Eagalic Music

Eventually I visited Puentarenas on the Pacific coast where I paid a visit to the shrine of a local folk hero and priest Fray Casiano, who had founded a learning centre for poor local children. I recorded this visit in my notebook and tucked in a picture of the man for a memento. What I remember most about this visit was the sweltering and humid heat of the Pacific Coast.

Later, I took a train to Limon, through the jungle to the east coast.  In Limon, despite the good advice of a fellow traveler from Brazil, who first beat me at checkers which he called Damas when I thought he could not (so I should’ve listened), I trusted a couple of  locals who told me they could get me a job on a banana boat to Columbia and who then returned to the room I was sharing with my wise traveler friend, at my invitation and robbed us both at gun point. 

They had produced some joints and after smoking them with us produced police identification and told us they were narcotics agents and that we were busted. I think they were intending to beat us up too, while playing “good cop, bad cop” with us. One of them after taking my passport slapped me in the face with it.

Another man however, rifling through my notebook, came across the picture of Fray Casiano. They had not believed my story up until this moment but I had also written comments and poems in the journal.

He motioned for the other man to stop hitting me.

“Hey man, Fray Casiano. Come on. These are not bad guys!”

They took all my travelers cheques except for $50. worth and late in the evening near dusk drove me to the outskirts of town, advising me that it would be in my best interests not to be caught in town. 

I can still remember that long, lonely walk into the jungle in the dark of night and the long trek through it until the next morning. There was enough light from the stars to make my way along a dirt road and after several hours of walking on I was rewarded by what appeared to be a kind of miracle. Ahead of me I saw a tree silouetted against the night sky. In its branches were brightly lit jewels which I thought were stars showing through. As I approached closer though, I could see the stars moving slowly, swarming about the branches. It took a while longer to see that they were not stars at all, but fireflies.

From then on the journey got easier, but it was a long hitch back to San Jose and an even longer wait in the offices of the Canadian Consul who could, of course, not really help. Too bad, old chap.

It was my good friend Robert James who came to my assistance, wiring me a few hundred Canadian dollars and giving me the option of continuing.  By now, however, something had percolated through my consciousness, that all was not well with this journey and so I reversed my direction, this time heading homeward.

I was hitching just north of Oaxaca, Mexico, when I was picked up by a group of medical workers from the Mexican Social Security department. 

When the jeep first pulled over I was taken by surprise.  Music blared from the 8 track player and the occupants, two women and four men seemed to be having a wild party.  Only the government insignia on the side of the vehicle reassured me as I climbed in. 

The driver, a young man dressed in a cowboy shirt embroidered with roses, was passing a doobie around and everyone seemed in good spirits.  One of the women was a public health nurse, one of the men was a was a Brazilian-born doctor who was practising medicine in Mexico and the others were, I guessed, social workers.  They had been given the task of going up into the mountains and inoculating the inhabitants of one of the remote Indian villages. 

We hadn’t gone very far, when the driver suggested I come with them.  They were going,  he explained,  to a village where the people lived much the same as they had for hundreds of years. It was a one week trek out to the highway from their mountain home and having no vehicles, they were quite isolated from the modern world.

At first I though he was joking until the doctor spoke up…”My friend is ahead of me amigo.  Yes, why don’t you come with us. You are a musician and we can get a guitar and play some music and drink some beer and it will be an unforgettable experience for you.”

I’d had my share of strange experiences on the road and the marijuana was now kicking in.  I started to get that old familiar twinge of paranoia, but for whatever reason, the energy around me was so good that I let myself be persuaded.  The truth was, I wasn’t even sure, by this time,  whether there was a choice or not.

The jeep pulled off the main highway and headed toward a range of low mountains to the east.  We drove for several hours along a dusty road that climbed into the foothills and then serpentined it’s way upward, taking us by late afternoon to the top of a lofty hill, overlooking a panoramic vista of valleys.  It was here the jeep stopped.  “Come outside, said the doctor, “I want to show you something.” 

“What now?” I thought to myself as my pulse began to quicken.  I got out and followed the doctor to a crest beside the road. 

“Look out across the valley” he said.  I was quite stoned, and I did as he asked.  The enormous sweep of it was breathtaking.  “Now, look about halfway up the other side of the valley, where I am pointing.”  I sighted down the length of his arm.  “Do you see a little clearing with some white buildings?” 

At first I could see nothing but after focusing a while, I replied…”You mean that little white speck over there on the hillside?”  I could barely make out separate shapes.  “Yes, there“  he replied.  “That is our destination.”

By early evening we had arrived at the small village.  As we drove through, the doctor pointed to a group of about 8 men sitting on chairs in the village square, watching us pass.  “They have no work to do now and for several months at this time of the year, they simply sit like this.  Let me ask you, do you think sitting like this doing nothing is easy?“  It wasn’t a question.  “You have to be very, very together,  to sit like this, day after day.”

We were soon introduced to the chief, a man in his mid-twenties but with great dignity and reserve, who was the only one who had been to university and because of this, appointed chief.  That evening we had dinner in the chief’s house, with his wife and children and food was lavished on us.  I was reminded by my friends that, although food was scarce, we were guests and this was a tradition.

The chief informed us, in very quiet serious tones, that a neighboring village had threatened to attack his and that his men were even now preparing.  “We have to be ready.” he said.  It was impossible for me to imagine these gentle, peaceful-seeming people at war with each other.

Over the next few days I helped the workers distribute disinfectant soaps, to the villagers who lined up outside the tiny office that had become the clinic.  At one point, the nurse handed me cotton swabs and alcohol and I helped by cleansing the arms of the children who had come in to be inoculated.

One evening, we were drinking beer with some of the men outside the clinic.  No one was saying much but suddenly a guitar was produced and handed to me.  As I tuned it, more villagers, men, women and children began to gather and within a few minutes we had a crowd of maybe 30 people. 

I will never forget the night I sang John Denver’s Country Roads to that little, silent crowd.  When I had finished, no one clapped.  The doctor chuckled softly and said, “Oh yes, man….Country Roads!”  I tried to hand the guitar over to somebody else but it was put back in my own hands, and I played for the next couple of hours to rapt, silent attention.  It was one of the deepest playing experiences I have ever had.

Instead of dropping me back on the highway when we returned to it, three days later, the doctor suggested I come back and visit him as his guest, in Oaxaca.  He gave me a full tour, over the next few days including a fascinating trip to the ruins of Monte Alban and an explanation of the rock carvings depicted there as showing women in the various stages of childbirth. 

The night before I left, we were sitting in his living room talking.  I was reclining on a couch across from him and in the midst of our conversation his voice suddenly changed and he said, quite calmly and in low tones, “Don’t move.  Just be very still and whatever you do, don’t move.”  I couldn’t understand but his tone said it all and so I remained very still, while he retireved a pair of tongs from the kitchen. 

He came towards me slowly and once again stressed that I remain completely still and then suddenly he stabbed the tongs at the wall above my head. Writhing in the tongs was a large, black scorpion which he carefully carried outside and deposited in an earthenware flower vase in the courtyard.

The scorpion didn’t bite me but the portent was not lost on me when I was arrested off the ferry from the mainland at Cabos San Lucas by the Federales on the way north. 

The doctor, as a gesture of friendship had given me a little leathern bag containing several sticks of marijuana. I had kept these under my shirt but when the Federales, not one of them over 25, drove me in a van out into a cornfield in the middle of nowhere and produced a sawed off shotgun, I was compelled to show them what I had been given.  I am proud to say that although I was threatened with an electric cattle prod, I never revealed the source of the gift.

But I was not to escape the south without spending a couple of nights in a jail in La Paz, however, a terrible experience.  And to make matters worse, my three journals full of intimate details of my journey, poems and songs were confiscated and never returned. 

By the time I hit North American soil again I was one grateful pilgrim. 

Perhaps, after all, my mountains were in a more northerly direction. 

 

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