The El Salvadorian Motorcycle Accident

The Sun dipped into early evening as my driver’s rust-marked, navy-blue cab slowed behind a collection of thin cattle, each with its hip bones and bumpy spine pumping up and down like the pistons of a slow-moving tractor engine. Black hides hung loose, swaying with each step as they slowly waddled along the center strip of the two-lane highway. I’d been commissioned to document the country’s recent coffee bean blight and the work of missionaries to help farmers transform their dwindling harvest into something more sustainable. Now, just thirty minutes in the country, and I’m already stuck in a classic Central American traffic jam a few miles from the largest airport in El Salvador.

Even with all my camera gear, the customs officials barely gave me a second glance. They were more concerned with how long it might take to examine all the cases than what might be inside them.

“¡Rápido! ¡Vamos! Estás bien,” one of them said without looking at me. He waved me forward with military-style arm movements. Thumb locked next to four fingers pointing forward. “Estás bien,” he assured me. Who am I to argue with a man in charge?

Once we maneuvered around the malnourished cows, it took another 45 minutes to the compound in La Libertad, a high-walled complex of stucco buildings and a courtyard thick with palm trees overlooking the Pacific. It was my home for the next nine days, and conspicuously far removed from the economic realities on the other side of the barrier.

A few tourists mingled on the pier as I lugged camera cases up the two flights to my

room. The dampness that threatened to run from my pores since I stepped outside the airport terminal to hail my cab finally let loose. When I had everything inside the whitewashed room, my clothes were soaked in salty sweat, and I began to shiver in the air-conditioned chamber.

I read somewhere that I could wrap my lenses in maxi pads and set them outside on a windowsill to acclimate to the high humidity, so I spent the rest of the evening unpacking and prepping my equipment, carefully wrapping each lens and camera body, while laughing to myself at what those customs guards might have thought if they had examined my luggage and discovered I was carrying three bundles of sanitary napkins.

I turned in early. The next morning, I would take a chartered bus to the base of the volcano at Guazapa to interview and photograph farmers and missionaries about their work to transform the local economy and the lives of the people there, living in the shadow of a dormant hole leading to the center of the Earth.

The next morning, the oppressive atmosphere clung thickly to my skin, while more hot air whipped in from the open windows of the old school bus, each rattling without rhythm. Sweat blanketed me, and a mixture of tourists and locals crowded into the sticky vinyl seats. The humidity made it feel like I was sitting in a room of steamy, damp cotton while exhaust fumes lingered in the air, and mixed with the hanging sweat of unfamiliar travelers. My eyes began to sting, and my throat became dry. I was convinced a fellow passenger had poked a hole somewhere close to the bouncing exhaust pipe underneath the worn rubber safety strip lining the floorboard.

Heat and smell notwithstanding, the scenery as we approached a massive mountain tunnel was stunning and lush. Green hills disappeared upward into the low clouds, and craggy valleys dipped down below the paved highway. All this land is pockmarked by houses and small businesses painted cerulean blue, canary yellow, and cartoon-heart red—gas station postcard material.

Traffic moved steadily since leaving San Salvador just a few hours before, but it suddenly began to slow. The tunnel ahead was flooded with congestion. Whatever was causing the bottleneck had just happened. It took another thirty seconds before the bus reached the mouth of the underpass. As the driver inched forward, I could finally see the reason for the logjam—a mangled yellow motorcycle, spilling gasoline, and making a rainbow from a nearby puddle of water.

Two people were on the road. One was dead. A quarter of their head was removed in pieces along the pavement. As for the second person, a young woman, there was still a chance. Despite the road rash pockmarking her body, only her left leg was seriously injured, with her foot turned in a way that no foot should ever turn, and a bone protruding from just above her ankle. While the woman heaved for breath, dizzy from pain, a crowd stood in a semi-circle, looking down on her as if they were all locked in the posture of a curious and morbid prayer, watching, not helping.

I leaped from my seat and hastily shuffled along the center aisle of the bus, pointing and yelling, my voice competing with the vehicle’s idling diesel engine and the confused rambling of voices from outside.

“Stop, stop goddammit!” I shouted. I still remember something from my field combat medical training. I knew the steps to stabilize the injured, and none involved standing around in a semi-circle watching a woman suffer.

“They don’t want your help,” came a man’s deep voice from the rear of the bus. If he had a hat, he was the kind of guy who might sleep under it during a long trip.

“But she’ll die!” I pleaded.

“Then she dies,” he returned, “and you might too if you get off this bus… Americano.” His name for me brought forth visions of hot coffee, steaming, like the air outside.

“Sit down.” He said, calm but quite serious.

Sounds from the excited, chattering people standing on the road filled the metal hull of the bus. There was no breeze. The air was stagnant. Faces inside the bus turned from the accident to look at me, to see what I would do next. I looked toward the door, then back to the other faces. The man sitting at the back of the bus wasn’t watching me like the others. He had done his part. With nothing left to say, I lowered my shoulders, put the camera to my eye, and photographed the suffering.

Traffic moved, allowing the hot wind to pick back up, whipping in from the open windows. It was still so clammy outside, which helped disperse the reek of iron blood and sickness lingering inside the metal tube. So many years later, it’s the humid days when I think about her the most and feel the shame of taking that single photograph.