Friends Forever…or just today
It was getting late. The night had already swallowed Purmamarca’s famous montañas coloradas, and a cool wind-which blew over the Salinas Grandes, Argentina’s largest salt flat-came down the canyon. We sat in the campground’s kitchen with another family, contemplating the meaning of travel over a few liters of beer.
Then, two cyclists, with their headlights twinkling in the dark, quietly pulled in to the campground. Elisa jumped out of her seat, ran down to greet the cyclists with a five-year old’s welcoming committee of one.
¿Hola, van a quedarse aquí? Are you staying here?
She usually greets newcomers, travellers, just about anybody in Spanish, and then she asks what language they speak. She assures them that she speaks either English or Spanish, so not to worry. From there, she might start probing the traveler’s intentions.
Where are you going next? Where did you start?
I was living in Bogotá, Colombia for three years. And now we are driving our Rainbow van to Chile, she says.
She tells our stories, the one about the whales, the one about high altitude in Laguna Parón, how a monkey in the Amazon bit her sister. She trades her stories for their time. On the road, this is the currency of friendship.
From the backseat of the Rainbow, her imagination has grown larger than her pint-sized body. She has a map in her head where all roads lead to Chile, but not before passing through Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina… Every country is a planet, and inside this diverse universe of humans of all different sizes, is a wide spectrum of faces, speech, and clothing. Travel increases the awareness that no one is like the next and cultivates a thirsty curiosity to match her thick mane, a moppy mess of locks framing her big brown eyes: the mind’s windows to the world.
The interaction is not limited to the adults. On this journey she has played with plenty of children. Some are smaller, some speak other languages. Some are interested in building sandcastles, others just want to play with a soccer ball. Elisa adapts to their accents, styles of play, and she brings her little sister along for the ride. A quorum of three is the ideal playgroup. Nobody is ignored, much is shared.
From the beginning, new friends are around every corner, from little Joshua in Ibagué, Colombia to Maria in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and the dozens of friends in between. There is Lilly, an 8-year-old American who taught the girls how to make miniature ghosts out of wet wipes. There’s Nerina, a 4-year-old Swiss German who spoke no Spanish and no English, but somehow they connected. What is the stuff of a little’s girl’s day if not running, exploring, and digging. The details are hammered out through eye contact, mumbling, and onomatopoeias, the intuitive ya’s, ne’s,and ouch’s, words which bridge the language gap.
Ich liebe meine Katze, I love my cat, she began saying to me. Since her play dates on the beach with Nerina, she continues asking me to translate words into German. How do you say milk… tree… grass… bear… bowl of soup? Auf Deutsch!?
And here in Argentina, she just spent a short week with Ani, an 11-year old American whose patience can only be matched by her resourcefulness. In three days, they built a spaceship, a campervan, a teepee, and a sandcastle. They played a soccer game and then fell asleep watching the movie Small Foot in the Rainbow.
Of friendships, who can say which is better: one really good friend all year long, or a hundred friends in a year? Who can say what brings more happiness, a BFF or a mosaic of relationships, each one marking you with a new perspective, a mentality from another experience. Is one more likely to become your lifelong friend than the other?
Every other day, Elisa asks me how many more minutes until Chile? I have uncovered several motivations for this question. One, the Chilean family is nigh, and where there is family, there are gifts, delicious desserts, and fun. On the other hand, Elisa’s birthday is between now and then, and if were are getting closer to Chile, we must be getting closer to her birthday party, so goes the five year old’s logic.
Herein is the tragedy of fleeting friendships. Who will she invite to her birthday party? Who will be there to gather all the candy from the piñata? This issue weighs on her mind. Lilly wont’ be there. Nerina won’t be there. Ani won’t be there. Perhaps the BFF has its advantages, or maybe the next new friend is waiting somewhere in Uruguay, and will be there on the fifteenth of December swinging a stick at the piñata!
