Ghosts of Atacama

“I can’t get no satisfaction” – Mick Jagger and we pass by the ocean. “Used to be a whale meat factory. But there are no whales left anymore, so the factory is closed.” The road winds up, the ocean stays behind and we are surrounded again with nothing but the sand. The colors are vivid in the setting sun, the shadows of the desert lines and crosses on sides of the road makes it almost to a place with life.

“But I try, but I try, but I try, but I try..!” We hum along. Desert is beautiful when you are inside of the truck with Mick Jagger and the sun is setting and playing with a vast nothingness like a canvas for colors.

Potatoes on the side of road. Will make a nice meal. If we find some wood in this ocean of sand. Another 15 km and rests of some wooden boxes. Fire in the desert, rice, potatoes, fierce sun and wind. It is easy to become friends in the desert.

Out of nowhere a car stops. A couple comes out and seems as if they would be playing a scene of sightseeing from some movie. The only absurd thing is that there is nothing to sight see. “Hello!’ They pretend not to hear. There is nobody else in this desert, except us, fire, cooking potatoes and these middle upper class newcomers. “This happens. Company sends spies to see if we are not robbing anything from the load. It would be alright, if they would at least pay us decently.”

Dusk changes it all. Time comes back. It is the end of the second day of our truck ride through Atacama desert. The signs of numbers of kilometers on the highway become almost invisible. Everything merges in one – sand, sky, highway, crosses of the dead along the road. Our bellies are full. The CD is over. Lullaby of the rotating machinery of the motor. Sleepiness. Grey. Crosses disappear in the dark. Beauty of desert is beauty of death.

“Are you afraid?”
“No,” – he responds. My question seems to have woken him up from a state between daydreaming and death. I can see his hands wrapping around the huge steering wheel of the truck a bit more firmly. “Sure, many truck drivers die here. Probably more than anywhere else. The monotony of the desert. But the worst thing though are the ghosts”.

They have spent here more than hundred years. Desert is a difficult terrain also for the dead. There are neither objects nor subjects to put your soul to rest. No trees, no shacks, no dogs, no snakes, no lizards, no stones. Constant wind. Sand. The smell of blood is long gone. Bolivians were fighting for their port. Their only water door. Peru – for their legacy of the Incas? Chile – for the new gold, the saltpeter.

They come when truck drivers are asleep. Bang on the window. You look out and see a ragged man, silent, just raising the remaining part of the arm. The blood is still streaming. You lay down again and drift into the sleep after many hours of driving. And then you hear the weeping. It is close to your ear. You roll on the other side and put the pillow on top. But it comes from underneath again. The weeping gets stronger and stronger, the despair and misery is all over your truck bed and creeps through heels into every part of your every cell.

“Therefore we never sleep alone and gather in some places in the desert. Before we go to sleep we talk to them: please, I am very tired, could you let me sleep tonight? And they are reasonable. Then they leave you alone”.