Out of Captivity : Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

138 OUT OF CAPTIVITYI wasn’t immune to these run-ins or feeling the effects of them. Wehad to learn to accommodate certain things. Though we were able tobathe regularly, wearing rubber boots all day produced a foot odor inKeith and me that could have killed a cat and made small children cry.Tom had to put up with that, but he did for the most part because it wassomething we couldn’t really control. But sitting six inches away fromsomeone while eating every meal for a couple of months, you get tiredof their openmouthed chewing or even the sound of their lips smackingwhen they first open them to take a bite. In that confined space,everything was intensified.Tom and Keith admitted that in some ways they were like oil andwater, and as a result they were less tolerant of each other and eachother’s idiosyncrasies than they were of me and mine. As it turned out,the one thing they could always talk about was a subject that I oftengrew tired of: airplanes. Both of them were airplane fanatics. If theycould, they would have talked about airplanes twenty-four hours a day,seven days a week (and at times I felt like they were). Normally I couldhave just walked away when a conversation wasn’t to my liking, but Ihad nowhere to go. It was enough to make me scream, and sometimesI did.In spite of all this, most of the time we were as thick as thieves. TheMud Camp’s conditions, the cords and harnesses, the severe blow toour hopes of a quick release, all combined to really rub us all raw. Evenwhen those disputes were at their worst, we were becoming close asbrothers. We were seeing the guards as even more of an adversary thanbefore. With the cords around our necks and being tied up, we becamemore dependent on them. We hated that and they hated that. If you hadto pee, you needed a guard to come and untie you and take you to thetrench. Sometimes they didn’t feel like letting you go, so they wouldn’t.For an adult to have to plead with someone to let you relieve yourselfwas incredibly demeaning. It seemed to be the FARC’s intent to dragus down as low as they could.