Mompox, a Unesco world heritage site, is the small and remote colonial town that I choose. Below you can find pictures of this too-cute town and its precious cemetery. Beyond the pictures, this post will not be about Mompox itself, rather an incident that occurred on the way to Mompox.
The bus from Cartagena to Mompox is supposed to take eight hours, though the distance is just over two hundred KM. At this stage in the game, an eight hour bus ride is not a twelve or eighteen hour ride, so how bad could it be?
I wake as the sun is raising and make my way to the bus station where I purchase a direct ticket. Ahh, direct… love the direct busses. Taking a seat on the bus, I am comforted that though it is a long journey, at least it should be relatively painless.
I fall asleep almost at once, dosing in and out as the bus winds its way over bumpy twisting mountain roads. We stop after three hours and I jump off to pee. After attending to nature, I head to the gas station to purchase an empanada that clearly sat too long soaking up oil in the fryer. It is delicious. Then it is back on the bus.
Only an hour and a half later, I wake out of my post empanada coma to find that the bus is stopping. This is strange, usually they don’t stop this often. As it turns out, we are at a bus terminal in a town that I soon learn is called El Banco: a town that cannot be found on my Lonely Planet map of Colombia. I assume that we have just stopped to pick up a few more people. This assumption is killed on the spot as I watch every other passenger grabbing all possessions and getting off the bus.
In my broken Spanish, I ask a woman passing my seat if we need to change buses in order to continue on to Mompox. Instead of answering, she tells me to come with her. This is somewhat typical, no one wants to explain, they just want you to follow. I too grab my bags and exit the bus after my fellow passengers. Once off the bus, I am told that the bus will go no further. I am able to understand that there has been massive flooding and the road to Mompox is underwater. If I want to continue, I am going to have to take a boat and then a taxi/back of a truck the rest of the way. No biggie, but I am not going to get ripped off. I calmly hand my bus ticket to the driver and inform him that I have paid full fair to get all the way to Mompox for that price. At my point, the woman who I followed off the bus indicates that she too has paid the full fair and expects the same. For some reason none of the other passengers are asking for a refund.
After some chatting, waiting and negotiating, the bus driver hands the woman beside me a wad of money. In a kindly hospitable way, the two of them have decided that she will take charge and make sure that both she and I arrive in Mompox for the amount of money the driver has refunded from our tickets. Now that I have a designated nanny, I decide to introduce myself. Josephine informs me that she is a nurse at the hospital in Mompox and she is happy to help me find my way there.
The bus driver points us down the road. Josephine and I walk for a few blocks until we reach a fish market. I do my best to make my way through the crowd with minimal fish slime contact. We arrive at a small dock with four river boats lined up side-by-side. A dock worker grabs my backpack off of me and loads it along with Josephine’s luggage atop the roof of the boat. With shaky steps and the overly enthusiastic assistance of several other dock workers, I take a bench seat on the boat.
Then the waiting game begins. Josephine informs me that we will have to wait until the boat fills with passengers. Unsure of how long that might take, I determine to take this opportunity to enjoy this random slice of life Colombia. We wait. I watch a fisherman throw catfish from the floorboards of his boat to the wooden platform of the dock. Many of the men are wearing mid streaked, knee high rubber boots. After about a half hour, three more passengers arrive and put their luggage on the boat. We keep waiting. I notice a fairly good looking young man at the end of the dock. His hair is gelled into spikes, surely the cool look that impresses the ladies. He is dressed in the ever-popular American Eagle shirt and slightly baggy jeans. My heart smiles as I notice that he is holding the hand of a little boy who can’t be much older than two years old. I assume this child is his little brother. I can’t help but think how nice it is that these two brothers spend so much time together. Furthermore, this young man must be more mature than he looks. Not many 18ish year olds would be caught spending so much time with a younger sibling when they could be out raising hell with friends.
My gaze drifts as four more passengers arrive. Josephine and I chat about the heat and I take note that I have sweated through my shirt. We keep waiting. I have donned a Zen attatude about the whole situation. Waiting and traveling go hand in hand.
We have sat at the dock for nearly two hours when we acquire the last two passengers required for departure. We all put our life jackets on. The bulky foam presses against the sweaty back of my neck and I am ready to get a little breeze off the water.
As the boat driver is untying the boat, the young man with the spiked hair kneels down on the dock beside us. His little brother sits down at his side. He begins to talk and all of my fellow boat passengers listen intently. My Spanish skills allow me to understand that he is named Jorje and he is indeed eighteen. I am proud of myself for my correct guess. He continues on, but I can no longer understand what he is saying. He lifts up his dark green t-shirt and I see that he has a large wad of newspaper stuck to his side about four inches from his belly button. The wad of newspaper is held in place by packing tape. Now this is strange, I lean forward a little trying to comprehend what is going on. Then with his left hand, he pulls at a piece of tape and the corner of the wad of newspaper. I can see the skin that it was concealing and there, right in the middle of the previously concealed area is a silver dollar sized, perfectly round hole.
“Oh shit,” I blurt out, as I notice slightly shinny, bubbly-pinkish- white matter oozing out the hole. My hands fly up to my mouth. Was that what I think it was? In a haze of shock, I realize that my fellow passengers are handing the man money. The newspaper has been returned to its prior position and his shirt lowered. Though I can no longer see the spot, the image is burned into my mind. There was no blood. The hole was cleanly made, likely by a surgeon. The most alarming thing of all was the bulbous glistening matter that appeared in that window through the abdomen. Josephine sees the shock and confusion on my face. She leans over and whispers,
“intestinos,” and then mutters something about how the man is very sick. I start to pull myself together. Okay, okay, I am digging in my purse. I can’t think straight. Before I can extract a bill, the boat is pulling away.
Further down the river, I have a moment to compose myself. I am ashamed at myself for my outburst and the look of disgust and surprise that the young man must have seen on my face. To top it off, I didn’t even pull myself together quickly enough to give him any money. Clearly he is deserving of a little charity.
This is not the first time I have come in contact with suffering and injury. On the scale of dead babies with oversized heads, paraplegics and lepers that I have come across in my travels (mostly in India), this wasn’t even that bad. But this is the first time that it has ever snuck up on me and caught me completely unaware. For the first time in eight months, I have been truly surprised.
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