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

340 OUT OF CAPTIVITYchess players and the card players, he’d found something to help passthe time.While we swam and played chess when we could, on occasion, theFARC would put us to work on projects that were for our “benefit.” Accordingto FARC policy, as hostages we were not to be asked to do workfor them. Enrique had a way of skirting that rule by telling us that if wewanted something, we had to help build it. Such was the case in earlyApril 2007 when Enrique told us that if we wanted a volleyball court,we had to bring in the sand. All of us got together and carried bags ofsand from the river to the camp. We all pitched in. Tom had been reallysick for a few weeks, but even he was out there, glad to be able to moveat all after weeks in his hammock.To see every one of us, Lucho and Ingrid included, working collectivelyboosted morale, but even though Ingrid was hauling dirt with therest of us, we were still not allowed to talk to her, a point that Mosterreiterated numerous times during the volleyball-court construction. AsI brought sand up to the camp, I tried to imagine what it was like to besingled out that way. That Ingrid was forbidden to interact fully withthe group seemed as harsh a punishment as what Richard had to endure,but instead of a week, she had been punished for months. Afteryears in captivity, I knew that one person’s mood or energy level had aprofound effect on the rest of us. As we watched her flinch at Moster’sreprimands, it was clear that Ingrid was struggling, that the effects ofher captivity were taking a toll.Like Tom, I’d been battling a pretty serious jungle sickness aroundthe time that we were building the volleyball court. Though I was wellenough to join in the swimming adventures and the camp building,the illness had forced me to think long and hard about my captivity andthe impact it had on me. In between grabbing my stomach and loadsof sand, I’d come to a painful realization: I hadn’t heard from my wife,Shane, in years. My mother was on the message programs all the time,and I heard from my kids, my father, and my brother regularly as well.