RICHARD GWYN

Ambassador of Nowhere

Stress-free travel is often a matter of balancing a desire for control with a willingness to abandon that control when it serves no purpose. If you find yourself in a place where schedules are treated casually and intentions declared on the spur of the moment, and you start fighting this attitude as though there were the least thing you could do to alter it, then you are in for a big disappointment. In other words, if you are always trying to be in control of the uncontrollable — especially in a country, like Colombia, that resists any kind of ulterior jurisdiction — you are doomed to misery and failure. Not that I am the most efficient seeker of travel information; I tend to get distracted at every stage. I don’t like reading instructions or manuals and I don’t like doing what I’m told, and I don’t much enjoy being a tourist.

In Cartagena, I try to find the best way to travel to the old colonial town of Mompox, also known as Mompós (population 30,000). Santa Cruz de Mompox, to give it its full title, is located 250 kilometres up the Magdalena river from Cartagena, and was founded in 1540 by Don Alonso de Heredia, whose elder brother Pedro settled Cartagena. It was also, significantly, the first city of the New Kingdom of Granada (which comprised much of modern day Colombia, almost all of Ecuador, northern Venezuela, Panama and Costa Rica) to declare independence from Spanish rule, on 6th August 1810. The town held a special place in the affections of the liberator, Simón Bolívar, to whom Gabriel García Márquez attributes the enigmatic accolade: “Mompox no existe. A veces soñamos con ella, pero no existe” (Mompox does not exist. At times we dream of her, but she does not exist). There is, I think, a special appeal in visiting a place that might not be there.

Nor, I discover, is it particularly easy to get to. By chance, I come upon the Toto Express, which organises a truck service for four or five passengers. I speak with someone — possibly Toto himself — who asks me to be ready at 4.30 a.m. on Saturday morning. The vehicle takes an hour or so to collect passengers from Cartagena, and arrives in Mompox late morning. The price seems fair. I am sorted.

My companions on the trip are Washington, our driver, and three elderly Colombian ladies, Momposinas, as the inhabitants of Mompox are known, who are on their way home. These three señoras talk incessantly, and from their conversation I am able to catch a flavour of their lives, although I struggle with the inflections of their accent, which in Spanish seems to echo some of the features of Caribbean speech in English. Although García Márquez, in Love in the Time of Cholera, refers enigmatically to Momposinas as having “indecipherable intentions”, these women were concerned only with everyday affairs, the prices in the market at Cartagena foremost among them. The oldest of the señoras, riding shotgun, was preoccupied with Washington’s driving, although I thought he was rather good, considering the hazards of the journey and the tendency of other drivers to hurtle towards us on the wrong side of the road because of the mud-caked trenches and potholes. Although some of the route was tarmacked, there were long stretches of dirt track to negotiate.

At one point we were negotiating a series of curves on a particularly poor stretch of road with a lot of oncoming traffic, and spent a while stuck behind a lorry. A car passed us at speed, and Washington edged out carefully to see if it was safe for us to overtake, in turn.

“Such imprudence,” says the señora in front, speaking with exaggerated formality. “And for what? Just to get ahead! I would rather be wise than imprudent, wait for an opportune moment to pass, and thus keep my life.” This is met by a chorus of agreement from the two señoras in the back with me. Washington takes this as a personal criticism — although the woman’s remarks seem to have been directed at the car that has just passed us — and he turns up the Ranchera music so loud the ladies cannot hear each other speak. The music is pretty dire but I don’t complain, since Washington’s feelings have been hurt once already, and to criticise the music might be a step too far. The señoras, in any case, are not complaining. Washington then takes what he claims is a shortcut and we encounter a lorry stuck in the mud, completely blocking the narrow road. We do a three-point turn and take the long way around, crossing the River Magdalena by an ancient ferry, consisting of planks attached to three metal boats, and powered by an invisible motor. When we drive off on the other side, an obese man, bare-chested, folds of belly flab cascading over the waistband of his shorts, cigarette limp between his lips, pushes a wheelbarrow laden with living rabbits onto the ferry. On the bank a pair of dogs are glued together by their hindquarters, determinedly facing away from each other but unable to separate or even to move. They appear bored and indignant. As we pass, the dog facing our way catches my eye, and follows me with an imploring gaze until we pass out of sight.

Mompox is a quintessentially Garcimarquesian place, in which the improbable — not to say the fantastic — seems to be woven into the fabric of everyday life, complete with plenty of colourful birds, iguanas and snakes. This might sound reductive, but stereotypes usually arise because they have a basis in some core reality, and Mompox immediately seduced me, no doubt in part because it fulfilled the expectations I had of it as a town that has already been dreamed in fiction. There was something both sensual and haunted about the place.

While I was still in Bogotá, deciding on my itinerary, a Google search came up with phrase, “the very aristocratic and sorrowful city of Mompox”. The Spanish colonial authorities built the Royal Mint here, supposedly out of reach of the English pirates who made frequent raids on Cartagena, from Drake onwards. It was a site of many confrontations during Colombia’s serial civil wars following independence from Spain. More recently it was a no-go area, changing hands between FARC rebels and government forces over a period of years. Since Colombia’s big clean-up under President Álvaro Uribe, a few years back, it has been readied for the onslaught of tourism. But tourism, you might be warned, of a particular kind. It reminded me a little of the Greek islands in the 1970s, a tourism still in its fledgling, puppy- love stage, backpackers scouting the place before it becomes deluged by package-dealers.

There is the same unawareness of ‘service’ — you often wait for whoever is behind the counter to finish what they are doing before they attend to you. This is done entirely without malice; it is simply the pace of life here, telling you what’s what. There is a lot of smiling and mutual incomprehension. My question about the non-existence of internet in my hotel — which I had been assured was available in every room — was answered by a shrug, and when pressed, the explanation: well, you know, it comes and goes. Foreigners are still a novelty, and therefore quite entertaining. My hotel, housed in an old colonial building near the centre, is decorated with the kind of bad hippy art that I thought had disappeared decades ago.

*

Saturday evening in Mompox. As I emerge into the street outside my hotel, I bump into Washington. He is taking a stroll with his brother-in-law, whom he introduces as Eduardo. Washington invites me to come for a bite to eat with Eduardo and other members of his family. We sit out in the Plaza next to the church of Santo Domingo. Eduardo is a police sergeant, and he finds it amusing that the family is seated around a table with a foreigner, occasionally leaning over in an attempt to speak a phrase or two of pidgin English. I have no idea why he does this, since I speak reasonably fluent Spanish. But there is a certain type of individual who finds foreigners intrinsically funny (perhaps to deflect from the fact that he finds them threatening) and Eduardo appears to be one of these.

We eat several plates of meat and potatoes — a variety of potato with a thick fibrous taste, which Washington tells me is called a papa yucca. It is accompanied by Aguila Light, a low-alcohol beer. Although Colombians enjoy drinking, perhaps, like the Russians, they do not consider beer to be a real drink, and Aguila Light conforms to this belief: to get drunk on it would demand extreme resolve. The conversation proceeds briskly: I am a guest, but no great ceremony is extended towards me, for which I am relieved. The family is accommodating and voluble. Along with Eduardo and Washington’s spouses, there is a sister or cousin, Eugenia, the most articulate and educated member of the family — to the extent that the men defer to her opinions on certain topics — and four for five children, aged between seven and fourteen. I’m not sure who the children belong to, nor am I introduced to them. Children, it would seem, are just children.

Eduardo asks me what I am doing in Colombia. I reply that I am a writer, and I am here to learn about the poets of Colombia; not, perhaps, the wisest admission to make to a cop.

Washington, to whom I explained the purpose of my trip during the ride from Cartagena, adds that I am a poet also, and an “ambassador from my country.” In my desire to be accurate, I have provided more information than is strictly necessary during the five-hour drive from the coastal city, and the mangled version that Washington produces sounds far more grandiose than anything I intended. You’ll do well here then, poeta, says Eduardo, wielding the term like an insult, and gesturing around the square — with all these layabouts, addicts and putas. Poets every one of them, he says, and he laughs, but without any sense that he is making a joke. He asks me where I am from. Wales, I tell him. Never heard of it, he says, suspiciously. Is that a country? Yes, I say, it’s a country. Does it have a government?

Well, it has a government, I explain, but is not a sovereign state. If it is not a sovereign state, he replies immediately, gobbling up the phrase (estado soberano) and spitting it back at me, it cannot be a country. And therefore, cannot have ambassadors.

I begin to explain — and even as I do so I feel weary — that Wales is a country, of sorts; we have our own language and culture.

But my brother-in-law — he prods Washington — tells me you are an Ambassador. How can that be? Only sovereign states — he has adopted the phrase and will not let it go — have Ambassadors. ‘Ambassador’ is an honorific title, I begin to justify, wishing we had not got into this: I was awarded the role of ‘creative ambassador’ to come to Latin America and hunt for poets. I actually use the verb cazar, to hunt, to add an element of ironic self- mockery to what I am saying. But irony is lost on police sergeants around the world. If my account sounds ludicrous to me, sitting in this dusty Colombian square, how must it sound to this leery small-town policeman? Eduardo regards me in silence for a moment, absorbing the information in much the same way, I imagine, with which he must listen to the alibis of local felons on a daily basis. You are, he pronounces, at length and with finality, the Ambassador of Nowhere. His face, which has been a rigid mask of sustained incredulity during the interrogation, suddenly crumples, and he roars with laughter, slaps me on the back, and orders more piss-weak beer.

The favourite tipple of Eduardo and Washington — indeed of Colombians in general — is aguardiente, an aniseed-based firewater. When, after supper, we retire to the discoteca, a rundown, forlorn establishment, Washington and Eduardo order a bottle of the stuff, which we put away within the first hour. As soon as it is finished, Eduardo orders another, and I begin to feel the onset of pre-emptive regret. He asks me if I have children, and I tell him I have two daughters. What age are they? he asks, and I tell him twenty-three and twenty- two. At what age do people get married in your country? asks Eduardo. That depends, I reply, but often not until they are in their late twenties or thirties. If they get married at all. Here, he says, girls get married at eighteen and in church. It’s the way things have always been, he adds. It is pretty clear he accepts the conservative dictates of church and state without question. He is, after all, the representative of law and order in a country that has spent the last fifty years devastated by civil conflict. I remember that Mompox itself was, until only a few years ago, occupied by the FARC. What might have happened to Eduardo during that time? How deep the rifts must run, and how certain the beliefs.

The conversation begins to falter. I fear our differences on political matters do not make for easy banter. I chat instead with Eugenia, who is not drinking aguardiente, but sticking with the low-alcohol beer. It transpires she is a schoolteacher, and she begins to talk to me about the difficulty of getting kids to attend school after the age of twelve, since most of them need to work, such is the poverty of rural Colombia. As well, she adds, glancing over at Eduardo with a cynical nod, as the ridiculous expectation to get married at the earliest opportunity, and the power of the church . . . she drifts off, clearly not wishing to say more in present company. The volume of the music in the discoteca makes conversation difficult, and besides, my head is not really in this place, nor any other identifiable location. Instead, I simply drift along to the melody of her Caribbean Spanish and watch the handful of dancers, all of them middle-aged and half-drunk, as they circle aimlessly around the dance floor. I cannot help comparing this scenario with my preconceptions about the way Colombians should dance: the wild rhythms of salsa, cumbia, or the local porro, youthful bodies bounding with intent, now morphed into this moribund chug around the dance floor to the lachrymose accompaniment of some Latin crooner.

At the end of the evening Eduardo, magnanimous in his cups, refuses to let me walk home — although we are only three blocks from my hotel — and he hails a tuk-tuk. There is room for two passengers, but the four of us pile in. When we get to my hotel Eduardo leaps from the mototaxi and hammers on the thick wooden door with its iron knocker, invoking all the authority of his station. I reckon, through a fog of aguardiente, that this will not make me the most popular of the hotel’s residents the next morning, but there is little I can do about him. He is, after all, the law here in Mompox.

The next day is Sunday and, late in the morning, I go to the square for a coffee, just as the church of Santo Domingo is emptying out. Churches in Colombia are packed and religious paraphernalia is everywhere. Washington, I noticed on the way from Cartagena, crosses himself every time he passes a church, and at random other moments while driving. Secondly, and not surprisingly given the country’s recent past, there is a deep and widespread hostility to both drugs and drug users. In a certain sense, the drug trade and those associated with it are seen by the Catholic right as responsible for all the woes that Colombia has suffered.

As I sit outside the cafe, I am approached by a young dreadlocked type who taps me for spare change. I give him a few pesos — the equivalent of around twenty pence — and he goes off happy. Two drunks sitting nearby, sharing a bottle of aguardiente, tell me off, explaining that the boy will spend it on la droga. They are incensed and one of them waves the bottle around in his rage as he explains to me the gravity my error, oblivious to any inconsistency between his attitude to drugs and his own benighted state. It goes like this everywhere that the legal drug of alcohol fuels its consumers with moral indignation about other addictive substances. But in Colombia, of course, the rationale runs deeper than elsewhere.

I try to arrange a boat trip up the Magdalena. The banks are thick with wildlife — especially birds. I know very little about birds, but it seems a shame to be on the famous river and not take the opportunity to explore a little. A would-be entrepreneur, Lazaro, offers to find a boat for me. Lazaro is incredibly thin, languorous but edgy, and blinks a lot, reminding me of a lizard. Lazaro the lizard. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a mobile phone, and has to borrow mine to speak to his contacts. This seems like a poor start, but I give him the benefit of the doubt. He tells me to meet him at three that afternoon in the Plaza de la Concepción. He finds me having lunch at the nearby Comedor Costeño, a cheap and friendly restaurant on the riverbank, and waits outside for me to finish. He borrows my phone again to speak to his contact, and the price I was promised this morning — 25,000 pesos for three hours on the river — has gone up to 35,000 (around seven pounds sterling). At this point he hands me the phone, so I can speak to the boat owner, if I wish, just to prove he is not making it up. I decline. We stop a tuk-tuk and set off for the outskirts of town, downriver. When we get there, there is no boat. Lazaro, a little frantic now, borrows my mobile again and makes a call. He furrows his brow. I can tell this is not going to be good news. The boat trip is off: the other two passengers that were lined up have postponed until tomorrow. I have a friend, begins Lazaro, with a boat, good price . . .

I have lost all interest in the boat venture, but we have to return to town anyway, so off we head in the same mototaxi. When we get to the Plaza San Francisco, Lazaro strides to the bank and yells across the wide river in the direction of a single farm building on the other side. A couple of minutes later, a man emerges and walks to the shore. He is accompanied by a second man, in a red shirt, and a child, a girl of around ten. After considerable discussion between the two men on the other side, they unrope a launch — basically a canoe with a small outboard attached, and cross the river. We fix a price, a quarter of which goes to Lazaro, who then departs, happy. I am not sorry to see him go.

Pedro, the boat owner, introduces himself. He is courteous and sober. His companion, Edgar, seems exceedingly dim, until I realise that his exaggeratedly slow speech and movements are due to the fact he is somewhat the worse for wear, though whether through drink, as I first suspect, or else some profound and irreversible melancholy, it is difficult to tell. The girl sits on the prow at first, but is deposited on the far bank before we set off, first down, then upriver. It occurs to me that her father doesn’t want her here, with a strange man, and I wonder if the budding tourist industry here has already been infiltrated by would-be sex offenders. Pedro is astute, and good at pointing out animals and birds. Edgar is completely vacant, occasionally turning to me and asking if I speak Spanish, and when I reply in the affirmative saying no more, but nodding to himself sadly. He even ventures to ask me where I am from, and when I answer he again nods in his melancholy way, as though my provenance were a matter of profound regret. He is perched on the edge of the launch, a position he maintains majestically throughout the trip. I would have put money on him tumbling in, and several times he wobbles, but he is clearly an adept at this balancing act. He makes no further attempts at conversation, except when Pedro calls out the name of an animal or bird and Edgar looks at me and then shouts incoherently and points in the required direction, of which the only effect is to scare the creatures away. The biggest thrill comes with the iguana, which I cannot see at first — it is so well disguised — and Edgar rouses himself from his moribund state to gesture frantically at the river bank. There is a lot of green riverbank, and by the time I have the large green iguana in focus, it moves; it reappears further up the bank, and I am luckier the second time.

The next evening, my last in Mompox, I wander along the riverbank. I am picking up something of the sense of the place, its mystery, as well as its historical association with commerce, especially gold and silver. The town has a long tradition of silverwork, and is renowned for its fine filigree jewellery. Along the riverside some buildings, which once served as warehouses and workshops, look as though they are being turned into bars, but haven’t opened yet. My unhelpful guidebook tells me the Zona Rosa is a pleasant place to take a nightcap, but I can neither agree not disagree, because it doesn’t seem to exist.

Perhaps Gabo’s Bolívar was right, after all. However I have a flavour, I think, both of what Mompox once was, and what it might become once tourism gets a firmer hold, which no doubt it will. Certainly there were properties for sale that could well appeal to a certain kind of nostalgic and world-weary European or North American with an urge to sink into timeless reverie on the banks of the Magdalena.

*

On Tuesday at 4.30 a.m. Washington is outside the hotel with the pick-up truck, all set for the return journey to Cartagena. This time I get to sit in the front. I must have earned the privilege after our big night out, I think, but it turns out I am the only passenger. As we set off, there are rumblings of approaching thunder.

We are barely out of Mompox when the storm hits the ground with apocalyptic intensity, rain crashing down around us. In fact the downpour is so overwhelming that Washington has to stop the car, as he can see nothing, even with the wipers on double speed. Then, very slowly, we edge forward along the mud road, which has become a river of sludge. Visibility is down to a few metres. An hour out of Mompox, the rain has not diminished; it is still dark, but there are streaks of lighter grey in the sky to the east and I glimpse a cyclist, dressed only in a vest and pants, utterly stuck in the mud, drenched, and immobile on his bike. The water is running past him at knee-height. He is a still from a black and white movie, in which we — Washington and I — are the only other actors. We pass him, in slow motion, a lean statue balanced perfectly on a bicycle, beneath the torrential rain.

When we hit the ferry at Santa Ana de la Magdalena, where I spotted the conjoined dogs, we are escorted down the slippery approach by a man clad in a bin liner. Around 6.30, daylight filters through and the rain begins to ease. We hit a covered road and start to make real progress. Casualties of the storm appear along the roadside, mostly dogs that have been hit by cars driving blind through the storm. I count six dead dogs on this stretch of road. In one place, as we slow at a junction, a living dog is tearing at one of the canine corpses, pulling at a leg, as if dismembering a chicken. Dog eat dog. Further on, vultures are feasting on another dead body. The corpse of a donkey splayed on the verge comes as a vision from Chagall. There is plenty of other random roadkill, which I cannot identify, and whenever our truck approaches, the vultures scatter. Eventually, four hours out of Mompox, the sky clears and we look set for another warm day. At our breakfast stop, a parrot hops onto the railing by my table, glares at me rudely, and wolf-whistles. It continues to stare at me while I finish my coffee, and when I get up to leave, it flies off, disgruntled.

Just after eleven we descend into Cartagena, as another rainstorm hits from the Caribbean. Washington drops me off at my pension, the aptly named Casa Relax, in bohemian Getsemaní. It rains hard for two hours and the streets are flooded. I take a nap, and end up sleeping all afternoon. When I emerge to look for some food, it is already dark. Setting off down the street toward the Plaza de la Trinidad, someone calls out: “Oy, Blanco!” I do a double take — my surname, Gwyn, means ‘white’ and sometimes, in Spanish speaking countries, I introduce myself as Ricardo Blanco; but how can a stranger in Getsemaní possibly know my name? And then I remember that this a regular form of address for a white man. A black street vendor is beckoning me over: “Hey, Whitey!”

On the southwest corner of the plaza a European-looking man sits outside the bar called Demente. A discreet bar, I might add, in defiance of its name; discreet to the point of being almost empty. Inside it looks discreetly and expensively furnished. It stands out from the other local dives. I’ve seen the man sitting here before. I couldn’t help but notice him, since he bears a passing resemblance to Leonardo di Caprio. He sits outside in an armchair, pulling on a fat cigar. At his feet lies a Bulldog. The dog looks like he might fancy a cigar as well.

We nod a greeting to each other the second time I pass. The third time I stop and speak to him, in English.

Are you the owner, or do you just look as if you should be? He smiles. I am the owner, yes.

He is of medium height, blonde hair with a side parting, friendly face, perhaps too innocent looking for this game, but I might be mistaken. Looks can be deceptive. With old- fashioned courtesy, he stands to shake my hand.

Hi, I’m Nicolas. Pleased to meet you. The accent is slight, almost imperceptible, possibly a trace of German.

Richard. And who is your friend? I gesture down at the pooch.

Ha ha. He is my partner. His name is Socio. Which in Spanish means partner. How old is he?

Five years.

How does he handle the heat? He does OK.

I want to ask what the local strays make of Socio, but it’s too early for that. Looks like a nice bar, I say.

Thanks, he says. We have been open one year now.

I peer inside. There are now three women sitting in a row at the bar. I’ve been past here on half a dozen previous occasions and it’s the first time I’ve seen anyone inside.

I’ll come and have a drink, but need to get some food first, I tell Nicolas. Ah, we do food normally, but with this electricity cut, it’s not possible. That’s okay. I’ll see you later.

I eat at Trattoria di Silvio, at a table on the pavement across the narrow street, fifty metres up from the square, where, it would seem, they haven’t been so disabled by the electricity cut as to shut down the kitchen. I have just finished my pizza when the second power cut of the evening strikes and the lights go out. I have a candle at my table. The three Portuguese at the next table do not, and they are still eating, with some difficulty, so I pass them my candle. A few minutes later the waitress brings me another. Nicolas walks past with Socio. I wave at him and he calls back a valediction. I guess the second power failure has proved too much for him. I would have liked to hear his story, and why he thinks it’s a good idea to open a new bar in a place like Getsemaní. After all, the shop next door sells beer for 2,000 pesos (around 50 cents) and bottles of rum or aguardiente for a couple of dollars apiece. But once Getsemaní becomes a little more gentrified, Nicolas will be in a prime location.

I sit on the edge of the square and soak in the spirit of the place. I will be leaving Cartagena in the morning, and am reluctant to return to my hotel. The cat’s pee scent of marijuana sits heavy on the air, overlaying the smell of the drains.

Three old aguardiente drinkers, a black man flanked by two blancos, sit in a row on the bench to my right, passing a bottle between them. The one in the middle is toothless apart from two protruding yellow canines. He laughs wheezily, before bursting into raucous song, singing the same chorus again and again, which his two companions applaud loudly at each rendition. The thinnest one — they are all three skin and bone, but this one is so gaunt he looks as if he would snap at the slightest touch — is shaped like a question mark. He stands and calls out every few minutes for música música! — looking around the square desperately to see whether his plea will be heeded in some quarter, and then turns his head imploringly to the heavens, as if some celestial orchestra might appear to do his bidding, and when no response comes he cackles disdainfully and shuffles in a circle around the bench, dragging one foot as he moves. The third, the most desperate of these musketeers, is too far gone to do anything but gurn like a gargoyle at the world passing by, if indeed he can see it. His drunkenness is such that when they rise, he immediately stumbles, but his black comrade-in-arms — who can barely stand himself — has already extended a hand to steady him. After some hesitation and incoherent argument, the three eventually stagger off into the night, moving with extreme difficulty, as though struggling against the impossible tide of fortune, croaking and cackling their way towards oblivion. I have a vision of Macbeth’s three witches, transgendered as these Caribbean drunks, wrecked beyond pity or purpose.

Richard grew up in Breconshire, Wales, and following several years in London, spent a decade travelling on and around the Mediterranean, chronicled in his memoir The Vagabond’s Breakfast (a Wales Book of the Year, 2012). His books include the novels The Colour of a Dog Running Away, Deep Hanging Out and The Blue Tent, and the poetry collections Walking on Bones, Being in Water, Sad Giraffe Café, and, most recently, Stowaway: A Levantine Adventure. He has also compiled and edited an anthology of contemporary poetry from Wales, The Pterodactyl’s Wing (2003), and spent much of the time between 2011-2015 travelling in Latin America, preparing and translating a second major anthology, The Other Tiger: Recent Poetry from Latin America (2016). His other translations include collections by the Argentinian poets Joaquín O, Giannuzzi and Jorge Fondebrider, and Impossible Loves, by the Colombian Darío Jaramillo. He is Professor of Creative & Critical Writing at Cardiff University.