The March of all Marches

“March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb.” So goes the saying. Here in the Southern Hemisphere, March brings the final days of summer and soon the first days of fall. March signals the massive return of vacationers to Santiago, massive traffic jams and the start of the school year. It’s the same every year. Well, almost.

       This March the atmosphere is charged with anxiety. Multiple protests and marches are scheduled, which sadly means the continuation of violence and vandalism in the streets which began last October. I agree with what most of the protesters are demanding: improved pensions and greater access to health and educational opportunities. I abhor the vandalism that has sprung alongside these protests – looting, setting fire to museums and churches, destroying property in general. Downtown looks like a war zone, windows boarded up, walls covered with graffiti (“Kill the cops, down with the president, no more tolls”)

        Affected businesses have let employees go, resulting in hundreds of unemployed. Particularly worrying is the lack of respect for authority. In spite of pushing through reforms, the government has been unable to maintain public order in cities throughout the country.

            These worries are compounded by a severe lack of water, due to a 12 –year-long drought. The central valley of Chile, where Santiago is situated, is brown and parched. Farmers are suffering; animals are dying. This has been the hottest summer that I can remember.

            Is there a silver lining to be found in these dark clouds? Some. More bike lanes are being added to major thoroughfares and increasing numbers of Chileans resort to bikes and scooters to get about. New bright red electric rental bikes, owned by Uber, stand clustered at street corners. Most of the metro stations destroyed by protesting masked vandals have been repaired in a period of months. Delicious summer fruits - peaches, melons, grapes - still abound.

            The political situation in the States also has me on edge. I follow the news on CNN daily, hoping for some positive news, something to feel hopeful about. But the November elections are many months away. My hope beyond hope is that the President gets his marching orders.

What to do with all this waiting?  I think of the robin couple that frequents our backyard. Last month their two fledglings were mangled by a neighborhood feral cat, who generously left them on our doormat. A few days later the two robins began building a new nest in our avocado tree. Yesterday I noticed a gawky adolescent robin practicing flight patterns. So what to do when the world feels dark? Do as the robins did: try again.

Will I join the massive march planned for March 8th, International Women’s Day? I don’t like crowds, and my marching days are over. I think. I did go out to march with American women on the streets of Santiago just two years ago to protest the newly-elected U.S. president. I hope, if I do go to the streets again, it will be in celebration – for my two countries.

Taking on the Challenge

Can I write fiction? An historical novel to be precise. Why not give it a try, I say to myself. It will be a great challenge, but I need a writing project to work on. I’ve read countless novels over the decades, but does that qualify me?

I want to build a story around a great-aunt who lived a rather unconventional life for the times. I only knew her when she was an elderly woman. Now I’ve become a sleuth, piecing together bits and pieces from her past: photographs, mementos, diplomas, possessions and remembered conversations.

She and her two sisters, my grandmother and another aunt, were born and raised in Scotland and immigrated to the States in 1910. Internet has greatly facilitated exploring family history. As I access Scotland’s census documents with birth and death dates, cause of death and addresses, the family members have taken on life for me. Now I know my mother was named after a Scottish aunt and my grandmother’s younger sister who died at the age of eleven. I’ve had to make deductions, like their reasons for immigrating, probably due to the fact that both their parents were deceased at an early age and few prospects were available in their small town.

The research fascinates me. I discovered photos of the ship on which they traveled. I’m currently reading “A History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1800 to 1900”. Gradually, with more and more details, I begin to imagine family members, breathing life into them. My greatest challenge is creating interesting complex characters that feel as real to the reader as they do to me.

My grandmother, Molly, her two sisters and brother

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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Colombia Part IV: Getting There

If you need directions when visiting a foreign country or even a strange town, ask a local. Right? So, arriving in downtown Santa Marta, we do just that, asking a bus driver at the central market, “Which bus do we take to Parque Tayrona?”

We’d already flagged down a blue bus on the highway near our rental house that, according to instructions, would take us to town. That bus took us on a bumpy, roundabout wild ride. Like all local buses, air conditioning in that steamy climate consists of leaving all windows and doors open. Loud music helps distract me from the hard seats designed for very small people. Later we learn that we should have taken another more direct blue bus with the words Yucal. At least, we’ll know better tomorrow.

Downtown, we face a line of bumper to bumper blue buses. A guy on a corner gives us different directions “Oh, the buses for Tayrona are on that street over there.” We run over there. No, someone else tells us, sending us scurrying back to where we’d started. At last, we locate the bus, another local one with the same hard seats that have my back complaining for the hour long trip.

After our hike in the park, we arrive back at the entrance at closing, when dozens of park visitors are also waiting for transport back to Santa Marta. I say to my friend Margery, “Let’s try to get one of those bigger buses with better seats.” People crowd and push into one of the blue buses. Some must make the trip standing. We stare down the highway for signs of another bus. The rain begins in earnest. Thunder crashes. We make a run for a van, more pricey but dry and comfortable.

The next day we spend a leisurely afternoon at Taganga beach. Sunset comes early on the Colombian coast, and sunbathers rush to the bus stop around 5 p.m. for the return home. Again are faced with a survival of the fittest situation. A bus bulging with passengers pulls away as we arrive at the bus stop. People gather in clumps. I wonder if we’ll manage to grab a seat on the next bus…. Here it comes. A gaggle of teenage girls charges for the bus door. I hold out my trekking stick, blocking their way. “Just a minute! We’ve been waiting much longer than you.” Margery and I have our choice of seats.

Flexibility and patience are necessary for getting to Bahía Concha, also part of Tayrona Park. Again, everyone we ask directs us to a different bus. Finally, after two blue bus rides, we are deposited at what appears to be the end of the line. We ask a cluster of men sitting on a wall at the corner. “Bahía Concha? I can take you,” a man offers. We pile into his battered 1989 Trooper and bounce along a winding road, clouds of dust billowing behind us.

    At the entrance gate, after ordering a fish lunch which will be delivered to us on the beach, we are directed to a pickup truck for “preferential” passengers. Non-preferential must walk. We must rent a small open sided tent and table and chairs. The expensive fish lunch arrives. Far better is the huge avocado (aguacate) we buy, cut in half and eat with our hands.

Palomino beach is our destination another day. The blue bus leaves us on the edge of the highway. How do we get to the beach, we ask? A helpful young man points across the street. “A carro-taxi,” he says.

     We climb into what looks like a motorized tuk-tuk and wind through town and fields, maneuvering muddy ruts in the dirt road. We come to a stop, a dump truck and several men wielding shovels blocking the road.

                “The road is being repaired,” says our carro-taxi driver. “You’ll have to walk the rest of the way.”

So we do.

Colombia Part III: Massage

My body is by far the oldest and whitest on Playa Blanca. Conscious of the bulges that my bathing suit can’t hide, I stretch out on a chaise longue, anxious for the Caribbean sun to turn me an immediate toasty brown. But the heat is overwhelming, and I sit up to consider an ocean dip.

A tanned, wiry woman in a short twirling skirt, a neon orange top, and a blue plastic beach pail in her hand approaches me.

“You look like you need to relax,” she says.

Before I know it, her strong hands begin rubbing my shoulders.

“No, no, gracias,” I say, but to no avail.

“Only twenty pesos for the back. Whole body is sixty.” She flashes a credential hanging on a cord from her neck. “Took a course. Have official approval to work here.”

“No. No,” I repeat, but she keeps on rubbing. Her strong fingers work down my back. It feels heavenly.

“See?” she says.

My friend, who lives nearby in Cartagena, comes up and haggles over the price. They agree on fifty for the whole body. I succumb.

She directs me to lie face down. As I turn my stiff body over, I notice that several sun bathers on chaise longues behind me observe with keen interest. My masseuse then squirts an oily liquid onto my back.

 “Qué es eso? What’s that? I ask.

“Aloe Vera.”

Aloe Vera with what else? I wonder.

She eases my bathing suit straps off my shoulders to better reach every possible surface.

“How old are you?” she asks, her hands nearing my buttocks. No room for vanity here.

            “Seventy-six. And you?”

“Forty-five. Do you have grandchildren?”

"Yes, I tell her. Five. “And you?”

“Fourteen.”

“Oh! You must have been a child bride!”

She laughs. “Had my first experience at twelve.”

I wonder if it was consensual, but say nothing.

She moves on to the backs of my legs, rubbing in her oil along with rebel grains of sand. She devotes special (painful) attention to my sore foot. Then she slips up my suit straps, directs me to turn over and aims the contents of her plastic bottle onto chest, arms and legs.

I can’t believe this! Here I am in the hands of a masseuse on a Caribbean beach. How long will she continue? It must be close to an hour. Who cares? Just enjoy the moment, girl.

She finishes up with my feet.

“Oh, that was wonderful!” I say.

“See. I told you.”

“You’re quite the saleswoman. Sneaky! Laying your hands on my shoulders. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. What’s your name?”

“Elizabeth.”

“Come over her in the shade, Elizabeth, and let me get a photo of you.”

She readily agrees and poses for the photo.

    “And one of us together,” I say and we pose with our arms around each other. Beach buddies.

Now, into the water to wash off that mystery oil.

Colombia Part II: Jungle Jaunt

“Do you think we’re lost?” Margery asks. “Should we turn back?”

“I don’t know.” I pause to catch my breath. “We’ve already come so far.” The thought of retracing our steps back to the trailhead feels overwhelming, scrambling up and down rocky steep embankments, clinging to tree roots and vines. Are we even on the correct trail? I imagine my husband reading newspaper headlines: Two elderly gringas missing in Colombian jungle. He’d had his doubts about this solo trip of mine.

We weigh the evidence. “Trail sign said a forty-five minute walk,” says my friend. “It’s already been almost two hours.”

“I hear the ocean ahead,” I tell her, “but we don’t seem to be getting any closer.” The trail supposedly leads to a mirador, a lookout over the Caribbean. “Let’s go on. We must be getting close.” Overhead loud claps of thunder accompany advancing black clouds. Though we’re already wet from intermittent drizzles, this storm sounds more serious. “Let’s try to beat this storm.”

We’re somewhere in the jungle in Tayrona Park in Colombia’s Sierra Madre. Getting to know the Park was one of the main reasons I’d given to my friend, who has lived many years in nearby Cartagena, for my proposed trip to Colombia. I was so pleased she agreed to make this journey with me.

                Margery and I met during Peace Corps training in 1964 in Kansas City. She was then posted in southern Colombia, and I in Barranquilla on the Magdalena River near where it flows into the Caribbean. Over the years we lost contact, until attending a Peace Corps reunion there four years ago.

Petite, sprightly Margery, wearing a Yankees baseball cap and sturdy shoes, leads the way, clambering crab-like up the embankment. I follow, looking for footholds on the root-ridden, muddy bank, thankful for my trekking stick, which helps keep my weight off my left foot afflicted with painful plantar fasciitis. Did I mention I am wearing my old Keen sandals? We hadn’t decided on our destination when we took the bus this morning into Santa Marta so my trekking shoes rest undisturbed back at the house.

We come across another wooden sign relating in lofty words the sacred nature of the area for the now-extinct indigenous Tayrona people. “I wish they’d cut the poetry and just say how much further we must go,” I grumble.

Just when we think we’ve conquered the last of the arroyos, another appears around the bend. I groan and struggle to make my way up the opposite bank, holding out my trekking stick for Margery to give me a pull. My turquoise clam-digger pants are smeared with mud as I slip and slide. Back on flat ground, I lurch to rest on an inviting boulder, where I loosen my backpack and lean back to gaze at the lush canopy, dotted with wild-haired palm trees. 

A parade of leaf-cutter ants trails up a tree trunk. In the understory I recognize a kind of wild philodendron and huge birds’ nest ferns. Such peace in this spot with only birdsong to be heard.

A rustling sound in the leaves behind me startles me.

 “Look! Monkeys!” I point up into the waving branches where three red howler monkeys make their way. I briefly wonder if they’ll come closer. Are we in danger? But they show no interest in us.

The roar of the ocean sounds closer. A wooden sign with a red arrow indicates we’re on an official trail, though not the one we set out to follow.

“I see the thatched roof of the mirador!” cries Margery.

Heartened, we wend our way up the steps to the lookout atop a small hill. The sky is overcast, a shade lighter than the pewter sea. Below us, waves break against a dark, jagged coastline, occasionally broken by stretches of white sand.

We snap some photos, proof that we are here.

 Yet the question remains: how far to the trailhead? Just then a human being appears coming from the opposite direction. He’s young, barefoot and looks like he might speak English. He does. His name is Joe. He’s been travelling around South America and now plans to return to Maryland for Thanksgiving.

“How much further do we have to go?” We ask in unison. We describe our odyssey and our hike of two hours.

“It’s not far at all,” he reassures us. “If you want I’ll go with you. It’s flat most of the way.”

Words sweet to my ears.

We tell him that we’d been Peace Corps Volunteers here in Colombia over fifty years ago.

“I’m thinking about joining the Peace Corp,” he says. 

As we slosh through puddles in the trail (my sandals weren’t a bad choice after all), Margery and I tell him that it was a life-changing experience for us, influencing the future paths we’d follow. Our choice of the Peace Corps maybe is proof of our genetic need for new adventures.

At last. The trailhead. We bid adios to Joe, thanking him for his company and head to the highway to try to flag down a bus back to Santa Marta. Just then the sky opens and releases its deluge. My sandals are packed with mud, my hair pasted to my head, and it feels wonderful, though I would like to find a bathroom.

Margery and I decide we’ve earned medals for our accomplishment. And we’re just starting. Another day we plan a pilgrimage to Aracateca (alias Macondo), the birthplace of Colombia’s Nobel winner, Gabriel García Marquez, author “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”

A son called this my “eat, pray and love” trip. Perhaps it is.