So Heavily Goes the Chariot

I have just had my third dark coffee of the morning and it is only 10am. I AM RARING TO GO. The caps lock was initially unintentional.

And so, we returned from our jungle adventure. Steve collected us from Bogota airport and took us to another cousin Phil’s house where we ate Oreos. They have a dog called Little which looks and feels like noodles.

When we got home to Louise & Diegos I was immediately called to the back room for a game of football with the boys. I spent the rest of the evening chopping up the catfish we’d brought back with us.

The following day was Louise’s birthday. Birthdays in the Arboleda household mean a breakfast of number pancakes! Everyone is given pancakes in the shape of the number of their age. Somehow I was in charge of creating them. I did a 4, 6, 8, 10, 24, 26 and 41. The 41 was the only one I broke. I have learned so much these 8 months. A birthday feast was had at Phil & Maria’s for lunch. It involved rice, chorizo, pork steak, kidney beans, avocado, crackling, plantain, salsa and moro juice to drink. Filling!

Phil & Maria took us to their English school down the road. They introduced us to some ‘Level 2′ students and asked us to ask them some questions to help them practice their English. An awkward time but no doubt good for them. One particularly painful moment occurred when I asked a nervous looking girl if she knew the meaning of ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’. As she broke out into a cold sweat Dad started singing from The Sound of Music for some reason which made matters worse.

We were next taken to visit a friend of theirs Juan who runs a model building business. They build little model Colombian house fronts and do a very good job of it. We went into the compact factory where four people sat at cramped desks surrounded by tiny roof tiles, thimble flowerpots and shrew-sized windows and doors. Bursting boxes towered precariously around the edges of the yellow room. We met Juan in the back room and Phil asked him to explain his story…

He had grown up in a Catholic home, his father sending them to church when he wasn’t drunk. He had grown to become a famous millionaire selling sought-after models of the Virgin Mary and enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle. When his brothers came to know and accept God’s love and sacrifice for them and stopped going to all the drunken parties which they had gone to with Juan for years he thought the most awful thing possible had happened to them; they had lost their real lives to an empty faith. He refused to allow them to open a Bible in front of him. But one day a verse was read to him about the importance of not making any images of God. This impacted him greatly although only to the extent that he decided to end his business. He didn’t tell his clients the reason.

A while later a guerrilla force sent him a letter asking for a large amount of money in exchange for his family’s safety. He paid the money and left Colombia to work in France. At this point he was making model houses and travelled France selling them at fairs, etc. He was used to them selling like hot cakes and making him a lot of money. There was no reason why this would not be the case in France but it was not. In the three years (?) he ended up selling only 5% of his stock. When he realised he was running away from his problems and decided to return to Colombia he found it worked out cheaper to throw away the surplus stock than ship it home. He ended up selling it to a trader for a very poor price. At the time of his departure the French airlines were on strike and yet planes were leaving empty. He got to an abandoned airport and somehow managed to get a seat on a plane. He sat alone in the centre of a plane made for 380 people feeling very aware it was just him and God. He watched ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’ about Louis XIV for France who although cruel set up many lasting things in government, etc. At the end of the film is a quote, “he is remembered as the greatest ruler this nation has ever had”. As Juan watched the film he felt it was all about the Kingdom of Heaven. When the quote came he realised how much greater and more worthy the title of king is Jesus who became the suffering servant that all might understand and live. God revealed himself to Juan and he spent the remaining flight in tears, hiding under his blanket from the stewards. Arriving home and thirsty for truth, he read the entire Bible in a week (!) and started attending his brother’s churches. He didn’t feel it necessary to end his destructive lifestyle. The churches he was attending had a couple of hours of worship before the message and he found the singing and dancing uncomfortable. To him he felt the people were being manipulated into acting in an undignified way. He would come to the service a couple of hours late in order to just catch the 15 minutes of teaching he hungered for. One Sunday as he arrived he found he had missed the talk and the closing song was beginning. People were called to raise their hands as a sign of submission to their creator and saviour. He felt a conflict stir within him. If Jesus truly was the only just ruler, had created him and yet had died in his place, that he might live, why would he not worship him? Was it really manipulation or a natural response to a living God? As he stood there he felt a conviction that it was his lifestyle of excessive drink which was conflicting with his relationship with God. As he knew he loved God much more than drink he decided it was idiotic to let a mere perversion of life get in the way of the real thing. He made the decision to stop and worshipped God for the first time, giving his life to Him. He went home knowing God was dwelling within him, the most joyous he’d ever been. He now spends all his time telling others of the truth he has been shown. His factory exists to take in disadvantaged people who cannot get jobs elsewhere and help them to understand the Love and Grace of God.

The following day Phil took Hannah, Dad and I to Fusa along with his son Daniel. Fusa is a town a couple of hours away from Bogota in a bus made of tweed and leather and is where the old Bible Institute is located. Large transparent stickers of Jesus and Mary filled the back window. Hannah forgot to take her motion sickness pills and wanted to expurgate or defecate or both simultaneously. After a quick whip around the local market’s kaleidoscopically colourful array of fruits and vegetables and exotic flowers we set off walking. The institute was on the outskirts of Fusa, about 30 minutes down a very steep hill I was hoping we wouldn’t have to climb back up. Phil had helped build the institute when he was about 15 but sadly it has been empty and falling apart for the last 15 years. There were dorms and flats and teaching buildings. In the 90s there was a lot of trouble from guerrillas and the risk of kidnap was high. The missionary families all moved out and have never gone back. Everything is overgrown and has literally gone to the dogs – four of them. An elderly lady looks after the estate and has a small house which we visited. An old friend of the Brown family, we spent a few hours with her as she showed us her collection of photos. As she was speaking in Spanish we didn’t have a great idea about what was going on. At 5pm we left her and caught a bus to some other friends of Phil. After an hour they told us the bus terminal would close at 7pm but we still had one more guy to visit. After seeing him it was 18:50pm! We rushed out into the dark road and flagged down the first bus which approached. It happened to be going to Bogota!!

Church on Sunday began at the kind time of 11am. Communion was served – the first time I’ve experienced Jesus’ blood ice cold! In the afternoon, after a lunch of coffee-caramel and cheese sandwiches we skyped Daniel and Claire and saw her pregnant belly for the first time, very exciting! Diego returned from the jungle and the completed bathroom. The turtles were safely and secretly in his socks. When we returned to Louise and Diegos’ the turtles were handed to overjoyed children. I wonder whether they will survive the intense pressures of the honeymoon period as they are pushed around the lino tiles like toy cars.

Monday began with a bike ride through Bogota. On the cycle path to a large park it seemed half of Bogota’s 6.7 million population were out. All sorts of bikes of every size and shape and from every stage in life were weaving amongst our untidy crocodile. Once at the vast green park we joined all the other people enjoying the bank holiday and cycled past numberless stalls selling heavenly scented foods extremely cheaply. Outside the park we stopped for a big slab of boccadilo (cheese and fruit paste) each. Six year old Daniel, the youngest with us, found the way back difficult for his little legs. We had to stop halfway for juice whilst he recovered. We then (unexpectedly) joined a motorway through Bogota which had been closed off to cars for the day. It felt like we were in the Tour de France and I’m pretty sure I won.

On Wednesday we joined one of Phil’s Bible study groups and practiced our Spanish… Hannah got given four bracelets by different people that morning…! The rest of the day was spent attempting to find souvenirs in Bogota. We found something for our housemates but for obvious reasons cannot tell you what we got. For everyone else we have bought lots of Colombian ingredients to put into a Colombian feast back in Southampton, should you be interested in joining us. One thing we ate that day but will not be attempting to make was a deep fried potato stuffed with rice, meat, cheese and a hard boiled egg.

In the evening we watched a film about a zombie dog.

Our last day in Colombia began with a breakfast of freshly made corn muffins. We then went on an expedition to Monseratte, a Catholic cathedral atop a mountain overlooking Bogota. On the way we saw a man pulling a llama around, selling its body on the street. A cable car brought us to the cathedral and we spent the morning wandering around taking pictures of it and its stunning setting. Pretty much the entirety of Bogota could be seen disappearing into a terracotta monotony below us. We climbed the cathedral’s large sandstone steps riddled with fossilized ripples from which it was possible to tell the stone had originated in a shallow marine environment… The cathedral inside was like any cathedral although the outside was a brilliant white which made for lovely shots against the deep blue sky (when a cloud wasn’t passing on top of us and enveloping us in its moistness). There was a hideous statue of Jesus in the cathedral surrounded by plaques placed by people claiming to have been healed by it.

Back at Phil and Maria’s we finally ate the catfish we’d brought back from the jungle and frozen. The evening was spent packing and eating tasty things prepared by Louise. Steve came by late and dropped off the 5kg of coffee he wanted us to take to Venezuela for my uncle David! We ended up going to bed at 2am ready for waking up at 4:30am. Steve and Diego took us to the airport (just Hannah and I, Dad had flown the night before as he was flying direct). We got to check-in an hour before our flight but found a 45 minute queue meaning we ended up running through the airport for another plane… Air travel being so commonplace for us now, I only took water when asked. Not even Coke.

Our plan was to fly to a Colombian border town Cucuta, get a taxi across the border to San Cristobel, Venezuela and then a bus up to Valera where David would pick us up. Diego had asked his friend Tim Anderson in Cucuta to meet and help us change our money and find an appropriate taxi, etc. He met us in the airport holding a sign with our names on which I have always wanted to happen and took us to his bright yellow jeep. He was planning to take us to his wife for breakfast but after phoning a friend’s friend’s friend he found us a good deal with a private car to get us to San Cristobel and they wanted to leave immediately. He kindly bought us some juice and lemon flavoured crisps and sent us on our way. The lovely driver took us to the exit and entry points of the border and stood with us as we were stamped then took us the hour to San Cristobel along steeply edged mountain roads. In SC he even made sure we got on the appropriate bus to Valera!

All the curtains in the bus were drawn and as we stepped out of the staggeringly bright midmorning light the effect was how I expect it would be to step into the entrance of a rabbit warren, though I’ve never had the opportunity. As I squeezed through the open door and waited for my eyes to adjust, a nun loomed at me in the darkness. Safely past her, we settled for the 8 hour journey with our newly purchased banana crackers. The curtains were to remain closed for the entirety of the journey, under strict discipline from a woman I can only assume was the bus matron. The result was that we could not see out and had no idea what sort of terrain we might be driving through, mountain or otherwise.

We were woken a few hours later (about 3:30pm) by a loud banging and what felt like a very bumpy section of road. I hit my face on the seat in front and then the bus tipped violently over onto its side, landing me on top of Hannah. It was maybe 3 seconds from bump to halt and there was little time to think or recognise what was happening until it had happened. The most pressing thought passing through my brain was a curiosity as to whether we were rolling off a mountain and a desire to open the curtain. Once landed, as the window was now black, we could not tell if we were wedged amongst some temporary trees overhanging a cliff, teetering Jurassic Park style. The wailing, panicking passengers didn’t seem to be worried about that though and all rushed (as much as one can rush in a bus where the wall is the floor) to the front to exit through the absent windscreen. The strange sense of normality which seems to come over when something unexpected and dangerous suddenly happens came over us. As we walked the length of the bus through a cloud of acrid smoke and throat-scratching particles, over the windows, ducking under discordant seats , we calmly gathered our scattered things even remembering to locate the remaining banana crackers before we made our escape. I later discovered to great disappointment that I had left behind a free bookmark I’d picked up in South Africa. It was the only real casualty. One guy had been cut by a falling pane of glass but just needed a plaster or two. We had lots of bruises and my left eye had a neon zig-zag flashing across it for a few minutes but that was the extent of it. The bus had landed in a ditch on its side and pitched forward so that there was a slight gradient downhill to the front of the bus. The windscreenless hole opened above a ditch a metre deep and between that and the bus a barbed wire fence which had moments earlier stood proud and erect. It now meant that escape was a tricky operation involving others outside being posts for those escaping to lean on to prevent them getting caught on the wire and left hanging upside down in the ditch. The rain was falling threateningly to add some drama. I paused in the field to capture a quick panoramic before climbing over into the fuel-soaked road.

It became obvious that we had been party to a head on collision with a large flat bed truck, the front right half of which was now part of the front left half. The driver’s cab appeared untouched so I assume he was unhurt, though I never figured out which of the ensuing rabble he was. The bus was entirely off the road but for the back wheels which hung over a few annoying inches. The truck covered all of one lane and a foot of the other, leaving a gap just slightly thinner than a wide car for the waiting traffic to squeeze through. As we were on a main road about 3 or 4 hours from the main cities in either direction and the road was only two lanes, there was already a lot of traffic. Large vehicles pulled up on the verges and the drivers and passengers all congregated around the wrecks with us to help smaller vehicles through the minefield of debris. After while a traffic officer appeared and took photographs before taking over the traffic flow. The bus driver came and told us that a replacement bus would pick us up when it arrived in an hour or three, the biggest problem being getting through the traffic we’d caused. A couple of guys stayed with us the whole time, one of them sharing his bread with us. People seemed surprised to see two white people waiting by the side of the road and many hung around us attempting excited conversation. It was all quite jolly.

After an hour or two a tow truck made it through the queue and took away the truck, opening up two lanes of traffic. We rejoiced, thinking the end was in sight for our tired legs and the bus would get to us before darkness descended. However, another small tow truck appeared and began attempting to move the bus. It blocked the entire road to do this so apart from thoughtless motorbikes, traffic wasn’t even trickling through. They spent two hours trying chains in various arrangements before they finally got the bus on its feet and on the road. One lane was free and traffic was moved in turns of 5 minutes each direction. It was now dark and the bugs were out. We were sat on the road despairing and needing the loo. Eventually of course the bus did come and we climbed on. It was 8pm, we’d been standing in the road for four and a half hours. We finally arrived at Valera at 1am and were collected by David and my Dad. We had arrived.

Brownout.