A Beacon in the Dark

These first days of the year 2020 have felt like dark times. I find it difficult to feel hopeful. The 12 year-long drought continues in Chile. The temperature everyday soars in the 90s. We live under a pale, washed out sky under a cover of smoke from the Australian fires. Plants in my garden are scorched. Since the massive social outburst in October here, life feels uncertain in this society where angry Chileans, empowered by social media, challenge authority, established institutions and the rights of others in massive demonstrations, looting and violent attacks.

The latter dominated the conversation at tea time in the house of my husband’s cousin. We were a group of six women all in our seventies and beyond: two of my sisters-in-law and two friends of the hostess. The house was dark and dreary, curtains closed to “keep out the heat.” Fortunately, someone opened the double doors to the minute back patio, letting in a bit of light and air.

I hadn’t met the hostess’s two friends previously but had heard my sisters-in-law often mention one woman, Carmen Slight, an unusual name that I immediately connected with our trip through the Straits of Magellan a few years ago.

Magellan Straits

 Reading historical anecdotes about the area, I came across the fascinating story of Scottish engineer George Slight who built many of Chile’s lighthouses, the first situated on one of the rocky Evangelista islets at the western entrance to the Straits from the Pacific. I told Carmen that I knew a bit of the history behind the lighthouses. Her eyes lit up. “Oh, I love talking about it!” she said. “George Slight was my grandfather. The Chilean government asked him to help design and build the lighthouse, badly needed to guide ships through the entrance of the Straits.”

Her grandfather fascinated his family with tales of four meter high waves, blustery winds and the inexistence of a place to dock on the rocky outcropping, making access difficult and dangerous. But Slight had experience with lighthouses in England and India. In 1898 the light first flashed over the seas, a welcome beacon for the sailors in those treacherous waters.

 Slight went on to build 72 lighthouses along Chile’s coast.  He married and settled in Chile, becoming head of Chile’s Maritime Signaling Service.

“The Navy continues commemorating him to this day, often inviting me to ceremonies,” Carmen told us. “A few years ago they took me in helicopter to visit the lighthouse! Now for the first time they have women naval officers there.”

We sat to have tea in the walled-in backyard, the conversation centering on people they all knew, the names of spouses and those who had passed on. I listened politely, while praying for a breeze of any kind, but Carmen Sight had brightened my day. What a privilege to hear the story from Mr. Slight’s granddaughter.

His gravestone in Valparaiso General Cemetery bears the English epitaph “His lights still shine over the waters of the Pacific Ocean.”

Colombia, Part V: Macondo

Local bus, 1988 Trooper jeep, pickup truck, carro-taxi, bici-taxi – they all eventually deliver us to our destinations. But it is in Aracateca where, on the wings of imagination, we travel the furthest, back in time to the fantastical town of Macondo.

Having had our fill of beaches, we opt for a comfortable, air-conditioned bus ride to the towns of Cienaga and nearby Aracataca, birthplace of Nobel winning author Gabriel García Marquez (Gabo). At the bus’s door in Cienaga, a jabbering swarm of young men descend upon us. They want to take us around town on their bici-taxis.

“I’ll take you!”

“Me. Me!”

“Look. Come this way!”
Making our way through the throng, we finally settle on Jesus, sitting apart from the others, a young man with limited language skills. “Can you take us to see the plaza and the church?” we ask him. “And then to the statue commemorating the 1929 massacre of the strikers against the United Fruit Company?”

He pedals us around town on his rusty, wobbly contraption, part bicycle and part bench on wheels (with a fringe on top) made with assorted components of unknown origin, yet I feel like royalty. Jesus pedals hard, taking us where we’ve requested, then depositing us at the stop to catch a bus to Aracateca.

The short bus ride from Ciénaga to Aracataca, is lined with banana plantations as if forshadowing the setting for “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” García Marquez´ prize-winning novel.

Bici-taxi is the way to find a place for lunch in Aracateca. From there, we walk along well-kept streets, passing a wall painted with a likeness of the author and a flock of hamburgers with wings, announcing “Gabo’s Comida Rapida,” (Fast Food). I don’t recall that his magical realism conjured up flying hamburgers.

     We arrive at Gabo’s museum, a series of replica rooms located on the plot of land where only one original structure remains. His words written on an outside wall set the tone for this visit. “More than a home, the house was a pueblo.” In the first room, his grandfather’s study, I read: “The move to Aracataca was seen by my grandparents as a journey into forgetting.” There are very few visitors. We walk through silent rooms of memorabilia: his grandfather’s desk, his childhood bed, family sepia portraits. Nostalgia permeates every space. Along the walls are quotes from Gabo’s books, which give me the sensation that he is present here with me. He says: “There is not a line in one of my books that does not have its origin in my childhood.” In the kitchen filled with old utensils, I read: Nothing was eaten in the house that was not seasoned in the broth of longing. In these rooms I’m a visitor to the past where the imagination that created the town of Macondo in “One Hundred Years of Solitude” found its early inspiration.
    In a back patio stands a majestic rubber tree, its thick tangle of roots and lianas reach high above me. It must have intrigued Gabo as a child. A bright flash of color flutters by. Before I can say “mariposa!” it comes to rest on one of the gnarled tree roots, but I see no bright colors, rather a large splendidly camouflaged moth, a day-flying moth. I imagine Gabo’s crinkling, laughing eyes as he recalls the garden creatures.
    Aboard another bici-taxi, we view colorful murals lining the canal coursing through town and, finally, arrive at the town’s entrance to catch the return bus.  There I pose in front of colorful, giant letters announcing “Aracateca” and “Macondo”. The locals have opted for a double name for their town. I send this photo to my family saying “Greetings from Macondo.”

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