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

80 OUT OF CAPTIVITYwhile and then go on home or finish up whatever errands we were running.Those memories came flooding back, and it was all just too muchthinking of Lauren and Kyle and that I might not ever see them again.Tom and Marc came out and sat with me for a bit, at first respectingmy need to be alone with all the crap I was feeling.“It’s so weird,” Marc said. “To be seeing roads and cars and signs ofcivilization. It’s like we could just step right back into it, but we can’t.We can’t touch any of it.”We stayed silent for a minute. I thanked them both and we wentback into the house to finish eating. After the meal, we marched onthrough the center of the town, past the slaughterhouse, empty at thathour, the hooks and blood drains just waiting patiently. We were walkingdown the middle of the street and there was no one around. Thehouses were all brightly painted in vivid blues, reds, and oranges. Everyhouse seemed to have flower boxes in the windows with roses or someother flowers spilling out of them. Yet everything seemed deserted,shut down. The village square was empty, the church doors closed, thebell tower silent. At one point, I looked down a narrow avenue off themain drag and saw a man peering at us around the corner of a building.We kept walking.Finally the FARC led us past a building where there were some peoplesitting at crude benches. The smell of tanning solution and leatherwas heavy in the air. We stopped for a minute. It was clear the FARCwanted us to see how industrious these people were; they were makingthe leather weapons vests the FARC wore. Instead of being impressed,the sight had the opposite impact on me. These people were clearlyslaves of the FARC, making who knew what kind of money—if any—todo their work. None of the workers looked up at us. Word must havegone around that the three Americans were coming through. Don’tlook. Don’t touch. On the outskirts of town, we passed by the cemetery.Even the dead folks knew better than to look up as we shuffled alongkicking up dust devils.