Werner Herzog named the documentary film we made together after this. I often ruminated on that strange name for a monument built for people for whom there was no more hope. At best my survival could be viewed as a temporary sign of hope, but in light of the numerous victims, I always found that somewhat presumptuous. Only recently did I learn that there was a missionary aid organization at the time with bush airplanes called Alas de Esperanza, which, of course, makes much more sense. This organization was among those that participated in the search for the crashed plane, and one of its pilots, Robert Wenninger, is said to be the one who finally sighted the first piece of wreckage from the fuselage of the plane.
It’s strange, but for many years I knew nothing of the existence of this memorial. No one told me about it, until Werner Herzog brought me here in 1998. At that time I was already shocked by how young most of the victims had been. One family lost two daughters, one fifteen years old, the other eighteen. Another had three dead daughters to mourn, all of them still children. Mary Elaine López was going to get married on January 22, 1972. She died together with her sister. The Sales family lost three members, among them a mother with her five-year-old child. Later I learned from a special edition of the Pucallpa newspaper Impetu, dated January 24, 1972, more details about the victims, such as the fact that one girl was not even on the passenger list, because she had taken her ticket from a friend who was ill. A young man had booked a flight for December 26, 1971, but he really wanted to fly earlier. After a passenger canceled, he got a seat. Another man couldn’t fly for professional reasons and gave his girlfriend the ticket. And Rodolfo Villacorta had won the LANSA flight in a prize competition.
Whenever I’m in Pucallpa, I visit the monument. I always look at the little photos that, according to local custom, are attached to the front of the niches in oval lockets. Here are the two sisters. There’s the girl who took her friend’s place. Some of the nichos have apparently been emptied since my last visit. Here and there, the names of the victims have been painted on by hand in black, stubborn attempts to retain memory and hold off the decay that accompanies gradual forgetting. As I’m leaving the cemetery, an elderly man who is cleaning the paths speaks to me. It’s very nice of me, he says, that I still come here. He knows who I am. Even here in Pucallpa, he adds sadly, people are gradually forgetting.
From the cemetery we head to the home of Tío Bepo, an uncle of Moro’s. His shaded farm, no more than three hundred feet from the bank of the Río Ucayali, will be our base station today between our many errands. For here, too, we have things to do. Anxiously wrinkling his forehead, Moro spreads out several documents in front of me on Tío Bepo’s garden table. They’re the papers for the acquisition of one of the plots of land that is to expand the area of Panguana. Apparently, one of the previous owners wasn’t telling us the whole truth, Moro determined after an inspection of the property. Because these parcels are in the middle of the jungle, it is not always easy to determine properly the exact lay of the land and the boundaries between neighboring plots. Some of the older documents that are supposed to prove ownership are of historic value, handwritten on crumbling, soft paper and frequently authorized with a thumbprint. In the case of some properties, the sale was confirmed by nothing but a handshake between the previous and present owners. Most of the eight property owners avoided the elaborate and costly entry in the registry of deeds, and, of course, I now have to ensure that all that gets rectified. For if I want to have Panguana, in expanded form, declared a nature reserve by the ministry of the environment in Lima, I can’t show up with papers like these.
“Here,” Moro says glumly, “look at this.”
One of the property owners sold us a parcel as primary rain forest. And that’s true for the majority of the area. But a remainder, fortunately small, is pasture, which has been used by a neighbor for years.
That is aggravating. But now it comes down to how exactly the boundary runs, and whether the owner of the adjacent property is willing to have his cattle graze somewhere else. This matter shows how urgently necessary it is to protect the remaining rain forest from deforestation. Here fences will probably have to be erected. Moro frowns, less than thrilled about this, for he will be stuck with this job. Since 2000, he has been the official administrator of Panguana.
Today our journey takes us to a lawyer who will now deal with the entries in the land title register. At least that’s my hope. For my visit last year with a notary in Puerto Inca, the provincial capital with jurisdiction over Panguana, did not have the successful outcome I’d hoped for. Aside from a bill that the notary issued relatively quickly, nothing happened. For that reason I’m a little skeptical regarding how the new lawyer will handle things. But after the sweat-inducing visit in his tiny office directly next to a sun-drenched roof terrace, I’m in good spirits. Finally I seem to have found a lawyer who knows what he’s doing. So I don’t mind learning that I have to go from Panguana to Puerto Inca to pay a long-overdue fee for all eight plots of land at the city hall there. I might already be able to deal with one of the registrations there. Here in Pucallpa, no one can tell me whether that will be possible. We’ll find out once we’re there. On top of that, the cattle-ranching neighbor lives in Puerto Inca, and I hope to be able to resolve then and there with him the question as to the use of the pastures.
Cheerfully, Moro, his wife, Nery, my husband and I take two of the countless, colorful motocars zooming around like mad; they are funny rickshaws propelled by motorcycles. For several years they have defined the streetscape of Pucallpa, filling the city with their pandemonium and stinking exhaust gases and making it easy for people to move from one corner of the city to another. I find it fun to go for a bumpy ride in these covered two-seaters, into which three can squeeze if necessary, chatting with the mostly young drivers and hearing the latest stories from the city.
Our destination is the market, where there’s always something we need to buy, whether it’s a new pair of rubber boots or a sheet or bath towels for Panguana, or some airtight sealable plastic containers for the insects my husband (a zoologist, like me, who studies parasitic ichneumon wasps) is hoping to capture, or the rain forest honey, which is liquid and not very sweet at all, but rather tastes sour and bitter. The wild stingless bees nest in hollow trees, and to harvest their honey one has to saw open the tree carefully from behind and swiftly remove the pot-shaped honeycomb. After the closing of the nest, the bees then produce new honey again. Since we’re already there, we also go by the stands that sell medicinal herbs and remedies of all sorts. We buy a cream from the plant, uña de gato, “cat’s claw,” which is supposed to help treat all sorts of things, and a root to alleviate toothaches. A few days before my departure, of all times, the dentist determined that one of my teeth needed a root canal treatment!
I love this market, the colorful supply of fruits, vegetables and tubers, the hodgepodge of things you simply need for everyday life in a jungle city. I often came here with my mother, passing through on our journey between Lima and Panguana, and we always had a long shopping list.
We have one today too. For we have to buy our provisions for Panguana here—everything, from drinking water down to the last piece of toilet paper—and take them with us. We do that in one of the large grocery stores, where the goods are cheaper by the dozen. They already know us here, because this is where we stock up on supplies before every excursion to the Yuyapichis.
Once all the packages are loaded onto various motocars and are zooming off toward Tío Bepo, we heave a sigh. It’s already late afternoon, and since breakfast we’ve eaten only a snack.
“What do you say,” I ask my companions, “shall we head out to Yarinacocha and have something to eat in one of the floating restaurants?”
I hear no objections, and a taxi has already stopped. The lagoon, an oxbow lake of the Río Ucayali, is quite far for a motocar.
We get a seat all the way out on the water. Of course, we order fish, which is fresher here than anywhere else. I lo
ok out on the lagoon, where fishermen in their boats spread gill nets. It was a boat just like that, I think, that brought me back to life back then. And as the others chat, the memories come back, of following the stream in the hope …
9 The Large River
Birds of hope: Hoatzins, a symbol for my rescue. The calls of these large birds showed me the way out to the large river, Shebonya, which eventually led to my rescue, 2010. (Photo courtesy of Juliane (Koepcke) Diller)
… of finding human settlements. The water flows around my feet. Doggedly I set one foot in front of the other. The stream turns into a larger stream, finally almost into a small river. The days are all alike. I try to count along, so I don’t lose my sense of time. The intensity of the daylight indicates to me the approximate time of day. In the tropics it gets light at six o’clock in the morning; at six o’clock in the evening, on the dot, it gets dark. The sun itself, however, I see rarely, for the canopy of the jungle giants is too dense.
Eventually I’ve sucked the last candy. I don’t dare to eat anything else. Since it’s the rainy season, there’s barely any fruit. I don’t have a knife with me and cannot hack palm hearts out of the stems. Nor can I catch fish or cook roots. I know that much of what grows in the jungle is poisonous, so I keep my hands off what I don’t recognize. But I do drink a great deal of water from the stream, which is brown with floating soil. That might be the reason I don’t feel hungry. I do not feel any particular aversion to drinking this water. From living in the jungle, I know that the water of the forest creeks is clean. There is not much danger of dysentery in uninhabited areas where people do not contaminate the water. Still, in Panguana, we had always boiled the river water before drinking it. That crosses my mind as I take in the muddy water from the stream, but I am aware that I have no choice. Because I haven’t had any food, I must drink a lot to survive.
Despite my counting, the days get mixed up for me. On December 29 or 30, the fifth or sixth day of my trek, I hear a birdcall, and my apathetic mood immediately turns into euphoria. It’s the distinct, unmistakable call of hoatzins, a mixture of buzzing and groaning. At home in Panguana, I heard this call often. These birds nest exclusively near open stretches of water, near larger rivers, and that is my hope exactly, for that’s also where people settle!
With new impetus I try to make more rapid progress and follow the birdcalls. And indeed I soon find myself at the outlet of “my” stream into a river. But if I was hoping to reach it quickly now, I was deceiving myself. The mouth is blocked by a great deal of driftwood and overgrown with thick underbrush. Soon I accept that I will never get through here with nothing but my bare hands. So I decide to leave the streambed and go around the barriers. It costs me hours to fight my way through the jungle here. The mouth is densely covered with about fifteen-foot tall reeds, the caña brava, and the sharp stalks cut my arms and legs when I’m not careful. But the calls of the hoatzins and the roar of the search planes embolden me.
My mother had studied the hoatzins extensively, observing and describing important details of their breeding behavior. These interesting animals not only look gorgeous, but they also belong to a very primitive family and are faintly reminiscent of the archaeopteryx. Like that first-known bird, their young also have claws on their wings. Since their parents build their nests not only extremely sloppily but also over the water, they can really use the claws. Frequently a hoatzin chick falls out of the nest, catches itself on the branches with the help of its wing claws and climbs back up. The chicks can also swim outstandingly.
Finally I’m standing on the bank of the large river. I estimate its width at thirty feet, a beautiful stretch of water, but there’s not a human soul in sight. Immediately I notice that it cannot be navigable, for numerous logs and other driftwood make that impossible. I look up at the sky. After so many days in the half-light of the jungle, I can finally see it open above me again. Where are the search planes? I hear them only in the distance. At one point one more makes a halfhearted sweep over me, and I wave and shout, but it’s in vain. It turns away and disappears, just like the others. Silence. They’ll come back, I tell myself, for sure. But time passes, and the engine noise I heard almost constantly over the past few days doesn’t return. Finally I grasp it: They’ve apparently given up the search. Probably all the others have been rescued, except me. Except me.
A boundless anger overcomes me. I had no idea that I still had the strength for such intense feelings. How can they simply turn around, now that I’ve finally reached an open stretch of water after all these days! Now that I can make myself noticeable! But as quickly as the anger flares up, it dies out and gives way to a terrible despair. Here I am on the bank of a really large river, feeling utterly alone. Only now that I have a little bit of distance from it do I become distinctly aware of the vastness of the jungle around me. I fear that it’s uninhabited for thousands of square miles. I know that there’s an extremely slim chance of meeting a person here. I suspect that my odds are virtually zero. But I don’t give up.
This is still a real river. And where there’s a river, people cannot be far. My father repeated that all the time. Sooner or later, I now encourage myself, I will reach them. There’s no reason to despair right now. On the contrary, my rescue lies just ahead.
I pull myself together. Think about how best to proceed. The riverbank is much too densely overgrown for me to go on hiking along it. I’m also afraid that I might step on a poisonous snake or spider with my bare foot. I begin to wade downriver in the shallower water near the bank. But beforehand, I look for a stick, not only to avoid slipping but also to check the ground in front of me. I know there are dangerous stingrays resting in the mud of the riverbanks or lying in rapids, and they can’t be seen. If you step on them, they plunge a poisonous stinger into your foot. The leg swells intensely, and you get a high fever. Though the stingray’s poison isn’t deadly, mud often gets into the wound with the stinger, which can lead to blood poisoning. In my situation such an injury could end fatally. I learned all this in Panguana from my parents and our neighbors. I know the dangers in the water, and so I walk carefully and warily.
My progress is very arduous. There are branches and many logs in the water, the ground consists either of slippery rocks or deep mire into which I sink. So I soon decide to swim in the middle of the river. In the deep water I’m at least safe from stingrays. Instead, there are piranhas, but I’ve learned that they only become dangerous in standing water. Certainly caimans are to be expected, but they, too, generally don’t attack people. So I yield to the current. I still have no fear. Plus, the confidence that I’ll somehow make it has returned.
It’s good that I don’t know but only suspect that they will soon stop searching for survivors. It’s also better that I can’t imagine that so far no one has been rescued—and that the searchers haven’t even been able to find the slightest trace of the plane wreck. But most important of all is that I don’t know that besides me some people actually did survive the crash, without being lucky enough to be able to leave the spot where they hit the earth. As I later found out, my mother was among those people. And I think of my mother during each of my nights, in which I barely sleep. For, ever since my concussion has abated, I no longer fall into that sleeplike state that is more akin to a stupor. My nights are long, pitch-black and without peace.
When the sun descends and I estimate the time at around five o’clock, I search for a reasonably safe spot on the bank where I can spend the night. I always try to find a place where I have protection at my back, either from a slight slope or a large tree. Still, sleep is almost unthinkable. Either mosquitoes or tiny tormenting midges, which are also among the gnats, keep me awake. They seem to want to devour me alive. There’s buzzing around my head, and the bothersome pests try to crawl into my ears and nose. Those night hours are unbearable. Dead tired, I fall into a half sleep and wake up again and again from the burning and biting of new stings. Or, even worse, it rains. Then the mosquitoes leave me alone, but
the ice-cold rain pelts mercilessly down on me. I freeze in my thin summer dress, constantly soaked to my skin. As hot as it may be in the daytime, during the rainy season it cools down drastically at night, and each of the hard drops torments me like an icy pinprick. And then the wind comes and makes me shiver to my core. I search for spots under dense trees or in bushes, collect large leaves and try to protect myself with them. Nothing helps. On those black nights, which seem never-ending, as I cower somewhere soaked to the bones, I cannot protect myself, a boundless feeling of abandonment arises in me. It is as if I were all alone, somewhere out in the universe. Those are the moments when I despair.
I think about my mother a lot. How might she be doing? Was she already rescued? I don’t dare to think of the possibility that she could have suffered the same fate as the three people who had been rammed into the ground, along with their seat bench. I wonder what my father might be doing right now. How is he? Where is he? Has he heard about the crash yet?
I ruminate a great deal on how it could have happened that I awoke alone in the jungle. I wonder where all the other passengers are, why I couldn’t find a swath cut anywhere in the forest, where in the world the airplane itself has gone. I think about my life up to now, which was so completely unspectacular. At least in my eyes, nothing really exciting happened before. I’m a young girl, like all the rest. I love animals, read avidly, go to the movies with my friends, get good grades, adapt to whatever place I’m dragged to—whether it be the jungle or Lima. I’ve never worried much about the meaning of my life. Though I was baptized as a Protestant and was just recently confirmed, my parents adhere more to a sort of philosophical nature religion and view the sun as the basis of all life. They have not raised me to be particularly religious. They believe that I should form my own opinion; they certainly provided the fundamentals for a Christian upbringing, but more was not necessary, in their view.
When I Fell From the Sky Page 10
