Thursday, June 25, 2009

on the bus to puno, from coreen

checkpoint, pampa cañahuas

6/22/09

I'm lying in the baggage compartment in the cab of the bus. My legs are hanging out the compartment door, resting and rolling on my backpack. It is cold and dark -- dark except for the occasional headlights casting Jon's shadow against the back wall of the cab. I'm leaning against a duffel bag and a stiff coat. I'm wearing a stranger's down jacket and my ankles are wrapped in a moth-eaten sweater I found. I'm sitting on a wool blanket and using another to cover my legs. When it was still light, the last sign read '4,528m.'

I'm wondering about the people who own these clothes. I'm imagining them discovering me amidst piles of strangers' belongings. Would they react like me, angry at the sight of this unknown person nestled in the contects of the luggage compartment? Would they stand stunned, mouths agape, staring at this diagional form crumpled in a tapestry of wools and weaves? Or would they laugh and laugh to find this gringa burrowed deep in their clothing? I picture their faces in the dark, and listen to the gravel and sand scatter against the side of the bus.

Before the baggage compartment, we were seated in a police station, or checkpoint at least. We listened to the wind pound the corrugated metal walls and watched the officer stop trucks outside. A typewriter sat at the desk, and a calendar with naked women drinking beer hung on one wall. The other proudly held the portraits of two national heroes, one the captain of the Peruvian police. Outside there is nothing but wind and sand. Women and men sit huddled with their bundles, waiting. El Misti, Huaca Huaca and snow covered mountains and volcanoes rise out of the high desert in the distance. I have to pee. The officer will show me where. He walks through the office and tears open the back door. The rooms is suddenly an explosion of wind and noise. The door has opened into a wasteland of barbed wire and dust. I find a wall painted white, and squat.

Now there are sounds outside. The woman and child seated next to the driver have awoken. There are loud shouts and banging and knocking on the metal sides of the bus. I think I hear something about not going to Cuzco, about the strike? The driver is honking and braking as bicycle carts and colectivos veer across the dirt road. A woman is feverishly slicing potatoes as men seated on the sidewalk eat steaming bowls of pasta or soup in the light of her cart. Children are running everywhere, standing on tiptoes along stone walls, tracing the painted words with their fingers, 'Dia de movimiento nacional, 22 de junio.'

A door diagonally across from mine slides open slightly. I tap Jon, "Jon, that door just opened." He turns, "There's someone in there." An arm emerges and then, "Buenas noches," "Buenas noches," "Buenas noches." We have been in the cramped back of the cab for four hours, inches away from this man, leaning against his exit, his escape, and he has been silent. I can't believe how unbelievably hilarious this is, yet everyone is stoic and silent. The man tells us that now in Juliaca we may be able to move inside the bus, to more comfortable seats. We scramble out and across the seated mother with our bags. She is overcome with laughter at the weight of my small pack. She keeps asking again and again, what could possibly be inside it?

Outside the world is loud with chaos. There is a shoving mass of men and women crowding the main bus door. A woman behind us is shouting, "Mazamorras y arroz con leche!" A man in front is telling me I need to get in the back of the the line, there is a line! We were on the bus! We already paid! The woman behind me is now explaining our whole situation to another woman who is also peddling food to the travelers. Everyone is small and round, and their bronze faces are half hidden by their broad, round hats. Their clothes are all color muted in the night. Jon is standing back, away from the crowd. He looks utterly lost and overwhelmed by exhaustion. He wants to retreat to the familiar quiet of the space behind and between the bus driver and the mother and daughter. "Jon! Come stand over here!" A woman half aboard the bus is shouting that someone is pushing her child, stop pushing my child! Then the mass echoes her cry, a chorus of stop pushing! A child! But the shoving continues in frenzied desperation.

I call out to the driver, pinned against the bus by the crowd, is there space? Will we fit? He looks at me and calls back, we'll see, maybe. The group is slowly and roughly swallowed inside. He finally turns to us and opens a different door, we duck in and I am washed away by relief. Among the few, wealthier travelers, ther are two seats, and at last, we sit.

pampa cañahuas

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