Outpost Trinidad Part II

Outpost Trinidad Part II.... Continued....


Day to day life in Trinidad meant the constant search for clean food.  This at times was a challenge as shipments form other parts of the country were irregular at best.  The decision was essentially find something and have a maid at the house cook it for you or play Russian roulette at a restaurant.  One experience that always brought a smile to my face was the hunt for chicken.  There are no supermarkets in Trinidad so when chicken was desired you had to pass by the chicken store.  In Trinidad this meant a visit to Pollos Imba.  Pollos Imba sold one thing, chicken.  The problem was that they only had chicken about 30 percent of the time.  The rest of the time the Pollos Imba girls simply hung out and responded to clients queries.  Typically it involved driving up in front of the store and rolling down the window.  Looking into the open front door you would catch the eye of the attendant.

"Hay Pollo?"  You would shout (Is there chicken?)

"No hay Pollo."  The voice would often shout back (there is no chicken) followed by a twisting motion of a fully opened hand similar to the fake wave given by a beauty contestant.

This was grocery shopping in Trinidad.

Eating chicken out was another exercise in communication and frustration.  I recall this one fried chicken place we used to go to.  For some reason I remember a particularly narrow or dangerous bridge crossing the great sewage moat.  When you reached the other side and found a wooden table they would essentially bring you the one thing on the menu, fried chicken and potatoes.  They must have had some sub source aside from Pollos Imba with a coup in the country as they didn't seem subject to the chicken shortages.  One day I was sitting there with a friend and a young girl brought our food.  I paid her the 10 Bolivianos for the order and gobbled down my food.  When I finished I was still hungry and asked her if I could just buy another piece of chicken.

"No," she replied. "Viene con papas."  (It comes with potatoes.) 

"That's okay." I said. "I will just pay you the 10 Bolivianos but please just bring me the chicken, I don't want the potatoes."  Her face was consumed with a look of bewilderment I have seen no where else in the world.  The eyes were vacant as if every speck of cranial illumination had been extinguished.

"Pero viene con papas." (But it comes with potatoes.)


"Look," I said. "I will pay you the same amount it doesn't matter.  I just want the chicken."

She shook her head still mystified. "Pero viene con papas." She replied.

It reminded me of the server girl who worked in the cafeteria at the Embassy in La Paz.  The place could be empty of customers.  You were the only one that occupied a chair.  The only living breathing human being in the room and she would walk out with your order, look around the room at all the vacant chairs before finally looking at you and sheepishly ask, "is this your order?"

Communication at times was as mysterious as the vacant eyed statues of Easter Island staring off into an ocean seemingly stretching to infinity.

Another story I recall that provides a perfect example of the Trinidad communication disconnect.  It was reported by one of my closest friends.  Trinidad is a motorcycle/scooter city.  As previously noted cars on the road are the odd ones.   The greatest fear of the four wheeled motorist is inadvertently taking out one of the two wheeled vehicles speeding by. The result of the two wheeled reality is that much of the commerce is designed to meet the needs of a passing cycle.  This is much like America where our entire country is designed around the automobile albeit on a much smaller scale.  There was one girl a few blocks away from our residence that would sit by the road next to several coke bottles filled with gasoline.  It was just enough for a scooter to refresh.  She certainly knew her client base.  My friend once told me of stopping by another roadside girl selling gum on a blanket before her.  He paused and examined the various packets she had for sale before announcing, generously, so he thought, "I will take it all."

"Pero senor, no puedo vender todo."  (But sir, I can't sell you everything)

My friend became confused.  After all, he thought he was doing her a favor.  With her inventory sold she could go about doing whatever she did for the rest of the day.

"Why won't you let me buy everything?" He asked her quizzically. 

"Because if I sell you everything, then I won't have anything to sell."  she replied resolutely. 

Some how over all I stayed surprisingly healthy in Trinidad.  I don't remember any serious toilet hugging illness.  The kind that you feel your body temperature is an inferno and Antarctica the next.   When the pain of cramps is so severe you nearly jab a dagger into your own stomach in a misguided attempt to seek relief.  This said there was one moment of concern.  Shortly after arriving in Trinidad I became horribly dizzy.  The world seemed to turn upside down and closing my eyes seemed to make things even worse.  I felt like Alice in Wonderland as the world grew and shrank with colors that made no sense at all.  Whenever you are far from home and a health related incident that is incapacitating occurs I always find myself wondering if I will make it home to die.  I mean what if this is it?  What if this is the big one?

In complete desperation I asked an friend to take me to the hospital in Trinidad to be checked by a doctor in their ER.  I had lived in Bolivia for years and honestly in La Paz some of the doctors I had visited were the most intelligent, caring and professional physicians I had ever known.  How bad could it be?

As I hobbled into the hospital I quickly learned the answer to my question, real bad.  Life is filled with decisions that can dramatically impact the outcome of life.  It is like we constantly balance on the fulcrum of a scale a bit of a lean from one side or the other can change the outcome of everything that supersedes it.  Crossing the threshold into the German Busch hospital suddenly seemed like one of those decisions.

The windows were all open allowing fresh air to pass.  Perhaps it was my only hope to avoid the pervasive infection that seemed to be everywhere.  Some sat in the hallways on the floor looking sick.  I remember a person vomiting nearby.  Everything was blackened, stained and had an unwashed feeling that no antiseptic could penetrate.  I contemplated turning around and traveling to the one other hospital I knew of in Trinidad.  It was the Japanese Maternal Infant Hospital.  Japanese were obsessively clean, it had to be cleaner than this I thought.  Maybe I could tell them I was a woman and felt pregnant.  I am not even sure there was electricity as I was shown to a dark examination room.  A few moments later a doctor met me.  At least I think he was a doctor.  He seemed like an older man and I wonder why in God's name he ever chose to practice medicine in Trinidad, Bolivia.  Maybe he was Cuban, on an exchange?  He didn't smell like cigars.

The doctor looked in my eyes, ears and throat and pronounced I had vertigo.  I wondered if that meant I was going to be murdered like in the Alfred Hitchcock movie.  He wrote me a prescription for what I do not know, yet with my paper in hand I fled and stumbled toward a pharmacy and handed it through a metal cage on the street.  A young woman vanished behind a number of shelves to a deposit of pills that had been curing in the Trinidad heat for God knows how long.  Moments later she returned with a bottle filled with tiny white pills.   Like a desperate man in the desert sipping water I pushed the pill down the hatch,  returned to my bed, and tried my best to rest.  Nearly 24 hours later it was gone.  I don't think it had anything to do with the pill.  In retrospect now I suspect it was a condition of my inner ear precipitated by flying and the sudden change of altitude.  Whatever the cause I continued to examine myself over the subsequent days for any sign of infectious disease I might have contracted in the hospital.

At some point my life in Trinidad changed from work to vacation.  My father visited me in Bolivia and it seemed only natural to bring him to what in a way had become a second home.  He seemed to make the conversion easily.  I think the time we all spent living in Alaska served us well when it came to adaptability. We wanted an adventure and with a little ground work found a guide.  A very generous police captain I knew lent us a fishing rod and we ventured to the Mamore river to meet a captain and a boat.   Sounds dramatic doesn't it?  Visions of  a pristine Miami cruiser out on the ocean waves sword fish rod in hand.  Reality was far different.  In truth it was a two decked dilapidated floating pile of lumber. That needed constant bailing to simply stay afloat. Behind us we towed dug out canoe that would have been prized by the Indians who met Lewis and Clark.  Come to think of it, it may very well have been the same one they used. 

River Dolphin

The captain was a sun weathered thin Bolivian man who welcomed us aboard.  He looked to be 70 but was probably more likely 30.  I have to say however it was his daughter who inspired the most confidence.  Like a scene from the African Queen we set out on the South American version of the Zambezi River, the Mamore.  If followed eventually the Mamore would lead only the most intrepid navigator to the Madiera and eventually the mighty Amazon river itself. With a series of sharp pulls an antiquated outboard engine puttered to life and like the fin of a shark we commenced slicing through the dark turbid waters of the mamore river.  At times off the prow of the boat we would see river dolphins surface and then dive again.  Ugly in nature when compared to their ocean going cousins they seemed to be evolutionary oddballs.  Left to their own devices at some point in the past when the continents separated and rivers twisted, in truth they represent a more un-evolved state than their distant relations.

 

Our mighty river boat.

Pacu

Surubi

Towering mahogany trees loomed over the river and as we passed each one, I made a silent wish that no logger would end its magnificent existence.  So few remained each seemed solitary and in a way lonely.  Our intrepid captain navigated us into a small estuary and my father and I tried our hand at fishing.  We boarded the canoe and slipped away from the mother ship to a more tranquil spot.  In retrospect it as probably best we didn't catch anything.  Bolivia and the Amazon as a whole are known for two fish in particular that can reach the size of a full grown human.  The Surubi is a kind of Amazonian catfish that slithers along the bottom of the rivers scooping up whatever it finds delicious.  A second fish known as the Pacu is enormous and has an overbite that makes them look suspiciously like a piranha that hung around a nuclear reactor.  If we had hooked either we would have ended up in the Atlantic Ocean before it would have ever been tamed.

My Dad doing what he does best.  Hold a shoe.

As the afternoon turned into evening my father and I watched as the captain pulled his boat into shore and tromped off into the brush in search of firewood.  In the trees we could see monkeys leaping from one branch to another curious on why we insisted on using such a slow and laborious form of transport.

Flush with firewood in hand the captain created a small fire on the shore near a tree.  My father was convinced the entire tree was going to catch fire yet he seemed to have the situation under control as he created a dish consisting of slices of meat, carrots and potatoes carved with his trusty machete.  At times the captains sense of humor was manifested in shouting as he pointed up in the trees and yelled, "Anaconda!  Anaconda!"  As our eyes would grow large looking for an enormous snake preparing to consume us he would giggle and smile a nearly toothless smile.

We didn't see much in the way of shore mammals but he explained that it was the wrong time of year.  It was the rainy season and they had no need to venture to the shoreline for a drink of water.

After dinner we boarded the canoe and slipped off into the the darkness of a small cove.  The captain attempted to locate the phosphorescent eyes of alligators with his flash light yet none were to be found.  More interestingly small fish began to fly out from the water and land in the boat.  First one, then two.  Before we new it dozens were flopping around.  I started to think it was Biblical.  Possibly the Bolivian version of raining frogs.  We picked them all up and tossed them back into the dark water.  I wonder if just perhaps they were seeking refuge from something nefarious lurking withing the deep.  Maybe in our overly simplistic human desire to help we simply  tossed them back to their fate.

Back on board the Mamore Queen the captain erected a tent for my father and I on the top deck and then slipped down below and slept with his children in net covered hammocks on the deck bellow.  As we attempted to find Morpheus' arms that night on the Mamore my father and I took turns swatting mosquitoes wondering if we would have Malaria before the trip was over.

The next day as we puttered back toward Trinidad the antiquated outboard gave up the ghost and surrendered. A short while later a storm emerged and the rain began to pour from the sky.  The captain commenced operating on the engine and pulled out a spark plug for examination.  He used a worn piece of sandpaper to clean it before replacing it in the engine.  Eventually the motor sputtered back to life and with a driving rain accompanying us we made our way back to Trinidad.

There is no shortage of insect life in Trinidad, each season celebrating its own crop of multi-eyed, multi-legged creatures.  The most alarming for me was a cicada hatching that seemed to blanket the world with enormous flying critters.  Everyone seemed to take them in stride yet it gave me the willies as they landed on my head and body in enormous numbers.  Another common event was my encounters with tarantulas in their native environment.  I would see them crossing roads and at times on the walls of the house in Trinidad.  Despite my best efforts I don't think ever seeking an enormous hairy spider crawl along will become normal.

One of my most favorite characters was a Narcotics Affairs Section contractor named Mick Hogan.  Mick was their man in Trinidad and he ran a depository parting out supplies to the various entities involved in the anti-drug effort.  He had a flamboyant mustache and in a world dominated by scooters and tiny motorcycles would ride his Harley Davidson as he navigated his way through the masses.  He was so out of place it almost reached a point of perfection.

Gradually as time marches on things changed in Trinidad.  Government accounting finally caught up to need and the lease on the house was ended.  Two agents were officially assigned to Trinidad and it was no longer staffed from La Paz.  An office was constructed on the UMOPAR base and our presence became constant.  I continued to travel and support the office yet things had changed.

Bolivia today is a dramatically different world than the one I knew in a professional sense.  Politics intervened and when Evo Morales a former coca grower and the head of the Movement for Socialism party came to power in 2006.  DEA became persona non-grata.  Our Ambassador was ejected and the entire infrastructure built over decades of cooperation was ordered to be dismantled immediately.  Four permanent offices and one office in Chimore, the heart of coca production were closed.  Millions of dollars spent in cultivating relationships and developing the capability of the Bolivian police and armed forces was ended.

Evo Morales

Arguments on the productivity of our effort can be vigorously waged to the pro and con yet there can be no denial of the personal relationships developed.  Bolivian counterparts became our trusted friends.  The American presence in Bolivia while at times over bearing provided a constant push for regional and economic development.  Bolivia was our flag in the center of the South American continent yet this was all brought to a crashing end as the Bolivian government under Evo Morales realigned itself with socialist elements in Venezuela, Cuba, Russia and Iran.   When I think back at the Bolivians I once called my friends and who were assigned to special units that worked closely with us I fear for them.  I hope they were able to reintegrate without too much animosity.  Often the extra pay, travel, training and benefits they once received was resented by the mainstream police and military.

There is a side of me that is sympathetic with the desire by the indigenous Indians of the Alti-Plano to elect one of their own as opposed to rule by a corrupt elite.  They have been used and exploited since the Spanish first arrived.  The problem is, this will not change.  There is no socialist panacea and money will always rule the day.  Rotating corruption was replaced by institutional dictatorship.   Evo Morales undoubtedly looks toward his mentors Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro as models in the maintenance of power for decades.

Bolivia also has the problem that an indigenous Indian from the Alti-plano doesn't represent the interests of the low country population.  The Eastern portion of the country is dramatically different from the Western portion in tradition, thought, experience and productivity. 

Bolivia is now going through a painful transition.  In many ways it reminds me of the period the Philippines went through when the US bases were expelled.  Initially there was huge shock and dismay by the United States and some Filipinos on how the Philippine government could turn its back on enormous amounts of US aid and money that was the result of our presence. 

The Philippines however had one huge thing going for it, the country has solidly established a democratic tradition.  This is something Bolivia has experimented with in thee past yet the election of Morales marked a return to the strongman type politics more akin to the series of dictatorships that commenced when Hugo Banzer took power later followed by Luis Garcia Meza Tejada.  Despite constitutional limitations on three consecutive terms of power he is already posturing to remain President.  This shouldn't come as a surprise, his mentor Hugo Chavez in Venezuela as done it numerous times.  It is going to take losing battle with cancer to remove him from office.

Only time will tell what the future of Bolivia will be.  If past is predicate it won't be bright.  This with standing, one can always hope for the best.  At the very least I will always remember the good times.