A Brief Story of Time

"You say he arrived this morning?"

"Yes, he went to Lago Agrio."

"When will he be back then?"

"Don't know, on the next bus maybe."

"When will that be?"

"Oh, sometime soon."

The rain went on falling. It was a warm rain, one of those storms so common here that drench and soak in clinging heat.

She brought us a Coke from the gloom of the tumble-down shop. Cans of tuna fish glinted on the dusty shelves.

They had come from Loja they told us, during the drought, some while back. They were making their living now from fruit and an annual handful of coffee from the smallholding, supplemented by the meagre earnings of the tienda.

A respite in the storm left the orchard green and steaming, the familiar drip of the jungle from every leaf. A green and turquoise parrot toyed with half a guava on the table. A mangy dog scratched listlessly at the inhabitants of its scruffy coat and two hens picked among the pile of coffee drying on the verandah. A steady stream of silver drops fell from a hole in the palm thatch on to the heap.

"That's quite a hole in the roof."

"Yes, I'm going to mend it sometime soon, tomorrow, maybe."

Here time is elastic, infinitely extensible. For the unaccustomed it could be irritating. Tomorrow will come but it will be today again. Time's arrow stretches way into the distance the country. When they go anywhere people walk or catch a bus, which will come sometime soon. Or they sit or clear the orchard for a while, a shorter or longer elastic while; then they sit again.

A few people stroll by, dawdling pas the gate, soaked; their heads protected by large leaves in token defiance of the tropical rain. Hands raise in salute, they are going somewhere, they will get there, sometime soon.

A rainbow flashes, colours moving through the green backdrop, it's the Putumayo bus. He was not on it, but buses, like time have no limits here and drop and collect where they will.

We found him at the bridge, moving the undergrowth to reveal a canoe. The women and the boy were filing slowly down the bank, a mingled train of heads with a month's essentials perched, bobbing gently. Gasoline, sugar, salt and oil for their jam jar lamps. A shout, a beam of recognition, yes they had received the message of our pending arrival but they didn't know quite when, "sometime soon" it wasn't clear.

That the message got through over three hundred kilometres of Chinese Whispers; seven hours by bad road over the Andes and five more by canoe in the Upper Amazon Basin with only a small confusion over the arrival day and time, was, in itself, fifty percent of the way towards the success of our project to collect palms, other oil-bearing fruit and other useful plants of the Siona people.

The canoe pushed off into a dark green tunnel. The river Tarapui, small and slow, timeless; made rapid now by twenty five horsepower skilfully manoeuvred to avoid the sunken logs. One day paddled is now five hours by outboard.

Anonymous birds called from dark banks, frogs whistled and croaked in an invisible amphibian chorus to the music of the river. Our friends chattered on in their own language, a staccato tongue strangely punctuated by Spanish.

"Hey what's the time?"

Careful dim-lit scrutiny of a Japanese watch hanging loosely from the woman's wrist brought a reply.

"About ten past five."

Their own language continued, a language with no concept of time except day and night, season to season, seed time to harvest, a natural calendar followed since the beginning, but not the beginning of time, because for them that was much more recent. People pass into and out of their Universe like snapshots in an album with just a wave as they pass their riverside settlement.

They are on the fringe, bank-dwellers in sporadic palm thatched huts, with gardens of cocoa, cane and coffee, manioc, sweet potato and beans. Fish come from the river and meat from the bush; the town of Lago Agrio provides only carefully chosen fruits from the tree of knowledge.

Victoriano is the chief and leads them sage-like; he is a friend to the stars, each one in the heavens has its own name, he is a friend to the plants and each one has its own use and unique place in the Siona cosmos.

Julio his eldest son teaches in the school house, he has written on the blackboard in Spanish and Siona.

"My donkey goes up the hill."

It may come down the hill too, eventually, sometime.

A bilingual teacher of bilingual children in a school with an elastic timetable but ever sensitive to events outside; Julio is on strike, the radio had said teachers were on strike. While teachers were protesting and burning car tyres in the city streets Julio was swinging in his hammock, not quite sure when the strike would end.

"Sometime soon, perhaps tomorrow, or the next day."

"But what happens if the radio batteries go flat or the news doesn't report the end of the strike, will the children's education suffer?"

Victoriano says that in that case he will decide, anyway they have a lifetime to learn.

Rojelio, the middle son looks after the boat but, he has ambitions, the 'bright lights' of Lago Agrio attract him like a moth to a flame. He likes sports too but precious gasoline wasted on Sunday football in Tarapoa is not to Julio's liking and he tells Rojelio so.

Angelina is the wife and mother, faithfull and loving; she and Victoriano still bill and coo like newly-weds on a park bench, but here on an upturned canoe shucking corn.

The youngest reads Walter Scott in Spanish translation by candle light. He is still learning, the family Joseph, adored by his father.

A tranquil society and archetypal family but could Cain one day kill Abel for a gallon of gasoline? Could Joseph be sold into slavery by his jealous kinsmen?

In a land with no time, five days pass and a visit to special friends is soon over. Things happened, but when was it? Oh yes, the day it rained, I suppose it must have been Wednesday, or was it Tuesday?

The canoe casts off early as the river throws its night-blanket of mist to one side. The slate-blue Kingfisher flies off to guide us upriver. I lay back on the corn sacks and scientific samples and watch the blue and yellow Macaws. The women chatter and laugh and point admiringly at the natural ornaments of their home.

"He, que horas son?"

"Son cuarto para las seis."

What does that mean?

It means there is a bus to catch