Chapter 2
The Asian jungle time

It was December and a monsoon rain was pouring down. It was hot and wet from the first day when we were entered the jungle and on each following morning and evening till the last moments of the event. It poured in the Terminator and Twilight zones alike, it drizzled during evening cooking time, it rained when the camp was being broken. Red clay clung to boots and everything it had contact with – clothes, camp beds, dishes, baggage, even socks and toothbrushes. The cloudy sky kept sobbing, sometimes with grief, sometimes it even wailed shedding tears on our heads. We left a comfortable hotel to be devoured by a Chinese dragon. Nobody knew at that time what we were about to experience.

The Rainforest Challenge, regarded as the most difficult and most eventful offroad rally in the world, has been organized for six years in Malaysia and each time the route is different. The drivers complained that the previous route was too easy. Therefore the present rally has been organized in the monsoon season and the route led through the Dinosaur Jungle, the world’s oldest jungle covering the southern part of Johor Province.

I was sitting on the front seat of a white offroad Toyota, looking through the windshield flooded by rain. At regular one second intervals a tree dashed by. We were driving through a plantation of oil palms which grew obediently in straight rows. Some were only one metre high, thick and ruffled, with red bunches of fruit. Such young trees make harvesting easy. When palm trees grow up to two metres or higher, people cut them down to make space for a new plantation.

My Chinese driver named Chris was puffing his cigarette. There were several other vehicles in front and behind us, carrying twenty five teams from all over the world. The laminated pass with my photo was swinging by the mirror. The rear seats were occupied by three guys: Balkon, Konik and Romek. The engine was purring like a cat. I fell asleep.

If you changed some of the dirtiest words in the Polish language into rhyming equivalents and translated the outcome into English, the first thing I heard when I woke up was:
– Pluck a duck! Look at this feather plucker. He is ducking his ass out of his legs, isn’t he?
I opened my eyes. We reached our destination, a long way from oil palm trees, at the fringe of the forest. The feather plucker turned out to be a small Tai wearing wellingtons, who was running deftly across a steep slope. There was no road. Only a hardly visible track grown with ferns had remained of the road that was used a hundred years ago by rubber collectors. I glanced at my companions.

- Duck, we are ducking stuck – said Balkon.
- Pluck a duck – replied Konik and they looked understandingly at each other.
- What a ducking place – Romek added. – Ducking rain.

I would never imagine that such a variety of emotions and ideas could be expressed with just a few words. My friends did not sound angry or bad-tempered. They just took no trouble to go beyond the very basic vocabulary in which particularly one word functioned as a noun, adjective or verb. The most amazing thing about it was the fact that in spite of the poor vocabulary, they made themselves understood by one another and by the rest of the world. I instantly understood that Polish taboo words are the most flexible words in the world that can be freely modelled and formed. If the same intrinsic procedures were used for other words, they would not make sense, while a feather plucker and ducking hell and other ducking terms remained readable in any new form.

We were waiting in the convoy for further decisions to be taken. Some time later we received the news that the night downpour had carried away the bridge we were to cross. Another route had to be found. To find it, X-men were sent, a rally team of Malaysian Schwarzeneggers. They were supposed to do all the things that others would consider as impossible. All we had to do was wait.

When in Malaysia, a few days after the rally had started, I realized that the Asian time is the same jungle time as the one I got acquainted with in South America. In fact, this time does not exist. In the zone of jungle time you are always w a i t i n g because nobody is in a hurry or keeps appointments. What results from the time thus conceived is constant sitting and waiting, walking and waiting, lying and waiting.

After some time no-one knows why and what they wait for but they wait long hours for s o m e t h i n g.

This time our situation was much better as we knew what we were waiting for, surrounded by irritated voices, producing mostly such words as duck! and feather plucker! to use again English equivalents of the Polish wording.

I said nothing for I had learnt to wait like the natives – without waiting. Far from being impatient or in a hurry, I do not worry that my life has stopped and there is no way to live on. Jungle waiting makes me last, I simply remain, suspended in non-existence, beyond consciousness.

I decided to take care of my nearest future. I looked around. There were two ways:- either keep sitting in the small car or get out of it. I chose the latter. I pushed the door open and jumped into the thick bushes. I thought they were not more than one metre and a half high, and that their lower parts grew out of something that could roughly be considered as ‘mainland’. Alas, I was wrong. The green curtain of ferns flowed down a steep slope covered with a layer of slippery clay. At the very last moment I managed to clutch at the edge of the car door and so I remained, hanging. The hinges got painfully tight. Their wailing made me think of Tatra Mountains meadows full of blooming crocuses – I wanted to drive away a crowd of heavy thoughts that might make my body heavier. I was hanging on the muddy door of an offroad car, with my legs down in some abyssal ditch covered with ferns. The rain kept falling. It was cool, wet, gloomy and absolutely unpleasant. I suddenly noticed some funny commotion among the crocuses in my head. I strained all my imagination to look at the fuss on the meadow and what did I see? My bare feet protected only by sandals were in great danger. Where would all tropical beasts equipped with frightening jaws, pincers, venomous thorns and poisonous hair if not right under my legs? For a moment I unsuccessfully tried to find support for my feet on the slippery ground, so I shifted all my strength onto my arms and disregarding the cautionary creaking of the door, I pulled myself safely back onto the track. The passengers on the back seats were still asleep. At my sight Chris blinked his eyes and looked as if I brought him back from a journey to the beyond. It was raining all around.

I climbed back onto my seat bringing in a pound of red sticky clay which caked my legs, sandals, trousers, even my hair.
- Are you okay? – Chris asked cautiously.
There was no time to reply as in that instant the engine of the car ahead roared powerfully and the whole cavalcade moved forward with relief.

Tłum. Janusz Kłosiński