Malika in Arabic means “the Queen” and she had a birthday at her campground.
She and her husband Anwar (“the Light”) sat down to a table of appetizers put together by Layne (“my wife”) so Arab and Jew ate Spanish ham and PriceSmart salami and sang the words of that ridiculous international anthem in Spanish Arabic and English and then toasted her in Mexican Mezcal we brought from Oaxaca and thanked her and Anwar for the campground they own where we are staying.
Seven years ago they opened La Bonanza to travelers after they toured South America with their three children. Their children are grown and La Bonanza is for sale. Two of their kids are here sitting next to a traveler from Spain and what extraordinary lives they will live is hard to imagine. Arabic English French and Spanish, US university degrees at their fingertips, gentle thoughtful personalities and a determination to get things done. I felt old and used up.
I rode a motorcycle across Morocco in 1977 and I met a young Moroccan who took me into the Atlas Mountains where he had been invited to a Berber wedding. I ate lamb and drank mint tea and watched the colorful impenetrable ceremony with the ease of youth, the only European for miles around in that tiny village lost in the mountains. Now I’m old and the internet breeds mistrust and I see fearlessness in youth and I feel reassured.
Kika (a nickname for Malika) gave us a bar of Moroccan chocolate to try which was nice because I couldn’t read the sugar content or sodium warnings as I don’t read Arabic. But then the phone rang and she, Kika listened to the message.
(Rusty got his share of cheese and salami-did you need to ask?). Here’s a thing you need to know about leaving messages in these countries. First everyone uses WhatsApp an internet based phone system. Travelers exchanged WhatsApps, not email or anything old fashioned like that. Second when you leave a message you don’t type it out. You leave a voice message which as you might imagine is a concept I love. No I don’t; I hate it. Voice messages are intrusive and awkward to listen to but writing comes hard to lots of people other than me.
The message stunned the table into silence. We heard a high pitched woman’s voice speaking rapidly in French and sounding pretty anxious. I could understand enough of her outpouring to get an idea of the content and as Kika played it back in the silence we got a clearer idea.
Out of the frantic garbled back and forth ( the melon and Serrano ham still tasted pretty good to me) a rather unfortunate story came clear that I shall condense herewith. A young French couple who had stayed at La Bonanza and whom we never met was in trouble while visiting Jericó the town we had recently seen tucked away in coffee country.
An angry dog had confronted them on the street whereupon he had kicked the dog to the ground where it hits it head and passed out. The owner of the dog appeared and yelled at the young French couple. In front of witnesses the verbal became physical and they fought in the street. The French man got arrested and is in jail. The dog is said to be recovering. 
To their credit Colombians take animal abuse very seriously and the welfare of dogs is something that makes this country easy to like for me, but I have a technique to fend off street dogs which is to bend down as if to pick up a stone. I. Mexico dogs scatter because Mexicans will hurt them, here they usually back off a bit at least. Kicking them insensible does not appear to be a good idea.
Anwar had no idea how to help but the young man has been fingerprinted and his mugshot is now on file. The police were telling the prisoner it might be better not to call a lawyer and for the two parties to settle the grievance. Anwar was worried that the case and the fingerprints would thus be left as an open case and not resolved. It was not I should stress a case of bribing the police, they had arrested the tourist but were trying to mediate a settlement.
It was I suppose you could say a sobering moment that is still unresolved. I have no idea yet if there is a resolution but there is a lesson to be learned. Do not lose your temper. As a guest in a foreign culture don’t get angry and don’t call the police. But for that tourist all the advice in the world is too late. No matter how your day has been going his is worse.
Layne and I are still coughing and spluttering horribly. We are weak and unable to sleep much and hoping the symptoms will ease up soon. We are alone in the campground with everyone else leaving after the Tuesday market.
The multitudes of French and German children have gone, bound for Cartagena port to ship home to Europe their year long journey unfinished. One of the parents came by which was weird as they hadn’t spoken to us in three days and he had found a bundle of Argentine pesos he had no use for. That seemed very nice of him but he wasn’t giving away $16 worth of useless paper money. No sit, he wanted the equivalent in pesos. Lat gave it to him good naturedly but it seemed rather venal. Aside from anything else Argentine currency is devaluing daily do it may only be worth $12 or less when we get there but the idea that he wanted to used to make a buck on paper worthless to him did not make him come across as particularly nice. It’s not what we have done upon finding ourselves holding money worthless to us. Last year at the Rome airport I made a cleaning lady’s day pressing on her $35 in euros that I hadn’t spent when I went to visit my sisters in Italy ( and where I got Covid for the first time lucky me). It was no good to me and she couldn’t believe her luck. Not this Frenchman though.
That is one thing we are coming to understand in this journey. Not everyone is a traveler by nature. There are lots of Europeans in a journey in their campers but they are here for a short time with a defined goal and then back to their real lives. That notion of a community on the road doesn’t really exist for them, this is an interlude not a way of living. That we have been traveling for three years is a shock to them.
And now we have dates to enter Ecuador. Hoping we will be over these infernal colds we plan to leave here Sunday and Rusty has a vet appointment four hours away in Pasto where he will get his border crossing papers. It’s said no one at the border inch cares about pet papers but I will happily pay $90 to have them if we need them. Rusty is worth it as is the peace of mind.
In a surprise change of policy Ecuador still requires anyone driving into the country by road from Colombia to have a police clearance from their home country, a problem free criminal history. In many countries this is easily available even online. For US citizens not so much so a campground operator in Ecuador is working with the tourism ministry to help us enter Ecuador and get 90 days to visit. We have sent him our information and supposedly we should be good to cross the border on Tuesday.
All set to leave Colombia. Now if only we could stop coughing.
On another note 1944 seems so far away now not many people remember the longest day anymore and none are left who participated in the Longest Day. 80 years for these sorts of memories is a long time but that is perhaps the burden of the older generation. Hard for us to forget.
