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Day 28: xxxx

Posted by Erik Frey Wed, 13 Apr 2005 12:59:00 GMT

day 28

I was shook awake by the hotel staff, telling me my taxi was here. I was comatose: I stumbled into the car and stared out the window the whole way to the airport. When we arrived, the taxi driver told me the fare was 1000 colones higher than what he’d quoted before. I just stared at him. It was too early and I was too tired for this. We went back and forth for a few minutes before he finally shrugged and slunk away. I tried to avoid thinking about the implications for the human character, that in every country and culture in the world, you can always count on taxi drivers trying to screw you over.

I slept the whole way to La censored. During my connection in Panama City, I withdrew all the money I was going to need for the next two weeks. The only ATM I could find was out in the open, in the middle of a busy mall pavilion in the Panama City Airport. Nothing like trying to stuff a gigantic wad of $20 bills into your money belt (which is incidentally hidden down the front of your pants) in front of crowds of duty-free shoppers. I did a little dance and imagined I was a schizophrenic stripper.

Things got more interesting at censored immigration. I was pretty nervous at that point.

For some reason, immigration is one of those procedures that always instills in me the feeling that I’m a very bad person and I’ve done something wrong. And as soon as the official takes one look at that little paper form I fill out on the plane, he’s going to laser in on my soul and point out every sin I’ve ever committed.

Except this time, I was doing something wrong. I was doomed! I told myself to relax, and did my best to look at anything besides the military police crisscrossing through the crowd.

I walked up to the booth, put on my best disarming smile, and handed over my documents. The inspector opened my passport, studied it, studied me, then reached for the big red stamp. I stuttered out “Please, could you stamp something outside of my passport?” The look she gave me was classic. It was damn near an eyeroll, like I was the tenth nervous gringo that day to ask her. She said “Of course, don’t worry,” handed me back my documents, smiled a really nice smile, and said “Welcome to censored.”

I walked through the door and felt like I was home free, and immediately after that (of course) a customs official pulled me aside. When he saw that I had a backpack and had arrived from Costa Rica, he harassed me for a few minutes about smoking pot, and threatened to search my bag. I told him to go ahead and search, and calmly held his gaze. He let me go without further incident.

I made a few calls to censored (private homes that rent out rooms), and soon found myself in a cab headed northeast into the city.

This is where everything begins to break down. Forgive me for not quite having the right words.

As we drove into censored proper, I had a harder and harder time processing what I saw around me. It wasn’t that down was up or dogs and cats were lying together. But still there was a whole swath of my understanding of daily life that had been stripped out and immediately replaced with the images I saw in front of me.

Children played baseball with wooden rods and bottle caps, in front of dilapidated, Coloseum-like structures. Above me, women hung ratty clothes to dry on ancient Victorian stone balconies. Old 1950’s era cars puttered by, side by side with bicycle taxis pulling stately old men smoking fat cigars. On a street corner, a guy in shorts and a t-shirt was kneeling over an old kitchen appliance, hitting it with a hammer.

The taxi dropped me off at the address I’d given him and I was stunned yet again. I was right on the censored: ocean on one side and a wall of ancient, crumbling apartment buildings on the other. I found my building number and walked in; there was no front door. I followed an old lady’s directions and went up to the second floor, rang the bell, and was let in by the proprietor. Her home looked like it could belong to Miss Havisham. I imagined that it might have once hosted the company of statesmen and diplomats. The ceilings towered high above me.

In an attempt to combat my disorientation, I dropped my gear in my room and headed straight back outside for a walk. I ended up spending the whole afternoon walking along censored in a complete daze. Everything was very unfamiliar and I felt very apprehensive. I kept my hands in my pockets and just kept walking.

I was sitting on a bench, people-watching at the censored, when a lady sitting next to me turned and said in excellent English, “Excuse me?”

“Si? Uh I mean, yes?”

“Are you American?”

I was a bit surprised. “Well… yes? How did you know that?”

She didn’t tell me how she knew, but instead introduced herself as Berta, and her son next to her as Sammi. Sammi smiled but said nothing. He seemed reserved, almost withdrawn. We got to talking and I asked Berta many questions about the things around me that I didn’t understand. Berta ended up telling me many stories about La censored and her life here. They weren’t good stories. They were about corrupt police, prison, and conspiracies. Some of the stories were so severe that I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d made them up. I expected her to ask me for money.

At one point, Berta asked me to buy her a loaf of bread and in my head, I thought “A-ha. This is what she was leading up to.” She explained to me that if she went, she would be refused service, or even worse, given poisoned bread, because in this area she was a known dissident. She told me where to find a bakery and what kind of bread to ask for. She told me a loaf should cost fifty-five cents. I agreed to help her and got up to go when she stopped me with a hand on my arm. Her grip was strong and her back was straight. She pulled out her change purse and handed me a $1 coin.

It was a brief exchange of body language that lasted for a second, but I’ll never forget it.

I bought her bread and brought it back along with change. Berta smiled a great big smile. We talked a bit longer and before I left, she told me that she spent a lot of time here at the censored, and that I should come by again and she’d have me over for tea. She also gave me a hand-written letter and asked me to mail it for her when I returned to the States.

A few occasions afterwards I came back to the censored to look for her, but I never saw her again.

That same day, I had many other conversations with censoreds, each one similarly heartwrenching in some way. Two fishermen tried to teach me to fish, then asked me for money. A group of hip teenagers told me that “whatever I wanted, they could get it for me,” and asked me to mail more letters for them. I bought chicharrones from a guy who called himself Chino. Chino spent a good twenty minutes trying to convince me to go out for a drink with him, and that I could stay at his place for really cheap. His sister would cook for me.

I came home a bit disheartened. I didn’t know if I could face two weeks of this strange brand of desperation. Luckily, that night I met some of the other renters at my casa: Nettaniel, an young Israeli and an old pro in censored; a German girl named Michaela who told a story of getting caught with trace amounts of cocaine on her fingertips at the censored airport; and two really cool Norweigan girls named Ingri and Marion. We bought a bottle of censored rum and spent the rest of the night talking at the casa. Nettaniel ended up giving me a lot of useful information about censored. After such an alien day, meeting some like-minded travelers helped to lift my spirits. And the waves crashing against the censored made for a wonderful night’s sleep.