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Return to Dibulla, Part 3 (Conclusion)

Abby Wasserman

Dibulla, La Guajira, February 2008

When I first entered Ida Campo’s mud and palm frond hut in 1964, her daughter Ana was 10 years old—dark, slim, and quick to laugh. Now she’s 51 and stands gravely with a grandbaby on her hip. I sense that life has pressed her hard. I would like to be alone with her to talk, to listen, but we’re surrounded by friendly people welcoming me back to Dibulla after 42 years. Carlos, the cameraman, is taking video footage. His sister, Lilibeth, is interviewing me for television. My goddaughter, Clea, stands close. Ida’s relatives and friends converge. One hour in Dibulla and I’m drowning in sensation and memory.

Ana tells me, “Voy a traer fotos de mi familia,” and after I assure her I will wait to see her photographs, she departs. But before she can return, Lili says it’s time for lunch, and we leave Ida’s. We walk a few blocks— where the street has been opened up for sewer pipe repair—and are welcomed by Rafa and Yuye, Lili and Carlos’s parents, heads of a big and accomplished family. We’re served cold drinks, and as lunch isn’t quite ready and as the cemetery is nearly next door, I excuse myself for a brief visit to what was once my shortcut to the beach. The graves are poorly maintained and crowded with stacked crypts and plastic flowers. I once photographed old Juana Bueno sitting on a crypt, legs crossed, eyes closed, chin resting on one hand. Juana liked the cemetery, too.

Lunch consists of baby shark piccata, sancocho (soup) with yucca and tripe, broiled fish, rice, salad, and cold Coca Colas. As their grandchildren arrive home from school, Rafa, Yuye, Carlos and Lili greet them with hugs and kisses. After lunch I visit the family tienda at the front of their house. María asks for dulce de leche, a soft candy made of milk, brown sugar, and coconut, but they haven’t any, so I buy her a hunk of cheese to take home.

We walk over to the plaza. Long ago the only gathering place in town was this open field between a row of small houses and the imposing stucco church. PCV’s and people from local government could set up in the field to show films on public health or community development, and folks would bring chairs with them or sit on the ground. Now it’s a real plaza with trees, stucco planters, benches, and a gazebo. A sign on one wall warns against public urination: Tenga cultura no se orine el parque! Padre Bernardino’s church still stands, but a modern new church has been erected next door, with open sides to catch cross-breezes. We do a sit-down interview on the church steps. By this time my Spanish has gained fluency and I’m more comfortable answering questions. Children sidle up to watch; otherwise the plaza is empty during the heat of the day.

We proceed to the old abattoir, now an education office, and the police building, which stands behind a high cement wall. There’s a badly neglected basketball court and beyond that the Dibulla River, in which a woman stands thigh-deep washing clothes and a man on shore slices a bicycle tube with a very sharp knife.

Howard Converse, my first Dibulla partner, thought the town had great potential as a resort, and there does appear to be some progress—a couple of beachside cafés and shady cabañas. The cafés are closed but I can imagine lingering in them over cold beer and fried fish. I wade into the river, dipping water onto my wrists and neck. The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is hidden by clouds. A bicyclist with a small boy on his crossbar rides slowly through the river shallows.

Carlos announces that the town mayor has returned after meeting with President Uribe in Santa Marta. A childhood friend of Carlos and Lili’s, el alcalde is young, educated, and ambitious for his home town. We’re invited to his office, where he listens but says little, seeming to take my measure. Finally, I ask him if there is anything I can do for Dibulla. He has the answer ready. “Tell people Dibulla is safe and a good place to come for a vacation.” I wonder how much infrastructure there is even now for tourism, but I know I would go to Dibulla for a vacation—string up a hammock and stay, watching the sea by day and the stars by night. I say I will spread the word.

I’m worrying about Ana. We’ve been gone for an hour and a half and perhaps she will think I’ve left without saying goodbye. So we return to my comadre’s house, where María again asks what I am going to do for my goddaughter. Ida chimes in gaily that I must take Clea to the U.S. I don’t tell her that this is impossible. It’s obvious that someone with reduced mental capacity like Clea is best off in her home town, surrounded by relatives and friends who love her and will protect her.

I will learn later from Alba Lucía Varela how Fundehumac in Santa Marta works with families to set goals and ways to achieve them, and how interested parties like myself can provide money through Fundehumac to support the effort. The key is a personal commitment—theirs. When I hear this I am filled with joy. To work with a family as a whole, taking everyone’s needs and goals into account—this is something I can embrace.

 I always thought that I was a poor Peace Corps Volunteer. I built no roads or schools or latrines, formed no lasting organizations, bettered no one’s life. I spent a lot of time listening and learning, not much doing. For many of us, our best intentions ended in failure or disappointment. We didn’t understand in those early Peace Corps years how difficult, even impossible, our ambitions were. Now, through the warm reception I’ve received in Dibulla, I realize that just being here and being myself may have been enough. Success has many faces and many hearts.

many of us, our best intentions ended in failure or disappointment. We didn’t understand in those early Peace Corps years how difficult, even impossible, our ambitions were. Now, through the warm reception I’ve received in Dibulla, I realize that just being here and being myself may have been enough. Success has many faces and many hearts. We stop at the Electric Plant across from Ida’s, a sturdy stucco building that also houses the town library. As I admire its neat interior and reconnect with the old A.I.D. generator in the back, a blond middle-aged woman with merry green eyes approaches, saying, “Me acuerdas?” And instantly I do —not her name but her face. I whip out a photo of a little blond girl with green eyes hunkering down in front of my house. “Soy Olga!” she cries, clutching the picture and hugging me. Olga remembers me! What better proof of time well spent?

Armando, the driver, says it’s almost time to leave. We must arrive in Santa Marta by dark. As I’m saying goodbye to Ida and Clea, a man comes up smiling in a challenging way. “Quien soy yo?!” he says, waiting for acknowledgment. But I have no idea who he is. “I don’t remember you,” I finally stammer, and his face shuts down; he is hurt. “Enrique Deluque,” Ida cries, “el padrino de Clea!” Enrique. We stood together at Clea’s christening, yet there is nothing familiar about him. Perhaps my mind is on overload. Hours later I will remember him, but by then we’re in Santa Marta. I vow to write an apology. I think, I should have pretended, and then, defensively, It’s 42 years ago, for God’s sake! Nevertheless, this inadvertent insult to an old friend disturbs me.

I understand now the story of Rip Van Winkle. I’ve awakened in a transformed Dibulla stark in its contrast with the past. I’ve had no part of its daily shifts, its gradual changes. I never saw Ana when she married in a long white dress, or Ida, when two of her grown sons died, or Camilo Ragonessi when he first held his baby girl, Rubiela, or Padre Bernardino on the eve of his return to Italy, if he ever did return. Our paths were the same for a brief time in the 1960’s, and then parted, to converge on this day in February.

We drive to Ana’s house a few blocks away. Hearing the car doors close, she comes outside to greet us. She asks me inside and I follow. The floor is packed dirt and there’s no glass in the windows.

Beckoning me close, she lowers her voice, and I know what she is going to say before she begins. “I have always felt so bad that I took that money,” she whispers.

When Ana took 40 pesos from my mochila, after we’d lived together for a year, I went to her mother at once, but before I said a word, Ida handed me the money. Ana returned to her mother’s to live, and although we remained friends, I felt my trust had been betrayed, yet regretted the severity of her punishment, for I suspected soon enough that my careless habits with money were as much if not more to blame.

I place my hands gently on her thin shoulders and talk softly. I tell her it wasn’t her fault, that she was a little girl, that I was just as responsible, that I forgave her long ago.

She brightens. How grateful I am to wipe away her guilt, and my own.

“The next time you come, stay with me,” she says. Could I hang my hammock in this dark house at my age? I decide I could. I smile. I promise I will stay with her when I return. Outside she gives me her address and cell phone number. Cell phone! In the old days there was no telephone service in Dibulla. One day, all the houses will have proper floors. The sewer system will reach everywhere and everyone will have flush toilets. The roads will be fully paved and there will be a tourism infrastructure. For the Dibulla of today has a sense of itself—it is grounded. It’s the place that didn’t let the paramilitares in. People know what they can accomplish working together. I wave to Ana as we drive away, feeling a surge of love for her and for this place.

As we approach the edge of town María sees two boys carrying a parcel and calls out hopefully, “Tienen dulce de leche?” And like the miracle of the loaves and fishes the boys nod. Armando stops the car and María and Lili buy warm bagfuls and hand them around. Like Proust’s petites madeleines, the dulce de leche transports me to Dibulla in the mid-60’s, when I was 23: radio music in the streets, cold beer on hot afternoons, the smell of blood in the abattoir, the black-and-white movies in Wilson’s theater, the bus at dawn to Riohacha, the cool river and warm sea, the sound of thunder at four o’clock in the afternoon, rain pounding the dirt roads, the return of the sun’s hot breath.

 We speed past the soon-to-be rice fields and onto the highway. As we again approach Rio Ancho, on impulse I ask Armando to turn into town. And there in the scrawny plaza, a chorus of uniformed schoolchildren perform a song for an audience of parents, teachers, and friends.

Their sweet voices lift and soar like birds. Like hope.

Contact the author at editor@friendsofcolombia.org.

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