“I wish I had been there” is a familiar lament for many. It certainly applies to me with regards to the incident which follows.
In the camp’s early days, my father would travel to Ciudad Bolivar to pick up the month’s payroll. This was long before the bridges which now span the Caroní River and the multiple lane highways which came years later, during my lifetime, in fact.
Back in the 40s, the trip was very long and also required him to spend the night under the open sky, something he did not mind and did not consider dangerous, even though he carried the camp’s month’s pay, in cash. He was never threatened with theft.
On one of those trips my father was rewarded with a sight he often recalled: a black jaguar.
My father had a copy of Fauna Descriptiva de Venezuela, by Dr. Eduardo Röhl, published in 1949. As a child I would avidly thumb through that edition, pausing here and there to read more carefully when the subject especially struck my fancy.
I have my father’s copy with me and regarding the black jaguar it says that it “lives in the jungles of the Orinoco, [and] is a case of melanism”, meaning a genetic issue which causes the skin to hide the spots to greater or lesser degrees and highlight the black color. In Venezuela the terms jaguar or tigre are interchangeable, but all agree that the black version is rarely seen.
This comports with the Wikipedia article which affirms that black jaguars have been sighted throughout Central and South America, but rarely.
On one particular trip, late at night, my father was driving the stretch from Ciudad Bolívar to Puerto Ordaz, the confluence of the Caroní and Orinoco rivers, grateful for a full moon by which he might see the outline of a tree under which he could spend the night.
However, the moonlight rewarded him with a more dramatic sight that night. The landscape was clear even though it was late at night. The brush and sandy loam had the grayish, yellowish hue so common to a full moon. And then he sensed something to his immediate left, outside the driver’s door and open window.
It was black and it was running like a gazelle parallel to the car on the left side of the road. It seemed as if the perfectly formed, graceful creature were racing the car. My father could see the light of the moon reflected off the jaguar’s shiny black coat. The sight was mesmerizing. He kept looking, while quickly glancing to the road, as it ran and ran and ran. And then it swerved to its left and disappeared in the thickets and brush.
My father slowed the car and looked through his open window hoping to see the animal one more time. But, of course, he did not.
The jaguar is a nomadic creature with no fixed pathways for his nocturnal journeys. Its prey ranges from the clumsy Chigüire to tree-based monkeys of all kinds. During Humboldt’s years of discovery, the jaguar was the greatest enemy of the river turtles in Venezuela, which, by the time I left the country in the 70s, were often seen but nothing close to the abundance described by the great explorer.
Company towns in petroleum or mining camps in Venezuela, like El Pao, had hospitals and doctors who tended employees and their families. Recently, I was prompted to think a bit about my childhood experiences and interactions with doctors and the hospital. My experience was primarily in El Pao, but also encompassed an annual check up with a doctor in Miami. I suspect my parents just wanted to sort of double check by getting a second opinion to confirm that all was well.
As I’ve told my children over the years and now tell my three youngest who are still at home, we have been blessed with good health. It is far too easy to take this blessing for granted. One should never do so.
Whenever we had to see a doctor (anemia, parasites, fevers, tonsillitis, broken collar bone, sudden nausea), depending on the urgency, we either rushed in as an emergency or made an appointment. In any case, Dr. Hernandez [a composite name serving for several doctors whose faces I can still recall and none of whose names was “Hernández”] would examine the patient and tell my parents what he had noticed and his treatment including any medicines he’d prescribe.
On one occasion, when I was about 6 or 7 years old, I was accompanying my father as he travelled with the company baseball team to play in Ciudad Bolivar, on the Orinoco River. This was before the bridges across the Caroní River were built and crossings were by ferry, making the trip much longer than it was by the time I left Venezuela.
About 40 minutes after the river crossing, the team stopped at El Kilómetro 70, a major highway intersection with a large, popular diner and gas station. I told my father to go ahead, that I’d wait for him in the pickup. I did not tell him that I was feeling very poorly because I did not want him to send me back and so cause me to miss the ballgame.
However, “Cero”, the water boy who was one of the friendliest and kindest men I have ever known, had decided to come out and look in the pickup, “¿Te pasa algo?“
I had been curled up, not thinking anyone would see me. He startled me but even so I could not move quickly as I was in pain and, as I recall, had nausea.
He turned away and in a minute my father was opening the door and after a brief discussion he along with Cero decided to drive on ahead of the team to Ciudad Bolivar where we had friends. Regardless, this would take less time than to travel back to El Pao, river crossing and all.
My father drove to our friends, the Graziani’s, who immediately took us to their family doctor who attended me promptly. I don’t recall what he did, but I do remember that by the time we left his office, I was hungry and at Mrs. Graziani’s house she served me the most delicious pumpkin soup ever. And I was not partial to soup. I have been blessed with the opportunity to travel to many different parts of the world. Whenever a restaurant had pumpkin soup, I’d order just to see if it equalled my childhood memory. Of course, none ever has.
My father told me later that Cero had come inside “El Kilómetro 70” and had told him that my color was not good. That caused my father to look at me more carefully when he came out to the pickup. He was impressed with and appreciative of Cero’s perceptions.
I think my father was able get to the game in time that day, but I had to stay with the Graziani’s. However, by then, I was content. I do remember his telling us our team had won.
Medicine and doctor care was very personal then. My father paid the doctor and thanked him. In El Pao, the doctors were paid by the company. In Miami, as I recall, medical costs were a bit less simple because those were paid by the company’s medical insurance; however, care and interactions were far more personal and direct than they are today.
These thoughts were prompted by the chapter, “The Crisis in Medicine” in the book, The Sensate Culture, to which I’ve alluded in an earlier post.
My intention was to write a brief review of that chapter here, but then I remembered Cero, and it is impossible not to pay tribute to him first. Unfortunately, I do not remember his real name and my mother does not remember either. However, in his case, the nickname was purposefully the exact opposite of the man’s worth. He was respected and admired and was easy to laugh with.
After leaving Venezuela, between college studies and early career hustle and bustle, I eventually forgot about Cero. Then came the expropriations of the oil and ore enterprises in Venezuela under the first administration of Carlos Andrés Pérez and many Americans and their spouses, including my parents, left the country.
The year was 1976 and unbeknownst to my father, word had spread of his imminent departure, and the veterans of the mining camp baseball team, which my father had shepherded to AA ranking and championships, agreed to come from all points of the country and surprise him with a veterans game. Newspapers covered the event but I’ve lost the clippings.
However, several men, including Cero, did not get word of the event.
About a month later, my father and mother, along with my little brother, had begun their trek out of the country. Their first stop was Maiquetía, the international airport which serves Caracas, where they were to spend the night and then head back to the airport the next morning. As they waited for their luggage, Cero saw them and ran to them. They embraced and laughed — it had been more than a decade since Cero had left El Pao and they had lost touch.
After asking about the rest of the family and being told that everyone is fine, Cero said, “I remember that you usually took your vacation in September. I see you now are taking it in the springtime?”
“Well, this is not a trip for vacation; we are leaving the country.”
Tears welled in Cero’s eyes, and they talked for a long time. But what I remember most from my parents’ narrative of the event was something he said amongst all the words, “Please don’t leave, Charles. This is your country. You are loved here. Don’t leave.”
I still choke up when I recall that; and I had not recalled in many years.
They embraced and parted company one last time.
Cero was worth millions.
Multi-year AA Champions. My father is in front row, far left. Cero is not pictured.
Sopa de auyama (calabaza). Hard to beat a childhood memory.
She moved slowly, as if tentatively feeling her way up the massive mahogany in the jungle to the left of that road which formed the boundary to the outlying wilderness.
Had I seen her, as she slid up the great trunk, I would have called her a tragavenado. All boas in Venezuela were known by that name. Even the ones along the Orinoco River, more properly identified as anacondas, were invariably called tragavenados: deer swallowers. Both boas and anacondas were plentiful in the regions around El Pao during my childhood. The anacondas especially in the wet jungle areas around the rapids of the Caroní River near its confluence with the Orinoco River.
The boas are smaller than the anacondas, which have been known to grow up to 30 feet and more. Tragavenados measure between 5 and 15 feet. The largest tragavenado seen in that part of Venezuela, for which there is record, measured just under 20 feet. That was considered exceptional.
Living in the damp jungle maze for up to 25 years and even more, this one grew undisturbed, never venturing very far from that area west of the road limning the west of the mining camp. Since her habitat had not changed much in a man’s generation, she remained therein where she fed on abundant wildlife of wild pigs, stray goats, tapir, deer, chiguires (capybaras), monkeys, and large fowl. Had she wandered closer to the Orinoco, her diet would have been augmented by small caimans.
The tragavenado can act as a very quick coil. She rests midst the brambles or branches for several days. Eventually, large birds, such as jungle parrots, settle nearby, oblivious to the danger. The tragavenado slips slowly, imperceptibly towards the resting prey. She does this by sliding the upper part of her long body towards the bird in an almost circuitous route. The tail end rests on a branch at the lower left side of the tree, seemingly to dangle, like a thick vine, two feet to the lower left and up to the upper left of the bird.
The massive middle section runs along, one or two feet away, further up and then curves along the higher branches so that it rests directly above and to the upper right of the bird. The snake completes as it were an expansive frame around the bird, so that eventually the snake’s head is beneath the bird, mere inches away.
The power of this reptile is embedded in muscles all along her 20-foot length, covering her entire body.
The head acts as a guided missile. The muscles along the 2 or 3 feet below the head are designed not only to cut off her prey’s blood circulation, but also to “launch” the head. This they do, and the bird never knew what hit him. Within minutes it is inside the snake’s jaws and beginning its final, unwilling journey into the entrails of its killer.
Other prey, such as a pig or goat, or especially a deer, requires accommodation. This the serpent does by biting and, while keeping the fangs sunk into her quarry, coiling herself around the quickly immobile body and squeezing it. This is done by degrees. When the victim struggles, it creates small spaces which the snake’s muscles exploit by taking those spaces over, thereby slowly reducing all room for maneuver, until the animal ceases to breathe, has cardiac arrest, dies, and, finally, it is slowly but relentlessly swallowed whole into the laboratory whose acids work on it, preparing it for absorption and transforming it into nutrition.
All this activity, occurring mere yards from the camp, my friends and I mostly ignored. Everyone in the camp ignored. But we knew it went on.
Once, during a game of war around our makeshift “forts” in the jungle, I had wandered off alone and stood in what appeared to be a natural, heavily forested culvert. Unexpectedly, I sensed as if the earth were opening or sliding under me. I looked down and saw a boa pulling herself, carrying me along like a jelly legged marionette. I, bravely, sprang like a jack-in-the-box, tumbled like a rag doll, and scampered like a hysterical baboon out of there, running on pure adrenaline till I reached the edge of the jungle. Only then did I catch my breath enough to call out. We all fearlessly marched to the scene of the scare. But, boas being very good at camouflage, we failed to find it.
The above is true.
Except for the “bravely” and “fearlessly”.
Venezuela tragavenado (boa) Tragavenado killed by machinery during the El Pao road construction Photo of Anaconda captured in Parque La Llovizna, about 40 minutes from El Pao. La Llovizna falls. One of a series of cataracts on the Caroní River as it approaches its confluence with the Orinoco in Ciudad Guayana. About a 35-40 minute drive from El Pao.
