Rainy day

I´ve just had some terrible news from home. A very dear friend of mine has discovered that what she thought was pneumonia is in fact a lung tumour, with a dose of leukaemia thrown in for good measure. Suddenly, being by myself in a jungle border town feels lonely. That may seem like a selfish response to another person´s tragedy; but sometimes I suspect the essence of loneliness rests in not being able to help those you care about.

The rain began to fall today. Within minutes the streets were flooded, and soon the electricity supply was cut throughout the town. Some enterprising businesses turned on clunking generators, and I had to run back to the guesthouse to bring in the laundry I´d spent all day trying to wash in a museum-piece machine.

The downpour made a pleasant change to the scorching weather of yesterday, which left me terribly sunburnt after several trips to the Brazilian immigration office. I first got there shortly after noon to find a sign announcing that the office was shut from 12-2. With nothing else to be done I walked back over the frontier to Leticia, had lunch and wrote my last entry.

I walked back up after two and found a friendly chap behind the counter ready to help me. (Again, he spoke good English, which still amazes me about this place.) He took my passport and asked for my yellow fever vaccination form. I knew I needed it to get into Brazil, but in a fit of absent-mindedness I´d left it at the guesthouse. So it was another walk to and fro until I arrived, bright red and sweating, with every piece of paper I had in my possession.

He then asked me how long I needed the visa for. I could´ve just said "two weeks please, squire" but instead I poked my return plane ticket through the glass. He held it with his fingertips and regarded it with a look of perplexity. It was then I realised, or remembered, that it had "GOOD CRACK" scrawled across it in capital letters. As the immigration office was in the reception area of the federal police station, I didn´t fancy having to explain this message, which must have seemed to him like a very simple but highly illegal shopping list. He already knew that I was absent-minded, so he could well have assumed somebody had seen fit to remind me of what I needed to collect or something.

As it was he stamped my passport and I didn´t need to explain. I´m not sure if he would´ve understood or believed me if I´d tried: "Well, you see, er, last week we bumped into these Norwegan disk jockeys in the street, in Bogota, and invited them and their large female entourage back to our palace for a drink. One of them, the girls, used to live in the states and had a very annoying whining accent (that made her sound like a six-year-old asking to stop for a wee on a car journey) so myself and a friend from Middlesborough, yes, that´s right, the smog-bound industrial town in the north of England, decided to teach her some British turns of phrase. Including ´crack´, as in ´to have a good crack´. No, really, that´s why it´s written there. Please don´t do that to me with your truncheon . . ."

After finally getting all my paper in order, and officially being in Brazil at last, I headed back over the border to my guesthouse. I asked the lad there if he knew of anywhere to go for a drink. He said he was going out with his girlfriend and some other mates, and that I´d be welcome to join them. That sounded ok, so we went to call for his missus. When we got to her house we found ourselves in the middle of her ten-year-old sister´s birthday party. There was a huge cake on the coffee table and plastic cups full of alarmingly-coloured fizzy pop. (This stuff is actually made in the town, and carries the boast that it is "Leticialicious".) Despite my unexpected arrival I was suddenly designated as the guest of honour and given the first slice of cake. The mother underlined this hospitality by carefully retrieving one of the decorative sugar flowers and, using her little finger, poking it back onto the icing of my slice as she passed it to me.

The cake was soon demolished, and then it struck me that for the first time I was in the company of a family of fat Colombians. It was like a Botero painting. They were all cheerfully plump, except for the father who was as thin as a whip. Then I noticed that there were about a dozen sisters, and goodness knows how many cousins, and that he was the only one who didn´t have any cake. Perhaps the others trough their way through birthday treats on an almost daily basis.

After taking our leave with profuse thanks I was left on the corner smoking a tactful cigarette while the lad from the guesthouse had a whispered chat with his girlfriend. Later he told me that she was pregnant. "I am in such trouble. So much trouble. Her father is going to kill me. He´ll kill me!" There was nothing I could say to console him on that front. Her father did look like one of those wirey blokes with a penchant for sadism, and (judging by the collection of religious books and videos) was a bit of a bible-basher with high moral standards. Indeed, the first thing he said to me, as he handed me a cup of the bright pink Leticialicious stuff, was: "We don´t have strong drink in this house, except at Christmas." The poor lad is doomed - and all for a fat lass.