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

200 OUT OF CAPTIVITYing for a book, they sent it over. No questions. No hassles. Of course,their generosity had to be taken advantage of. The politicals borrowedmore books than they could possibly read. When a note came backfrom the military guys asking that a particular book be returned, Ingridand Lucho would get it and read it. “No. No. No. We can’t let that bookgo back. We haven’t gotten to it yet.”Those guys even helped us out with our lessons. They sent over acopy of How to Speak and Write English, a great little basic instructionalbook that I used to teach Orlando and Consuelo. It was interestingteaching the two of them. Orlando was making better progress becausehe didn’t care if he made a mistake; Consuelo could not allow herselfto be anything but perfect. If she didn’t know an answer, she wouldn’tguess. Because of Orlando’s humble background, he didn’t have thesocial-class pressure of keeping up appearances to slow him down.I learned Spanish much faster than my counterparts did Englishmostly because I was immersed in Spanish all day every day. I wasdrowning in Spanish and it was really a case of sink or swim. At firstI had the vocabulary but not the grammar. In time, I learned to conjugateverbs and get all the verb tenses straight. Consuelo was theverb mistress and an enormous help in refining me so I could make aproper debut in Colombian high society someday.For the most part, we managed to form some kind of livable arrangementduring the first few months we were all together. On the whole,we all tolerated one another, enjoyed playing card games, and engagedin our language instruction the rest of the time. One exception to allthis was Clara. Early on, we noticed that Clara, who seemed to be themost affected by captivity, started to isolate herself much of the time.We also witnessed an odd transformation of her body. Her arms andlegs grew thin but her torso became larger. Pretty soon it was obviousto us all—Clara Rojas was pregnant.None of us said anything, but one day not long after she began to