photo #2034645

Post one of continuing story 1Do you remember your first driving lesson? How old and what vehicle and location? Also who gave you your first driving lesson?Down and up the winding gravel mountain roads in southern Colombia, I learned how to drive my first work truck with men that at one time were in a branch of the US military or government agency. They claimed to now work for the cartel and took orders from Pablo Escobar, in charge of security at a compound that was now being used for housing indigenous workers mainly young children who grew up in the care of the cartel constantly rotating from one compound to another during different seasons of work or necessity. They came from the larger cities usually at age 4 or 5. Sold or given they separated from their parents and all live together in protected cartel housing. Amazingly quick to overcome no parents finding great strength in each other as they absorb more discomfort than any children should. Having to watch one of the men hired to protect them wake up each morning and grab the closest sleeping child to their door shot in the head and thrown outside to be picked up and taken to the pit just outside the compound fence line about a football field away. These are the men responsible for giving me my first driving lesson and in the work truck used for picking up dead bodies from an organ harvesting location just one mountain top over. Usually once a day they would drive down and up the winding gravel road to the next compound where husks of people would be loaded in the truck no blood no organs but everything else. There occasionally were other bodies that were killed and brought there as well. I was allowed to take the wheel on the way there unloaded and learn what it meant to predict the slack in the direction that at first went from one side of the road to the other, slowly I learned the correct amount and appreciated my driving lessons. Seems even killers make good teachers when there is no killing going on. Usually, in the morning, the truck would arrive full and emptied into the pit outside the fence line. The men would leave 3 or four bodies not thrown in the pit I was given the task every day at noon to pick them up and put them in the pit. There punishment or humor for taking care of me. If I could not pick up the body because it would as too heavy they would send me back with a machete. I was eventually allowed to ask other indigenous children to help. I learned horrible things about going outside the fence and how snipers practice or played with anyone who crossed the fence line except the men in charge and me a yellow-haired boy who Pablo Escobar had given instructions not to kill, after being flown there from a military base in Arkansas with Pablo Escobar as the pilot and Stephen Shaffer of the CIA as a passenger who checked me out of my elementary school and drove me to Arkansas were Pablo who worked with the FBI at that time picked us up. Stephen Shaffer of the CIA had a camera for pictures that he said caused a conflict with me going back with them and Pablo caught me disobeying him by going outside the fence to walk across the equator line painted by indigenous ceremonies on the mountain top. He said because I didn't lie about it he wouldn't kill me but would not let me leave with them and I watched my world as I knew it fly away as Pablo and Stephen took off for the next location leaving me with killers for guardians. They were great at protecting but lame on church values. I had to stay several weeks with attempts by Barry Seal to come get me but was shot at when he approached. Finally, Fred J Foster a retired photo analyst of the CIA and then pastor at the pentecostal church I attended came and left me fearing his life the first time but came back a week or so later with another pilot and plane conveniently the same day as a trip from the church group to a carnival festival in Brazil. He spoke at the beginning of the festival playing a small role in the ceremonies that started with a fire that spanned the old ruins in a rectangle then music and dancing took over the crowd and Fred J Foster and I went up the stone stairs to the top where a locked gate stood between the parked plane waiting to take us home filled with baggage packed by the killers at the compound that obviously wasn't mine. I had a backpack and a small tin and one or two bags. Everything else was a surprise or a joke from the killers to Fred the pastor who they gave the impression they disliked. You can imagine Fred wasn't impressed when he found out what was in the baggage. Blaming me as if I had something to do with the body parts the killers packed which turned out to be arms and legs and various other parts of the body. Fred threw them all out over the Gulf of Mexico, but I'm getting ahead of myself let's go back to the locked gate with the plane on the other side at the festival so I can get on the plane with Fred and the other pilot who didn't make it to America and the reason why during my next post.