by Mike Lawson
Leaving Arequipa, she passed a series of small townships built on the flanks of Chachani, one of the volcanic massifs towering over Arequipa. The road was a two-lane blacktop blasted out of the mountain’s flanks, crowded with trucks and buses and winding ever upward. The first part of the journey was through country that was bone-dry, with only a few saguaro-like cactus plants to provide some relief from the rocks. About ninety minutes from Arequipa, she reached the boundary of a nature preserve, the Salinas-Aguada Blanca. Here, at twelve thousand feet, was the pampa, a grassy plain populated by vicuña, the wild cousin of the domestic alpaca. In the background was the perfect cone of the volcano El Misti.
The road continued to climb—she wondered if it would ever stop climbing—until she finally arrived at a mountain divide where a roadside sign said the elevation was four thousand, eight hundred meters. Almost sixteen thousand feet! She was lucky she wasn’t feeling symptoms of altitude sickness; she suspected being a marathon runner was probably one reason why. And although the altitude didn’t take her breath away, the scenery did. From where she stood, she could see Ampato and Hualca Hualca, each mountain twenty thousand feet high.
She was glad she had come to this place—it was everything she imagined. She was also glad that DeMarco had decided not to come with her. He would have complained the whole time and, being an off-and-on-again smoker, he would have wheezed himself to death at this elevation.
Finally, the road began to descend. When she reached the town of Chivay, she saw she was at a mere twelve thousand feet. Chivay was the largest town in the region, with a population of about four thousand, and overlooking it was Cotallaully, a sixteen-thousand-foot peak that is the city’s apu—its guardian mountain spirit. At Chivay, she turned westward, heading into the region along the southern rim of the Colca Canyon, which had been struck by the quake—and the enormous landslides that followed—in 2007. The small towns of Yanque, Achoma, Maca, Cabanaconde, and Huambo had all suffered some damage, but Pinchollo had apparently been the hardest hit, as this was where Lizzie Warwick initially focused her relief efforts.
As she drove, she was amazed by the amount of terracing on the steep hillsides and awed by the tenacity of a people who had the determination to farm in such rugged country. At one point, she passed through a long, winding tunnel bored through the side of a mountain, a tunnel so long she couldn’t see the light at the other end when she entered it. She was astounded the tunnel had survived the quake and couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to have been inside it when the earthquake struck. She stopped again at another lookout point, and found herself looking thousands of feet upward at the mountains and thousands of feet downward into the Colca Canyon. The Colca River was just a thin ribbon of silver from where she stood.
Late in the afternoon, she reached Pinchollo and saw areas that had still not been rebuilt four years after the quake. Mounds of brick and stone dotted the landscape like untidy grave markers. She stopped when she came to an eighteenth-century Catholic church called San Sebastian. The church also appeared to have been damaged by the quake; there was scaffolding on one side but nobody was working. There was a small plaza near the church where people could sit and enjoy the sun on their faces. Today was sunny, if a bit cool. Emma grabbed a bag from her car containing food, a bottle of water, and a bottle of Peruvian wine, and took a seat on a stone bench on the northern edge of the plaza.
Two old women were sitting about twenty yards away from her, heads close together, speaking in low voices. A couple of gossipers Emma figured. The old women wore straw hats on their heads, alpaca jackets, and long, dark skirts with magnificent embroidery on the hem. Across the plaza were two young men, smoking and laughing about something. Emma nodded to the old women, then ignored them as she pulled a loaf of bread, fruit, and cheese from her bag. She could feel their eyes on her and she imagined they were wondering what she was doing by herself. Usually the tourists who came to this rugged region to look at the canyons and the condors came in groups.
Finally, and as Emma had expected, one of the two young men walked over. In heavily accented English, he asked if Emma spoke English. Emma said, “I do but I also speak Spanish,” and the young man smiled in relief that she could speak his language. She guessed he was about nineteen or twenty. He was short and broad, wore jeans, ragged tennis shoes, a faded red sweater, and a fedora-like black hat. She could tell he was proud of his hat. He told her his name was Marco and said that if she needed a guide, he was her man.
Emma didn’t respond to his offer. Instead she asked if he would like a glass of wine, a bit of cheese. He beamed again, a dazzling smile, his white teeth in brilliant contrast to his dark skin. She uncorked the wine bottle, took plastic cups out of her bag, and told him to call his friend over so he could have some wine, too. Marco made a motion with his arm and his friend, a man who turned out to be Marco’s cousin and whose name was Arturo, joined them. Emma looked over and could see the old women staring, and she raised the bottle and motioned them over.
Emma wasn’t a gregarious person, but this was different. This was a mission, and the mission required her to be sociable. She chatted with the young men and the old women for half an hour, asking questions about the town and the surrounding area. Eventually she steered the conversation to the earthquake that had occurred four years ago. The men and women all began to speak at once about the devastation, the horror of people being crushed by their own roofs as they slept, how some people had simply disappeared as if swallowed by the earth itself. Lizzie Warwick, they all agreed, was a saint. She and René Lambert had arrived with thirty people four days after the quake and had helped so many people. They tended tirelessly to the wounded, passed out food and water, helped dig for those trapped in the rubble, and set up temporary shelters for those who had lost their homes. One of the old women said that without Lizzie and the handsome French doctor the number of dead would have doubled or tripled; her sister was alive today only because of Dr. Lambert.
Emma asked if any of them remembered a man named Downing, a big man, an American. He worked for Lizzie Warwick, she said, and he came here two years ago to take pictures of how things had improved since the earthquake. Neither Marco nor the old women remembered Downing, but Arturo did.
“He didn’t take pictures here, though,” Arturo said. “He wanted to find Juan Carlos and the hospital.”
“The hospital?” Emma said.
Arturo explained that it wasn’t really a hospital. It was a camp, a … He groped for the right word. A facility, he finally said, unable to think of any other word to describe the place. Lizzie Warwick built it to house some people left homeless by the quake.
Emma figured Arturo had to be speaking about one of the long-term Warwick care facilities that her friend, Clive Standish, had mentioned.
“And that’s where Mr. Downing went when he came here?” Emma asked.
Arturo shrugged. “I guess. As soon as I told him where it was, he drove off.”
“And where is this place?” Emma asked.
Marco jumped in at this point. He said the facility was just off the main road about twenty miles west of Pinchollo. He then scratched a rough map in the dirt with his finger and described a landmark Emma could use to locate the road to the place.
“Why did they build this facility so far from here?” Emma asked.
Marco shrugged. “Maybe they were worried about another quake. I don’t know.”
That may have been true, Emma thought, but she was still surprised. If this facility had been constructed to help the local people, it would have made more sense to build it closer to Pinchollo so friends could visit more easily. She didn’t say this, however, and reminded herself not to jump to conclusions until she had more information.
It was getting late and Emma was tired from the long drive from Arequipa. She decided she’d visit the Warwick facility tomorrow and talk to this man, Juan Car
los. She asked her new friends if there was a place she could sleep that night, saying she would pay in U.S. dollars for a bed. One of the old women said she could stay with her daughter, a recent widow, but that she didn’t have to pay anything.
Emma slept on the floor in the widow’s house that night, next to a fireplace. She had two rough blankets for a mattress, two rough blankets to keep her warm, and her knapsack for a pillow—and slept like a baby. She left a hundred dollars on the widow’s table before she left; a hundred dollars was a small fortune in this part of the world.
The Warwick Care Center was located about twenty miles from Pinchollo and off the main road, but Emma would have driven right past the place if Marco hadn’t told her to look for a rock formation that vaguely resembled the head of a dog. The road to the facility was nothing more than two deep ruts created by the tires of other vehicles.
She drove for a mile, going up a slight grade, until she crested a hill and could see the facility half a mile away. It was built on rocky but relatively flat ground, and behind it Emma could see a small stream. She wondered if the proximity of the stream was the reason for choosing this site.
As for the facility itself, Emma was impressed. There were two large, modern Quonset huts and four smaller enclosures. The buildings looked like the type that could be erected quickly by a team of men who knew what they were doing, but she wondered how they got building materials to this site four years ago; sections of the road to the east would have been impassable immediately after the earthquake. And again she wondered why the facility had been erected in such an isolated spot and not closer to Pinchollo or some population center like Chivay.
She parked her Land Rover in an open space in front of one of the large Quonset huts where she saw a few people sitting outside on benches, enjoying the late morning sun on their faces. They all stared at her as she exited her vehicle and a few of them smiled and waved their hands in greeting, but no one approached her. Everyone she saw appeared healthy, although one woman was holding a cane in her hands.
A man came out of one of the smaller huts and walked toward her with a smile on his face. He introduced himself as Juan Carlos, and like the men she had encountered in the village the day before, he was short and cheerful with a broad, round face. He was wearing jeans, a hooded gray sweatshirt, and a Colorado Rockies baseball cap.
As much as she hated to do it, Emma began with a lie. She told Juan Carlos that she worked for the Red Cross and had heard about the marvelous things the Warwick Foundation had done after the earthquake, particularly setting up this special facility. She said she’d spoken to a man named Phil Downing who worked for Warwick and he’d told her about this place.
“Do you remember Mr. Downing?” Emma asked. “He came here two years ago.”
“Oh, yes,” Juan Carlos said, and then made an expression that made it clear he hadn’t been fond of Downing.
“Mr. Downing told me he took videos to show American politicians how the money Lizzie Warwick had been given was being used to help people.”
“He didn’t take videos while he was here,” Juan Carlos said. “He just asked lots of questions and made me show him around.” Juan Carlos hesitated. “He was a rude man, but because he worked for Señorita Warwick, I was respectful. I was glad when he left.”
“Yes, I didn’t particularly like him either,” Emma said. “Anyway, I was visiting in Chivay and because of what Downing told me, I decided to come here to see for myself what Warwick had done. But first, I’d like to know more about you. The people in Pinchollo speak very highly of you.”
Juan Carlos beamed at the false compliment. He said that eight years ago he went to Lima, stayed with a distant cousin, and took classes to become an emergency medical technician and an ambulance driver. He thought the work would be exciting, but he grew to hate it. Lima was too large, too crowded, too noisy, too smelly. And the job. … Well, mother of God, it was awful. Bodies mangled in car accidents; drug addicts who overdosed; people beaten, knifed, and shot. He couldn’t stand it. He went back to his hometown, not sure what he was going to do next, and a couple of months after he returned, the earthquake happened.
He did what he could to care for the survivors, but he had no idea how to deal with such a large-scale disaster. Fortunately for him and everyone else in the area, Lizzie Warwick, Dr. Lambert, and their team showed up and took charge. When Dr. Lambert discovered that Juan Carlos had had medical training, he asked him if he wanted to manage a facility they were going to establish to care for some of the survivors.
“Why did they build this facility so far from Pinchollo?”
“Dr. Lambert said they would have to clear away all the rubble to build in Pinchollo. And maybe there were issues with whoever owned the land.”
Emma thought that answer odd. There was a lot of uninhabited land near Pinchollo—it wasn’t a densely populated area—and certainly Lambert could have found a spot just outside the town to build where it wouldn’t have been necessary to clear away debris from damaged structures.
“How did they get building materials to this place? The roads must have been damaged by the quake.”
“Helicopters,” Juan Carlos said. “Big helicopters. They brought in everything you see here and a team of men, and they built the facility in just a few days. We have a pump to pump water from the spring, two generators that supply electricity, chemical toilets, and heat for the winter. Every couple of months I call Mr. Hobson and … Do you know who Mr. Hobson is?”
Emma nodded.
“… and I tell him what supplies I need and he sends food, diesel for the generators, anything I want.”
“How did Ms. Warwick and Dr. Lambert decide who should live here?” Emma asked.
Juan Carlos gestured toward the people sitting outside. “These people have no one. After the quake, if we didn’t take care of them, they would have been all alone, without food and shelter. Many of them would have died.”
“I see,” Emma said. “But there must have been a lot of people after the quake that needed help.”
“Oh, yes, there were so many. Children who lost their parents, people with horrible injuries.”
“What happened to those people?”
“The children, Miss Warwick sent to Arequipa and Lima, some to Chivay. They have organizations in those cities to help with orphans. The badly injured, they sent to Arequipa, where they have hospitals.”
“I see,” Emma said again, although the picture still wasn’t completely clear to her. “And what exactly do you do for the people who live here?”
“Feed them. Care for them. And I give them Dr. Lambert’s medicine,” Juan Carlos said. The pride in the job he was doing was evident on his broad face. “I also take samples and administer tests and mail them to Dr. Lambert so he can make sure they are okay.”
“I don’t understand,” Emma said. “Are all these people sick?”
“Oh, not really. Just the usual things—arthritis, high blood pressure, digestion issues, but nothing too serious.”
“So what is this medicine you give them?”
Juan Carlos shrugged. “Drugs that Dr. Lambert prescribes to keep them healthy. He gave them all exams before he admitted them to the facility.”
“Would you mind giving me a tour?” Emma said.
The two large Quonset huts were like military barracks. There were beds for about twenty-five people in each hut and lockers at the foot of the beds for storing their belongings. Juan Carlos said the women lived in one of the huts and the men in the other. One of the small outbuildings housed two large generators and fuel for the generators. The second outbuilding was Juan Carlos’s home and office. It contained his bed, a small desk, bookshelves, file cabinets, and a satellite phone. The third building was a kitchen with propane-fueled barbecues.
“Do you cook all the meals?”
“Oh,
no. The men and women who live here take turns cooking,” Juan Carlos said. “Some of the women are excellent cooks,” he added, patting his small potbelly.
The fourth small hut was a miniature clinic. There was a bed, boxes of disposable syringes, containers for biological samples, a laptop, and a printer. Juan Carlos didn’t object when Emma picked up a vial containing what appeared to be blood. The first thing she noticed was that the vial was marked only with an alphanumeric label and didn’t identify the patient by name. When she asked about the label, Juan Carlos became quite animated and explained that each person living at the facility had a small electronic chip inserted in his or her upper arm.
“It just took a small incision,” he said, “not really painful at all.”
“You’re kidding,” Emma said.
“No, no. It’s very, very important, Dr. Lambert said, to make sure we don’t mix up the samples. So whenever a sample is taken, I use the RFID reader—Dr. Lambert taught me how to use it. I point the reader at the chip in the person, and the reader talks somehow to the computer and a label is generated, then the label is placed on any specimens taken from the person. It’s a very good system and there are no mistakes—writing down the wrong name or something like that.”
“Ah, I understand,” Emma said, but she found what she had just heard chilling. They had tagged these people the way biologists do when they track animals in the wild. She could understand the logic of using the RFID chips, but her instincts told her something was wrong with this.
“Where do you send the samples?”
“A laboratory in Delaware, USA.” Before Emma could ask another question, he added, “I also administer tests, and I send the test results to Delaware, too. I drive to Arequipa once a month and use the Federal Express to send them.”
“What sort of tests?”
He explained, and Emma began to get a better understanding of what this was all about.
“Have there ever been any fatalities here?”