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

50 OUT OF CAPTIVITYcomplaining about severe stomach distress and he wasn’t able to eat.I was sure that sight didn’t do much to help. As I brought the broth tomy lips, I thought briefly of Mariana’s wonderful cooking and the lastmeal I’d had before the crash. I don’t remember much about the soup’staste, but I was glad for the liquids in my system. My wag on it was thatI could have just as well been drinking an IV fluid.We joined the circle of cracker eaters, and Keith managed to eat afew. I ate some, too. During my life, I’d traveled a good bit and beento some out-of-the-way places, but this scene defied belief. A group ofadults was sitting around a cooking pot suspended over an open fire,their mouths full of half-eaten crackers and a confetti layer of crumbsoutlining each of their positions. We were startled into reality whenone of the FARC guerrillas began jumping up and down and pointingat us and then toward the house. He was trying to say something, butthe congealed mass of flour in his mouth muffled and distorted hiswords. Finally, after a bit of swallowing and spitting, he made it clearthat he wanted us to be quiet. Several of his guerrilla comrades walkedover to the house, where a Sony AM-FM radio was hanging from oneof the posts supporting the roof.“¡Es ustedes! ¡Es ustedes! ¡Es ustedes!”We all quieted down enough so that we could hear the report on aColombian radio station about our crash and capture. The details weresketchy. They didn’t reveal the exact location of where we’d gone downor what the military was doing to find us. I didn’t take much comfortin knowing that we were celebrities in this part of the world. Whenthe FARC heard the radio mention what connected them to us, theirresponse troubled me. They erupted with cheers, acting like the hometeam had just scored a touchdown at the mere mention of our names.After things settled down a bit, the weirdness revved up once more.Several yards away, a few of the FARC had gathered around a well andwere washing their clothes. The young men had stripped down to thebriefest of bikini-type briefs and so had one young woman. I’m not a