Pinky's Tailing Box: a weekly Wednesday feature of At a Bottom Now for Gold...
Special Travel Edition PART II...
COLOMBIA! (Part I)
Of Customs & Customs...
It was a cool, damp, fall-like but sunny morning the first time I buzzed into Bogota's Aeropuerto Internacional. Customs ignored me entirely and I was about to exit the airport altogether when I spotted a man holding a placard that read, simply: Allan Gust.
The man escorted me to a jeep that howled down avenidas lined with free lance mercantes hawking powdered milk, palm trees, gramophones, and practically anything else that one could imagine.
After spending the night in a missionary guest house, I was sent in the first available jeep on a late-the-next-morning, three-and-a-half hour, down-the-hill jaunt to Villavicencio. We were speeding along into an entanglement of main roads converging at the outskirts of the city when we were ground to a halt without warning. The twelve foot whip and steadied hand of a llanero was patiently guiding twenty or thirty head of cattle across four lanes of traffic, as oblivious to the drivers of the vehicles around him as they appeared to be to him.
The jeep first climbed to 11000+ feet before abandoning its ascent and dropping nearly to sea level. I only spent an hour in Villavicencio before a modest-in-size Jurassic Park style jeep began the last 45 minutes of the journey back into the foothills of the Andes to my missionary compound destination. Despite my previous months of unsettling mountain travel in Guatemala, given the mud of the wet season, the early tropical darkness, and the hairpin drop-off Colombian terrain, I considered the trip to be neither expeditious nor safe by comparison.
I regarded myself as on vacation and so spent much of my time sitting out back in the bush sketching the mission's airfield which was propitiously set just above the raging Rio Meta, churned in my ten days there by a 23 inch rainfall, and beneath spectacular peaks of the Andes, looming in a grand array as if some ideal Doric temple backdrop the ancient Athenians could only envy.
From the beginning, existence in remote Colombia exuded a magical quality. Frogs clung to the stucco/concrete walls inside my dwelling and jumped in panic upon one's approach--often into one's face. Spiders, horrible in size multiplied themselves a hundredfold at their demise if perchance stepped upon.
Though it rained daily, the sun was no stranger and one morning I walked high into the foothills above the mission compound, crossing along the way an unending line of army ants, some carrying whole leaves intact. At my return I was informed of a compound curfew from that moment on--guerrilla activity had been reported within kilometers of the mission.
My missionary aunt asked me to help clean up her classroom, which resembled a medium sized pole shed with windows. The ceiling on the inside was V-shaped to the roof itself and therefore rather high. In my janitorial pursuit I came upon divers slats with cotton swap beginnings and razor sharp ends. I was told they were poison darts used to vanquish unwanted birds that chanced into the building.
My last full day at the compound, I boarded a twin engine Cessna chartered by my missionary aunt and flew 200 miles southeast into the jungles beyond the llanas. At 10,000 feet one could see nothing but rain forest in all directions. We landed at a remote jungle airfield straddled by the Guaviare and Guainia rivers. I could hardly imagine a more exotic setting than the lower reaches of the Andes, but had found one in the rain forest mission with its stately ceiba trees lining the edges of the airfield and its pineapple gardens supplementing the missionaries' breakfast table.
In my tourist's daze, I was caught unawares by a half dozen women of the Macu tribe of southeastern Colombia. The dress of the average female Macu is a set of tight ankle bands, a second set of tight wrist bands and possibly a bone or piece of jewelry attached through the nose. In other words, there is no dress.
They immediately set about tearing my clothes off, presumabley in order to touch my unusual white skin. There was no prurient juvenile delight on my part in this stickiest of circumstances. I was panicked beyond measure. I turned to my missionary aunt just stepping off the plane for aid, only to receive for my trouble a very disapproving look.
For all I knew, any attempt to restrain the native women physically might be met by an eighteen inch dart with a tip dipped in the toxin of a venomous Amazon toad. Launched from a six foot blow gun accurate at 100 yards, it would not matter that the male members of the tribe were yet some distance away. With my Milwaukee Brewers shirt ripped off, I commented to the missionaries meeting us, "They must be Minnesota Twins fans." The missionaries laughed. The Macu tribeswomen laughed. I don't believe my aunt laughed. But my crisis was over.
There were no cats or dogs at the mission. The children had monkies for pets. As they playfully jumped from child to child, I drew caricatures of them with magic markers on scraps of paper and awarded my artwork to my admiring critics.
After a brisk walk through the rain forest, I interviewed a Macu tribesman, through an interpreter, at his home in the jungle--two overlapping vine-sewn hammocks swinging just below a half shelter of dried banana leaves. He seemed mainly curious as to whether or not my aunt was my dad1s sister, which she was, much to his approval.
My plane ride back ran into some turbulent weather, but we landed in sunshine. A rainbow arched across the mission compound from end to end. It was a very spiritual moment. It was the pinnacle of my trip. The abyss lie just ahead.
PART TWO OF "COLOMBIA!" NEXT WEDNESDAY!
$$$
From the Tailing Box...
Dear At a Bottom Now for Gold:
The Dow dropped 300 points. Is it all over for the market? --Edgy
Dear Edgy:
Yes, and new highs this fall. --Whirlwind
Dear Whirlwind:
Ralph Acampora first said market crash to 6000, then rise to 10,000 this past Spring. Then he said market rise to 10 to 12 thousand yet this year. Then he said drop to 7400. Then he said strike that--market rise to 10,000. Comments? --Baffled
Dear Baffled:
And what was Monica Lewinsky's side of the story? --Whirlwind
Dear Pinky1s Tailing Box:
Zappa didn't trade on Monday--what's up? --Worrywart
Dear Worrywort:
Canada took the day off. And if I don't post this pretty quick, I will will have too. --Whirlwind
Questions about PMs? Email the Whirlwind at:
whirlwindbuyszappa@mindless.com
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