The Revolutionary and the Priest

“Por favour!” At a orphanage, hidden away in the Bolivian hills, I needed to leave.
Four days earlier, I had made the spontaneous decision to leave the NGO I was volunteering at in Peru to travel down to Bolivia, in order to visit the death place of ‘Che’ Guevara. It was of personal interest, but also on return to England I was to finish my History degree with a dissertation on Guevara, and thus thought it apt to journey to his final resting place in La Higuera. After a lengthy ride, my bus pulled into the town of Vallegrande at around four in the morning. I wandered the streets in search of accommodation but it was aimless; nowhere open at such an hour. A local who was also on the same bus passed and I asked for assistance in my broken Spanish. He confirmed my fears but then offered a bed at his; an offer I was in no position to refuse. We meandered through the streets until we reached the church. My host was Adolfo, the priest of Vallegrande, my bed - a room in the church. The next morning I had a look round the town and quickly discovered that the cash point was inactive; I was penniless, bar the bus ticket back in three days time. I was effectively stranded, and as a result taken in by the Church. That night we made our way in his car, crammed in with six others and four guitars, to an isolated church in the hills. Here I was the main attraction and quickly found myself given a song book and then told to sing hymns with a group of school girls to the bemused, laughing locals.
Despite this, I was not to be undeterred in my quest for a Guevara based experience and enquired about visiting his memorial on the outskirts of Vallegrande to realise the minimal entrance fee was well out of my price range. Still, I wandered down to the gates of the memorial to have a look, when I noticed a small farm by its side. There a weathered, nearly deaf, farmer was working away on his crops. After repeatedly saying “Che” to him, he grasped my meaning and took me to a bedraggled fence at the back of the farm. Here I was able to hop over to spend the next few hours in solitary wonder.
This quasi religious life carried on for the next few days until I got the impression he wanted me to stay indefinitely. If I missed my bus I had no idea what I would have done. However, with my bus leaving in twenty minutes and now at an orphanage in the hills, I had to be firm. I made it with a minute to spare. We bade farewell and are still in contact today. I never got to La Higuera.