Ndura. Son Of The Forest. Javier Salazar Calle

The images of Juan riddled with bullets by the rebels popped in my head like a succession of short flashes. Alex's lifeless body seated in the airplane after the crash with blood dripping from his forehead tormented me once more. I imagined myself bleeding from several holes in my body inflicted on me by the shootings of the rebels, lying on the ground at the foot of a huge tree, they laugh at me while I'm in agony. The pain... I scanned the leaves of the trees and I finally discovered the origin of the sound: a monkey about two foot tall with a tail as long as its body, a bluish face, it had a tuft of dark hair on each side between eye and ear, and a white oblique one over the eyes, most of its body was yellowish brown, except its throat, chest and belly that were white^[11]. Perhaps I wasn't predestined to die that day. Little by little, more monkeys appeared, until there were five of them, jumping from branch to branch and squealing. They must have been playing or something, they perched themselves on a branch and they shook it energetically while they shrieked. Perhaps they were in their mating season, I had no idea, but it was a huge show. Little by little, my heart started beating at a normal pace again. The last thing I saw was one of them picking something up from the ground and eating it, from where I was standing it looked like a centipede.

      On the other riverbank, I saw another monkey of similar shape but with different colors. This one had a black face, white sideburns and a beard that spread over its chest and parts of the arms. Its color was more blackish and it had an orange reddish triangular spot on its back. It was bigger than the other one and it was relatively more robust^[12]. It drank a little water raising it to its mouth with its hand then it disappeared. I watched the others play and jump for a while, it was a unique experience that I never thought I'd ever see. Once again I remembered my two dead friends and how they would have enjoyed seeing this, especially the cheerful Alex, always so curious about everything. Now with whom would I talk about these moments, with whom would I share them? Nobody who hadn’t lived it with me could have understood it. No! I shouldn't think about that, it didn't help me keep going forward and what I needed now was to garner as much energy as I possibly could to be able to survive. Leaving this damn forest had to be my only goal. To escape this green hell.

      I took off my sneakers, I twisted them a little to drain the water and I hooked them on the extremities of some branches to dry them out. Then I took the bottle and I looked for a small stream to fill it, I thought I read somewhere that it was worse to take water from sites where the water was stagnant because there were more possibilities of it being insanitary or having some type of bug. Good thing I remembered that before drinking. My entire body wouldn't stop itching, although with less intensity than before. I felt a throbbing pain in my thigh and when I looked at it to check if I had a bruise, I saw a leech stuck on my leg, sucking the blood out of me. It was some sort of a slug, thinner maybe. At first I got scared, then I calmed down and thought about a solution. If I remembered well, you could remove leeches with salt or by burning them. I took out the lighter and burned it with the flame until it shrank, I took advantage of that moment and removed it with the knife. It left a red spot in the place it had been before, a drop of blood oozed on the edge. I heated the tip of the knife with the lighter and I carefully cauterized the wound. I had no idea if leeches infected the wound they created or not and I preferred not to risk it. It hurt so much that I had to make a huge effort not to scream at the top of my lungs. I checked the rest of my body in case I had another one, but there were none. Now on my leg I had the shape of the tip of my knife tattooed by the burn. I was going to have a tremendous blister. Perhaps I shouldn't have done such an outrageous thing.

      Laziness took control of my body and I decided to take the morning off. So many consecutive emotions were tiring, I was exhausted and my body weighed a ton. I looked for a spot in the shade and when I was dry I put my clothes on and I used the souvenir t-shirt from Namibia that I had in the backpack, to cover all my head with, including my face, to avoid contact with the annoying and abundant insects that lingered on the riverbank. Before lying down, I checked out a shrub that was close to me, I had already seen many like it, with a showy carmine fruit with small bluish seeds^[13]. Could it be edible? I crushed a confused ant that I wasn't able to shake off of my clothes. I closed my eyes and I let myself go into a state of drowsiness, dozing off, the heat and the humidity weighing on my muscles and willpower.

      A shot, then a burst from some automatic weapon, more shots. I immediately jumped to my feet. I heard the shots on the other bank of the river, although distant. Now I was sure I wasn't imagining it, they were going to find me at any moment now. Suddenly, it came back to me that my situation did not allow me to just relax. Not maintaining all my senses in constant alert was my road to perdition.

      I quickly gathered all my things, I shoved the shirt in the backpack, I put my socks and sneakers on and I picked the stick up. They were still wet, but at that moment, I didn't have time to concentrate on such nonsense. I decided that the best way possible to get somewhere, was to walk along the riverbed, but it seemed quite dangerous to me to follow along the riverbank, so I ventured into the forest once again to try and go unnoticed between the foliage and walk thirteen or fifteen feet away, parallel to the river. It was a small world, I looked in all directions and didn't find more than an impenetrable green wall without any exit. At most, I saw 13 or 16 feet in front of me. I soon lost the river and, once again, I was on my way to nowhere.

      I walked at a fast pace at times and a slower one at others for the entire afternoon with little moments of rest. Just enough to catch my breath a little and to listen for more shots in case there were others. I had to permanently put up with the sound my sneakers were making with each step I took, similar to the one produced when you step into a puddle, and the sporadic cramp warnings in my calf. The density of the foliage increased incrementally, plunging into the shadows in some places. There were mosquitos everywhere, they wouldn't stop harassing me as if we were in an endless battle. Sometimes they reminded me of the Japanese kamikazes of World War II, swooping down on their target without any regard for their lives. The mosquitos were the same, continuously throwing themselves at my body, regardless of the casualties I caused with my hands, using them as antiaircraft artillery. Some were so big that they looked more like giant bombers rather than fighter aircrafts, whose mere presence could make the enemy apprehensive. When I saw them approaching I immediately tensed up, ready to avoid them. There were always some hungry ones, I had plenty of bites on my arms and legs, in places where my clothes did not cover my body. Some were even on the same bites the other ants from this morning had left me. I was fighting a losing battle, a banal, futile, useless fight, since they had no end and I was increasingly tired. They bothered me so much that I decided to cover the parts that my clothes didn't with moist soil, creating an impenetrable barrier between them and my naked skin. That fleeting idea saved me. It was uncomfortable to move, especially when it dried, but the continuous attacks were worse.

      Thanks to this trick I was able to forget those ruthless insects for a good while and, although I couldn't claim victory yet, at least it was a temporary truce. It also had the surprising effect of stopping the itching where the ants had previously been. Finally, a lucky break.

      I didn't stop looking around, I had the constant feeling that I was being followed, that I was getting increasingly cornered, in a limitless forest. I even thought I heard steps and voices behind me or saw fleeting faces of guerrilla men watching me with ferocity from between the trees, constantly monitoring me. The truth is I didn't really see anything with clarity, I didn't find a single trace of their presence in the area. I had the impression that the trees bent over my head, imprisoning me more and more in a living wooden cell. I didn't know if I was becoming paranoid or what, but I had to calm down if I wanted to survive in this unfamiliar and deadly forest.

      While I was madly wandering, I came across a gruesome scene. What seemed to be a family of primates, as large as a chimpanzee or similar, were lying in a glade without hands, feet or heads in the middle of large pools of blood, parched and surrounded by thousands of flies and all types of insects and scavengers. The stink coming from them was unbearable and I couldn't avoid instantly having vomit come up my throat. I gathered my strength and looked again. There were two that must have been adults and a smaller one. There didn't appear to be any young ones, what I didn't know was why they hadn't slaughtered them too, was it because there were none or because they had taken them to sell them on the black market. I knew that there were particular parts of animals that were easily sold as aphrodisiacs