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THE NATIVES ARE RESTLESS

By Michael.McGrath

9:54 PM 12/18/2001 – San Andres Island, Colombia

The All Inclusive Hotel Resort

I won’t pretend to try to make a lot of sense out of any of this. I am not surprised to be laying back in bed, a little weak after a bout of tourista after one week at San Andres all inclusive resort. I may as well be on the moon. Home seems so far away and indeed a five-hour direct flight from San Andres Island to Toronto and then an eight-hour drive up north makes for my detached reality.  The only one I could count on here is my friend Xavier, a tall Native fellow from the James Bay coast who I convinced to travel with me to paradise.  

It’s not just one thing. There are so many incidental intersections that I am making here. Like the lady I met in the ocean the other day that talked about past life regression, a shaman she met and the fact that she worked with homeless people in Mississauga. She had a large straw hat on. She said she was from Peru originally and she more or less just walked about in the ocean in front of the resort up to her neck in salt water. Most of the time, I found myself conversing with this bouncing straw hat. It wasn’t so much what she said but what her conversation drew out of me.

The lady in the straw hat made me say things as she bounced along in the ocean under the burning sun. She helped me remember a time in the old house when a friend of mine Tom showed up with an acquaintance that was either mentally unstable or had some depth of reality that most people only touch on in their dreams. Tom’s friend was some kind of expert in past life regression. I recounted to the bouncing straw what Tom’s friend had greeted me with. The fact that on entering my home she stood back a little aghast and proceeded to tell me that I was a pirate in a past life.

Somehow this bizarre notion, through this eerie memory, had been following me ever since my friend Xavier and I landed on this tiny little island in the middle of nowhere. The lady with the straw had made me admit it.

There was something familiar here for me. It’s not just what I saw around me but a combination of what I have observed and what I knew from somewhere far away. I can’t even blame it on booze or drugs. I have been clean for so long that clean almost sounds like a dirty word. The fact that this little rise of land, surrounded by coral reef, was a pirate’s lair centuries ago kept this nagging notion rippling through my mind. It seemed more and more to be evolving into some more profound idea or reality that was running its course. Wait there is more.

How is it that I stumbled upon the so-called Native shaman, political mover and islander soul just when I wanted to forget about anything being important? How much of a coincidence is it that I was visited by Storm the shaman, just as I was emailing friends back in Canada from this little dot in the ocean.

I found myself learning far more than what I wanted to about the islanders’ struggle to throw off the Colombian government’s grip in a quest for some sort of independence. None of the information was really new. It seemed as though every time I stopped to talk to an islander over the past week they were eager to tell me about this conflict.

When Storm dropped in with perfect timing to talk to myself and my buddy Xavier in the internet café, I was suspicious. He was intimidating in his stature alone. This black man was at least 6 foot 5 and although graying, he had the body of a much younger man. He looked like an athlete and was fine toned, broad shouldered and spoke with a hint of higher education in his words. In the short time I knew him I had learned that he was a political force to be dealt with and had been leading the islanders’ in their fight for justice. He was unhappy with Columbia’s approach to islanders and he felt that the government had only one thing in mind for them; their assimilation and in the worst case scenario perhaps genocide. Storm was respected by all of the powers at the resort. Everyone from the hotel security guards to the department managers acknowledged his coming and going with tolerance. He was the only outsider allowed to freely come and go. Perhaps the fact that he led the islanders in organized protest and ran a weekly radio show provided him with an elevated place, even amongst the local Colombian officials.

I didn’t censure myself in chatting with Storm, although I felt a little vulnerable, speaking in the open about such intense concepts with a nearby local sleazy destination representative soaking up our every word we let go in the Internet office. I let myself speak. I somehow felt it important to tell this tall and noble islander what I knew about changing things. I reminded him that this struggle should never become violent. For examples I picked the Weathermen and the Black Panthers of the sixties as examples of how not to protest. I assured the well spoken and dignified Storm that if his fight took on any violent means it would all be for not. We discussed the importance of communication and the media to his cause. I reminded him that a violent struggle with one of the largest and most sophisticated military powers in South America would be suicide. I also suggested to him that a true warrior lives to fight another day.

For the longest time his words deflected anything I had to say. He kept telling me of the plight of the islanders who had been turned over to Columbia by the English in the early 1800s. I just kept bouncing back my same message wrapped up in different spins. Finally, I think he got it. He thanked me for the advice at the door before he walked out with one of those funny, yet artful little birds crafted out of palm leaves dangling from his hand. I found it strange to know that such a majestic character made his living braiding palms into birds and hats. Then again, it occurred to me Jean Cretien was the son of a machinist in a paper mill in Quebec.

I first met the lady in the straw hat on an occasion when I stopped to chat with Storm under a large bamboo umbrella on the beach. I had noticed her before. She was bizarre. She looked kind of like a witch and I don’t mean that in a negative manner. She truly looked like someone who walked in that way. She had long graying hair and exotic tattoos on her shoulders. One was an eagle and the other some sort of Asian character. It was as though we already knew each other and that the words were simply an excuse to rub our souls together. Our conversation skipped along like slippery flat stones on a mirror like lake.

Somehow it didn’t really surprise me that we connected in real life too. She had been a teacher in my hometown of Iroquois Falls in the sixties. Obviously that was another life for her that she had long ago shed. Here I was resurrecting it with news of her old school and other teachers and personalities she had bumped elbows with. She seemed to have some association to Storm, which also didn’t surprise me. She brought him food and hung close to him as he braided his birds.

“Drop by anytime – my office is always open,” he said under the bamboo umbrella and laughed heartily and deep as he worked on one of his palm birds with the former teacher at his side. I visited his office often.

Proud To Be A Canadian

The latest onslaught of vacationing Canadians welled into the San Andres all inclusive hotel. They were mostly fat old men with balding heads accompanied by wives with hair permed so tight they looked like plastic dolls. They were all here to drink themselves silly, chain smoke, eat too much and to play cards. I was embarrassed to be Canadian in the wake of their arrival. Hell, they could have stayed home or gone to a local Holiday Inn to play cards and get drunk. Instead they chose to house themselves below my room in what was now fast becoming a tainted paradise. I was blessed with their shallow conversation that churned through the day until it fermented into drunken howls and laughter with the evening hours. Didn’t anybody with a brain come to these places I thought and then I realized the danger in asking the question.

I had become more or less accepting of the fact that tourista was a way of life for me on the island. With that acceptance I was less worried about the fact that whatever I ate seemed to almost immediately run through my system for deposit back into San Andres through its mysterious, yet functioning toilet and sewer system. However, I was less accepting of the fact that part of that mystery seemed to be solved in the murky ocean water just off the man made beach in front of the resort. To discover this through swimmer’s itch was no great piece of detective work.

In my research to resolve my dilemma of being itchy from head to toe, I talked with many on staff in the resort. The lady at the enfermeria didn’t feel good about lying to me about the so-called jellyfish that caused these itchy phenomena. She made up for it by cautioning me not to swim off the resort beach but instead to head out to a nearby island or the beach in town or the one at San Luis a few kilometers up the road. She had no antidote for my dilemma, after all in her eyes – it didn’t really exist. Finally, it dawned on me that the best people to talk to in seeking out a solution to this nasty itch were those who worked at the water’s edge. After two days of putting up with this itch, in ten minutes I had a solution from one of the water sport activity workers. This Colombian mainlander by the name of Gustaw told me straight off that bathing myself with vinegar would rid me of the bothersome creatures who had moved in and by now were quite comfortable living on my skin. The curly haired, brown skinned Gustaw actually provided me with two options, there was the vinegar solution and urine could also be used. I opted for the vinegar sponge bath and somehow it worked. My little buggy guests moved out.

The Watering Hole

Having been faced with the need to travel, if I wanted to swim in the ocean, the resort pool became my last retreat. It was clean enough but I got the feeling I was in a gold fish bowl every time I went for a swim. The card players were at one end and several Colombian families with kids bobbed up and down in the heavily chlorinated water. I sensed that many of the people I shared the pool with were paramilitary Colombians on some sort of leave. It did not take much to imagine these strong young studs in fatigues and carrying machine guns. Just about everybody else in the resort came and went to the poolside during the day. All eyes were on you when you entered the pool. It was as though everyone here at this spot had accepted the tight life of the all-inclusive San Andres resort hotel. No matter how much I tried to ignore it I could not over look the presence of a dozen little kids frolicking continually at the shallow end of the pool. I was pissed off in more ways then one.

The pool reminded me of those watering holes in Africa that you see on National Geographic television shows. It was like a place where every sort of animal comes to have a drink during the day. The different personalities moved here and there to provide room for each other and access to the water. Most of these animals were more or less sedated by mid afternoon through their indulgence in every alcohol drink imaginable. Many of them seemed semi comatose and lay burning under the hot equatorial sun. I spent as little time as possible at pool side and I darted in and out of the scene, making few waves in my quest for a little refreshment.

There seemed to be no happy medium here. It was either burning hot under the sun, humid as hell on a cloudy or rainy day and always freezing in our room. It was surrealistic to walk from forty degree heat into fifteen degree cold with simply the opening of the door to our room. The air conditioning had only one mode of operation which was full blast and freezing. Try as I might to turn the system down I could find no means of moderating the temperature in our room. Still, none of this really took away from the fact that I was at the very least out of boring little Iroquois Falls and the reach of several frantic people that in some way or another had continual intentions to control my life.

Xavier and I rented a scooter one day and proceeded to zoom around the island. There wasn’t much zooming to be done as we discovered that the entire circumference of San Andres could be accomplished on a rattling little 100 cc, two stroke scooter in about an hour with lots of stops along the way. Afterall it was only 12 kilometers long and three wide. Mostly, the island coast was a kind of coral rock with a couple of major sandy beach areas. Strangely enough, although I was told that the island had a population of 80,000, I didn’t see many people in the countryside. The beach at San Luis was a few kilometers long and populated with lots of tourists bobbing on the big rolling waves. The beach in town had an even higher population and there was a lot more activity.

I was surprised to find that town had no name other than ‘town’. One islander we talked to made an effort to provide me with some sort of name for the town. He suggested I call it San Andres Town or St. Andrews Town if that was more to my liking. The fact remained however, that everybody for all time referred to town as simply ‘town’.

The traffic wasn’t too bad out and away from the resorts and town and the highway was pretty smooth. However, the main artery close to and through town was like an obstacle course. The asphalt was all chopped up and traffic far too heavy for such a little place. Most of the cars were big America 1980s taxis. There were Buicks, Chevy Capris, Pontiacs and some of those sporty four wheel drive SUVs. There were tons of motorcycles and no stop signs or stoplights. Somehow, people got to where they were going.

I knew the absence of motorcycle helmets on all the motorcycle and scooter riders meant a high death rate for people here. Yet somehow I felt some false sense of security in being part of the pack. It wasn’t until after a week or so that I began to realize that every second person I met had a tragic story to tell about a brother, sister or cousin being killed on a motorcycle. It was just part of island life or death should I say.

The Other Side Of The Island

Another part of island life that I discovered, had to do with a large number of guns in San Andres and seemingly in the wrong hands. I met Franco at his post in the snack bar of the Isleno Hotel in town where he was only too happy to flush out the island experience for me.

The way he talked about the barrios described a picture of poverty, drugs and violence. He told me a story about riding his bicycle on the road one day near his home. He noticed a strong odour coming from the bushes from the side of the road and he could see thousands of flies focused on one spot. On closer examination he discovered a young man’s body, bound hands and feet with a bullet in his head. He told me this happened a lot and that he had heard about many such killings but discovering an actual body was more realistic then he wanted to deal with. He said he had been plagued by nightmares about the young man on the side of the road with the bullet through his head ever since that fateful day.

Franco painted a picture of terrible poverty and people living in shacks and huts with no running water. He described the average family as having little or no food most of the time, not much access to clean water and no real sewage system to speak of. Many of the islanders, he explained, took their baths in the ocean and drinking water for the most part was collected in large cisterns that caught the rain. He added that in the dry season the lack of drinking water becomes a real problem. He told me that he was going to school but that it was expensive and he had to work to provide himself with an education.

All of this information that came from Franco and every other islander I spoke to, we had to dissect from the language of Creole. I decided at one point that this English dialect the islanders used had originated from the African slaves brought to the island by the English. Although it has survived centuries in pretty much its original form, it seemed now to be threatened by the years of Spanish influence. I also decided that the language was in part born out of English used to describe things in the way an African slave would think. In other words the African slave thought in his original Native language and translated it into what he had learned as English. This resulted in this almost cartoonesque, quick, musical and percussive San Andres Creole. Of course all of the islanders also spoke Spanish.

Our window to the island opened a little more with a visit one night from Jose, an 19 year old cleaner for the San Andres all inclusive resort. We had learned that visitors from outside the resort compound were not tolerated and specifically those visitors who were local people. On a couple of occasions I had to meet local friends at the compound entrance and plead with the security people to allow them access. Even then, the best I could do was to sit in the reception area and chat. Later I found out that we could buy their way in for a day or for an evening at the disco. The whole thing seemed ridiculous to me. I wondered, were they trying to keep people away from tourists in an effort to protect us or were they trying to keep us away from them in an effort to limit our awareness of what life in San Andres was really all about? I decided it was probably a combination. At any rate it made the place seem more like a prison than a get away.

Jose told us about his side of island life. He mentioned the guns, the poverty and the drugs. As a matter of fact, he had a story of watching his 20 year old cousin murdered in broad daylight right in front of him in one of the nastier barrios while playing soccer. He shuddered a little when he described the scene and talked about running away to save his own life. There were no tears but I noticed that his eyes dampened up.

Jose was better off then most. He had ‘an auntie’ working in the restaurant at Marazul and a ‘black man night manager’ who helped him secure his cleaning job in the resort. He told me that there was a lot of violence on the island but that if you were not looking for it, you were probably okay. In other words, if you got close to the drug trade, you got close to the violence. Of course, there was always that remote chance that as a naive tourist you could wander into a spider’s web if you took a wrong turn in the night. Jose was slim and had very dark skin, he didn’t seem to see himself as black. He talked about people in shades. He made 11,000 pesos a day which was about $11 Canadian. He lived in a small house crammed with ten people but with the luxury of cold running water, a shower and a toilet.

Like most islanders, he peppered his sketch of poverty stricken, violent island life with religious overtones. Most of the people on this part of the island were Baptist or Pentecost of some sort. Jose spoke of his affiliation with the church as though it was just another part of the scene. Religion seemed somehow to be the glue that held the whole stinking mess together.

He told me about the whorehouses. There were several on the island. In fact, Jose, had frequented a couple of them. He talked about sex openly and seemed to have no problem that it was actively sold as merely another commodity under the hot sun.

In a detached way Jose seemed accepting of everything around him. There was no question in him what so ever. He appeared almost medicated through this acceptance of fate and had no great plans for the future. His fatalistic approach seemed to originate in his means to survive. We gave him a T-shirt and a couple of pairs of shorts. I don’t even remember him saying thanks. It was just another thing that happened to him. We were just a couple of tourists that had come in and would go out of his life at the San Andres all inclusive resort. The only thing he might have thought strange was that all we wanted was some conversation with him.

As we took off into the sky in the 757 Boeing and headed back to Canada I caught a last glimpse of the tiny little island of San Andres. It was no longer merely a few paragraphs and photos in a colour brochure I picked up from the travel agent. I saw it now through the eyes of sad and traumatized young people living day to day in a shameful existence in so called paradise. Here I was heading back to certain boredom and a familiarity that provided me with a way of life that was full and rich, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness. I was returning yet again from a third world country with a guilty and sick feeling for not doing enough to make the world a better place for everyone. I was coming back also with the accumulative knowledge that many of the people’s of the world that we use and abuse are becoming increasingly frustrated and angry. I hoped and prayed our flight would make it back safely and I wondered how long I would be able to venture out and to travel safely in this wonderful world. After all, the natives are restless.

– THE END –

by Mike McGrath (C) 1995

A voice in the hall said it was three in the morning and he marveled to himself at his wide awake state. It probably had something to do with the music blaring top 40 hits next door and of course the company he didn’t keep in the hall.

Howard Munroe lay propped up against the wall on the lumpy bed with worn sheets pulled around him and a book of short stories open at his side. He wanted to be anonymous and alone after his three year stint in the small northern town which was home, most of the time. Now, he was indeed alone in one of the many cells that made up this Victorian vintage hotel in the heart of downtown Toronto.

Tonight, Howard was on his own. It was what he had wanted, to be lost in the midst of thousands of city people, all going about their lives oblivious to his. No doubt he felt a quiet comfort and some serenity but he was nervous too as though in the eye of a storm. It did not take long this night for the peace to turn on Howard in loneliness again and to make it worse he seemed to have become acutely aware of every sound around him.

The hall reverberated with stomping feet and crude, drunken chatter. Somehow even the laughter that drifted through the warped plaster walls was cruel and had an edge to it. This could have been a 24 hour donut place if sound were his only sense. In fact these sounds came from the hallway outside the dingy room where Howard lay listening.

There were several sharp raps on a door in the hall and a voice followed, “It’s Brian, man. C’mon lets go,” a young man whined. He got no answer. He knocked again and harder. “Just a beer, c’mon don’t make me wait here,” the voice was more determined. There was another pause and no answer. “Fuck,” the voice said in anger and the sound of slow steps faded down the hall and then were punctuated with a burst of disco music that drifted up from the bar below, past the shuffle of feet and down the corridor, then they were gone with a slam of a door.

Next door the music blared out of a portable radio, “Life, la la la la la, life is life, la la la la la,” and his was accompanied by sensual sighs, that progressed to grunts and then laughter.

The north still had a hold on Howard and it caught him again for a few seconds and made him writhe in pain that was a missing feeling of sickness that churned in his stomach. He thought of the old woman, fragile, thin and wrinkled. He imagined he was a boy again and was cuddled in her arms as she sat in her rocking chair at the window.

He could almost hear her weak but still beating heart and see her glazed but still bright, dancing eyes that momentarily calmed him with deep wells of love.

Then he wiped the scene away by rubbing his eyes so hard that it hurt. He cupped his hands over his face and a deep breath became a long and drawn out sigh.

No, he reminded himself, he could not let the thought of home and the old woman pull too greatly or the result would find him back in the Buick and heading out of the neon night city to the expressway and the narrowing, dark road that wound back up north.

The voice in the hall was back again on the tail end of three sharp and loud knocks, “Look. It’s me again. Just tell me your OK. You don’t have to let me in. C’mon Ken just one word. OK?” Silence was his answer and he beat on the door, “This is bullshit and you bastard you’re just going to make me wait all night,” the voice said in a mean and desperate tone and then left again with hesitant steps that did an exit with the disco beat rushing up from the first floor and then again with the slam of the door there was silence in the hall.

A few minutes passed and from the far end of the hall a door opened and closed in a series of knocks. Greetings were punctuated with rough words like fuck, shit and screw and a party stumbled back and forth between the distant room and the hall. The party grew quickly.

From the direction of this party a young woman’s voice sliced through dull drunken sounds after two slight knocks on a door, “I’m here,” she said. The door opened and the party spilled into the hall with heavy metal music and a sexy young male voice, “Yea, come on in.” He sounded eager.“Oh, whoa,” the girl’s voice said to what she saw. “What are those guys doing here?”

His reply was cool, smooth and meant to be reassuring, “Oh its okay, they’ll mind their own business. Anyway in half an hour they’ll all be passed out.”

“No way man, it’s too crazy,” a more defiant tone spoke out of the woman. Street wisdom barked out of her, “You want me in there, get them the fuck out or forget it.”

“I can’t babe,” he swooned and then harshly added, “What you wanna do fuck on the staircase?”

She was blunt, “It would be a lot safer,” and her high heels kicked in with hammering clicks that faded down the hall, let in the disco beat and a door slammed.

“Fuck you bitch,” came a frustrated retort that was obviously more for the ears in his room than the departed visitor. Grunts and roars of laughter drew him back into his world and the party was shut inside again.

Howard shook his head in amazement. This he was not used to and it filled him with a combination of disgust and sadness. He felt disgust for the thin emotion that bounced back and forth between the voices and their seemingly desperate situations. Then he felt sadness for what he imagined was poor luck, which had taken them to a rough edge that glittered like fools gold with alcohol, drugs and fast, risky money.

Two days, Howard thought and he could move on to a more comfortable and sane environment. He had been naive on this jaunt into the city and had settled too quickly for the huge Victorian hotel, which with its outward shell had promised much more grand accommodation. He felt a little cheated too; the advertisement he had read in the Body Politic claimed Ernest Hemingway as a resident for a short while in his early days as a writer with the Toronto Star.

Howard adored Hemingway’s work and admitted to himself now that he had been pulled in by a sense of history and nostalgia and some pretentious notion that he fancied himself as a writer.

This glamorous hook led him to a decaying cell where wall paper heaved from disfigured walls and cracked plaster mixed with the shadows cast from the dim lamp light to make crazy designs on the ceiling ten feet above his head.

He tried to imagine the grand state of the old hotel in the 1920s, the toast of the wealthy and high society. The red brick, castle like building would have jutted high on the city scape back then. Ornamental chandeliers, oriental wool rugs and gleaming wood staircases would have given the hotel a prominent place in Toronto. There were still enough hints of what had been and it captured Howard’s imagination. For thirty-five dollars a night he felt he could put up with any inconveniences for a short stay in the belly of this ragged Victorian princess.

Bass notes came up from the disco below in dull thuds that shook through the room and rain beat, whipped by the wind on loose panes from which only the fuzzy sight of other panes in the dark could be seen lit in a building across the way.

The pop music next door mixed with a bizarre harmony in sounds of lust, the dull disco throb from below, muffled rock beats down the hall and rain that pounded in a pulsating rhythm. These were sliced with the wail of a siren that cried in panic and distress from the suppressed but ever present roar of the city at night.

Then he was back with the same slow leather heal to pine step sounds, “Please. Its me Brian. Please Ken I promise I’ll go away if you just say something, anything,” the voice trembled. Then he cried, “You really are a bastard .”

There was a pounding on the door and what sounded like a bang made by the force of an entire body crashing against the door. It was quiet for a moment and then the voice groaned as the pain of love lost slipped up and out of him. “Oh Ken, Ken. I love you Ken, please.”

As though tethered with a greater weight, the feet moved in sluggish creaks, hesitated, then continued to where the disco music came up to welcome the wounded young man back downstairs, the door slammed and it was quiet again.

Howard looked about his room and was overwhelmed with where he was and also with the demands of his day. He shut the light out of it all with a flick of the lamp switch and then went in a drift off to sleep.

Deep in the caverns of slumber he could hear from far away the goings on about him. From where he lay there were familiar passings and knocks and voices. They trembled in waves to him like thunder announcing a storm.

In panic he awoke trough the layers of numbing, fluffy sleep to horrific screams that bolted him automatically up and to the door. The screams were trying to get in and Howard, in a knee-jerk reaction, unlatched the lock and pulled on the heavy oak door to reveal wild eyes in terror. Wild eyes that pushed him aside and against the wall.

A naked young man covered in blood tore into the room and scrambled on all fours towards the far window. He was followed by a bearded fully clothed assailant that jumped on his back and in great thrusts was burying flashes of steel into his victim’s back. Blood splattered in streams up and over everything and Howard, on impulse, lunged at the bearded assailant.

“Ahh, you fucking cunt,” the bearded man with the knife screamed and Howard knew it as the recurring voice in the hall. In reflex, Howard tried to overpower the flailing figure but the voice turned in the violent body with the power of ten men and put his flash of steel into Howard with a crunch that broke though his rib cage and exploded his heart. The butcher knife sucked back out and the voice with crazed eyes in a screwed up face, behind a full black beard let out a satanical laugh, then went back to hacking at the writhing form on the floor.

Howard fell slowly against the wall. He was poised to holler for help, there was a great scream just on the edge of his tongue but he was frozen in this cry and everything slowed and then stopped and locked into one last frame of the scene that hung there before him.

There was no breath to come, no way out, no angel of mercy, time stopped dead and Howard was cold then very warm. This last view of the murderous rampage began to melt in colors that dripped and flowed where forms had been and then he went with a sick feeling into the deepest dark there could be. He felt as though he was free falling into empty wells of blackness and then a dot of light appeared and grew.

He came to screaming but it didn’t seem right. It was new and it was fresh and he was crying and gasping and ripping with his arms and legs at the air. There was the thick sweet odour of blood and he cried out but could not find words to speak.

“It’s a boy. A good healthy boy,” the voice said. Howard Munroe felt his memory banks empty as he was raised in the air and gently slapped.

He tried with all his might to hold on to his one final thought in this new world, “Oh no, not again,” this thought echoed in his mind and began to fade as air filled his lungs, images blurred with a new light and energy burned in him like a fire in renewed ignition after having been blown back from dull embers.

The End