Jerry is homeless. He lives on the streets and the beach on Isla Colon in the tropical island chain of Bocas Del Toro, Panama. I really like Jerry. He is a gentle soul who spends hours every day cleaning the streets even though no one asked, and certainty no one pays him.
I sat on the street with Jerry one night, late and in the rain. He sat on his piece of cardboard and I sat on the hard tile just outside a Chino (Bocas-ease for grocery store. They are all owned by Chinese). The long over-hang protected us easily from the rain and we talked.
Jerry was born in Colon, the city that guards the Panama Canal on the Caribbean side. It is notorious for violent crime. When he was born, his mother dedicated him to Lucifer. He explained that when he was very small, he was killed many times, shot mostly. He explained that every time he died, he just got back up. It seemed an unpleasant memory for him. He asked me how many times I died, as if it was just normal for people to die and then get up again. Of course, I told him I had never died.
Jerry told me that when he was old enough, he studied witchcraft for three years. He studied so he would have the tools he needed to be a drug trafficker. He talked some about Mexico and a boat headed to England that never got there and Columbians that were impressed with the magic he could do. He explained that he could turn a snake into a chain and back again and that he could turn a cigarette into a hundred-dollar bill, but he didn’t like to make money that way because every time he did, he paid for it with a year of his life.
I sat listening to the rain and trying to decipher everything Jerry said. He sat mostly with his head bowed, his black dread locks hanging in his face. Occasionally he looked directly at me, his black eyes piercing. He switched back and forth from English to Spanish and I dared not interrupt him to ask him to repeat himself lest I interrupt the flow of his story.
I had known Jerry for several months. I'd bought him coffee and lunch. He never asked for money. In fact, he told me he had money. He just didn’t have access to it. He showed me the Bible he had tucked into a backpack that was stashed in the bottom of the shopping cart he pushed around town. He talked about "the engine," but every time he mentioned it, he lost me.
That night, as I sat listening to him in the rain, I finally figured out that "the engine" was a spirit that lived with him. Jerry often told me what "the engine" thought about things. And as he spoke of his time running cocaine, he frequently threw in side comments about this ever present companion.
So I asked Jerry about the engine.
“It’s a very bad spirit,” he said.
I must say, my head was reeling. I read a book once about a man who did some mission work in Africa and ran into stories similar to Jerry's. I found the stories fascinating. I think when we feel strongly pulled to something, it comes to us. And I think my time in Panama was evidence of that. I was learning a little about, not just Jerry, but the under-belly of the third world country I was living in.
“Other people have a face just like me,” Jerry said as he pulled out two forms of ID so I could see his picture. Was he referring to shape shifters? People who could mimic someone else?
“There are ships here that fly like planes, but look like big balls of fire,” he said. “They fly into Costa Rica.”
I had my own thoughts about aliens and Costa Rica and even the possibility of the Illuminati (the not-so-secret-anymore group of rich elite who are running the world) using Costa Rica and its vast unpeopled land as a base for operations and a safe zone in case of total world chaos.
“There are aliens here,” Jerry explained. “But, they are just here to learn.”
He explained that if we were nice to them, they would be nice to us. They had no bad intentions. They were just studying mankind.
“There is a hole in the sea,” he told me. “A place where they hid the gold. The spirits protect it.”
I added this to my information about the bad pirate spirit we evidently encountered when we were lost at sea.
Jerry didn’t have a computer. He never watched TV. I didn’t think this was the kind of stuff he would just make up. And the way he talked was like a long, thoughtful ramble—almost more like he was remembering and talking to himself than talking to me.
I stopped Jerry occasionally in his ramble to ask a few clarifying questions.
Was he a powerful witch?
Not really, he just knew enough to get by.
Were there other witches in Bocas?
Yes, many. Everyone knew it, but no one talked about it. In fact, he said that Bocas was "full of devils."
Did he have to go back and start life out as a baby again every time he died?
No, he just got up and kept going.
Did other people in Bocas traffic drugs?
Yes, many of the people who looked poor actually had tons of money stashed in their houses, but they lived simply so no one would be aware.
It was so late—after 1:00 am—and I was involuntarily yawning. Finally, I had to excuse myself and go get some sleep. Could we talk more in the morning?
Yes, he would be happy to talk to me. But, I was not to tell anyone about the witches.
I left him there on his cardboard, sheltered from the rain. I still had questions to ask. My curiosity was on fire. I went to bed with thoughts racing through my head. In my time in Central America, I have sometimes felt like an anthropologist, a discoverer of stories and faces, a documenter of ambitions and fears, an observer of authentic life.
I thought I ran away to Mexico when my husband died. I thought I ran away from pain, from truth. But I think maybe I was led away to find life in the dark places of humanity, to find the beauty of the poor people, and to expose it.