Josue and the forest of bamboo

About twenty minutes down the dirt packed and potholed roads outside the town of Pedro Vicente Maldonado, is a forest of bamboo. Paz took me one morning; we bumped along in her jeep past fields lush with plants I never knew existed, over valleys swallowed in fog, tall, skinny palm trees emerging to scrape the sky. She pulled up to a dirt yard with a colorful little row of (how do I say, the structures don't merit the word houses or apartments)...a colorful little row of domestic quarters. A pack of dogs rushed out from beneath a stilted house, barking. Two young boys stood on the stoop at the top of the stairs, watching us, while a woman sat squat at the bottom, washing containers in a metal tub. Roosters and chickens ran free in the yard.

"Is it okay to be here?" I asked Paz. A silly question, but I felt like a trespasser. Paz parked the jeep, said her greetings to the boys and the women who responded very amicably. We proceeded behind the structures.

By a smoldering pile of dirt and rotten bamboo leaves stood a little boy, Josue.
"Josue!" Paz's greeting was surprised. She asked how his operation went, told him how handsome he looked, asked him if he would like to join us on our walk in the bamboo. Josue smiled wide. He had stayed with Paz's family at their hacienda after his cleft-pallete operation three months previous. It was the last in a serious of operations. His was a particularly tricky case, one that was so unappealing to the eyes of strangers that it kept him from school. He was eleven now, and learning mathematics, reading, writing...

I followed the two of them into the forest and its cool quiet and diffused light. The bamboo grew in bunches far over our heads - like tall trees with a dozen hollow trunks. A light rain fell, cutting through the canopy, echoing on the hollow trunks, falling on our bare skin and the earthen red carpet of decaying leaves. It was a sanctuary for contemplation.



We asked Josue to guide us and to keep us safe from the snakes. When the drizzle turned to deluge, we sought refuge under the awning of his family's quarters. We watched through the glassless window as he swung his baby sister in her hammock. We watched his mother perform her outside chores: pour buckets of rain water on the narrow concrete porch lining their complex, sweep the water out of earthen gutters with a broom, rinse out her son's boots. Her white dress was soaked to the skin, exposing her bra-less upper body. She wore thin plastic flip flops, nearly barefoot.

From the bamboo forest we drove another ten minutes to a one-way bridge overlooking a cascade of falls and rapids and a gorge of swirling water some 25 meters below our feet. The point, located at the convergence of two branches of a river, was called El Salto del Tigre. A few meters up the road, in a tangle of branches, vines, and tropical bushes we found two paths leading to a still lagoon amidst the falls. I followed Paz and Josué down the steep, muddy paths, over slippery boulders, grasping fallen trunks and tangled roots covered in velvet coats of moss.



The quiet pool between the cascades reminded me of something I had dreamt before. Tall vines hung down from the forest canopy, skimming the surface of the water. An island of river-polished boulders and stones stretched out into the lagoon. An ever-present hum of falling water and bird calls filled the air. A blue morpho butterfly floated by. We left our clothes and cameras on the rocks and slipped into the water, cold and fresh. Submerged, the water was a natural, transparent green and had a mineral richness that felt soft and nourishing to the skin.

At first, Josue entered the water with trepidation, claiming that he did not know how to swim. Ten minutes later, he was jumping off the rocks, belly first, and doggy paddling around gasping for air with a wide smile fixed upon his face. He was hesitant when we said it was time to leave and had to jump and paddle at least more than one "una vez más".