safe. I assure you, safe.

I tell you this here, this thing that is not quite a public thing, because I don´t know how to tell you this in person because I don´t quite yet know what to say.



Yesterday the harp camp ended and we were put on a bus with one of the student orchestras to drive back to Asuncion. Halfway there our bus crashed. There was a thud and some wild driving and I flew up in the air a little and it all seemed to happen very slowly because I remember grabbing on to my arm rest and J and thinking ¨You´re not supposed ot have time to grab on to anything when you´re crashing¨ and I wondered if the bus would roll and if we would be a little crushed. I also remember thinking, ªI´m fine, I think I´m fine, am I fine(question mark)ª

And then the bus stopped with out any rolling or falling of luggage or crushings or much of anything at all. J and I poked our heads out the window to see what we could see. Part of the side of our bus had peeled away and was sticking out, but it seemed to be only a couple of feet of metal, no sweat. I was hoping we could maybe just bend it back and keep on driving. We can do that, right (question mark) It IS Paraguay after all.


My North Dakotan upbringing prepared me for hitting a boulder or a post or a deer. So when J and I couldn´t resist our documentary curiosity and opened the door to exit through the driver´s cab I was surprised to see the windshield was gone. Did it have one in the first place (question mark) Can he roll it down (question mark) Because it can´t really all be broken can it (question mark) And when I had to crawl over the twisted remains of the door and jump five feet down to the ground I just thought of it as part of the adventure.


I was surprised to see the front left corner of the bus reduced to knots of metal. The damage I was expecting to find were some mildly damaged harps.


Then we began walking back to the crash site. A man came walking in our direction. ªThree deadª I heard him say.


They can´t really be dead, I think, I mean, they can all be revived, right (question mark)


And then we saw the car. Or what had been a car and was no more knots of silver metal and then I realized that the thud thud thud was a group of men working to hack off the door of the car and there was--well, in the end, there were five dead and I saw them. I couldn´t film, I couldn´t do anything but silently cry and hold J´s hand as I watched their bodies that looked like they no longer had bones or muscles being carried and placed into the back of pick-up trucks.


I don´t know how long we watched everything. The directors of the orchestra found us and told us there was a van waiting to take us to Asuncion. J got our luggage from the bus as I stood imobile waiting for her. A man approached me and asked if I had been on the bus. I knew he was a reporter and I knew I didn´t want to answer his questions and I couldn´t understand how he didn´t just know that I couldn´t really speak spanish but my brain was working too slowly to get myself out of there.
So I answered him.
He asked me where we had been coming from.
Pedro Juan Caballero.


A professor we were traveling with saw me and took me away to wait for J by the van safe from the reporter.


We, ten, and our luggage and a harp rode three and a half more hours in a six passenger van listening to the strangest assortment of music. Electric organs and ironically a spanish version of that Last Kiss song. You know the one that Pearl Jam and that group in the fifties sang. About a car crash.


Thanks to some wonderful people we are now safe and warm and comfortable.


I love Paraguay and I want to tell you happy stories. They are yet to come. But I tell you this one first because it must be said and it must be processed. I don´t know what to think. I only know two things-- I must think differently about life otherwise I can´t handle it and I am ever so grateful for how much everyone has been doing for us this whole time in Paraguay. Do you ever feel you can´t ever repay the generosity shown to you (question mark) I feel that more and more every day of my life.






Love,
Marge