Tales from all around

How did we end up in an emergency clinic in this part of the world…and on our honeymoon?! Dark faces were staring at us like two foreign suspects standing there with our victim waiting for the verdict…

On our way to the elephant orphanage, the chauffeur guide drove through a narrow semi-asphaltic curved street running like a belt around highlands of forests. Despite being awfully dizzy, the panoramic scenery of lower cliffs of jungles and sounds of waterfalls cutting their way between rocks, took me to Mogli’s jungle book. There, within the virgin nature, laid man made wide grid of tea plantations. Paths between plantations were dotted with women carrying large baskets on their backs. Small brick houses with tiled roofs were like scattered Lego blocks within this endless ocean of greenery.

Everything was going on so well until we came across a flat land of proudly-standing tall and slim rubber trees, uniformly organized as rows of soldiers. Each tree stood with a bucket fixed to its waist for collecting the milky rubber running out of cuts in the wood as blood would run out of a skin wound.

Had we never seen something similar, we asked our guide to stop the car. My husband was spontaneously opening the car door, facing the street, when we heard a sound of something crashing into the door. A human body was flying off a motorcycle in the sky! It landed few meters away while the motorcycle lost its way in the forest depth. We shouted and jumped to the place where our victim was piled between rubber trees. Fortunately, the skinny local man was awake, but snoring with pain and a seriously bleeding knee appeared from his torn pants. A group of local farmers popped up out of nowhere and surrounded us, yelling with anger.

Are they going to tie us to the rubber trees and take a tribal revenge? I wondered to myself… Are we destined to get arrested on this land for a crime we never intended to commit? Our local guide approached, calmed them down, and asked where we shall take the wounded man.

There, in the emergency clinic, we stood with locals waiting, as a nurse checked on the man. Our worries melted away as we started to communicate with them only with signs. Finally, all things were handled and we could see a smile on the wounded man's face.

A couple of hours later we were back on track. We never had the chance to see the rubber trees again, but we surely had a story to tell, and a new friend to check on when we went back home.