Day of the dead and the accident (Español Abajo)

HAPPY to be alive after surviving the ACCIDENT!

We left Cochabamba after our pleasant stay at various friend´s houses and after the completion of excellent interviews with the MUCOV PROYECT. We were prepared now to embark on our four day bus-a-thon with only overnight stops in three different locations. We were ready to continue our way eastwards towards the northern part of Bolivia headed in the roundabout way towards the Amazon. We first headed towards Santa Cruz, which took us 10 hours. We did not like it much and the next day we continued to Trinidad on another 12 hour bus ride. We spend the night on the third floor of a crusty but cheap hotel where we slept only for a few hours given the suffocating heat and the buzzing of the all nighters mosquitoes. We spend the morning walking around the main Plaza and feeling frustrated after we were stood up by a womyn we were scheduled to interview. We then went to get our tickets to continue on a westbound route towards Rurrenabaque where the Amazon Basin lies. We had not visited the Amazon before in any of the countries we have visited so we were excited to finally be able to get to see the vast green tropics, the Beni River, the exotic plants, the wildlife and the beauty of such a sacred spread of mother earth´s richness. We knew that we had to wait to visit the Amazon in Bolivia since it is cheaper than the other countries that share Amazon territory.

It was now Saturday the 31st of October 10:30 am and we were boarding the jiggery bus, with huge tires, rusty shell, and dust all over it. We were paying 120 bolivianos (roughly $15) for a 12-15 hour bus ride and we were told that the road is a dirt road, very bumpy, long, long but that we get to see nice panoramic tropical scenery. We were off at 11am and the trip begun. For most of the way we were sticky, sweaty, and resisting to calculate how many hours we still had left on the road. We had to take advantage of every stop the bus driver made (which was every 4 hours) to be able to empty our bladders. Not fun. It was interesting, however, to listen to the conversations Bolivians from different parts of the country had with each other. Some were going to the border with Brazil (20 hours bus ride) and others staying in small towns along the way.

The Crash It was around 9pm and we were just two hours away from Rurrenabaque and quite tired of sitting for almost 11 hours. I was looking out the window, at the beautiful full moon, contemplating the magic that is felt in such hot land of green jungle spread all across from left to right. All of a sudden we heard the impact of a crash, the broken glass landing on every inch of metal in all corners and edges of the bus, and then there was an echo of pure silence. What just happened? Are you okay, am I alive? “An accident.”Yes”. “Yes”. Think fast… Everything was all of a sudden quiet. Nobody knew what happened except that there was an accident and that we were part of it. The bus with almost 50 passengers was stopped on the right side of the road, people were stupefied, nobody knew what to do, what to feel, what to ask. We were sitting in the middle of the bus on the right side of the isle and I opened the window, saw that I was about seven feet off the road and jumped off. Carly followed and then a lady asked us to help her get her daughter out. I ran to the front of the bus to find out what happened. The entire front left side of the bus was destroyed, all the windows on the left side of the bus where also broken. “Someone hit us! Someone hit our bus and they left! It was a hit-an-run!” we heard people say.

The rest seems all still too surreal to conceptualize in written language. It is where reality is way more than what you ever thought you could experience, and staying calm is the only healthy response your logic is focused on achieving. People started to come out the bus. There were many injured passengers, blood on their faces, shoulders, hands and everyone was still wondering what the hell was going on. I went back on the bus to see if anyone needed help and to see if I could find our camera bags that we left behind when we jumped out the window. “There is a dead passenger,” I heard someone say, “Cover her face, cover her face.” I walked on the bus, looking for injured passengers while walking over millions of pieces of broken glass, noticing the hats and sandals thrown everywhere. That is when I saw the womyn who seemed to be sleeping with her head reclining on the now fractured glass-free window. The metal part of the window frame had been hit causing it to break and hit her head, killing her instantly. I asked if anyone else was dead, but luckily everyone else survived.

Outside, in the middle of the road people were calling out for help and hoping for other buses or vehicles to pass by and assist us. The nearest town was 45 minutes south (Yucumo) and the nearest city was still two hours north (Rurrenabaque). We needed an ambulance fast… While we were helping the injured passengers we heard the truck that hit us was over a ditch on the side of the road. It was a huge truck that was about 100 feet away from us that had flipped upside down. From the side of the road you could see that someone was moving and people started to bring flashlights. Quickly the locals that had come out to help went to assist the passengers and the driver. There were two visible men stuck between the door and the metal. They couldn´t get them out without the help of machinery. Impotence before a suffering human being, stuck between the nearness of death and the confusion of pain and life. It is hard not to remember the moaning that came from that ditch and the feeling of not knowing how to get them out with just the human hand and the human will.

In the next minutes several of the surviving passengers asked us if we had a camera. They wanted us to film the scene, the tire prints on the road, the glass, and all in all what the results of the impact caused upon us. So we did. We tried to do it as calmly as possible, with the two small flashlights that we borrowed and filmed the post-accident scene, the comments, the fear in people´s voices, and the calmness felt by others who knew how to handle the situation. It was now midnight, Day of the Dead in most of Latin-America and we were on the back of a huge truck that delivered gasoline. There were about 25 people with backpacks, boxes, and personal belongings headed towards the hospital in Yucumo. We arrived to the local hospital that had one nurse on call and one doctor on the way. People were taking glass out their own faces, others where washing with water the backs of other passengers in the hallway while the driver of the truck that hit us was lying on the floor with his face almost split in half.

Then we got more information on the accident. It just happened that the driver who hit us was drunk. A witness had seen three men come out of a bar heavily affected by alcohol consumption get on the truck. Then they heard that there was an accident and were not surprised to find out that it was the same truck that they had seen the three drunken men get into. Our bus driver told us that he saw the truck coming in the middle of the road at high speed. He flashed his high lights at the oncoming truck to indicate that we were coming and that he needed to move to the right side of the road but there was no action taken. Our driver saw that the truck was going to hit us face on so he moved to the side of the road, almost completely flipping us over the edge to prevent the accident; but the other truck hit the left side of our bus completely, starting with the driver´s window and breaking every window till the end of the bus. Afterwards the impact must have caused the other driver to lose control and they veered off into the ditch.

At 7am another bus came to pick-us up at the hospital to continue on the route and original travel destination to the various cities all the way to the Brazilian border. We were still in shock; we had glass even in our bras, small cuts in our feet, baggy eyes, and felt worried about the situation of the other passengers. What is the family going to say when they find out that the lady died? What is going to happen to the men that has glass in his eye and can´t see? What about the drunk driver that died on the hospital´s hallway floor in front of all the survivors? Why does it feel like this is not real even though we know it is?

We got on the bus, not knowing what to say to each other except that we were glad we were okay. That we were glad we could help. That it was a symbolic welcoming to the Day of the Dead. We were also happy that most people had stayed calm and everyone was thanking each other for the help they received. We got to Rurrenabaque around 10 am and found shelter in a nice isolated hostal, showered, and slept all afternoon. We lit a candle that night for the womyn that we hope died truly in her sleep, pain free, and for all the dead that come and visit their loved ones on this day.

As we travel, we know that we always think about how we are living our life and we know that there are no guarantees, we are not eternal and so we only remind you that enjoying life should not be a luxury, it is an imperative necessity. We will let the Bolivian Jungle remind us that we are still here and that there is still much to live and see because we are alive…

P.S. Malinche Comments: Drinking is fine. Driving is fine. But 1 plus 1 equals stupidity squared. It doesn´t take a mathematician to figure this out, just common sense.