Puerto Ayacucho, Venezuela.—Even if the goal were simply to reach the city, the only one which exists in the Venezuelan state of Amazonas, crossing the Orinoco River on a barge, car and all, would not have the same flavor as any road trip on a highway.
Nevertheless, knowing that the destination is far beyond the end of the highway, where the jungle begins, the river crossing becomes the first adventure, makes the Orinoco the entrance to a landscape that appears savage to the eyes of an anxious traveler.
If one reaches the crossing in the morning, it is easy to see the backs of toninas (a large species of dolphin) breaking the surface. While the river - wider now that the Meta was added its waters - appears to move slowly toward the horizon where the sun is rising.
—It’s pretty, right? —says another passenger leaning against the barge’s handrail, noticing the visitor’s fascination.
—Yes, pretty, it looks like the sun is coming out of the water.
—Or that there is another sun in the water. In all of the Amazon’s rivers, at this time of day, there is always a sun in the water—he adds, making clear that he is a native, though his appearance had already made that evident.
—Are you Cuban?
—Yes, how did you know?
—Because you speak like a teacher who teaches how to give classes in my Jivi community. There are lots of Cubans here, you know, doctors, nurses, they say that even as far away as the Río Negro there’s a CDI (medical clinic), just before reaching Brazil, at the end of the Venezuelan jungle, and they get around in canoes with the local indigenous people. Could that be?
Yes, no doubt. That’s what the statistics on Cuban collaboration in Amazonia reveal: 380 individuals cooperating in all of the social missions, 130 of them healthcare professionals, in the jungle’s six municipalities.
But there’s nothing like firsthand experience to validate arguments, confirm the truth, and understand the subtleties of the day to day life these collaborators live. So this reporter is going into the thick of the world’s largest jungle, where the Cubans are.
The teacher described by the passenger on the barge is Emilio Barbán, from the eastern city of Manzanillo, and was coincidentally the first Cuban I interviewed upon arriving in Puerto Ayacucho, months ago, when I did not go farther into the jungle’s depths.
There are others like the educator Emilio, in white lab coats, much farther out – a two hour flight away, over a thick green carpet sliced by rivers and bayous. Cuban doctors are wiling to go wherever their life-saving care is needed.
Crossing the Orinoco, and heading south into the Amazonian lungs of the continent, this reporter will travel in search of these brave souls’ testimony, who with their simple personal and collective stories are leaving the footprints of Cuban solidarity in the wild.
It will be an opportunity to confirm what one of the Jivi adult students, in the community Emilio visited, said in his native language, which served as inspiration, “Cae epa ata apocuene rrowinae woja yapü toeneja. It’s never too late to learn.”
This is definitely the idea: learn.
