The measure of the moment
In a difference of degree
Just one little victory
A spirit breaking free
One little victory
The greatest act can be
One little victory
It was as if the Amazon jungle dared me to leave. And leave I did. But let it be known that I escaped within an inch of my life.
You see, here I am in Quito, days after packing my bags, saying good-bye to the villagers in the site where I lived and worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer for two years, and yet I still cannot rid my mind of the day's trip out of the Amazon and into "civilization."
The days preceding my departure were filled with an array of going-away dinners and farewells. I ate dinner at the homes of two mestizo families, one Indigenous Quichua family, and two Shuar families.
Perhaps the most interesting dinners were at the Shuar homes, where the generous hosts there served me a plate of Armadillo meat (yeah, I know, I know, I shouldn't be eating the flesh of endangered species, but when a poor Ecuadorian family offers you their hard-earned [in this case hard-hunted] food, you accept it graciously), with a side of yucca, and a bowl of home-made chicha.
Chicha is a typical drink that the natives in the Amazon prepare out of fermented yucca. In some areas of the jungle the women prepare it by spitting into a vat, which ferments the yucca. Luckily, in my site, the Shuars no longer contribute their saliva to the concoction.
However, when Carmen, the elderly Shuar woman (who has tattoos on her face and holes in her chin where she used to place ceremonial piercings) gave me my chicha, she made sure to dunk her hands into my bowl of chicha and stir it up. I cringed when I saw her putting her dirty hands into my chicha, but I knew that I would be in Quito days later where the medical office would be giving me all the medication I need for combating intestinal worms, amoebas and parasites. So I took the bowl of chicha she offered me, said "salud" and poured it down my throat before indulging in my smoked Armadillo.
My boss came to pick me up in a Peace Corps SUV at 5:45 A.M. last Wednesday. The night before, the Gods had punished the Amazon with torrential rains, so I knew the roads heading out of the Amazon and into the Andes mountains would be in poor condition.
We drove the first 2 hours without incident, but as we started to make our way into the mountainous and very curvy road into the Andes, I knew we were in for trouble as we passed our first landslide. Landslides are extremely common in Ecuador, especially on the roads heading into and out of the Amazon. Thousands of people have died on these roads, as the muddy landslides have been know to come roaring down upon vehicles like avalanches, burying them underneath tons of mud. And when it rains on these roads, you do not want to be traveling. But, of course, we were cuz it's the Peace Corps and we are hard core.
We passed a second landslide as the weather became even more ominous, the rain pouring down in sheets and the thunder bellowing menacingly. There were huge boulders in the road, and part of the road itself had disintegrated down onto the steep cliffs. I felt as if Mother Nature were challenging me to leave my site.
We still had one more landslide to pass, and weeks earlier I had gone by it without incident. As we came around the curve, on approach to that landslide, I could see it in the distance. It was the biggest landslide I had ever seen in my life. The entire side of the mountain, which was at least 1000 feet high, was falling apart. It truly looked like a living being, gazing down upon us ominously, pulsating, quivering. My boss and I could actually see sheets of mud and rock sliding down that mountain, and we knew that our lives would soon be at risk, as the wind moaned and howled, our vision clouded by the rolling fog.
As we approached the landslide, large rocks came plummeting down the mountain, falling past the other side of the road, into a river far below us. Several vehicles were ahead of us assessing the situation. It was not pretty. As the vehicles inched onwards, we watched them cross the landslide's territory, the road covered with a thick layer of rock and mud. Had such a landslide occurred on a highway in the U.S., I guarantee you that the Department of Transport would have closed it down. But this being Ecuador, with its lax safety regulations, there was no stopping those vehicles from getting to their destinations.
I prayed to the landslide for permission to cross, and I could feel it observing us mockingly, our fate completely in its hands. My boss’s knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel so tightly, as he put the SUV into 4-wheel drive, took a deep breath, crossed himself with a hale-Mary, and punched the gas. As we moved across the dead-zone, I looked up at the landslide looming overhead, and could see the boulders come flying down towards us in a flurry. We sped on as fast as we could, without plummeting off the cliff, and finally made it to the other side, both of us sighing with relief, and grateful that the landslide had allowed us safe passage and another chance at life.
I looked behind us at the landslide and saw a bus inching across it gingerly. I prayed that those people would make it safely to their destinations.
Much of the rest of the journey was punctuated by very foggy conditions that forced us to travel at a snail's pace. We finished the spectacular journey to Quito in 2-days time, both of us exhausted, but happy to have made it safely.
Here in Quito, I will be completing my Close-of-Service paperwork, before heading back to the States later this month. I feel like I have accomplished a lot these past two years and am glad that I stuck it out till the end.
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