Anibal's Story

Before you read this post, I want to warn you that it will not be a "funny" post. As a matter of fact, this is a very sad story. Please understand that I am not setting up a joke here - this story has a really tragic ending. A young man dies.

This story has been on my mind for the last 2 weeks. I woke up one morning thinking about it and could not get it out of my head all that day. Since then, it has sort of stayed on my mind, and I have debated whether to write about it on El Gringuito. If you have read some of my other blog posts, you know that I usually put a light-hearted spin on the stories I tell.

My stories usually go something like this:

Part 1 - Ryan & friends prepare to do something weird.

Part 2 - Ryan & friends do something weird (often making questionable decision).

Part 3 - Ryan & friends luckily walk away - usually relatively unscathed, maybe a little embarrassed, and hopefully having learned something from the experience.

Well, like I said, this story does not have a happy-ending where everyone walks away unhurt and a little wiser. This story just ends in tragedy, and a light-hearted spin is not really possible.

Nevertheless, I believe it is a story worth telling. For one thing, it had a pretty substantial affect on me personally. The story also serves as an example of how a bad or even a merely questionable decision can have huge and lasting implications.

So based on what I have told you, you can decide whether or not you want to click the link to the full-post. If not, there is plenty of other material on El Gringuito that is not quite so heavy.

This is a story about Anibal. It takes place in Bocas del Toro, Panama in January 2008. Telling this story more than 2 years later, some of the details are not 100% clear. I'll try to tell the story as best as I can.

First, I have to give you some background information. I was working for a company that was developing a large-scale resort on an island off Panama's Caribbean coast. The area is called Bocas del Toro, and it is a group of several different islands. The project was located on Isla Bastimentos, but most of the employees and I lived on another island called Isla Colon. That meant that each morning, we would all take a boat over to Isla Bastimentos to work. It was about a 15-20 minute boat ride. In the evening, we would ride the boat back to Isla Colon. This was the routine.

The other main piece of background info that you'll need to know is that the company became engrossed in a labor conflict with a radical syndicate called Suntracs. There were actually 2 strikes - but the first one was resolved relatively quickly. The second strike lasted a lot longer and continued after I left the company - I think it lasted nearly 2 years.

I won't get into all the specifics of the strike. There is waaaay too much to tell in this blog post, and it would require my putting a lot of thought into what may or may not be appropriate to tell about the company's situation back then. I still support the project and the people behind it. Anyway, the strike is only relevant because it contributed to creating the setting in which this story takes place.

In general, a labor strike can get really expensive. For a large real estate development - the construction sites, real property, assets all have a tremendous value that must be maintained. This means a company must keep sufficient employees around to maintain the project and to minimize deterioration. This is especially true when the project is on an island and surrounded by jungle. During a long labor-strike, the jungle keeps growing and will literally engulf tools, large machinery and even buildings. Furthermore, the salty air and humid conditions in the Caribbean can be really tough on equipment and partially built homes. So the company needs to have people around to preserve the existing value on-site until the labor-strike can be resolved.

On the other hand, the company cannot complete the construction of homes, because the workers are on strike. This means it cannot close on the homes and receive additional payment from the buyer. In addition, an ugly labor conflict is not an ideal atmosphere for selling new units. A strike also makes it extremely difficult for the company to obtain new debt or equity financing for the project. Without income and financing, a company may not be able to afford to keep employees around (the ones who aren't on strike) - so the company has to let a lot of people go (read "lay-offs"). But the company cannot fire EVERYONE - for the reasons I explained in the paragraph above. Meanwhile, distributors and other creditors are calling asking when they will be paid. Buyers who have invested their savings want to know when and if their houses are going to be completed. Basically, you can see how a labor conflict can spiral into a "perfect storm" scenario...

This is sort of the type of situation in which the company found itself in January 2008. The company had to lay off a whole lot of people, and those of us that were left amounted to a skeleton crew. Each of us was responsible for the work that 3 or 4 or 5 different employees had done before. At the same time, resources were very scarce.

One of my jobs was to manage a maintenance crew that was in charge of the villa lots at the project. A few of the villas were mostly complete, but most of them were in various stages of construction. Those were the toughest to maintain, because there was a whole lot of construction materials that were not meant to be directly exposed to the elements. There were also a lot of interior finish materials that were exposed to the weather - for example, if not all the doors and windows had been installed on a villa when the labor-strike started. There were also pools that had to be maintained, and the water-pumping equipment had to be run periodically. The grass also had to be cut regularly so that it did not literally swallow the partially constructed real property.

At some point, the maintenance team was down to only 3 workers - a woman who cleaned and maintained interiors, and 2 young guys who maintained the outdoor spaces. The guys were named Damian and Anibal.

Well, in order to cut costs the company decided to stop running the generators 24 hours per day. These generators were using a whole lot of fuel each day to create electricity for the massive project - but there was only one couple living on the project full-time. The company tried several different strategies, and ultimately got down to running the generators only for a few hours each day during the morning. This created a challenge for me, because most of my work required my being in the office with access to the computer, telephones, etc. So we developed a system - I would go to the project in the mornings to help the maintenance crew get started. Based on weather conditions and changing priorities, we would modify the weekly and monthly schedule. I had a small office on the project (in Isla Bastimentos) where I could work during the mornings. Then when the generators were shut down in the afternoons, I would take the boat back to Isla Colon where I had another small office. The maintenance crew would stay on-site until the end of the day.

About once a week, I would stay on-site at Isla Bastimentos during the whole day. Sometimes I had to visit specific construction-sites. Other times I would work with the crew cutting grass cleaning pools, inspecting deteriorating properties, etc. This was to maintain a sense of respect among my crew. I didn't want them complaining that "Ryan creates the schedules and deadlines, but has no idea about the work we do." But like I said - on most days I would be on-site during the morning, eat lunch with my crew, and return to Isla Colon in the afternoon to do office work.

Well, one Friday in January 2008, I went to Isla Bastimentos with the maintenance crew in the morning. I worked in the office all morning and had lunch with the team. During lunch, we discussed the work that they would focus on during the afternoon, then Damian took me down to the boat so that I could return to Isla Colon. The plan was for Damian to then go meet Anibal up at Lot 36 to cut grass that afternoon. When I arrived back at Isla Colon I ran to my apartment to grab my suitcase, because I was planning to fly to Panama City in the evening.

When I arrived to my apartment, I received a phone call from a secretary at our office. She asked me to please call Damian - he had called asking for me and was obviously very upset, but he would not tell her what was going. I called Damian on the radio and asked if everything was alright, but Damian just asked me to please come back to the project right away. I asked him again, "What happened?" Damian said he didn't want to tell me over the radio - could I please come back to Isla Bastimentos.

I ran by the office on Isla Colon to pick up a friend and co-worker named Christian. We jumped on the boat and quickly headed over to Isla Bastimentos. When we arrived Damian explained what had happened.

After leaving me at the boat, Damian had gone up to Lote 36 as planned - but Anibal was not there. Damian started to work, but after about 20 minutes Anibal still had not arrived. So Damian went up to where my office where we had eaten lunch - but Anibal was not there either. Damian then started riding around the project looking for Anibal. Damian finally came across the little cart that Anibal had been using parked down by the beach.

Damian was looking around for Anibal near the little cart when he noticed a couple from Costa Rica that was looking out toward the water. He asked them what was going on, and the couple explained to Damian that there was a young man trapped in the water. The water was extremely choppy that day - the waves were huge. Damian ran out to a little wooden pier overlooking the ocean and saw Anibal down in the water. That was when a big wave came and pushed Anibal under the water. Anibal never came back up.

We took the boat around to the beach-side of Isla Bastimentos. We also called the police, but it took them a good hour-and-a-half or so to arrive. The police didn't have radios, so we lent them some of the company's radios so that we could communicate between boats. We searched for hours, but we couldn't find Anibal. The police came with a couple divers, but the water was so choppy that they couldn't see much under the water.

It seems like a few people drown each year in Bocas del Toro. It was pretty common knowledge among island-dwellers that when a person drowns and is under water, the body will generally come back up to the surface after about 3 days. Depending on the currents, the body may come up in the same place it went under - or it may come up 15 miles away in any direction. Well, on Monday we received a call that a fisherman thought he had seen something out near the area where Anibal had gone under water. We called the police and set out on the boat for another search.

I was on the boat when we found Anibal's body. It took another couple of hours for the police and fire department to arrive to lift the body out of the water. Anibal had been in the water for nearly 3 full days. I won't go into graphic detail here, but I can tell you it was one of the most troubling and disturbing things that I have ever witnessed. Anibal's brother was on another boat that was with us when we found Anibal's body.

Anibal was only 20 years old. He was from Panama City, and so his remains had to be sent back to his family in the capital. There were also numerous detailed reports that had to be notarized and submitted to the company's attorney's. I had to write the story from my perspective. I also had to interview Damian 3 different times to document the story from his perspective. Anibal had washed clothes out at the project on the day he died and left them hanging out to dry - so I collected them and kept them at my house for about a week until I could get them back to his family.

We will never know for sure why Anibal was down at the beach that day. He was supposed to be working. It was a very hot day, and we suppose that he decided to sneak down to the beach for a short swim to cool off after lunch. Looking back we could see that Anibal was sort of still a kid-at-heart, and he sometimes made immature decisions.

You can imagine that I went over the day's events numerous times - always asking myself if this was somehow my fault. Could I have done something different to prevent this from happening? Did I fulfill my responsibility as his boss? In the end, I came to the conclusion that we did everything we could given the circumstances. The breadth of my responsibilities meant that I could not be at the project all day. We had developed a schedule and a system based on the realities of the situation, and we had followed that procedure. Even though Anibal may have been child-like in some ways, he was a grown man. The company and I certainly had certain responsibilities with respect to workers' safety - but Anibal decided to break the rules and sneak off down to the beach.

We didn't just lose a co-worker that day... not merely an employee. Anibal was our friend. As I said, I tried to take a real, objective look at the incident to determine where things went wrong. This was something I had to do for my own sanity. Anyway, I don't feel guilty about Anibal's death, but I still think about him fairly often. A couple weeks ago was one of those days, and I thought about him from the moment I woke up. Something in me has wanted to tell this story. For whatever it is worth, now I have.