At the Mercy of Nature

At the Mercy of Nature

It was raining hard for a whole week in the town of Turbo in northern Colombia. People on the street outside the hotel where we were staying seemed unaffected, going on with their life as usual: Men loaded timber on to their boats, children played soccer on the street, and smugglers roamed the streets looking for immigrants who were on their way to the United States.

Our small group, which comprised of seven Eastern African nationals, was sitting in the balcony of the hotel, admiring the beauty of the town. Jemila, a Somali woman from our group, was expressing to Michael and Aaden, how different Latin America green vegetation was from our East African Sub Sahra desert. Coming from a region where rain is scarce, everyone was fascinated to see a place that rains for weeks.

The small hotel was occupied by a group of immigrants and refugees from different parts of the world, fleeing poverty, persecution, and wars. The majority of the group was Haitians, followed by Cubans, Indians, Syrians, Nepalis, East, and West Africans. Most of us landed from our respective countries by plane to Ecuador or Bolivia. From there by bus, using the Pan-American Highway, we made our way through Ecuador and Colombia to the northern Colombian city of Turbo, where all roads stop.

The Pan American Highway, which is a long road that connects North, Central, and South America, has a small gap in the Colombia-Panama border called the Darién Gap. The Darien Gap is 66 miles of large watershed, forest, and mountains that we have to cross by boat and on foot because there are no roads that cross it. Crossing by plane was not an option because the moment a refugee or immigrant is apprehended by the Panama AirPort authority meant instant deportation.

The East African group before us, who safely walked across the Darien Gap and reached Panama, informed our group by Facebook, what items would be needed and which smuggler was to be trusted. So we got out to the streets and started shopping. Laughing among ourselves and telling each other with the reassurance that we will make it to the other side of the jungle. We jokingly said to each other that in our past lives, we walked for hours to get basic things and lived in refugee camp tents for years, and that was practically like living in the wild. So how hard could it be to walk across a jungle?

After the rain had stopped the next morning, on the instruction of the recommended smuggler, we packed our bags and boarded on a big boat to take us to the next town of Capurgana, where the estimated six days of walking across the jungle would start. The boat, crowded with different nationalities, was stopped by Colombian immigration authorities who were more concerned with sending immigrants out of their country than checking any papers. After one hour, we reached Capurgana to be met by a swarming number of smugglers who claimed they could guide us through the jungle. Some offered 5 dollars per day, others 10 dollars per day. All claimed they knew the shortest way than the other. But the critical primary quality every immigrant was looking for was trust. After taking immigrants' money, some smuggler can leave their customers in the middle of the night while they are sleeping.

We saw our smuggler Nicko, with a big rifle on his back, pushing through the crowd and calling us by our name. He took us a little further from the crowd and told us to wait under the shade of a big tree and returned to the boat to get more customers. After thirty minutes, he returned with twenty-six Haitians and five Cubans who agreed to pay him 5 dollars per day. Other groups who came out of the boats chose their smugglers and started to move out of the town.

Our journey started with optimism and joy, admiring the beautiful scenery of the jungle. There was a sense of companionship that a person feels among travelers. People helped each other with heavy bags. There were single mothers with children, so everybody took turns to carry each child on their shoulders. After eating canned sardines at dinner, some people amused themselves by singing in French or Spanish under the night stars.

The problems started on the third day after a Haitian man accused Nicko that he was taking us around the same mountain twice because he wanted to earn an extra day of 5 dollars per person. Doubt started to sink into the group, but since there was no other option but to follow the only smuggler we had, the majority of the travelers calmed the Haitian man down by reasoning.

Everything went from bad to worse the next morning. As we were hiking up a mountain on a long line track, gunshots started to eco from the foot of the mountain. We looked down and saw a couple of Men armored with AK-47 shooting to the sky while climbing the hill. They were aggressively shouting in Spanish to the group who were at the back of the line. Our group looked at each other, and confusion started to melt into fear. Then all hell broke loose; people started running left and right without a sense of direction but to escape. Mothers began crying out loud their children's names. We ran, leaving some of our bags, which were too heavy to carry. We ran until we could not hear the gunshots and then we stopped to breathe and regroup. The East African group who passed before us failed to mention intentionally, not to scare us, I suppose, that the Darien Gap was lawless jungle filled with the leftovers of a paramilitary group, who committed theft, kidnappings, and drug trafficking.

For the first time in our life, we were at the mercy of mother nature. We walked for hours with no guide until we reached a river. After walking some miles on the side of the river, we met other small groups of Haitians. Together, we walked for three days without any sign of hope. The jungle, with its weird sounds, and too many rivers, was something that we East Africans had never experienced. We were more accustomed to dry sub desert environments, where you could see your surroundings for miles without the obstruction of even a  single tree, but in the jungle, our vision was impaired by an ocean of green vegetation that made it impossible to determine which way we were going. So we had to rely on our Haitian travelers to guide us through the mountainous jungle. The Haitians had a good understanding of the jungle and could look for tracks, and expertly follow rivers. Finally, on the seventh day, we found a footprint on  mud with empty water bottles on the side. Everybody was rejoiced and relieved after following the print, got us back on a jungle track.

On the jungle path, we saw graves with a cross on them. The sight of people like us who did not make it, made us shake with fear. In our minds, we started to question why we took this journey, and if we were going to make it. While traveling in a sub desert environment, the first natural barrier anybody feels is the thirst for water. But in the jungle, there is so much excess water from rain that our clothes were wet each day because it rained twice per day. To walk a mile took longer cause our feet were getting stuck in the deep wet mud. To cross a river became even more dangerous because the water reached above our shoulder.

Finally, on the tenth day, God heard our prayers, and we found an older man with his two sons cutting a tree in the middle of the jungle path. His sons told us that we were in Panama and took us to a nearby village where we met fragments of Haitians and Cubans travelers who started the journey with us. We were sad to hear that one Cuban man died because of snakebite, and a Haitian mother and her son were still missing. Although it took almost two weeks for us to cross the jungle into Panama instead of six days, we were delighted that the jungle track led us to Panama instead of taking us back to Colombia. And most of all, we were thrilled to make it alive.