Ghost In The Jungle

by Kornelia Szatko (Germany)

I didn't expect to find Colombia

It blinks at me. The white figure stands out piercingly against the dense green. As my hand instinctively reaches for the phone, the guide's warning words echo in my head: “Guys, please don’t take pictures of the indigenous people." The phone slides back into my trekking shorts. I would have been too slow anyway: the ghost is long gone. It's just one of many rules our guide prays down while we - an insecure group of twenty-somethings - have our last meal on civilized ground. His name is Cristiano and he even looks a bit like the famous Cristiano Ronaldo, except that his athletic body was not formed by hundreds of hours on the course, but on a muddy path in the middle of the Colombian jungle. Our destination is the Ciudad Perdida, the lost city, or in TripAdvisor language: Machu Picchu of Colombia. "How often do you walk this path?" I hear someone asking. "Once a week. Four days there and back, sometimes five, then I have two days off." "I would die of boredom," laughs the tourist. I think of the office chairs that each of us presses flat day after day. How dull must this idea be for Cristiano? The sun peeps through the clouds, the hilly landscape welcomes us friendly. Five hours to the first camp. It is a sweaty way. Behind every bend a mule loaded with provisions could come towards us. That's why the rangers announce their animals already way ahead screaming "Mula! "Mula!". The red clay is still softened by the last downpour, the mules fight their way up the steep path on thin stilts at breakneck speed. On the last mile it's sneakers against mud. Nobody is prepared for the slide. Everybody wants to be McGiver, but nobody wants to look like one. We're approaching the camp. The bunk beds and hammocks are strangely inviting. There's no electricity but: popcorn. It is cooked in an oversized mold pan. A silent woman sells beer from a box. We play cards in the light of the kerosene lamps. The next days we go deeper and deeper into the jungle. Steep paths, ancient trees, muddy curves, "Mula! Mula". I take a short drinking break and stay behind the group - and there it is: a girl, maybe four years old, barefoot in a white robe. She remains still on the path like a frightened animal. Then she runs down the path with a squeaky laugh as if we were playing a game. As I learn later, the girl belongs to the Kogi tribe, a pre-Columbian indigenous group here in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Cristiano is closely connected to the people and gets the chief to come and talk to us for five minutes. Chewing coca leaves, the man in white robe stands before us. His hair reaches to his hips, the furrows in his face contract every time he spits a bunch of leaves. Cristiano translates for us. I let my gaze wander between the cone-like huts, but there is no trace of any other inhabitants. For hundreds of years they lived unnoticed and shielded by the forests, isolated from all worldly influences, invisible even to the Colombian government. Until today they avoid contact with "our" world. Only one emissary travels to the city once a month for essential medicines, all others never leave the jungle. In the end, we are asked to give the chief a gift as a token of our gratitude: a personal item, no money. What do you give to a people who need nothing? I'm thinking of the ghost girl. She will never see our world. She cannot be captured by our smart phone screens. She doesn't even know she's hiding from us. Maybe that's why she's the winner of this game.