Bahá’í World/Volume 9/Pioneer Journey
25.
PIONEER JOURNEY
BY VIRGINIA ORBISON
HOW does a Bahá’í push off into the deep decision of pioneering in a foreign country?
Having myself contemplated longingly and somewhat fearfully the unknown regions which so urgently need to be explored and inhabited, I am recording some of the experiences attending my pioneer journey to Chile. Only to encourage others in making the decision, is this written, as our Guardian’s call for volunteers to all possible places, North and South, is still being raised.
“God will assist all who arise to serve him. . . .” (The Báb)
“By the righteousness of God, should a man, all alone, arise in the name of Bahá and put on the armor of His love, him will the Almighty cause to be victorious, though the forces of the earth and heaven be arrayed against him . . . and if his love for Me wax stronger, God will establish his ascendency over all the powers of the earth and heaven. Thus have We breathed the spirit of power into all regions.” (Bahá’u’lláh)
Because of these promises, I had distantly hoped that my turn might come. Having witnessed the ardent and difficult preparations of two South American pioneers, and having been allowed to read some of their letters, I was filled with admiration and their works seemed quite unapproachable. Meanwhile came the Guardian’s soul-stirring calls for more pioneers and settlers, no matter how inadequately prepared they might be. So I began to supplicate with the little prayer: “O my God! Open Thou the door, provide the means, make safe the path, pave the way.”
I studied Spanish, worked at my job and did my committee work and Assembly duties, besides taking a First Aid course. Suddenly the way really was cleared, and I found myself appointed to go to Chile, a nation so heroically plowed by Marcia Steward Atwater. What then churned inside of me —spiritually, psychologically and mentally —is a whole chronicle, but enough to say, that the process was searing and completely re-modelling.
Very soon airplane passage with many
helpful instructions, was received through
the Inter-America Committee’s watchful
and efficient travel expert. Application was
made for a passport which included letters,
certificates of various kinds, plus a leave of
absence from my job with more letters.
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During all of this process came opportunities
that I had never before had of telling people
of the Cause—“Why make a trip to
South America in these uncertain times?”
In return for my answer, I was often given
some astonishingly inaccurate information
on Chile!
After many obstacles had been overcome, a larger one suddenly threatened me. My mother (not Bahá’í), who had only mildly questioned my trip, began to disapprove so violently that a great sense of confusion and frustration fell upon me. There was only one person who would be capable of advising me in such a situation. So a cable was sent to the Guardian, stating the problem and asking his guidance. Although delivery of any message during war time could not be guaranteed, within a few days’ time a reply was received from him worded: "Advise induce mother’s approval journey. Exercise patience. Praying success.” Only a few days remained in which to persuade the unpersuadable, but after saying strings of Remover of Difficulties, I approached and prepared to induce. My parent, without any preliminary, said to me: “While before I was opposed to your going—now, I am completely reconciled!”
“Exercise patience. Praying success.” Such is the power and wisdom of the Guardian! How many times have those words throbbed in my heart and enabled me to persevere and to withstand things which appeared all too formidable. In memory the marvels of obstacles removed are preserved one after the other, removed by the magic Name of the Beloved.
Then the departure. It was far from glamorous! As the plane was to leave from an Army airport at three in the morning, no one could see me off. So a faithful friend took me in her car as far as the gate, and, in the darkness of total blackout, after being examined by the guard, I was allowed to drive alone the several blocks to the entrance which was not easy to find. My fifty-five pounds of baggage was carried in, examined by the Customs (and also by the other passengers, which seems to be a form of morbid amusement among travellers!) before I could drive the car back to the gate, bid my friend good-bye (as if for a weekend, I felt) and return on foot alone in the darkness to the place of departure.
Finally the twenty-two passengers were made ready. All was quiet. Then came the one-bell stroke as signal for the crew to parade to the monster flyer. Two bells: the passengers. We filed obediently out. It was all mysterious and had a dooms-day appearance. The windows were blacked out. When all were in, the door closed and the plane slowly taxied to position. Then sounded the huge noise of testing the motors. The sensation during this process is always that the plane must not be able to withstand such vibrations. Why doesn’t it fly to pieces and scatter itself and us into infinity? Then calming down a moment, it gathered itself together and surged forward with great control, mounted onto the waves of the air, and the steward passed the gum! Even a despiser of gum welcomes it on the first take-off. Soon going into a complete letdown I went sound asleep and only woke up somewhere over Mexico, for we descended at Hermosillo for Customs inspection. It was early morning and very warm.
The color of Mexico from the air at that time of the year is a vivid dark blue-green. When one is above the first layer of clouds, a different world is found. One seems to wander through landscapes suggesting seas, with islands, which, of course, are the tops of mountains poking up through the clouds. Sometimes there are unending fields of spun sugar puffs which turn adorably pink at sunset.
Over Mexico City that first evening we plowed into convulsive blocks of black storm clouds. The mountains stood below, and muddy stretches of water lay about. While we circled the city, these clouds broke up into huge monumental divisions, and then appeared a rainbow of great size and brilliance, a triumphal arch for us to fly straight through. By the time the plane swooped down onto the airfield, the sunset had illumined all of the sparkling earth.
During the forced stop-over in Mexico
much time was spent in arranging
transportation out. I was not alone in this, as the
Panagra office was crowded with people having
the same purpose. After finally obtaining
passage to the Mexican border only, on a
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Mexican plane in ten days, which was the
only possibility, I spent the intervening time
in visiting friends and sight-seeing—a trip
through Xochimilco (pronounced like such-a-milk-cow!)
with its water gardens; then,
following for a while the road built by
Cortéz in nearly a straight line over hills and
valleys like a dragon trail, to Cuernavaca,
famous place of beauty which lay on the
way to the place of the sweet jewel that is
Taxco. Only one who has seen it can be
that sentimental about Taxco! A full moon
there, gazed at from a terrace above the
town, while telling of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh
to a stranger in first-time Spanish, is
an experience for remembering with a private smile.
The two other passengers and
guide-driver on that trip started as strangers
with no point of contact, but they all became
closely knit friends as they, too,
learned and absorbed what they could of the
Faith in the short time spent together.
At three-thirty one morning, when it was cold and dark, the Panagra car came for me. Mexico City was silent and dripping. There was only one other passenger going in this car. He turned out to be a large Yankee with a Boston accent. As he was dressed for tropical places, and I was struggling with a fur coat, conversation started as he helped me. He soon found out that my destination was thousands of miles away in Chile, but that my immediate goal was the South Mexican town of Tapachula, from where I hoped somehow to "work” my way through Central America on train or plane (even boat or burro!) to Balboa, where the traffic flow eased up. I only knew that “people were getting through.” If “they” could, so could a Bahá’í pioneer, I thought. But no one had really told me about Tapachula. My fellow passenger knew it too well and was horrified to think that passage had been given there to a woman travelling alone—"why men, even, wouldn’t stop there if they could possibly avoid it.” As for me, there was nothing to think, except that hardships were to be expected; and when he saw that his words had not made much impression, and that I needed a richer description, he said: “Well, as one of the boys told me, ‘I don’t mind having the rats crawl over me during the night, but when they chew the pillow out from under my head, this is too much!’ ” Then my mind swiftly visualized a terrified pioneer trying to look brave while perching all night on a stool surrounded by the ravening rats of Tapachula! But I said nothing. My ticket said Tapachula, and I was lucky to get that far on my way, travelling being what it was during war time.
Well, a curious thing happened. My new friend knew a lot about the proceedings at the airport. We had breakfast together as the sun came out of the mist. My spirits darkened, and I wondered how I would weather Tapachula. He kept telling me to try for the Panagra plane as soon as possible and to stay at the hospital instead of the hotel if they would take me in. (I later found out that it was worse.) I really must have looked stricken, as he suddenly exclaimed: “Wait, I’m going with you!” That’s what he said; so I started saying more Remover of Difficulties, peeking every little while to see him using the phone, conferring, holding up the plane’s departure, and finally coming back with his ticket changed. “I’ll see that you get out of Tapachula!”
We sat well up over the wings of the smaller Mexican plane, as the weather promised to be rough (but all the way South the "rough weather” was an unruffled pond). We finally reached the tiny airport of Tapachula.
The air was suddenly warm and soggy.
My winter clothes stuck to me. The ticket
agent examined my ticket and laughed
when I anxiously told him I wished passage
out that very afternoon by Panagra plane.
He remarked emphatically that there were
already three men who had been waiting for
seven days to get out. They were still
waiting. My Yankee smiled and told me to come
with him. Then he and some rough but
pleasant-looking men whom he knew drove
me in a station-wagon through banana
groves into the village. There is no use to
describe the best (and only, I guess) hotel.
We dined after a little, with the town’s
highest society in a sort of beer parlor, in
heat, filth, flies and friendliness. The
matter-of-factness of the whole thing—and the
complete kindness and consideration of that
man! Now and then I thought of the committee’s
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last instructions: ”Now don’t speak
to any strange men in those countries!”
Later, but all in its own time, we returned to the airport through the afternoon flood, and sat ourselves in the comfortable and clean wicker chairs (as the place was newly built). The Remover of Difficulties was my refrain. The ticket agent asked for my ticket, while the engineer and “the boys” talked things over with him. My luggage was examined by the Aduana. By the time the lake was swept off the concrete field, the afternoon Panagra came droning in. My bags were carried out. In my purse I spied my precious Persian coin given me by a Persian Bahá’í child. There at hand was the good gift, and I had to urge him to take it, telling him that it bore Protection and my continuous gratitude. They walked to the barrier with me. One-bell: Crew. Two-bells: Passengers. "Well, I guess that’s all I can do for you now,” he said. The handclasps were fervent. I walked alone to the plane. As the door shut and we mounted into the clouds, I wondered if that man would ever know that he had been "possessed” of an angel that day.
Only a few hours to Guatemala City. The miracle of getting away from Tapachula was emphasized by the long parade of evil volcanoes attended by belching clouds which could well have been smoke. The scene was too strange to be real, yet it was as real as my flying past.
The three days in Guatemala were spoiled by the absence of young Johnny Eichenauer, intrepid pioneer of the Central Americas.
Leaving Guatemala presented the same difficulties of crowded applications. The advice of a hotel clerk who noticed me after three days, was to go to the airport every morning at five, then spend the rest of the time in Panagra office. A dismal thing. I decided against the early morning checking out, but did sit in the office that evening along with dozens of others, forlorn-looking from many disappointments. The promised assistance was urgently called for. While the names of the next going-out passengers were being announced, I sat apart, with my eyes on the clerk. Suddenly he said my name. “Will you take as far as Costa Rica?” I certainly would, and so did a young man from Texas. The next morning at five we were watching the world slide by, coming down at Tegucigalpa, Honduras, the coziest little luminous town tucked into a green valley that one would ever hope to see, and soon, San Jose, Costa Rica.
Of course, after the usual procedure of begging for a plane place the finding of Gayle Woolson was the problem. With only her Post Office box number, I asked several officials questions which they did not understand at all. At last one official spoke eagerly to me, and I heard the word Bahá’í. “Si Señor, you soy Bahá’í,” I managed to say. He seemed to say the same, so we were immediately amigos. He took me straight to Gayle, and many a lesson in good pioneering did I have from her and her lovely Bahá’í friends.
During our stay in Costa Rica, the Texas oil engineer and I had many talks on the Faith while we watched the ox-carts, many of them equipped with folded black umbrellas for the afternoon rain, or sat in the Paseo listening to a juke box and drinking Coca—Cola. He had found what he hoped was a protection against the lovely Venezuelans by acquiring a wedding ring while on a visit to the States, but due to the transportation problem the new wife had to stay at home. Any man who goes to see a girl twice in that country is considered engaged to her. And the South Americans are eager for a North American husband because he does not keep his wife in seclusion!
Again the impossible was achieved, and after ten days of many disappointments, during which I learned to know the charming and hospitable Costa Ricans, a plane bearing a Bahá’í was making its run toward Panama.
In the warm and humid Canal country I
was happy with Louise Caswell and Cora
Oliver who have made a most inviting and
homelike Bahá’í Center of their apartment,
which is spacious and modern. The Bahá’ís
were most agreeable, and especially gracious
was Alfred Osborne, outstanding Negro educator,
who has embraced the Faith and is
tirelessly proclaiming it. Gwen Sholtis, on
her way to a pioneering post in Venezuela,
was with us and we enjoyed comparing our
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experiences and wishing each other success.
Panama was very busy with war defense so
we were not able to see much, and the Canal
did not present its usual appearance.
After leaving Panama the plane seats were easy to get, and only one night did I stay in Cali, Colombian town by a singing river. Lima, Peru, appeared very beautiful in the small glimpse to be had. After Peru, the country looks like a dull brown clay relief map, all down the long coast beside the barrier of the Cordilleras. After completely arid Arica, and equally brown Antofogasta, we finally reached the green and fertile (because watered) lands of Central Chile. Now the snow lay low on the Andes from there into Santiago, which was reached in the middle of a cloud-blown day.
The realization of being such a tiny part of which so much is expected, in the Great Plan wherein South America is to become the “spiritual descendant” of North America, was an overwhelming accompaniment to my long ride from the airport in streets lined with still-bare trees, as it was the middle of September and just beginning Spring. The entrance into Santiago was necessarily as lonely as the leaving of home. Over three weeks, there were, of wonders, beauty, excitement, astonishment, new friendships, new confirmations and the ever-conscious knowledge that “a company of His chosen Angels shall go forth with them”! Only a year in which to fulfill the Master’s call made twenty-five years ago! We must not fail the trust that the Guardian has put in our ability to finish this mighty work.
No news from home since leaving. The only letter for me on arrival was from the engineer in Mexico who wrote that although the rats chewed his shirt and bag in Tapachula, already the Persian coin had brought him startling good fortune. “There is a mysterious Power in this Cause. . . .”