What were you doing last night around 1:23 a.m.? This isn’t an official policing question, just curious.
If you were me then you were digging around with your hands looking for rocks in the muddy light red-brown earth of a long and empty road in the Amazon jungle.
In the distance fellow rock-searchers Roberto, Leonardo and another guy shone a flashlight also searching for rocks. A light drizzle began falling in the ultra-humid air almost like a misty snowstorm and their beam of light formed a small halo in the distance.
In the other direction the sound of a pick smacking into the ground and a deluge of shouts in Portuguese followed by the revving of a bus engine.
I picked up some rocks and tossed them in a big orange traffic cone I was carrying. I hauled it to a bus down the road and was directed to dump it under a back wheel.
Let me back track to the beginning.
I took a bus (see above) from Porto Velho to Manaus, Brazil. It left on Oct. 4 scheduled for 1400 and actually got on the road around 1417. We made good time at first on the paved roads, although our jovial pink-clad driver let us know beforehand that if it rained or there were any issues the trip could go somewhat longer than the scheduled 24 hours.
People I’d met told me the trip went over some rough dirt roads. But I didn’t mind the adventure and don’t like flying much and going to massive airports and paying extra for luggage.
As we zipped from asphalt onto the bare terra things were fine at first. Minor bumpiness, but my earphones double as earplugs and it didn’t bother me a ton.
We stopped at a small town unlisted on the map and ate at a buffet inside a warehouse-like restaurant / store / community center. A guy on the bus had made conversation with me before, Leonardo. He spoke a bit of English because he’d lived in Chicago in the past.
In the restaurant he sat at my table as well as another guy who actually spoke pretty good English, Roberto from Manaus - a law student who was learning the language on his own.
We finished our food and got on the road.
I drifted off to sleep somewhere in the endless miles and woke up to a strange growling sound. Roberto indicated the area behind us. We weren’t moving.
“The other bus got stuck,” he said.
Our driver and his backup driver got out and helped attach a thick steel cable to the bus which was snaked partway on the side of the muddy expanse with ridges of mushed up mud ridges squelched several feet high.
The driver climbed back in and put us in gear. The line went taught and we revved, feeling the cable take the weight of the other bus.
A little boy in front of my seat screamed half in excitement half in fear and other passengers craned their necks to figure out exactly what was going on and to catch some more of the air conditioning.
The other bus was now out. We honked and set back out. I drifted off again. Everything seemed fine now.
I woke up apparently inside a tilt-a-whirl to the sound of a scrambling engine as we fishtailed on the side of the road and the back end of the bus lurched off the roadside into a muddy side area. It wasn’t going fast but still felt like the bus was close to taking a little lie-down on its side and going to sleep for the night along with a few scrapes and bruises for us passengers.
But it stayed upright.
The problem was we were stuck. Confusion reigned and people talked. We sat for an hour while a gathering of another truck driver and some other people who suddenly showed up and were maybe part of the municipal road crew stood and congregated, mainly pointing and discussing at the muddy mess of the road.
The other bus we’d saved then came up and attempted to pull us out. But it didn’t work and actually just displaced our bus further. The other bus gave a little wave and continued on its way in the dark night. Now there was only another trucker and us. We were going to have to save ourselves.
Then an order came down to the ranks to me in the back.
“Everyone out. Just the men,” the driver said in Portuguese.
The males from young to old - excluding kiddos - got out and thence ensued two-and-a-half hours of pushing, gathering rocks to help get traction, digging and standing and talking.
We were never in danger or behind where the bus was tilted (not in danger of it falling on us), although the pushing got very intense.
Ironically, because of the slippery mud conditions, our pushing had a strong effect as 15 or so of us pushed on the back while the driver revved. Eventually after multiple attempts the driver managed to get back on the road, by now roughly 90 degrees horizontally across the road.
Unless he was planning to drive further forward or backward into the mud he was in a tricky position. He leveraged for a 100-point turn but eventually went too far forward and ended up … you guessed it … stuck on the other side nose in the muddy ditch.
He kept accelerating and we pushed and then he slammed forward like a crazy salamander and snaggled halfway in and halfway out of the ditch tilting even worse than the first time.
You could hear the driver shouting from inside as the bus almost tipped over. He put the pedal to the medal. It tilted more than 45 degrees as if making its mind up to take a dirt nap. A man ran over wildly at the back corner pushing and I and several others ran frantically to the very back pushing.
“We need more guys!” we yelled in Portuguese.
The bus engine heaved and the wheels spun then it righted itself and surged onto the road.
Cheers and raised fists arose in the muddy track. We were elated. The last few of us who hadn’t given up and gone back in the bus or stood and given up had just saved the trip.
We got back in the bus and sat for a good while. I took off my shirt which was stained with the red clay and soaked in sweat.
I did my best to stay modest and downplay the appreciative looks from the young (and old) women in the bus. It’s hard going through life with this level of muscle-definition, but you get used to it.
Then after some time recovering from that bizarre, wild, intense adventure we squelched on, reaching a small place for breakfast and eventually a paved road, two barges to cross and eventual arrival in Manaus around 17:25.
What a trip.
(Left to right: Leonardo, Roberto, Paulo)
If I had any big professorial take-home message from this is would be that experiences like this are reminders that when we work together we can do great things. The trip was almost ruined or worse but we didn’t give up and worked step by step with grit and brains and brawn to fix it.
My anxiety and panic issues get very bad when I feel disconnected and things are too indifferent, impersonal, universal and non-tactile. In a strange way, then, I begin to panic when things are “too nice” and too abstract or streamlined. I feel useless and dependent, trapped in a vast bubble of an indifferent and menacing machine in which I’m about to die and drift away forever without ever really having lived and hyper-conscious of my own powerlessness and irrelevance.
This kind of gritty, and normally upsetting experience made me switch off my internal monitoring and just get in my body and help. I felt a sense of accomplishment and solidarity.
Still, maybe next time I’ll force myself to take an airplane.