Years On and Other Travel Essays

Doctor Mario Ribera Arteaga was still at the hospital and the women had gone out. At the door, a thin, small dark skinned Indian dressed in blue jeans, a cowboy shirt and a straw cowboy hat, bowed and nearly whispered his question, “Is the great doctor home?” I explained that Mario would be home within the hour and that he could wait inside. He thanked me and tipped his hat, then sat cross legged on the front lawn. An hour later Mario’s red jeep’s transmission whined as he downshifted. Sunlight reflected off the hood and lit up the front window like a spot light. I stood and looked out. The Indian stood and bowed to Mario, then handed him a note, waited for a short reply and walked off. I’m already a week overdue at the ranch,” said Mario as he walked in. “They’re running low on ammunition for hunting. Tomorrow I’m on duty at the hospital. Day after tomorrow. Want to go?” That night at dinner, we overheard Mario’s radio broadcast message to his men that he would be there in two days. Nancy poured herself a lemonade and said, “Yo no.” This was followed closely by two more votes supporting her: a woman thing. It would be Mario and I. Later that night I began to sweat, my forehead pounded and my stomach knotted. Mario found me kneeling over the toilet bowl at three in the morning. “Are you sure you want to go?” he asked in a low voice so as not to wake the women. “We’ll be on horseback for several hours.” The next morning at breakfast, Mario handed me some pills, explaining that they would stop the cramps. They also would have stopped me up which is an unpleasant feeling, kind of like being a bursting melon. I thanked him and put them in my pocket as he went off to the hospital and I ran to the bathroom, both ends running. For the rest of the day, this race was repeated many times, you betcha. That night, the situation hadn’t changed except for the temperature which had dropped thanks to aspirin. Mario shook his head as I admitted to sneaking a frozen juice bar at the shop he had warned against. The next morning, I was dressed and backpack loaded by four fifteen when I woke Mario. He nodded groggily. Dressed in his undershorts, he walked like a zombie towards the bathroom while I popped two aspirin into my mouth. The city of Trinidad was still dark when we loaded the supplies into the back of his jeep. Every so often, I had to stop and double over, grab my stomach and breathe deep through a cramp. Mario plopped a blue cowboy hat on my head, loaned to me by one of his brothers, he said. It had rained that night but fireflies still illuminated the muddy street. Frogs croaked. The jeep fishtailed down a river of mud and Mario stopped to click the wheel hubs into four wheel drive. “The sky is too clear,” said Mario as he slammed his door closed and looked up through the mud splattered windshield at the stars. “I hope it doesn’t rain more.” Outside of town we passed a rectangular clearing with a neatly cut and crowned road leading to a well-lit modern concrete building. Mario told me that it was a milk processing plant. “Within an hour,” he said, “Dozens of men in jeeps will be collecting milk from the surrounding farms and bringing it here.” Although just outside of town, the highway–a double laned and unmarked strip cut by a bulldozer–ran straight through thick underbrush and trees, all heavy and damp. The highway was full of cattle, horses, small fur covered creatures which looked like foxes and groups of what I thought were huge hogs. Mario stopped the jeep, told me to get out and look at one. Two walked by the jeep’s headlights as I stepped out. They had long snouts and weird skin. Mario told me that they were capybara, a South American rodent like a giant four foot long rat that might weigh one hundred pounds! Farther on, Mario had to stop as packs of them crossed the road in front of us. He told me that they slept on the raised highway during flooding. Not a good sign, he said. Mario flipped off his jeep’s headlights as the potholed road forked and we entered the tiny hamlet of Casarabe. No more than five hundred people lived in homes along a sloppy, orange road. Mario stopped in front of one small home where a woman worked on the porch. “Is Juan home?” he yelled. “Yes doctor,” replied the woman and disappeared inside. Mario turned to me. “This is one of my cousin’s homes. He has eleven children. He raises cattle too,” he said before grinning. His cousin was a tall Bolivian with giant shoulders which made his cowboy shirt pull and tug. He brushed his long mustache aside and shook our hands firmly. He and Mario talked about family for several minutes which seemed natural enough given their family numbers. Then, Mario mentioned a gas can that he had left months ago. “Yes, I’ll get it,” replied his cousin and began to wave at one of his children to fetch it. “No, that’s all right,” said Mario. “I can get it in two days on my way back.” “Room for a passenger on the way back? My son Roberto has an errand to run in Trinidad.” “Sure. We’ll be back in two days in the afternoon. How’s the road?” “Bad. I’m not sure you’ll make it.” The jeep swayed and yawed as Mario negotiated the river of mud past grazing cattle. My stomach churned. The underbrush was thicker and scraping along the sides of the jeep as Mario whipped the steering wheel from one side to the other, his jeep fishtailing along and throwing up an orange spray that made the cattle scatter. Within an hour and a half, we had traveled ten miles. Mario stopped the jeep at a turnoff where the trees had been hacked back on each side of two wheel ruts. Mario walked ahead and inspected the mud before climbing back in and driving on the grass under the hacked trees, the jeep’s back end breaking loose. He whipped the wheel. Mario explained that he would have to attend to some people in the village called Eviato before we continued. “There’s some incest here. The amount of birth defects is enormous.” As the jeep cleared the trees and raced down a clear straightaway near a creek where children swam naked, Mario told me to stick close to him and not to be surprised by anything. The children raced naked behind us, waving and screaming and laughing as women dressed in rags cooked in metal pots over campfires. Other women washed clothes by hand in the creek, their only source of water, Mario explained. There were shacks built around an artificial hill. Mario slowed and we passed more wooden shacks with thatched roofs and dirt floors. The only furniture appeared to be hammocks strung from wall to wall. There was no electricity, no gas. Horses, cattle, dogs and rhea (South America ostriches) ran loose. These people called themselves Siriono and numbered three hundred, some thirty families. Our jeep pulled through orange mud, the tires spinning and throwing clumps as we rocked back and forth. The villagers waved and smiled. They live, as Mario said, “Because God is great and air is free.” Mario pulled up the floor mounted emergency brake, clickety-clack as he parked under a grapefruit tree and next to an adobe home, larger and better constructed than the rest of the village. Mario explained that the local chief or cacique lived there with his family. Before we had opened the car doors, children surrounded the jeep, smiling and waving. Mario suggested that one of the boys climb the grapefruit tree. One boy boosted another up and soon, we held four gigantic bright yellow grapefruits which we peeled with pocket knives as the children formed a tight circle around us and laughed as the juice ran down our chins. Adults walked up slowly, carrying sick children. Mario pulled out a box from the back of his jeep and began tending deep cuts and handing out medicines. I sat under the grapefruit tree, leaning back to stretch my stomach muscles and breathe deeply through a cramp. A six foot tall man wearing clean clothes and boots let the adobe home’s screen door slam behind him as he walked towards us. He