor.”<br /><br />Nancy grabbed Diego and stuffed him into the front seat with the doctor’s girlfriend while the others piled into the backseat. Maybe Prado Mar was only twenty minutes from here, maybe it was more. It was one of those split second calculations one has to make while on the road. A car full of drunks and a liquor prescribing doctor and I don’t even have a toothbrush. Here was the first group of interesting people I’d met in months who have invited me to something more than a seat at a table, and they were going somewhere I suspected I’d never see otherwise. The Doctor tapped on the horn, while Natalie, the last to climb into the crammed backseat, made the decision for me when she extended me her hand. <br /><br />Natalie took my whiskey, then arched her back and stood up on the floorboard as I brushed under the perfect half moons of her bottom. I was just able to click the door shut as the girl on my lap took a long pull from my go cup. Diego, who I now decided must have been her boyfriend, was not paying the slightest attention. Maybe he was too stoned for machismo. I couldn’t guess what he was thinking as he groomed Nancy's blonde and silver in the front seat.<br /><br />Presumably there was something in the Hippocratic oath about staying awake at the wheel. The streets were empty on the ride out of the city as the Mercedes swayed gently back and forth across the lanes. But it was a divided highway, and the motion was not out of time with the vallenato blaring through the speakers. Natalie and I took turns sipping the whiskey and Carlos next to us was prattling on about all the things we would do tomorrow on the bitch. Something about a hotel a friend of theirs owned and a pier which I had read about somewhere, either the longest or the oldest in South America.<br /><br />Natalie leaned her head back and I tried to think of anything but the perfume on her neck and how well her body fit onto mine. I did not want my lap betraying how little luck I had been having with the cachonas of Barranquilla.<br /><br />A bright moon illuminated our descent down to the Caribbean whose waters for months had been close but unseen. I wasn’t ready for the ride to be over when the Mercedes spun over the packed earth off of the Puerto Colombia road. We reached the alley that led to the Meyers’ place and slowly decompressed from the car. I followed the others into the dark alley that ran along a high stucco wall topped with broken bottles and chards of colored glass until we reached the chained double gate of the villa. Nancy rang the bell several times. No one answered. Someone grumbled that the night man was asleep. We sat on the stones outside the gate and the girls smoked and Irene tried to call the house. Finally a little girl, about seven or eight, emerged from the house cradling a stuffed horse and rubbing her eyes with the hand that held a large key. </span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-62270690214688436742010-01-28T18:48:00.000-08:002010-01-28T19:37:19.016-08:00Haiti III: Road to OccupationThe night of July 26, 1915, a rebel army surrounded Port-au-Prince. The advanced guard crept up to the National Palace where a firefight woke Guillaume Sam in the pre-dawn hours. With his palace troops, those who hadn’t already defected to the other side, outmanned and pinned down, the Haitian ruler made a mad dash for the adjoining French Legation. He took a bullet in the leg, and then found his key would not turn in the rusted gate. Sam then somehow managed to scale the ten-foot high wall. <br />
<br />
To this point the story reads like any other Haitian coup d’etat, but from hereon Sam ceased with convention. He did not request that the French minister arrange a steamship for him and his family, whom he had momentarily abandoned on his scramble to the legation, to sail for Jamaica. Nor was he escorted to the port through a mob gathered to heckle but do him no harm as he made his escape into exile.<br />
<br />
That was the scene that had awaited Sam’s predecessor just 4 months before, and dozens of others who had come to seize power over a war torn century of independence. Yet Guillaume had devised plans to stay in power. When he led his peasant army into the capital earlier that March, he rounded up 168 hostages from the best families in Haiti. These men and boys would be his bargaining chip when his day of reckoning came. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #327d13; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;"><span class="fullpost"></span></span> <span class="fullpost"><br />
<br />
He sent a message from the legation to his chief of police General Charles-Oscar Etienne, explaining that he had abandoned the palace. He ended the note with the ambiguous direction, “<i>Faites ce que votre conscience vous dictera</i>-- do what your conscience dictates.”<br />
<br />
Etienne, known as “<i>Le Terrible</i>,” listened to his conscience, then ordered his men to the jail. With rifles and machetes they shot and hacked and smashed through the crowded cells. Their work was brutal and efficient. After feigning the call of a rescue party, Etienne’s henchmen sussed out the last survivors from the mass of limbs, disemboweled bodies and crushed skulls until the last groans yielded to the sound of blood sluicing into the drains. The slaughter claimed one hundred and sixty eight fathers and sons from the Haitian elite. <br />
<br />
<br />
The state of shock in the crowd that gathered around the prison for news soon turned to outrage. Edmond Polynice did not wait for the crowd to make up its mind. Once the gentleman confirmed that all three of his ransomed sons were dead, he sought the whereabouts of General Etienne and followed his retreat to the Dominican legation. Amazingly, or so the legend goes, Etienne came to the door as requested, at which point Polynice shot him in the chest three times, a bullet for each of his dead sons.<br />
<br />
From his upstairs window Sam would have seen the well-dressed mob that gathered outside the French compound the next morning. Had he looked far enough out into the bay before hiding in the bathroom he might have seen the four smokestacks of the <i>USS Washington</i> as it steamed towards the capital.<br />
<br />
This would not be the Americans first naval intervention in Haiti. For decades American policy was frozen by the schism between slave and free states in the Union, though from the late 1840’s on, U.S. warships began what became a near continuous presence in Haitian waters. In 102 previous civil wars spanning those seven decades, American forces in most instances had kept their distance from the shore. <br />
<br />
In the five years leading up to the July 1915 coup, Haiti took on more strategic interest in the view of the US State Department. With the help of U.S. officials asserting the Monroe Doctrine, in 1910 National City Bank was able gain an interest in the national bank of Haiti on terms more favorable than those of longer established German and French competitors. <br />
<br />
Historians who filter American foreign policy in the Caribbean through the lens of economic imperialism will tell you that the Marines landed in 1915 to protect the interests of City Bank. Yet Dollar Diplomacy does not seem a sufficient explanation for intervention. Total US investments in Haiti circa 1915 amounted to 4 million dollars out of the 1.7 billion invested throughout Latin America. When a head of City Bank petitioned Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan in 1913, he had to explain to Bryan that Haiti was a nation in the Caribbean. Bryan came away from the meeting impressed.<br />
<br />
“Dear me,” he said. “Think of it! Ni…rs speaking French.”<br />
<br />
<br />
To suggest that the US intervened solely on the bank's behalf is to ignore the larger geo-political picture at the time. <br />
<br />
For decades German warships had been protecting her commercial interests on the island, while German merchants sheltered and sometimes financed various rebel factions. On several occasions the Kaiser’s navy collected debts for her citizens by bearing guns upon the national palace. To further the humiliation, imperial commanders would often impose demands beyond the immediate repayment of debts. Terms once stipulated a 21-gun salute to the double eagle run up the flag pole at the palace, and on another occasion, two ransomed ships left by the departing Germans had their Haitian flags laid on the decks and smeared with shit.<br />
<br />
If they didn’t exactly believe in the role of soft power, the Germans were bent on a naval build up to rival the other Atlantic powers in the arms race that preceded World War I. In order to project naval forces in the age of steam, coaling stations scattered throughout the world were a necessity. American wariness over German designs on a coaling station in Haiti only intensified with the outbreak of war in 1914.<br />
<br />
The Wilson administration had even more on its plate than petitioning bankers and the threat of a German a foothold in the <i>Mare Nostrum </i>of the American Caribbean. The Panama Canal had just opened its locks for business in 1914, and Haitian waters fronted the primary Caribbean passage to Panama. So Haiti, through no cause of her own, had vaulted in strategic importance in the year leading up to 1915.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Guillaume Sam would exit the legation the same way he entered. On the morning of July 28, his lifeless body was thrown over the wall. Sam’s torso was dragged through the streets, with his head, feet, hands, and various other parts carried about on poles. This was the scene in Port-au-Prince, rich and poor for a moment joined in universal rage, as the marines from the <i>USS Washington</i> landed launches and set out to secure the various legations in the city.<br />
<br />
<br />
But what then? After several days there was still no clear objective for U.S. forces onshore. Secretary of State Robert Lansing asked his boss for orders and in short order, Wilson delivered:<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1. We must send to Port-au-Prince a force sufficient to absolutely control the city…[and] the country immediately about it…</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">2. We must let the present Haitian Congress know that we will protect it but that we will not recognize any action on its part that does not put men in charge of affairs whom we can trust to handle and put an end to revolution.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">3.We must give all who now have authority there or who desire to have it…to understand that we shall take steps to prevent the payment of debts contracted to finance revolutions.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
No 14 points these, but reflective of the high minded principles that Wilson used in framing his foreign policy. If Wilson really did believe the US could bring tenable democracy to Haiti, it underscores his cabinet's continued ignorance of the country. <br />
<br />
The objective of the 19 years of American occupation, beyond the maintenance of civil order, was never clear. Perhaps the best legacy of this era was the dozens of memoirs and amateur histories written by the occupiers who dramatized the Haitian people and their Vodoo religion for popular consumption.<br />
<br />
That story is for another time. </span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-33136038986338522732010-01-21T18:08:00.000-08:002010-01-23T14:55:30.950-08:00Haiti II: A Bayonet for the Pen<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
To Toussaint L’Ouverture<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Toussaint, the most unhappy Man of Men!<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Within thy hearing, or thy head be now<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Pillowed in some deep dungeon’s earless den.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">O Miserable Chieftain! Where and when<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not; do thou<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies.<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">There’s not a breathing of the common wind<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Thy friends are exultations, agonies,<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">And love, and Man’s unconquerable mind.<br />
</div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">William Wordsworth<br />
</div><br />
<br />
With the British defeated and Napoleon’s ships of the line not yet on the horizon, Toussaint set to rebuild a shattered colony. Bereft of resources, skilled technicians, or any organ of state apart from the military he had molded from the chaos of revolt, he set a new foundation upon the ashes. The General in Chief commissioned schools, roads and a court system, established a tariff and a tax system, and above all, devised a new economic system to restore the plantation economy, the island's only conceivable source of wealth, without the return of the slavery. The compromise was a feudal model with vassals from the officer corps given the plantations and a class of conscripted ex-slave serfs whose hours and pay were to be regulated by the state. <span style="color: #327d13; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;"></span><br />
<br />
Toussaint handpicked a delegation charged with drafting a constitution, but he would not live to see the creation of the Black Republic. An armada carrying 28,000 troops arrived to reclaim the island as a stepping stone to a restored French-American empire. This time the plans were drawn by Napoleon himself. <span class="fullpost"><br />
<br />
Toussaint and his generals faced one last scorched earth campaign against superior forces. They torched the coastal towns and cities, poisoned the wells, and retreated into the mountains. But Napoleon had wisely sent his troops for a winter campaign, and the Haitians were months away from the rains that brought the season of fevers.<br />
<br />
Toussaint's troops were outnumbered and outgunned, and he was compelled to explore a negotiated surrender. Tricked into what he thought was an informal meeting outlining his terms, the Haitian leader was captured and whisked through the night to a war ship that immediately set sail for France. <br />
<br />
“In overthrowing me they have cut off only the trunk of black liberty.” Toussaint said, eying Haiti’s emerald slopes for the last time. “It will flourish again through its roots. They are many and deep.”<br />
<br />
<br />
Within months of the publication of Wordsworth's homage to the imprisoned leader, Toussaint expired in a freezing cell set high in the Alps. His loss was devastating to the prospects of the country he had delivered through a decade of constant warfare. <br />
<br />
Not that his enemies would fare better. May came, and so did the rains. The French were bled by malaria and the Yellow Fever, then crushed by Toussaint’s one-time lieutenant Dessalines. The thousands of soldiers and millions of Francs wasted in the Haitian campaign dashed Napoleon’s hopes for American empire and forced his hand in the sale of Louisiana to the United States. <br />
<br />
Dessalines was no Toussaint; he lacked the vision of his mentor. The military dictatorship set up by Toussaint, for lack of alternative, became the precedent Dessalines and an endless succession of military rulers would follow.<br />
<br />
Toussaint realized a successful Haitian state could not flourish without knowledge, skills, and resources from the outside world. Born into the cane fields, Dessaline’s only schooling had been the brutality of the lash. In the seat of power, his vision was focused on the common passion for revenge.<br />
<br />
New Year’s Eve 1803 was also the eve of Haiti’s formal Declaration of Independence. The generals who had assembled to deliver this proclamation found their drafts lacking. No wonder, few of them could write or read. Each revision had to be read allowed so that the General-in-Chief could follow their stumbling progress.<br />
<br />
“But this doesn’t say what we feel,” the convention’s secretary exclaimed, “We should have a <i>blanc's</i> skin for the parchment. We'll use his skull for the inkwell, his blood for ink, a bayonet for the pen!”<br />
<br />
Dessalines agreed with the sentiment, and on the spot assigned the man to write Haiti's first national document. Perhaps the outburst inspired him to pen the opening stanza for the Haitian state with more blood. <br />
<br />
In his first month in power, Dessalines set out to exterminate all white men, women and children on the island. His soldiers blocked access to the ports while whites were rounded up and killed. Planters were ordered to pay steep ransom in exchange for their lives, those that showed up were first relieved of their gold, then their heads. After a month of methodical slaughter, a decree was issued that any women or children still in hiding would be given safe passage. Those foolish enough to heed the decree were executed. Dessalines did spare a handful of American merchants and British citizens, a few priests, and the pitiful dregs of the Polish Legion that two years before in Italy had been forced onto West Indies bound frigates.<br />
<br />
The above events are not catalogued for their cruelty; in the context of the preceding plantation regime, the violence was not exceptional. Yet Dessalines’ myopic leadership played into the hands of his enemies abroad, and would have long lasting repercussions for a nation already challenged by an inhospitable climate and a lack of resources. The mere existence of the Haitian state was a threat to the Atlantic plantation system, and his vengeance served as justification for the world to shun the new nation. It would be over two decades before a single government would recognize Haiti, and by that time the island was deep on a course that would careen from slumber to nightmare. </span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-2535299571256046922010-01-19T14:31:00.000-08:002010-09-08T18:04:24.334-07:00Haiti I: Beyond the Mountains<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><i>Deye mon genmon</i>--Beyond the mountains, there are mountains. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3UfdVmbjyg8/S1Y13MifsHI/AAAAAAAAAFo/dxgSzsxeoDE/s1600/haiti-mountains.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3UfdVmbjyg8/S1Y13MifsHI/AAAAAAAAAFo/dxgSzsxeoDE/s400/haiti-mountains.jpg" /></a>Language is a repository of culture, and perhaps no single expression in the French Creole dialect better illustrates the Western Hemisphere’s most long suffering nation. The phrase describes the Haitian landscape, dense folds of green mountains and impenetrable tropical valleys, as perceived from the sun scorched coastal plain.<br />
<br />
In Creole, the only language spoken by the vast majority of contemporary Haitians, this saying is invoked as a vengeful warning to the perpetrator of an evil deed. It could as well describe the waves of misfortune that have roiled the island nation over half a millennium of recorded history. The earthquake that razed large swaths of Port-au-Prince has claimed untold lives and by any measure ranks among the all time worst natural disasters. Sadly, it is just the latest devastation wrought on a countryside utterly disfigured by centuries of exploitation and bloodshed, poverty and displacement. One need not consult the history books for evidence, the ruined landscape has rendered Haiti’s eastern border with Santo Domingo visible from outer space.<br />
<br />
Fault lines are not the only natural phenomena that have conspired against the Caribbean nation. Ocean currents doomed the island’s Taino inhabitants five centuries ago. <span class="fullpost"> Waters streaming straight across the Atlantic deposited a group of Europeans led by a cocksure Italian who had grossly underestimated the circumference of the globe. India this new land was not. The islanders might have been spared further molestation if it hadn’t been for the little gold pieces they wore in their noses. Columbus liked the look those little gold pieces, and he convinced his bullion minded bosses for a commission to search for more. <br />
<br />
Columbus and his contemporaries returned, and brought with them small pox, plague, yellow fever, influenza, and a rash of other diseases to which the Taino had no natural defenses. The Spaniards’ insane demands for more and bigger gold pieces forced the dwindling native population into the mines. Many of these enslaved islanders were pushed to suicide, though it must be said historians still debate the veracity of this <a href="http:/">Black Legend</a>. Regardless the extent they were man made or natural horrors, after little more than a century the decimation of the original Haitians was complete. <br />
<br />
The next two hundred years brought more suffering to the island. After unfruitful attempts at indentured servitude, the colonial powers hit a formula that drove modern capitalism into the 19th Century. The Europeans shipped firearms to Africa, slaves across the Atlantic, and sugar back to Europe. <br />
<br />
Nowhere was formula more successful than the French colony occupying the western third of Hispaniola. Saint Domingue, the “Pearl of the Antilles,” was the most profitable plantation island in the Caribbean and the envy of all the mercantile powers in the North Atlantic. At the dawn of the French Revolution, Saint Domingue produced nearly 40 percent of the sugar consumed in Europe and North America, and was responsible for up to two thirds of the tropical groceries produced in the French colonial possessions.<br />
<br />
This enthusiasm did not extend to the Africans who toiled for the island’s sugary pearls. Conditions for the island’s workforce were so grim as to preclude human reproduction anywhere near replacement level. In 1789, after 150 years of the triangle trade, an overwhelming majority of the colony’s 500,000 slaves had been directly imported from Africa. <br />
<br />
A plantation slave working the cane fields had a life expectancy of seven years from the time his chained feet were set on the on the docks of Cap Francois. A significant number who survived the hellish Middle Passage wouldn’t endure two seasons of drudgery on a sugar plantation. The survivors of this period, referred to in the planters’ ledgers as “seasoning”, might look forward to 10 years of more toil. Or a slip during the 20-hour shift at harvest might end in the voracious teeth of the cane mill. Even if a foreman were on hand to cut the harness of the horses driving the mill shaft and to sever the slave’s arm clean above the elbow, infection would likely finish the machine’s work. <br />
<br />
There were mountains beyond the mountains that fronted the miserable coastal plain, and beyond these mountains there were survivors. Thousands of slaves annually fled the horrors of the plantation regime, and those who managed to evade the slave catchers and colonial special forces sought hideouts carved into the remote folds of jungle-clad slopes. Entire communities subsisted in the interior, self-governing bands who raised a guard to stand watch beyond camouflaged moats and wooden palisades. These maroon communities were largely self sufficient, though the occasional raid on the plantations supplemented provisions and no doubt boosted morale. That these groups became recognized by treaties attests to their strength vis-a-vis a colonial government that lacked the power to eradicate them. <br />
<br />
The maroons did more than survive apart from the plantation economy. They provided a cultural continuity impossible on the plantations. Their stories traveled up and down the Atlantic Coasts with the slaves and free men of color among the seamen who worked the ships of the maritime economy. Spread upon the common wind, events on Saint Domingue inspired slaves and terrified planters throughout the New World. Slaves of the Western Atlantic would follow the exploits of Haitian leaders during the Revolution, but the consciousness of African struggle in the New World had deeper roots. <br />
<br />
Uprisings in Cuba, Louisiana and Brazil chose to invoke an earlier enemy of plantation society. In 1805, a band of Brazilian slaves wore amulets bearing the name of the legendary Haitian maroon Macandal. <br />
<br />
In the early 1740’s Macandal escaped his plantation for the mountains beyond the mountains. By most accounts Macandal had lost his arm up to the shoulder when it was caught in a mill shaft, and he later escaped to the mountains from his job as a shepherd. The maroon gathered knowledge of the land and oral history from the survivors who had spent decades in remote caves and mountain hideouts. Schooled in Africa, he was literate in Arabic and likely taught himself to read French. He applied his understanding of African medicinal arts to the plant life of the island. In time he built a network of maroons and slaves throughout the island.<br />
<br />
According to oral tradition, Macandal sat before his followers with a bowl at his feet and gave a lesson in history and his vision for the future. He explained that the bowl represented the island most of them had been brought to in chains. He then pulled a yellow scarf from the bowl. The yellow symbolized the original inhabitants of the island. Next he pulled a white scarf, symbolic of the people who had destroyed the original inhabitants and now ruled the island. The last scarf was black, the color of the people who would destroy the whites and reclaim possession of the land. In a short time, he said, they would restore island to its original name, Hayti, the land of mountains.<br />
<br />
Macandal did not conquer Haiti, but he shook the plantation system to its core. With his botanical knowledge he mastered the art of poison, and with his island wide network of conspirators his potions entered the livestock pens, then houses of the French elite at the close of 1757. Macandal's poisons killed hundreds. The whites were hysterical, they felt their vulnerability due to a total dependence on the slave workforce. At the last minute, Macandal’s larger plot to overthrow the planters was uncovered. He was hunted down and burned at the stake, though his followers claimed the one-armed man wiggled free of his binding and escaped the flames in the form of a fly.<br />
<br />
Thirty years later, the half million slaves toiling on Saint Domingue had not forgotten Francois Macandal. <br />
<br />
The first and only successful slave revolt in history had roots far deeper than the echoes of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity that began to reverberate on the island after the storming of the Bastille. The 1791 rebellion that began on Saint Domingue’s northern plain had many underlying causes, not least demography, a ten to one ratio of slave to white, coupled with the growing economic clout, and accompanying legal and social marginalization of a free, mixed race class that came to threaten, and rival in number, colonial whites.<br />
<br />
After the decades of unimaginable violence inflicted on a slave workforce-- hung by the ear with nails and stuffed up the ass with gunpowder, being whipped, burned, branded, buried alive, disfigured and crushed by instruments of torture it would be kind to describe as medieval--the reprisal was light. Many planters escaped with their lives to Paris and New Orleans.<br />
<br />
A grey haired coach driver in his late 40's, ancient by the brutal standards of the island, rose from obscurity to command the slave uprising. Toussaint L’Ouveture organized the chaotic outburst into an effective regular army. Toussaint’s direction of this fighting force would credit him among the most effective generals in the history of the modern world. His armies would defeat the French, the Spanish, and the English, the big three maritime powers of the age. Like Macandal, accounts of Toussaint would be feted in song and story on the slave rows from Maryland to Uruguay. <br />
<br />
After defeating Napoleon's bid to reclaim her colony in 1802--at the great cost of a scorched earth policy and the loss of the great Toussaint--Haiti would become the second independent state in the Western Hemisphere. She was also a pariah state, shunned by the slaveholding powers who feared Haiti’s example. From the time of the burning of the northern plain in 1791, Haitian leaders were faced with the harsh reality that their one valued commodity, sugar cane, was not something that could be abandoned. If the island nation was to support even the most basic aspects of government, let alone a military capable of repelling hostile world powers, Haiti would need to have a viable GDP. Someone would have to cut and process the cane. <br />
<br />
Toussaint was faced with this problem throughout his military campaigns. Christophe, Toussaint’s right hand lieutenant who would become Henry I, and Dessalines, the first ruler post independence, all faced the same dilemma. Each in turn were forced to issue decrees conscripting former slaves back into the detested cane fields. It is amazing how successful both men were in continuing the island's export economy. Within 18 months of his emergency rule, Toussaint managed to raise sugar production to nearly 70 percent of pre-war levels.<br />
<br />
Yet for an ex-slave, the chief desire was a plot of land far from the plantation. It was inevitable that sugar production would not be sustainable in the long term and a testament to people's respect of the revolutionary leadership that this terminal decline was forestalled until after Christophe’s presidency. The subsistence farming that still employs a majority of poor Haitians was a rebellion from the detested work with the sugar cane. <br />
<br />
In the next post I will engage in a very brief history of the first Black Republic. </span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-5767461820240825462009-12-23T16:31:00.000-08:002012-05-23T14:05:43.500-07:00Barranquilla IV: The Turk's GranddaughterThere was a disposable camera I brought back from college that sat on my desk at my mother’s house for years. I’d look at it each Thanksgiving and Christmas and think about getting it developed, then didn’t, reasoning it was several pictures short of a full reel. When I finally got around to taking the seven-year-old film to the pharmacy, the negatives had long turned the color of tomato soup. In the muck of reds and browns and rust I could see the outlines of faces, but they were indistinguishable to the point I couldn’t tell which face was my own. On my last evening in this apartment on avenue 43B, I woke up reminded of those negatives. Afternoon sleep for me has always been tinged with death and sweet lost time.<br />
<br />
<span class="fullpost"><br />
Since my Protestant upbringing has left me ill suited to siesta, I had tried to fight off the drowsiness, but my work ethic proved no match for Mama’s fish stew. Few sedatives were more powerful than the pungent broth special to this city of baking concrete where the only air conditioners are found in the bedroom. I had planned to cool off just a little, while waiting for the three o’clock sun to soften. Instead, I leaned back onto the uneven mattress, just to rest my eyes.<br />
<br />
I woke up groggy, the even stripes of yellow streetlight on the wall had appeared sometime beyond the blink of twilight at this latitude. I reached for the remote to turn off the ac so that sun-baked walls would flush the cool air from the room and me from the bed. <br />
<br />
The sound of heated argument that came from next door, as it did almost every afternoon and evening and on every weekend morning, was no longer the unsettling reminder that I was far away from home. The shouts had become familiar, and now that I knew their source, Rosita shouting into the phone line so that her 86-year-old mama would not miss a thing, I would probably come to miss them.<br />
<br />
<br />
The old woman was leaning forward in her plastic chair, her ear cupped towards her daughter’s conversation. Rosita smiled and waved me to the couch, and she shouted through the line that their gringo was about to depart. <br />
<br />
“Wee-liam! You are leaving! Us!” she shouted after she put down the phone. <br />
<br />
<br />
“Returning! To the United States!” she said. Though she spoke at maximum volume for her mother’s sake, she now screamed each word with an exaggerated emphasis that surely even an American could understand.<br />
<br />
“Mama! Will miss you! You are like! A son! To Mama!”<br />
<br />
“Mama will also miss her primary source of income,” I thought. <br />
<br />
The flat next door was in her name, and her daughter couldn’t possibly have wheedled as much money from a Colombian boarder. Perhaps they should have thought of that before they decided to turn me out for Carnival. They could easily fetch a month’s rent over the next five nights, and then I wish them good luck while waiting for another wayward gringo to fall out of the sky. <br />
<br />
Still, I was going to miss this apartment house with Elena and her daughters competing to keep me stuffed with tabouleh, babaganoush and the other dishes passed down from their Lebanese great-grandfather they referred to as the Turk. Elena kept the most watchful eye over my plate, and she hovered in the space between the counter and the stove, serving spoon in hand to fill any spaces that might open on my plate. <br />
<br />
“Mama doesn’t think you are coming back,” Rosita shouted, word by word, when I sat down on the couch. Elena pursed her lips into a pout and shook her head. I assured her it wasn’t true<br />
<br />
Elena knew that I wasn’t coming back, despite everything I had said and done to the contrary. It was easier to say I’d return than it was to say goodbye. I had almost convinced myself it was true, why else had I gone through the charade of sending resumes to all the colleges for teachings post next year, hedging my bets? I hadn’t read an American paper in three months, but if it was true that gringolandia was settling into the next Great Depression, maybe I could do worse than spending a few more years in Colombia. <br />
<br />
“If you stay for Carnaval, maybe you’ll meet a Colombian girl! Not a cachona!” Rosita yelled, sticking two fingers behind her head to emphasize cachona, a devil woman Rosita was convinced populated all the regions of Colombia outside of Barranquilla, though she suspected more than a few cachonas outside the radius of our block. <br />
<br />
<br />
“Lots of Cachonas” Elena repeated, chuckling into her lap. <br />
<br />
Elena mumbled though the beginning of a story. I struggled to make out her raspy words, but it was a story I had heard before. When she was a young woman, barely 20 years old, her family forbade her to go out the Saturday before Carnival. That has always been the night locals celebrated before the tourists arrived. At time Elena was engaged and her father did not think it appropriate for her to be out on the night when Barranquilla went wild. <br />
<br />
“Phew,” Elena whistled through her dentures, in rebuttal to the past.<br />
<br />
The hell she was staying home. Her brothers were going out, her parents were going out, even her grandparents had bought seats for that night’s parade. Who had ever heard of staying home on <i>Guacherna</i> on the account of marriage? <br />
<br />
A friend of Elena’s was hosting a party for her <i>comparsa</i>, a group that is the equivalent of a New Orleans crewe. This <i>comparsa</i> dressed as Marimondas, one of the most traditional of the Barranquilla Carnival disguises. Marimonda wore a clownish suit and a mask with elephant ears, a long, brightly colored tubular nose and matching tubing that made exaggerated eyes and lips, combining for a-not-so subtle symbol of the cock and balls. <br />
<br />
Elena noticed her fiancé almost immediately by his height and the wobble of a bad leg. She was busted. But he did not notice her, and since she was not supposed to be at the party, she did not let on to him. <br />
<br />
“When he died, and I still hadn’t told him I was at that party,” Elena chuckled into her lap. "that was 43 years ago."<br />
<br />
<br />
The minibus for Monteria left early, so I wished Elena and Rosita well, and in another token gesture that I would see them again, I entrusted them with a few books I had brought and a few more I had accumulated during my stay that I had no intentions of hauling through the jungle. I threw the rest of my things in a backpack before going out on a night walk.<br />
<br />
No one walks in Barranquilla, at least not in this relatively well-off quadrant of the city. During the day the tropical sun stirs a noxious cocktail of car horns and diesel fumes on roads where traffic signals are suggestions and pedestrians a nuisance. At night there are no cars, no pedestrians, and it is possible to walk on the roads alongside two foot high curbs that allow the streets to double as a drainage system in the rainy months. <br />
<br />
The breeze that blew in off the Caribbean during winter months was a gale tonight, and my blood had thinned to the point I almost agreed with the locals that 70 degrees qualified as cold. I walked across a concrete park, and weaved along a grid of riverbed streets in the direction of a supermarket Cineplex. <br />
</span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-57001228098853419652009-12-09T16:03:00.000-08:002009-12-09T16:05:08.920-08:00Barranquilla III: Donaldo“Donaldo, leak the duke.” <br />
<br />
Like the duck, he said.<br />
<br />
That’s how Donaldo introduced himself the first time he sat down at my table at the vegetarian place in Barranquilla. In a culture whose social currency is it’s grilled meat, the vegetarian restaurant is like a social club for adults with Asperger’s. Colombia was not as bad as Argentina, where downtrodden vegetarians didn’t dare make eye contact with one another as they shuffled through the buffet lines of second floor haunts invisible from street level.<br />
<br />
If the patrons here didn’t bear the shame of their Argentine compatriots, they shared in an element of ritual about this restaurant and health food store where printed placemats announced two calendar months worth of daily menus without a repeating meal. Everything else about the place was OCD delight. <br />
<br />
<span class="fullpost"><br />
<br />
The same regulars made up the daily lunch crowd, and they would trickle in to what might as well have been assigned seats, designated by profession. Nurses occupied the two tables nearest the door, the next two tables in the shotgun floor plan were filled in by the secretaries. At the other end of the narrow dining hall, businessmen with suspiciously round bellies conspired underneath the overmatched air conditioner on the back wall of the dining room. Various artisans and professional types I couldn’t quite pigeonhole filled in the remaining tables. <br />
<br />
As the only representative for the freelance gringos I took a less desirable table next to the kitchen door. By second week Donaldo, an emissary from the professors table, began joining me for coffee and by the second month I became a part of his lunch crew.<br />
<br />
A few days before Carnival, Donaldo unfolded a map of Panama and Northwest Colombia across the table. As he leaned back in his chair a wide smile revealed the gaps between jagged teeth. The way the corners of his lips stretched to his back molars and his small black eyes squinting under thick lenses balanced atop a long and pointed nose he reminded me less of a duck and more of cartoon crocodile. <br />
<br />
"El Tapon," Donaldo said, tapping in the space between a broken red line that represented the Panamerican Highway. <br />
<br />
"Juan D, ease possible."<br />
<br />
I nodded my head to buy the time I needed to figure out what he had said while hoping Julio or Maria might offer a clarifying comment, but our lunchtime companions just sat there staring into the map. <br />
<br />
It would have been easier if Donaldo had spoken in Spanish, but he was proud of his language skills. Rightfully so in a city where neither of the two English professors I had met, including Maria at my right, were reluctant to speak more than a few words. Donaldo did not lack confidence, though his inclination for outrageous pronouncements made his arbitrary grammar and thick accent difficult to decipher.<br />
<br />
“One day? You are saying I can cross the Darien Gap in one day?”<br />
<br />
“Si,” Donaldo’s smile broadened. <br />
<br />
As he nodded, wisps of mad professor hair flew in all directions.<br />
<br />
“How is that possible?” I asked, “That’s at least 100 kilometers by land.” <br />
<br />
I measured a 100 kilometers with my forefinger and thumb on the map’s scale and transferred the pinched off space to connect the only missing link in a network of roads that stretched from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. <br />
<br />
“No, leak these,” like this, the old man bit off his smile as he concentrated on the map.<br />
<br />
Donaldo then ran a finger past my thumb up the wedge of Northwest Colombia that tapers between the border and the Caribbean coast until the two lines met at point marked Cabo Tiburon, Shark Cape. The top of this little sliver of Colombia was north of the of the Pan American Highway’s terminus at Yaviza, Panama. He pressed his thumb down on a distance half the width of the north-south break between the red line of roadway.<br />
<br />
El Tapon means the plug, the 100 km wide swath of jungle clad mountains and treacherous swampland between Colombia and Panama otherwise known as the Darien Gap. The Darien is not only home to some of Earth's least inviting terrain, it is teeming with tropical diseases and all sorts of venomous life forms that creep and crawl and slither. <br />
<br />
The noxious plant and animal species are only outdone by the particularly terrifying strains of homo sapien found in the Darien, nominally left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries who have eschewed political ideology for cocaine profits. The variously affilated drug traffickers and arms smugglers contest the few semblances of trails that meander through the Darien Gap. <br />
<br />
I expected Maria to interject, or to give me some signal that this man in the gray smock seated across from me was putting me on, that gringos should not think of blazing trails through the jungle. She stared into the blue space that indicated the Caribbean on the map, her far off eyes seemed lost in a daydream. Julio was with us, but the shop teacher wasn’t as worldly wise as Donaldo. He waited for his friend to continue the lesson.<br />
<br />
I’m not sure I could have found another three Colombians more consenting of an American making a land crossing of the Darien Gap. While I sat there and watched Donald connect the blue coast to the red line of the Pan American with a single joint of his gnarled thumb, it looked possible. <br />
<br />
Donaldo had given me the idea for a trip back up the spine of Central America while looking though a folder of ESL materials I had brought to teach conversation classes to some university students Maria had referred me. He took interest in a wrinkled brochure I had picked up years ago in the Nashville airport. The brochure had become a stock lesson plan, students used it to make an advertisement highlighting the places of interest in their own hometown. <br />
<br />
“Nashville, Music Seedy, U. S.A,” Donaldo said, smiling at the words on the cover. <br />
<br />
He flipped open the brochure and read from the list of tourist attractions with a voice of mock wonder.<br />
<br />
“The home of William Walker”<br />
<br />
The grey-eyed man of destiny was definitely not included in the list of Music City attractions. How Donaldo had linked Walker to his place of birth by looking at that dog-eared brochure, I will never know.<br />
<br />
“William Walker?” I said, “How do you know about William Walker?”<br />
<br />
“El Filibustero, from Nashville Nosh Veal!”<br />
<br />
Donaldo knew a great deal about William Walker. He had spent some time living in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, where the name William Walker, was still an incantation used by grandmothers to scare the children at night. Be careful, or William Walker is going to get you! <br />
<br />
The crazy professor knew when he had a captive audience. He gave me his widest crocodile grin and told me a story I had yet to hear about my doctor-turned-lawyer-turned-journalist-turned-soldier of fortune ancestor. <br />
<br />
“Walker had plans to invade Martinque, he was going to use it as a beachhead to invade Central America. He was going to use the blacks on the island as plantation slaves in Nicaragua. The President of United States had given him permission,” Donaldo said.<br />
<br />
His anecdote made about as much sense as William Walker’s motives in his filibustering years, so though I had never encountered this particular rumor, I scribbled it down in my notebook. This just egged him on, and on. He rambled through stories of his time in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras. <br />
<br />
The more he spoke the less I understood, until his swallowed Costeño accent washed into the whine of the hopelessly overmatched air conditioner losing ground to the afternoon heat. But I knew I had to go back to Nicaragua to find the other wild haired professors who dug for arcana and yellowing half-truths to spin legends about the little man from my hometown and family tree who came to terrorize a region and personify two centuries of American imperialism. <br />
<br />
</span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-74351321687842812832009-11-13T13:15:00.000-08:002009-11-13T14:56:14.720-08:00Natchez Trace XII: Training DaysOn the map day six did not look challenging. Rather than try and make it 77 miles to Florence, Alabama in a day, I booked a cabin at Tishomingo State Park, just 45 miles from Tupelo. I needed every last pedal stroke of my training to not break down on the ride. <br />
<br />
Seven weeks earlier, I wrote my friend Adam before leaving Colombia, “Can a guy without much cycling experience train for a 450 mile ride in a month?”<br />
<br />
Adam is one of those guys with the fancy jerseys. He is on a racing team and regularly rides a 100 miles in a day, a century, the insiders call it. <br />
<br />
“Absolutely,” he replied. <br />
<br />
I should have remembered sports enthusiasts are the most incorrigible optimists when it comes to the realm of the possible. <span class="fullpost"><br />
<br />
To his credit, he kept the instructions simple. Train as much and as hard as possible before the ride. Don’t train in too high of a gear; better to keep the legs moving at about 90 rpm. He recommended that if I couldn’t train on a real bike the next best thing was spinning. Spin bikes more closely imitate the pedal action on a road bike than regular exercise models. Just as importantly, they have real bicycle saddles. Sure enough, after my first workout a sore butt became the weak link in my training. <br />
<br />
<br />
If I didn’t find every spin bike between Barranquilla and the Rio Grande, I came close.<br />
<br />
I figured I could sneak in 25 training rides to get into shape for the Trace. This regime would shaped the course I took to get back home. I had a few more days in Barranquilla, and Rosita told me there was a gym just around the corner from our apartment building. I thought I had understood her wrong. I had lived in this place for 3 months without noticing a gym not even 50 yards away. <br />
<br />
There it was, opposite the concrete park, a dusty little storefront with aluminum grilling over the windows. I had never noticed the Atlas figure on the rectangular sign above the door, or the spin bikes looking out the front windows. It was just a single room with some free weights in the back, and a few worn exercise machines sprinkled around the place. The ten spin bikes were well worn, the resistance knobs were rusting from the years of sweat and humidity in a room without air conditioning. The gym was run by a short body builder with the strut of a silverback gorilla. He’d occasionally stop near the wall opposite his counter for no apparent reason but to steal a glance in the mirror at his biceps. <br />
<br />
I bought a weeklong membership to the Atlas. This was my first gym membership, a good place as any to make some novice mistakes. <br />
<br />
The first five minutes of my first ride were interminable. I checked the minute hand on the plastic clock above the counter about once every thirty seconds, regulating my rpm, I convinced myself. There were no fans to stir the oppressive tropical air. I thought if I took off my shirt maybe it would be slightly more tolerable in the 90-degree room. There were no women around, just a couple muscle junkies on the bench press. <br />
<br />
As soon as I had peeled off my dripping shirt, the silverback bounded over from his habitat near the free weights, one set of knuckles almost scraping the concrete floor, while his other arm wagged a stubby a finger. Next to the bike, he started pantomiming, even though I had negotiated the membership fee in a more than passable Spanish.<br />
<br />
I knew what he was telling me, though if I hadn’t, the sign language would have just confused the issue, his bulky arms were not meant for painting pictures.<br />
<br />
I gave him a blank stare in hopes he might continue the show. If this were charades I might have guessed he was a studio ape ripping off a tuxedo near the end of a trying day on set. The gesture became more convincing with repetition, two hands grabbing in front of his washboard abs and violently lifting up and out over his head. Then he wagged a finger close in front of my nose. <br />
<br />
I’d learn it was a universal gym protocol I had violated—do not remove your shirt. Still, I imagine most gyms are built less like pizza ovens. At least my soaked shirt felt cool against my skin. I’d make some more faux pas on my gym hopping up the isthmus, but I’m glad I learned the basics in Barranquilla<br />
<br />
In Monteria, I spun with the wives and girlfriends of some of the most terrifying figures in Colombian paramilitary. This ranching capital is the last seat of power for the AUC, its higher ups protected by President Uribe himself, as he is the owner of a sprawling hacienda north of town. One can guess how important a person is based on the strength of their bodyguard. Collectively, my workout partners were important enough to merit one half dozen AK 47 toting guards at the front door and another half dozen out back. If I had been in some nowhere town other than Monteria, I couldn’t have felt as confident these weren’t just drug henchman. Paramilitaries, mafiosos, and left wing insurgents are all involved in the drug trade, and they largely agree on their assault rifles of choice, the durable and cost effective Kalashnikov. Colombians have told me the only reliable way to know the difference between Paras and the FARC is by their jungle boots. The right-wingers wear leather, and the lefties sport cheaper plastic footwear. Cartels stick to the concrete. Government troops, who could also be anywhere, are easier to distinguish, just look for their Israeli designed Galil rifles. <br />
<br />
This wasn’t the kind of gym where one needed a lock for the lockers. It was just me, another silverback trainer--this one probably a eunuch--and a dozen kept women, spandex clinging to their surgically enhanced bodies. <br />
<br />
If there was a spin bike in the Darien, I missed it. <br />
<br />
<br />
Panama City was like an extension of Miami, the athletic clubs notwithstanding. I am surprised they let me enter with my grungy black shoes and bathing suit. It’s amazing what a gringo can get away with sometimes.<br />
<br />
In San Salvador I found a gym near the University that would only let me ride if I joined a spin class. They rode like they were always in the mountains. The only reward at the summit was asphyxiation, gulping down San Salvador smog was like jumping into a trench fogged with mustard gas. The air was darkened by eternally gridlocked second-hand American school buses puking black clouds of diesel smoke. The city somehow smelled worse than the diesel fumes; it stank of burning garbage. When I hit the streets after a workout my eyes watered and my lungs burned and I wondered what the hell was the point in exercising in a city where breathing might prove unhealthier than smoking. At least cigarettes come with filters.<br />
<br />
Guatemala City might have had a gym, but I’d prefer a week in San Salvador to a night in that cesspit of urban agglomeration gone terribly wrong. The villages around Lago Atitlan were gym free. One of the expat hippies I met there suggested an astral projection class, where, for 40 bucks, I could visualize the challenges of my coming bike ride on a higher plane of consciousness. I opted for a massage instead.<br />
<br />
The gym owner in crumbling downtown Veracruz took one look at my black shoes and told me to come back when I found something decent to wear. This exchange came after I had paid the cashier. Oh, and No Refunds.<br />
<br />
I found a gym on the back streets of old town Monterrey, where a leathery man outside in a rocking chair let me in for a dollar. The dusty hall had a few weight machines and four rusted bikes directly across from a boxing ring. The instructor was teaching a lesson in counter punching to a teenager. Each time the teenager jabbed the instructor deflected the blow with a target glove and smacked the boy in the face with his other glove hen shouted “again!” After a while he looked frustrated with his pupil and started yelling in my direction, beckoning me to step into the ring. Glass Jaw Wilson knows his limitations. I declined, and rode for an hour one and twenty minutes while the lead-footed kid took a beating. I got off that bike in as good of shape as I’d been in my entire life.<br />
<br />
I managed 17 workouts before New Orleans, where I tried my new bike out on the levee. I chose a hybrid, the narrow tires on road bikes made nervous, and though the upright position on my Giant Cypress meant less efficiency, it also meant less leaning over day after day for 450 miles. I figured my back would appreciate it. <br />
<br />
The day before I got on the Marty Baskerville I learned that road miles really were different than time logged on a spin bike. After 12 miles, I felt my thighs tightening, so I prescribed myself a beer. I spent the rest of the afternoon alternating riding and drinking. Twenty-five miles and five beers later, I felt pretty good. I was ready for a week on the Trace.<br />
<br />
Turned out the 45 miles to Tishomingo would be the most challenging ride of the trip. The undulating hills got steeper, the ascents longer than anything before Tupelo. <br />
Three miles from the park, within sight of the highest point in Mississippi, a hundred yards from the top of the last hill before the park, I surrendered. I got off my bike and walked it to the top. <br />
My legs weren’t broken, so the defeat was mental. Next time I’ll take the hippie class.<br />
<br />
My Wal Mart bought dinner was delicious, a bachelor’s recipee I call the Calorie Bowl, baked beans topped with sliced almonds. I ate the last of the French Camp loaf, and ignored my only dinner companion, a deer mounted on the wall across from the bed. I slept for 10 hours untroubled by my insomniac roommate’s disapproving glare. At dawn I was ready for my last morning in Mississippi, my only day in Alabama, and a delicate spring afternoon in southern Tennessee. <br />
</span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-79755203587533532712009-11-06T17:59:00.000-08:002009-11-09T13:54:21.345-08:00Natchez Trace XI: A Death on the Trace“Still,” officer James Myers shook his head. “This is the only road for bicycling in Mississippi.” <br />
<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3UfdVmbjyg8/SvTNDBA_DWI/AAAAAAAAAFc/ORqzOdgVfIs/s1600-h/DSCF0335.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3UfdVmbjyg8/SvTNDBA_DWI/AAAAAAAAAFc/ORqzOdgVfIs/s320/DSCF0335.JPG" /></a>Even with the grisly wreckage strewn out on the black top behind him, his words rang true. The Natchez Trace was the only road even remotely safe for long distance cycling in the state of Mississippi. Mississippians do not abide sharing right of way with slow moving geeks under foam helmets. <br />
<br />
Since mile marker one five days ago, I had totaled less than two miles off the Trace, and twice in that time I was run off the road. That averages to just over one terrifying incident per mile outside the Parkway’s federal protection. <br />
<br />
At least both drivers had the decency to honk before running me down. <span class="fullpost"> In Port Gibson, a man in a white minivan was enraged at the prospect of waiting 15 seconds before he could safely pass me due to oncoming traffic on Church Street. Then he realized he didn’t have to wait. He laid knuckles into his horn and accelerated. I had been looking over my shoulder and had just enough time to swerve into a ditch. <br />
<br />
My near miss in Mathiston was less provoked. I started day five with a quarter mile ride from the motel back to the Trace on a four lane divided highway. I was riding near the shoulder in the right lane when another white minivan approached from behind. Rather than changing to the open passing lane, he slowed down which led me to think he was about to turn. Then he started honking. I held my ground a couple inches from the white line, clear of the glass and twisted metal detritus on the paved shoulder. I waved my arm, motioning him to pass me in the open left lane—we were the only two people on the road. Instead, he dug into his horn and gunned for my back tire. As I swerved into the shoulder my pannier bag dodged his front bumper by a few inches. He gave me the finger out over the roof of his car. Happy Earth Day, mother fucker.<br />
<br />
I had a better Earth Day than the cyclist whose mangled bike lay beyond Officer Myers’ car.<br />
<br />
I first heard something had gone wrong after lunch when I pulled back onto the Trace and was flagged by a southbound pick up truck.<br />
<br />
“Were you riding with a girl back there?” the man asked.<br />
<br />
“No, why, is she alright?”<br />
<br />
“I don’t think so,” he said as he rolled away.<br />
<br />
A few minutes later one, then another police cruisers roared past, their blue and red lights traced the road’s gentle curves at 100 miles an hour. Then an ambulance sped past from the other direction. Without flashing lights or horn, the bulky vehicle marked the silent retreat of a crestfallen warrior.<br />
<br />
A few minutes past mile marker 240 I rolled up on a Chickasaw County police car parked horizontally across the road. An officer was directing cars to turn around and take a detour back and around the Trace. I asked her how long I would have to wait for the road to open. She did not have an answer.<br />
<br />
It was not clear from the scene behind her what had happened. Carnage from the wreck was strewn 300 feet and seemed improbable to have been caused by a single collision. A white road bike with crumpled tires and busted pannier bags rested on the double yellow just beyond the police car. The guilty SUV sulked midway down the grassy shoulder.<br />
<br />
I figured if I waited long enough one of the officers pacing back and forth through the scene would escort me through. After a half hour I asked the traffic officer what was going on, and she deferred my question to an approaching pacer. Meyers had been the first officer to arrive but had since been relegated by his superiors. <br />
<br />
"Were you traveling with a woman named Esther?" he asked.<br />
<br />
I said I was not.<br />
<br />
He told me he couldn’t answer any questions about the collision. He then went on to tell me everything but the suspect’s name and age. The road was blocked because it was a crime scene; they were waiting for a coroner to arrive from Tupelo. The cyclist, a “heavier woman” from the Netherlands, was most likely killed upon impact. <br />
<br />
<br />
"This is the first fatality in about about three years," Meyers said.<br />
<br />
He said most collisions happen at twilight, when it got hard to see bikers on the road. He noted that my bright blue jersey had stuck out nicely as he streaked past. <br />
<br />
It was past 4:30. I had a little over twenty-five miles to go, and if I was going to make it to Tupelo before sundown I would need to get pedaling soon. An eight-mile detour wasn’t an option for me. Sixty-five miles was already pushing it today, and there was no way I was venturing outside the relative sanctuary of the Trace. I pointed out to James that I would be faced with a twilight ride if I had to wait much longer. <br />
<br />
James agreed, and after a few more minutes he walked me past the roadblock. <br />
<br />
A hundred feet behind the mangled bike, the cyclist’s items spread out in a wake, a plastic shopping bag smeared with coleslaw, fried chicken, a can of Budweiser. Further down the road were her extra clothes: a red raincoat, jeans and underwear. Closely bunched at the far end of the plume, a hundred yards from bike, lay a helmet still in tact, a pair of sunglasses, a cell phone, and a streak of congealed blood.<br />
<br />
A television crew had set up on the other side of the roadblock. The reporter wanted to ask me some questions. I told him what I had seen when I pulled up and mentioned that sad, quiet ambulance with its lights in mourning. He seemed disappointed with my report, perhaps goading me to elaborate for the audience on the other side of the lens. I had nothing sensational to say to the camera. They went with the footage anyway. I guess I had looked sufficiently aggrieved.<br />
<br />
The cars that passed me the rest of way that afternoon did so with extra deference. Drivers were also unexpectedly cooperative on the mile I was forced to ride on a busy six-lane road into downtown Tupelo, where I got the feeling that Esther’s death was all over the evening traffic reports. <br />
<br />
I’d learn after watching myself on the news the next morning that the victim’s name was Esther Hageman, a 51 year old journalist from the Netherlands who was on a cycling tour of the South. The driver of the SUV, whose name would be released later, was 58-year old Wendell Blount, a convicted felon who had been high on morphine at the time of the collision. </span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-74512771177935239202009-11-03T09:38:00.000-08:002009-11-03T09:38:00.107-08:00Natchez Trace X: Kosciusko to MathistonA beautiful Indian woman was working behind the counter of the modern stand at the Days Inn Kosciusko. She and her husband weren’t natives of course, but from the subcontinent Columbus had been trying to find before claiming Hispaniola for his Crown. These Indians had come by way San Jose, California. They had just finished the company’s management program and were now working up the corporate ladder. I couldn’t imagine a lower rung than Kosciusko, MS, though in fairness it was dark when I arrived and I was too tired to walk the mile into the center of town. <br />
<br />
My hostess was diplomatic when I asked her what she thought of Mississippi—she dodged the question—though she did tell me she missed living in the Bay Area. She was hoping they would receive another placement within the year. I can vouch for the couple. They ran a clean and friendly operation.<br />
<br />
The town of Kosciusko was named after a Polish engineer who had an impressive Age of Enlightement resume. A believer in the promise of an American republic, Thaddeus Kosciusko sailed from Europe to Philadelphia and enlisted with the rebels. <span class="fullpost"> His talents were quickly recognized and he was promoted to Chief Engineer of the Continental Army. He designed the defensive fortifications at Philadelphia and Ticonderoga as well as the academy at West Point. Upon leaving America for Poland, he decreed the lands given to him for his invaluable services be used as capital to buy the freedom of slaves. <br />
<br />
His work in Poland was no less impressive. He commanded an army that scored successive victories over the larger forces of the invading Russians. Poland being Poland, her Prussian and Lithuanian neighbors sold her out for their own gain. Still, Kosciusko won battles against the encroaching Czarist army and might have triumphed had the Polish King not reached an agreement behind Kosciusko’s back to capitulate and save his own skin. Never having lost a battle as head of the Polish armies, Kosciusko was forced to accept the terms negotiated by his king that reduced their nation to a minor state-let. In a last effort to mobilize the people against the invaders, he abolished serfdom and raised an insurgent army that for a time threatened to repel the Russian forces. This time he was defeated in the field and captured. He was forced to watch from a St. Petersburg prison as Russia, Austria, and Prussia swallowed up the remainder of Polish territory so that politically his homeland ceased to exist.<br />
<br />
There is a museum dedicated to Thaddeus Kosciusko just outside of town at mile marker 162. Why someone had chosen this spot to commemorate the Polish hero, a site that was just as much in the middle of nowhere at the close of the eighteenth century as it is today, and why there was an annex with a tribute to Oprah Winfrey, the museum did not make clear. <br />
<br />
The weathermen didn’t forecast the cold rain that fell on the stretch between Kosciusko and French Camp, or maybe they did, and figured it not worth mentioning if no one would be there to notice. I only saw two cars that morning. <br />
<br />
Even with my legs pumping at 90 rpm the steady rain drove the cold into my bones. French Camp was the only ink on the map between Kosciusko and my destination for the night, and luckily there was a small country restaurant right off the Trace. <br />
<br />
The couple from Tupelo at the table next to me claimed this French Camp retreat had the best BLT’s in Mississippi. The bread was homemade, baked by the students at the French Camp Academy who also served in the restaurant. I opted for a thick slice of white bread and potato soup, the perfect lunch to bring some heat back into my hands and feet. After lunch I wandered into town and stopped at the welcome center operated by the school. French Camp Academy was a second chance special education school that emphasized work and prayer. I chatted with some of the students who came from all over the southeast. They were happy to have a distraction and they asked me every question they could think of to ask. The kids were sweet, if not imaginative. They soon ran out of questions and their supervisor put them back to work before giving me suggestions for some bike rides in the area. She sent me off with a half loaf of home made bread. <br />
<br />
I finished day four in Mathiston, a one-diner town across the Trace from Pigeon Roost named for the passenger pigeons that had once chosen it as a favorite rest stop. It is impossible to imagine the extinct birds that used to travel in flocks of millions, by some accounts billions. Their flocks stretched for tens of miles, thick enough to blot out the noonday sun when they passed overhead. After landing for the night, they would leave a wake of broken tree branches and blizzards of bird shit. <br />
<br />
The stand at Mathiston did not compare with the previous night in Kosciusko. The cinderblock cells at the Mathiston Motor Inn were a refuge for truckers, prostitutes and, from the looks of the corroded sink and tub in the bathroom, itinerant meth chemists. I was too tired to be bothered by the grime, and the room sufficed for bike storage and sleeping. Two hundred miles down, two hundred and forty to go. </span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-13063504464157789322009-11-02T16:55:00.000-08:002009-11-02T16:55:18.443-08:00Natchez Trace IX: Old Hickory and the Death of the Old TraceThough there is no clear beginning to the history of the animal runs and footpaths that became the old Trace, its end is easier to pinpoint. In 1811, the <i>New Orleans</i> demonstrated to a multitude of skeptics the possibility of coupling steam engine to riverboat and pushing up current, past the treacherous sawyers, snags and whirlpools on the Mississippi. <br />
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Once upriver navigation became reality, smoke-stacked paddle wheelers proliferated like algae blooms on tamer waters. Within a decade nearly a thousand steamboats plied the Mississippi. By that time even the poorest farmer could afford the third class passage that entitled him a spot on a crowded deck where he would sleep out in the elements. Given the accidents and violence on the river, the water route was no less treacherous than the Trace, but it saved at least a month in travel time and avoided a 500-mile walk back to the Cumberland Valley. It should have meant less business for the Native Americans who by treaty had exclusive rights to operate the inns, known as stands, along the road's desolate stretch through the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations. <br />
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Though at the same time the road was losing its northbound traffic, greater numbers pushed south. Unscrupulous characters drove chained men for whom they had no or dubious title. Otherwise they too would have taken the quicker, and more policed, river route to the Mississippi bottomlands where cotton production was booming and the demand for human capital insatiable. Settlers with an eye for this wilderness, now within the boundaries of the young republic, arrived in increasing numbers hungry for land and confident their government would soon wrest it from tribal control. <br />
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The Trace was already losing its commercial viability by the time Andrew Jackson earned his most famous moniker on this road. <span class="fullpost"> At start of the War of 1812, Jackson led the volunteer Tennessee Militia down river to aid the defense of New Orleans. Yet his troops were delayed, then abandoned, in Natchez due to the perfidious maneuverings of Jackson’s military superior in New Orleans, Major General James Wilkinson. The treasonous Wilkinson, archives have established he had once worked as a spy for the Spanish Crown, wanted no competition from the able Tennessean. Rather than allowing Jackson to join his forces in New Orleans, Wilkinson commanded him to proceed no further than Natchez while he worked to secure orders from Washington that would dismiss the Tennessean from command. <br />
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Denied permission to join forces along the Canadian front, and cut off from the government commissaries, Jackson staked his personal fortune to march the 1500 Volunteers in his charge from Natchez back to Nashville. Along the way the commander who was tough as a hickory tree offered his own mount to the sick and encouraging words to the dying. By 1815, the scalawag Wilkinson had stood court-martial for incompetence during the war and Jackson was a national hero for repelling a superior force of the British regulars at New Orleans. Jackson’s march home was a last hurrah for the road that Jefferson had deemed to be of vital national importance a decade before.<br />
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Old Hickory would commence with his most villainous legacy along the same road that had catapulted him to greatness. In 1820, at the close of that last relevant decade for the Trace, Jackson arrived at Doak’s Stand, just a few miles southwest of Kosciusko, as an agent of the federal government. There he set the terms by which the United States would claim the rich bottomlands of the Choctaw, who a few years prior had fought alongside Jackson in the Creek War. Jackson repaid his allies by pushing the tribe into Arkansas on the false promise that these new lands lay beyond white encroachment. Within another decade, Jackson had ridden the western vote into the White House and rewarded his constituents with the Indian Removal Actthat pushed the Choctaw, along the with other Indian Nations, even further west. When the last Native Americans east of the Mississippi shed their tears across the Trace, the road no longer held national importance. Nor could it be thought of as a cohesive unit. In the 1820’s the Trace began splintering into a series of local throughways. They would not be fully reconnected until my 29th birthday, the day when the last stretch of smooth pavement was opened to the public, over seventy years after the Natchez Trace Parkway was first conceived as a Depression era WPA project. </span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-62831581224416912152009-10-27T14:52:00.000-07:002009-10-27T16:14:34.108-07:00Natchez Trace VIII: Gentleman, Scholar, Athlete"I am not an athlete," was all I could tell Hank when he asked me a cycling question just before we unloaded my bike near mile marker 102. He must have realized then how hare brained this trip was for me. He gave me his cell phone number in case I got into trouble.<br /><br /> It is true—I am not an athlete. If I managed to finish the Natchez Trace, it would rank as the greatest athletic accomplishment of my life. <br /><br />I have never belonged to a gym or run more than 1 ½ miles, and that was for middle school cross country. I should be able to claim having run three miles, back in the dark days of MBA intramurals, an athletic program designed as punishment for students who didn’t play varsity sports. The curriculum consisted of rounding up the debaters, drama kids, slackers, and other athletically inept for a three-mile run through the neighborhoods in the vicinity of campus. At a school with the motto “Gentleman, Scholar, Athlete,” we were the short bus kids shoved into the module with the broken AC unit farthest from the principal’s office.<br /><br />None of us were in a particular hurry on those milk and honey spring afternoons. We’d trail behind whichever teacher drew the crap assignment of babysitting our run. The teacher was usually a jogger who had more interest in maintaining his pace than keeping tabs on the delinquent pack behind him. He would soon stop checking over his shoulder and start pulling away. The slackers had long dropped off, lighting their cigarettes in the first bushes suitable to hide the smoke. The debaters’ jokes would lose subtlety after the first half-mile, the teacher having grown smaller in the distance. After another half mile it was back to argument. The theater kids did, in English accents, whatever it was thespians do on an afternoon walk in the suburbs.<br /><br />I would have been happy if they had given us a football or basketball and told us to play a game. Yet field space and court time was at a premium at old Montgomery Bell, and this limited the options for the non-athlete. The option was to run, away from campus. <br /><br />So we schemed. <span class="fullpost"> Once we knew what days we’d have which teacher-jogger for our thrice-weekly runs, we could predict the routes he would be taking. Then a couple of us would coordinate in the mornings to stash a car somewhere along the route. This took some creativity in the last generation before cell phones.<br /><br />Occasionally our taskmaster would catch on that not all of us were coming back from the runs and change up the course. He’d keep tabs for the first mile and a half and jog in a straight line away from campus. At this point the teacher could resume his normal pace and the rest our sorry crew would be forced to complete the three miles, by jogging, walking or smoking our way back to school.<br /><br />On one of the afternoons we had guessed wrong I found myself stranded almost two miles from my car. I had stashed it along the Latin teacher’s normal running route to the west of campus; he took us south and east. Suddenly I didn’t have so many jogging buddies, and none of these fair weather delinquents offered me a ride to my car once we got back to campus. <br /><br />At the halfway point the teacher blazed for home. The debaters grumbled, the slackers found a smoking bush, and the thespians traded old Monty Python lines. I didn’t feel like arguing, didn’t smoke during the school week, and didn’t find Holy Grail jokes that funny. I didn’t feel like jogging either. <br /><br />I stuck out my thumb to the next car that passed. No luck. The second car I thumbed slowed then stopped about 15 feet in front of me. I caught up with the car as the driver lowered the passenger window. <br /><br />“I’m probably not supposed to do this,” she said.<br /><br />“Probably not.” I said.<br /><br />“Get in the back.” she said. <br /><br />I could hear a couple of the debaters snickering about 50 yards back. The same guys who hadn’t offered me a ride when the route changed. I opened the back door and flipped them a bird. <br /><br />“I have to go the bank first. My son Charlie has a soccer game on campus.”<br /><br />She knew where I was headed, the alma mater’s letters were branded across the chest and thighs of our gym clothes. I knew of her son, his dad had been my pediatrician. Like most kids, I idolized my pediatrician. I told her what a swell guy I thought her husband was.<br /><br />“ EX-husband,” she snarled. <br /><br />“I’m sorry,” I said.<br /><br />“You wouldn’t believe how cheap that bastard is with his own children. A doctor who can’t find the money to pay his alimony!”<br /><br />In our wait at the bank’s drive thru lane, the EX-wife was determined that I get a fuller picture of the man. I thought about getting out of car, but I was still on the other side of campus from my car, and I was afraid she might figure out who I was and report me for siding with her cheapskate husband. I just sat in the backseat stone-faced, waiting for her to change the subject. She didn’t. Who knew the guy whose jokes kept the shots from hurting and whose amoxicillin cleared up countless ear infections would have…well, Nashville people read this blog. <br /><br />I kept my mouth shut.<br /><br />The unforeseen dangers of hitchhiking with a soccer mom—she might smash your childhood idols.<br /></span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8915833594393453377.post-16089646180344267352009-10-26T15:58:00.000-07:002011-12-02T17:28:47.204-08:00Natchez Trace VII: Beers with Rube and Hank<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3UfdVmbjyg8/SuZMDwhN4dI/AAAAAAAAAFU/FbPeaD7M8xQ/s1600-h/Rubes_2007-1.Holiday.Card.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5397084830897660370" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3UfdVmbjyg8/SuZMDwhN4dI/AAAAAAAAAFU/FbPeaD7M8xQ/s320/Rubes_2007-1.Holiday.Card.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 229px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a><br />
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I didn’t notice Rube, Kathryn and Hank pull into the parking lot. Rube had finally traded in his iconic Volvo station wagon for a generic Japanese sedan. Kathryn had long been encouraging the upgrade.<br />
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“Now we’ve got to work on his wardrobe,” Kathryn said.<br />
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Michael Rubenstein was a long time sports broadcaster in Jackson who has founded and for the last 15 years run the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame. Rube’s stentorian voice and cracking wit made him a natural television personality. <br />
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Rube went to Vanderbilt with my stepfather, and was the guy I wanted to sit next to at the homecoming games. For one he broke the lawyer, doctor, businessman mold of most of the guys who showed up that weekend, and he also knew what was going on down on the field, whether the coach was any good, and what we could expect in a couple of months from the basketball team, the real Vanderbilt sporting interest. He was also the seasoned traveler and had been just about everywhere in the world I wanted to go.<br />
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I got the chance to travel with Rube when he joined Steven, David and I on a trip to China in 2002. Three weeks on the gringo trail is ample time to get to know a man, and Rube demonstrated he was one cool customer. <br />
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We were floating down the Yangtze River two months before they closed off the Three Gorges Dam and flooded its namesake valley when Rube realized he had miscounted his pills. These pills weren’t cholesterol regulators or happy candy; Rube was short the medicine that kept his body from rejecting his transplant kidney. He must have been worried, though he only mentioned the oversight in passing one morning at breakfast, casually enough so that it didn’t interrupt for too long our oggling the waitress with the largest chest in China. No, death’s shadow did not stop the man from appreciating the oddity of a humongous pair of boobs on a tiny Chinese girl. <span class="fullpost"><br />
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He must have been really worried when Fed Ex screwed up the emergency shipment Kathryn sent that night from Jackson. If we had taken this same trip five or ten years before, Rube might have died in central China, or at the least found himself back on a dialysis machine, perhaps for the rest of his life. Fortunately there was a new pharmacy in Chongqing that had the proper medicine in stock. <br />
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Hank Klibanoff was Rube’s other houseguest for the night. Hank won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for his book <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780679403814">The Race Beat</a></span>. Meticulously researched and masterfully written, his book will become the definitive history of journalism in the civil rights movement. The protagonists in his tale, the small band of enlightened newspaper editors who fought for equality in the Jim Crow south, were the models I looked to when I first sought to be a liberal. No elitist dweebs, these liberals presented an easy going, disarming face to the world, men who personified the good qualities of the southern way of life even while they battled the great majority of their contemporaries to expose and defeat the glaring injustices and inequalities inherent in racial discrimination. <br />
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Not even a Pulitzer could shield Hank from the cost cutting blades of the publishing industry; he has since been laid off as managing editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Hank’s position encapsulated the vicious cycle ravaging the American press. An editor flush with contacts and germane knowledge of the history and politics of his region is invaluable to maintaining a standard of excellence in the press. Yet the profit model for print journalism today cannot afford this excellence, and continuing decline in circulation must be in part a response to a diminished product. Worse, the stakes are far more serious than profit models eviscerated by the internet. The fourth estate has long been the pillar upholding transparency and accountability in democratic governance. No army of bloggers or TV screaming heads can replace the guild of newsroom editors steeped in the rigorous pursuit of objectivity and civic interest.<br />
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Hank is now director of the Cold Case Truth and Justice Project. His center examines civil rights related murders that were never investigated or were dropped by local police departments. Through interviews and the examination of old documents Hank hopes his team can bring conclusive evidence against alleged perpetrators who evaded the slipknots of criminal justice in the Old South. In some cases they seek out suspects from new leads. The aim is not to bring octogenarian defendants to show trials, but to document the many unsolved cases so the stories of the victims can be remembered and the guilty tried in the historical record. <br />
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Rube and Hank became friends back when Hank was a reporter for a local paper. They were introduced one night by their respective girlfriends who had planned a double date. They spent the evening talking to each other more than to their dates. <br />
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Rube took us to a restaurant on the reservoir north of town. It was a warm night and there was a band playing on the docks. The crab sandwiches were tasty and the cold beer was the perfect tonic to soothe my legs.<br />
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Hank told us about why he was passing through Jackson. If my retelling is murky, it is no fault of Hank’s, he was a raconteur in the best of Southern tradition. I was too tired to take copious notes later that evening, and my brain was awash with endorphins and in no shape to nail down details. Two days on the road and I already had the makings of an exercise junkie. <br />
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Hank was investigating an unsolved murder from the Oxford riots that erupted when James Meredith arrived in the fall of 1962 to enroll in the University of Mississippi. Before the army could step in to bring back order, the Mississippi Highway Patrol stood idle as a white mob rained rocks, bricks and gunfire upon the campus. Two men were killed in the maelstrom, one a French journalist who had come to cover the Meredith story.<br />
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“People don’t realize that a lot of these people came from Alabama,” Hank, The Alabamian, said.<br />
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“Our rednecks in Mississippi, they try,” Rube conceded, “but those Alabama rednecks, they’re the real deal.” <br />
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Hank had recently received a tip from a man living in Jackson who remembers as a boy one of those Alabama rednecks visiting his house to retrieve a rag-wrapped parcel hidden in the basement. The man believed the parcel might have been a gun. Hank had reason to believe that it could have been the murder weapon used to kill the French journalist. <br />
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There are many reasons the boy’s family would have been afraid to speak up. A KKK riddled police department was unlikely to be interested in such a report in the 1960’s, and the Klan had a reputation for brutal retaliation against snitches. Hank wasn’t sure if the story would lead to anything, but the chance was enough to pull him from Atlanta.<br />
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That night Kathryn left us with the best pound cake on either side of the Mississippi. Rube got the best of worlds, the bachelor lifestyle and a fantastic girlfriend who was always bringing homemade treats to his kitchen, and then leaving. Women have always chased after Rube, and he has always resisted encroachment. He had been with Kathryn since before the China trip, but they still maintain separate residences. Kathryn has figured out the formula for keeping in the picture, and seems happy with it. <br />
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Before bed there was time to absorb what wisdom I could from these esteemed elders. I questioned Rube about bachelor life and asked Hank for his perspective on the state of journalism. I have yet to earn my stripes in either field, but as I yet I am relatively young. There is still hope.<br />
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“Last time I heard from your mom and Stevie, you were damn well near married,” Rube said. <br />
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“I guess I dodged a bullet,” I replied.<br />
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“Good for you.”<br />
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“I might not have been so lucky, but I couldn’t pass on the French girl.” <br />
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“French girls.” Rube smiled. “It’s something about the way they talk.”<br />
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That’s exactly what it was. Even English sounds seductive in a French accent. <br />
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Rube told us about the French Canadian girl he met on the beach in Acapulco. It was probably from thirty years ago, but Rube told it fresh, uncluttered with the embellishments that tend to accumulate over time. Wise men knew which memories to preserve. It would have the perfect weekend if he hadn’t gotten food poisoning just before he could get her into bed. Still, he managed to see her a couple more times, once in Montreal, and another time on a weekend in New York City.<br />
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“Not bad for a boy from Booneville, Mississippi,” Rube said.<br />
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Not bad at all. Rube’s college housemate Steven Fayne, later my boss in San Francisco, told me a story that sized up Booneville. Steven and some <span style="font-style: italic;">Zeta</span> brothers were on a road trip between semesters and decided to spend a night in Booneville. They pulled into a gas station in town with a payphone and dialed Rube’s house.<br />
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"Rube, we're in town!" Steven said.<br />
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“OK. I’ll come down and get you.” Rube said.<br />
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“How do you know where we are?” Steven asked.<br />
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“Because you’re at the payphone.” Rube said. <br />
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An old veteran from Booneville I’d meet later on the trip was impressed when I dropped Rube’s name. He was even more impressed that a TV personality had hailed from Booneville. He had assumed Rube was a Jackson man.<br />
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I wish I had talked less and listened more that night with these heavyweight Southerners from Booneville and Florence, Alabama, but my body was spent and my mind still swimming with those damned exercise opiates.<br />
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I had more of Kathryn’s pound cake for breakfast, and wrapped up a big chuck that would last half way to Tupelo. I wanted to visit Kathryn’s classroom, she worked as a fourth grade teacher at a public elementary school. Her career sounded like an extension of my brief experience teaching in the Delta. That she does her job well, presents a positive and fun loving face to the world, and manages a successful relationship with Rube likely qualifies her for sainthood.<br />
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There just weren’t enough hours of sunlight to see her children and get to Kosciusko before dark. <br />
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Hank didn’t have his interview until the afternoon so he offered me a ride back to the Trace. We went for lunch at a Greek restaurant where the friendly owner opened a half hour early when he saw us pull up. <br />
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As I unloaded my bike, Hank gave me a copy of his book to take with me on the road. Few books were worth hauling 300 miles in an overstuffed pannier bag. I suspected right that this was one of them. The civil rights movement was perfect subject matter for a slow crawl through Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee.<br />
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Just after noon I started peddling north along the reservoir. Fueled with stuffed grape leaves, pound cake and great conversation, I peddled over the bumpiest stretch of the Trace and reached my next stop well after sundown in the last minutes of twilight. </span>Bill Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15826694268019219251noreply@blogger.com0