The plan was to eat a quick dinner and then visit a longtime friend of Molly’s, Bob the Scot. He knew the area well and would know how to get to where they were going. They took the moto-kar to one of the outer neighborhoods, which gave them a bit of a tour around the small city. Molly was amazed how it was still the same in some ways but had changed so much in others. There were still countless people sitting outside their houses, or in the plazas, enjoying the cool of the early evening. The houses were still small, but here too, the endless shanty towns had become clean and tidy neighborhoods.
On the way, Molly told Jonathan a little of Bob’s story. He had been a miner and had spent years living in the mining towns high up in the cold, desolate Andes Mountains, or deep in the jungle. He would say “Oh it’s impossible to imagine how dreadful it was”. He had been a mining man all his life, and he knew his stuff. He did well, and made good money from it, but he also knew the devastation that mining had caused round the world. He was the first to implement a simple solution to clean up the pollution that he, in part, had caused. He worked with a team of biologists to develop a system that used plants to clean up contamination. As well as soaking up the pollution the plants also soaked up tiny quantities of metals, such as gold and silver, which could be reclaimed.
They knocked on the door of his house, and Bob’s little dog was the first to greet them. The dog ran around their ankles, and jumped up and down, full of delight.
“Hello Molly. It’s so wonderful to see you. How are you, young lady?” he said in his broad Glasgow accent while he laughed and hugged her.
“And you must be Jonathan,” he said, as he hugged him too. “This is my wee doggie, Mac. He was a loan dog, Molly. Took him for a walk one day and couldn’t part with him.”
“I pointed out to Jonathan where the loan dogs started. This little one would certainly keep you fit, Bob. You are looking marvelous. This jungle life is suiting you.”
“It certainly is. Sad to hear about Linorio. You said on the Connect you’ve come to look for him, and you’re not quite sure where you’re going. Sounds perfect, Molly. Off to the deep jungle, on a treasure hunt! What is she getting you into, young lad? Let’s make a tea and we’ll have a wee look at that map of yours.”
While the water boiled, Bob looked at the scanty map. He laughed when he saw the X marking where they were going. But he knew from Molly’s expression this was a secret that he was being entrusted with. They sat down at the table, and Bob added more detail to the map, inserting the names of villages and landmarks. He told them how to get as close as possible. It would be a bus and a moto-kar to the port town of Puerto Verdad, then two boats to the nearest village of Shiringa. They were lucky, as there was a shortcut now the river was so high. It would take a whole day off their journey.
“I have a friend in Shiringa, Jamie. I’ll contact him. He can help you and organize a canoe for you. But be careful. At this time of year, the depths of the smaller streams can vary enormously,” said Bob.
Molly revealed that neither of them had any experience paddling a canoe.
“Oh!” said Bob. It was obvious he was now getting worried. “Well, Jamie can take you some of the way. Then you’ll need to walk if you want to go on your own. I don’t know the exact location but there is nothing in that area, and I’m concerned about how inaccessible it’s going to be.”
Bob went over to cupboard and produced a small electronic device.
“Take this. Push and turn this red button to send out an alert to the local rescue team if you get in trouble. And promise you’ll contact me as soon as you come out of the area, or I’ll be sending a search party.”
Molly was worried but managed to hide it from Jonathan. At least she now knew the map was part-way accurate.
Bob offered all sorts of advice about footwear, protection for the night and supplies they would need. “The water in the area is perfectly good to drink now,” he said proudly. “Contamination free!”
They sat drinking tea, playing with Mac and chatting about what had changed. Bob talked about the times in the past where there had been so much damage to the land and waterways from mining, and drilling for oil. The rivers had been so contaminated the fish were unfit to eat. He told them how the damage wasn’t always the fault of the companies. There were horrible examples where locals would smash oil pipes that ran past their villages to create work to repair them. But they had contaminated their own land in the process. They would sometimes vandalize the pipes while they were pumping, and oil would spurt up over the whole village, their own crops, and over the forest.
And Bob told them about how it had changed and about the successes. “Education was so important. We set up surveillance and made people responsible. And of course, my wee project was finally adopted. They came to their senses. And, they are still using my plant-based clean-up systems to reclaim precious metals after all these years. But it was such a struggle. It took so much time and energy to persuade the governments, and the huge companies, to use the system. They were unbelievably slow to act. But I held onto my dream to clean it all up. I kept saying to them, ‘Imagine how much money you could make from reclaiming lost metals’. I imagined a cleaned-up world, and it happened.”
Bob was a philosopher and talked on in his soothing Scottish lilt. He had seen such changes and had been a part of them. Jonathan loved to listen.
“We had looked for some great solution to all the world’s problems,” Bob continued. “We looked to our leaders, our politicians, religious leaders, our teachers, the corporations. But so many of their strategies were illogical and out of touch with how far the problems had advanced. It took a few of us to overcome our own resistance and push through to have a new vision. We had to think as individuals and believe in progress and change. We had to imagine the possibility of a better world and believe that humanity could advance and evolve.
“And evolve it did, young man,” he told Jonathan. “And so did I. I did my best to catch myself, and the ways in which I contributed to the problem, so I could change it in myself. I made lots of mistakes, but I did my best. I watched myself carefully. And I knew there were others doing the same. I started seeing, thinking and doing things differently, more clearly and more honestly. And things started changing around me. Mystical laws at work, Jonathan, mystical laws.”
They talked until late before riding back to the hotel in the cool night air, surrounded by the sounds of the jungle.