{"id":64583,"date":"2015-10-27T18:37:41","date_gmt":"2015-10-27T18:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=64583"},"modified":"2021-06-26T14:36:44","modified_gmt":"2021-06-26T21:36:44","slug":"the-town-of-jones","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=64583","title":{"rendered":"The Town of Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This account of the author\u2019s trip to Jonestown is the chapter of the same name from his book,<\/em> Wild Coast: Travels on South America\u2019s Untamed Edge (New York: Vintage Departures, 2012. The book was recently\u00a0nominated<\/a> by <\/em>The Daily Telegraph\u00a0as one of “The Twenty Best Travel Books of all Time.” The chapter is reprinted with the gracious permission of both the author and publisher.) <\/em><\/p>\n

About half way through the flight, I began to wonder if all this was a good idea. Down below, the landscape began to change. For a while, there were the comforting strips of sugar. They looked like the spines of books, stacked deep inland, and then all the way up the coast. Then the patterns ended, with the mouth of a river almost as wide as the English Channel. It was the Essequibo, looking as if it had drained the continent of silt. After that, the land darkened to a sort of stygian green, with veins of silvery-black. There was no order about this, nor any sign of life. It was just an uneven vegetative darkness, as if the land had swallowed the night.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the Townies were right: I\u2019d find nothing. Perhaps I\u2019d just wander off the airstrip only to be lost in the gruesome prickly dark. I\u2019d meet strange people, mad with damp and sores, but they\u2019d never have heard of Jones. Then I\u2019d get diarrhoea and yaws, and my skin would begin to weep. After four days of this, blundering around looking for the light, I\u2019d eventually emerge in a clearing. By then, I\u2019d no longer care about Jonestown, and I\u2019d look like Debbie Layton: hollow-eyed, panicky and howling for a plane.<\/p>\n

I tried to reassure myself but nothing seemed to work. I was travelling to a place I wasn\u2019t sure existed, and which was once the epitome of despair. I\u2019d never met anyone who\u2019d ever been there, and now here I was in a tiny plane with a tractor tyre, two cases of rum, and a box of brand new Bibles. Even my fellow-passengers were a discouraging sight. One was a pork-knocker \u2013 or gold prospector \u2013 and was dressed in shorts and orange rubber boots, and carried a pump-action shotgun. Another had with him a little bird, about the size of grape, which he chatted to all the way. Meanwhile, the woman next to me, who was already flooded with sweat, peeled open the Old Testament and started murmuring chunks of Leviticus.<\/p>\n

\u2018Where you going?\u2019 said the birdman.<\/p>\n

\u2018Jonestown,\u2019 I said, without thinking.<\/p>\n

\u2018You won\u2019t find their gold,\u2019 he grinned, \u2018They had bunkers<\/em> underground.\u2019<\/p>\n

My heart sank. Already I could I could feel myself encircled in coils of local myth. Jonestown was famous for this. To survive it, I\u2019d brought with me my own version of the story, assembled back in London. It included several hand-drawn maps, a hefty bundle of notes, and dozens of grainy pictures. I\u2019d even transcribed parts of \u2018The Death Tapes\u2019 \u2013 the recordings Jones made as he ordered his people to die. None of this would tell me what went on there now \u2013 but at least it was better than the birdie version.<\/p>\n

As man and finch began to tweet, I pulled out my notes and started to read.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

In the short, peculiar life of Jim Jones, what stands out most is his relentless metamorphosis. The old coverings are constantly falling away, as the new ones form in their place. By the end, he even acquires a blank insectile gaze, and a voice that clatters and whirs. Perhaps he knows where the transformations will inevitably lead. Not that it frightens him. \u2018Death is nothing!\u2019 he\u2019ll be heard to say. It\u2019s merely the shedding of a used-up layer.<\/p>\n

Ever since he was born, in 1931, Jones has been wriggling out of whatever he was before. His family are descended from Native Americans. They are poor and live in Indiana, and Jones\u2019 father is a Klansman and an angry veteran, enfeebled by poison gas. This, Jones decides, is not the life for him. As a child, he plays the preacher, and by the age of twenty-two he\u2019s established a church of his own. Jones likes the multi-coloured skins of the poor, which seem to give him a certain beauty. By 1963, he\u2019s head of the human rights commission, and his disciples assume a new name, the People\u2019s Temple Full Gospel Church. Two years later, he shrugs off Indiana, and moves to California. According to an article he\u2019s read \u2013 in Esquire<\/em> \u2013 it\u2019s the only place that\u2019ll survive if there\u2019s ever a nuclear war.<\/p>\n

As he waits for the war that won\u2019t happen, another change occurs. The Prophet, as he now calls himself, acquires some of the powers of God. He tells his followers that he\u2019s the reincarnation of Lenin and Christ, and soon he\u2019s performing wonders with chicken giblets and hauling out dangerous tumours. By the end of the Sixties, no one knows who loves him more: the politicians or the poor. Now the dispossessed are giving the Temple everything they\u2019ve got: their children, their trust and all their possessions. In time, the cult amasses over $10 million, in fifteen different accounts. Even the Revd Jones is surprised: \u2018Everything I touch,\u2019 he thrills, \u2018turns to gold.\u2019<\/p>\n

But soon there are no more layers to shed, and the sheen begins to fade. The Prophet now has to colour his hair, and thicken his sideburns with an eyebrow pencil. He also finds that he has to rekindle his potency with the youngest girls, and steady his hand with Scotch. Virgins like Debbie Layton are made to promise that they begged him into bed, and that they\u2019d never seen a man so big. As the Prophet\u2019s powers dwindle, he even begins to press them on the boys. This only excites the interest of the police. One day, he finds himself at the back of a Hollywood theatre, grappling with a fluffer (who works for the LAPD). He\u2019s accused of lewd conduct, a pitiful charge for a man so close to God.<\/p>\n

So it is that the coverings begin to crack. But as they do so, the cult that surrounds Jones only seems to strengthen. He calls his followers \u2018darlings\u2019, and then tells them they\u2019ll never leave his church alive. Sex is often the only hold he has over people, so he keeps them all on film. Now there are always guns around, and curious ceremonies, to bless the Father\u2019s fetishes. Look at Idi Amin, he says, \u2018we should learn to emulate his wild actions\u2019. Soon, \u2018The Cause\u2019 will have its own fleet of buses, and its own little army that goes training in the hills.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s now time for a final transformation. By 1977, California has become hostile, and it\u2019s time for the Prophet to fly. He\u2019s already bought a piece of Promised Land: 27,000 acres of distant Guyanese forest. There he will rule like some mystic king. In his eyes, this country\u2019s perfect; it\u2019s been shunned by the world, and its officials are now starving, and candidly corrupt. They\u2019ll do anything for money, or a night with a teenage girl. Unsurprisingly, nothing seems to function, except a ministry of thugs. Even better, Guyana is cranky and socialist, and run by a man called Burnham, who thinks he\u2019s an African chief.<\/p>\n

Late that summer, the planes are all block-booked. Over 900 believers will fly out to Georgetown, and then transfer to ships. Amongst them are both the hopeless and hopeful: fundamentalists, former addicts, charismatics, ex-cons, Vietnam veterans, hundreds of African-Americans, and a handful of white progressives. These include a former CBS television presenter, Mike Prokes, and a woman who\u2019d escaped the Nazi death camps. She\u2019s there with her son, Larry \u2013 who will eventually start shooting people \u2013 and her daughter, Debbie Layton. Finally, there\u2019s Jones himself. He looks puffy and distracted. All that sustains him now are faith and voodoo, and powerful draughts of prescription pain-killers.<\/p>\n

Finally, they get to Mabaruma. After two days at sea, there\u2019s relief as they clamber ashore. But what no one knows is that this is an act of metamorphosis. It\u2019s a process that can never be reversed, and has only one conclusion.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Mabaruma was not quite what I \u2013 or the faithful \u2013 had expected. While it wasn\u2019t exactly a Land of Milk and Honey, nor was it dark and carnivorous.<\/p>\n

From the airstrip, I got a ride to the village, which was built high above the forest on an enormous whale of green. Up here, running along the spine, was an avenue of stately rubber trees, and a pleasing sprawl of orchards, paddocks, tiny wooden farms, and tobacco-coloured cows. There was also a miniature hospital, an ambulance without any tyres, and a shop that sold nerve tonic, barbed wire and jeans. It was run by a man called Mr Chan A Sue, who was part Amerindian and part Chinese. He told me that this was once the garden of Guyana, and that every week the ships had left stuffed to the gunnels with fruit.<\/p>\n

These days the fruit ships no longer called, and the great sleep that had overwhelmed Mabaruma was now in its third decade. The paint had peeled, the machines had stopped, and the mangoes plopped \u2013 unclaimed \u2013 into the grass. I stayed at the government guesthouse, which had an ancient bulldozer outside, nesting in the leaves. The evening meal was served at lunchtime, and then everyone went home. I ate with the local doctor, who happened to be Cuban. He hadn\u2019t understood anyone for months, and almost wept at the sound of Spanish. The garden that he described sounded more like Eden than Guyana: idyllic, lonely and haunted by snakes. \u2018I see a lot of people with bites,\u2019 he said thoughtfully, \u2018and most of them die.\u2019<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just snakes that made people mawkish. Across the road was the police house, quietly flapping apart in the breeze. There was always a drunkard on the porch, and once I asked him if he remembered the people of Jonestown. He fixed me with a meaty red eye, \u2018White Boy,\u2019 he rasped, \u2018Only one\u2019s thing is certain: we all is going to die.\u2019<\/p>\n

Then a corporal appeared, and I asked her the same. She had nervous, pretty eyes like a fox, and her stripe was fixed to her sleeve with a pin. \u2018They was lovely people,\u2019 she said, \u2018they had a band, and they often came here and sang. Right here, under the trees. Their girls was always beautiful. Beautiful<\/em>. I can\u2019t believe they\u2019re gone.\u2019<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

From the top of the guesthouse, I could just see Venezuela. It was hard to tell exactly where the trees lost their English names, and where the Spanish ones began. The doctor said the border was ten kilometres away, but that no one ever went out there except \u2018piratas y contrabandistas\u2019<\/em>. We spent ages peering down into the jungle. There are few frontiers in South America that have tempted so much war, and perhaps we expected to see a patrol, or a little army on the move. Instead, all we heard were the monkeys and the call of a screaming piha.<\/p>\n

But people still worried about the Venezuelans. Many felt that one day their rich, hot-blooded neighbours would come pouring through the forest, armed to the teeth. It was well-known that Venezuelan schoolchildren were taught that over half of Guyana was theirs, and that clawing it back was a matter of national duty. Caracas was always threatening them. In the 1890s, the issue had brought Britain and America \u2013 for the last time \u2013 almost to the brink of conflict. Eventually, the tension between imperialism and the Monroe Doctrine had been resolved by the Tsar. But it wasn\u2019t the end. The row flared again in the sixties and seventies, with occasional exchanges of gunfire, and it has smouldered ever since.<\/p>\n

Some think Washington was behind these spats, trying to humiliate Burnham (better Venezuelan than Marxist, went the thinking at the time). But if it\u2019s true, Burnham outwitted them. He\u2019d always wanted some sort of leverage over the United States. Then into his lap fell Jones. This kinky, drug-befuddled crackpot not only had guns and a bank full of money, he was also willing to live in the benighted north-west, and place thousands of vulnerable Americans right in the path of the enemy\u2019s army.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Guyana opened its arms and let the Temple in.<\/p>\n

From here, my trip upriver felt like a journey backwards, through the Amerindian past. To begin with, everything felt reassuringly contemporary. I walked down off the hill to Mabaruma\u2019s port, known as Kumaka. It had a long street of bright red earth with a few stalls selling contraband from Venezuela, mostly shotguns and beer. Several people still remembered the Temple. They\u2019d sold embroidery here and kept a lodge called The Dewdrop Inn. One of the Indian traders wished me luck finding the gold, and slipped me a can of illegal beer. \u2018Look out for my cousin,\u2019 he told me, \u2018Lost all his fingers in the Jonestown sawmill, but he knows where everything is.\u2019<\/p>\n

Along the river was a waterfront, made of timber and zinc. Here I met Ivan, an Arawak boatmen, who had thick square hands, long blue hair, and a canoe with a powerful engine. He could take me as far as Port Kaituma, he said, first along this river \u2013 the Uruca \u2013 and then the Barima and Kaituma. It was about fifty miles, and we\u2019d leave as soon as he had fuel.<\/p>\n

As I waited on the wharf, I began to get a sense of the past closing in. First of all a large blue-haired family appeared, with an ancient sewing machine. The children, who were all naked, swooped off the woodwork like swallows and flapped around in the water for a while, until a boat like an old tree-trunk appeared, and they all climbed in and paddled off. Then suddenly there was an old man next to me, inspecting my face very closely. Eventually, he spoke: \u2018You got glasses. I\u2019d like you to give them to me.\u2019 I explained that I couldn\u2019t see properly without them, and he explained that he\u2019d never seen properly at all. This, however, had never stopped him making canoes, one a week, chopped from a tree.<\/p>\n

Then Ivan reappeared, and soon we were soaring along between two ribbons of forest. To begin with, there were occasional Arawak farms: a canoe, a tiny, painted house and a plot of neat little vegetables coaxed from the edge of the jungle. But then the river narrowed and darkened. The water here was black and inert like tarnished silver, and, above it, the morphos seemed to flop around as if they were caught in molten metal. Here the people too were different, glimpsed through the trees. They had narrow roasted faces and knots of dusty hair. At first, I waved but they just stared back, as if they\u2019d seen nothing at all.<\/p>\n

\u2018They\u2019re Warau,\u2019 said Ivan, and I suddenly understood.<\/p>\n

The Warau were famously different, like a link with a long-lost age. It\u2019s said they\u2019d given Mankind its first dugout, and would probably give it its last. In hundreds of years, they\u2019d hardly changed at all. Although it\u2019s likely they were the first Amerindians to encounter Europeans, they were also the most resistant. They\u2019d never been persuaded to work, and had no interest in learning the language of others, or in the world beyond their own. For centuries, they\u2019d been merely a vessel for everyone else\u2019s contempt. \u2018They just Bucks,\u2019 said Ivan, \u2018dirty, lazy Bucks!\u2019<\/p>\n

But it was their simplicity that had probably saved them. There were now about 3,000 Warau living in these swamps. Even their huts had a pared-down, essential feel. They were just stacks of branches and woven grass, straddling the water. There were no crops, no ornaments, and no discernible gods. Traditionally, the bodies of the dead were stripped down by the piranhas, then daubed with ochre and hung inside the hut. For all I knew, the Warau still did this, and the bones were their only possessions. That\u2019s how they\u2019d survived: by having nothing of their own that anyone else could possibly want.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

The experience of the other Amerindians hadn\u2019t always been so simple.<\/p>\n

To begin with all seemed well. Up this end of the Guianas there was little resistance to the Europeans, who\u2019d often assumed that the natives had been provided for their pleasure. Even the things explorers took home \u2013 berbekots<\/em>, kanoas<\/em>, hamakas<\/em>, and mar\u00e1kas<\/em> (barbecues, canoes, hammocks and maracas) \u2013 seemed to suggest an easy life of indolence and leisure. The men too made good souvenirs, and there are records of the \u2018Guianians\u2019 serving not only the English Tudors but also the Court of the Medicis.<\/p>\n

But most pleasing of all were the women, who were biddable and plump. \u2018Whoever lives amongst them,\u2019 wrote one early adventurer, \u2018had need to be the owner of no less than Joseph\u2019s continency, not at least to covet their embraces\u2019. Even the good Sir Walter Raleigh found his continence severely tested (\u2018I have seldom seen a better favoured woman,\u2019 he pants, \u2018she was of good stature, with black eyes, fat of body \u2026\u2019). Before long, the Europeans were lavishing the Amerindians with their appreciation. It is now widely believe that, in return, the Amerindians had another innovation for their guests: Europe\u2019s first cases of syphilis.<\/p>\n

Then came sugar, and everything changed. By the early seventeenth century, the Dutch were gathering up the natives and trying to make them work. But it failed. Like the Warau today, the Amerindians would rather die than do what they were told. They wouldn\u2019t even work for baubles and periwigs, and so the import of Africans began. Only then did the Amerindians have a role, as man-hunters and captors of runaway slaves. In 1686 it became illegal to enslave Caribs and Arawaks, and for the next century and a half, they became a minor aristocracy, just below the whites.<\/p>\n

None of this bode well for emancipation of slaves. In 1834, Africans were suddenly in the interior, scraping out farms and looking for gold. Even now, the Amerindians fear them for their size and their strength, and their potential for revenge. As the new population began to sprawl inland, so did the smallpox. By 1900, the population of indigenous Guianese was down to 18,000, a fraction of what it had been before. The survivors were those that lived in the swamps and the mountains, or three weeks\u2019 journey inland. But they were still like vagrants in their hunting grounds, despised by those that worked.<\/p>\n

Then came the age of the museum. For much of the twentieth century, the Amerindians have lived like specimens, preserved in their own domain. It was made illegal to visit them, and they all became wards of the Crown. Sex with an Amerindian was now a crime, like the seduction of a child. It wasn\u2019t quite what the tribes had wanted, but at least they began to revive. There are now 45,000 Amerindians living in nine different groups. In fact, it\u2019s the only section of Guyanese society whose numbers are increasing.<\/p>\n

But the modern world is still fraught with danger. In the last fifty years, the Amerindians have had to cope with drug gangs, illegal logging, mercury poisoning (from the gold mines) and a new and virulent plague. Ivan explained: \u2018The big thing just now is HIV. The girls go to the camps, and they works with the miners, and then they comes back here. If one of our men dies, then, in our culture, his brother must take on his wife \u2013 and so him die too.\u2019<\/p>\n

The dangers have constantly changed. In 1977, there was an altogether different threat to the Amerindians of the north-west. It was the beautiful people, with their embroidery and cookies. Come and join us, they\u2019d say, we\u2019ve found paradise on Earth.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

After several hours, Ivan dropped me at Port Kaituma. From here, it was only seven miles to Jonestown, over the ridge and out in the Bush. \u2018But watch out,\u2019 he warned, \u2018there\u2019s bad people around.\u2019<\/p>\n

I thanked him and smiled bravely. But it was not how I felt. I realised that, the nearer I got to Jonestown, the more insistent the warnings became. It was as if I was now closing in the target, and some internal radar was beginning to beep. As far as people downriver were concerned, Port Kaituma was a sort of tropical Gomorrah, a place of whores and smugglers, and fortunes made in gold. The only people who ever came up here were the mad, the desperate and those on the run. It seemed that these were the Guyanese badlands, and now, here I was, wondering what to do next.<\/p>\n

I took a deep breath, and clambered onto a pier. Around me was a small black inlet, cluttered with stilted slums. The mud stank and made the air feel oily and burnt. I followed a path of planks that led upwards through the stilts. Many years earlier, a man named Vespucci had seen huts like this \u2013 also Warau \u2013 and had called the place Venezuela<\/em>, because they reminded him of Venice. Clearly, he\u2019d never seen Port Kaituma.<\/p>\n

This was no Venice. As for the town at the top of the bank, it wasn\u2019t even remotely Venetian. For a start, I could see right though it, along a furrow of crimson mud. It looked as if something huge had plunged through the shacks, scraping up a layer of stalls and cardboard and starving dogs, before vanishing into the forest. Then I discovered what the plunging object had been. Through the mud ran long, broken trails of silvery metal. It was all that remained of a railway line which had closed in 1968. Most of the wagons were still there, scattered along the ridge. A few were inhabited, and \u2013 where they\u2019d clustered together \u2013 this was the centre of town.<\/p>\n

I soon learned that much of this had sprung up in the recent gold rush. But, although Port Kaituma looked like the work of an afternoon, there was a pattern, of sorts. Along the top of the ridge was a rim of rickety churches. They had grandiose names like the Tabernacle of His Glory Revealed and the Assembly of God, and from here the town spread out, in descending levels of sin. First, there was a strip of old British army trucks. This is where the miners worked, constantly loading up drums of fuel and roaring off into the bush. Next came the gas-sellers, who were always swearing and drinking and playing cricket in the sludge. Then there were the little people \u2013 the prostitutes, pedlars, rappers and junkies \u2013 who lived in a sort of human piggery of pens and stalls, tumbling down the hill.<\/p>\n

Finally, at the bottom, was the long red scar left by the rails. During my three days in Port Kaituma, it was always here that I felt most wary. Each of the rum shops played its own techno, enveloping everything in waves of interlocking sound. It was like being caught in some devastating electronic crossfire. Often people looked as if they\u2019d already been mechanically deafened and now just stood and watched. Once a man who was almost naked came over and screamed at me, waving some wounds in my face. I couldn\u2019t even tell what language he was speaking, but his breath smelt of paint.<\/p>\n

It was quieter up the other end, away from the port. Up here there was a large, clapboard guesthouse \u2013 where I stayed \u2013 and a matching clapboard shop. They were both owned by an African ironmonger, called Mr Charles. There was also a row of little eateries, each with stools around the stove. The best of these was called BIG D\u2019S FOOD MALL. It was painted toothpaste green, and \u2013 instead of techno \u2013 it emitted gentle chirrups of gospel choir.<\/p>\n

\u2018Big D\u2019 herself \u2013 or Denise \u2013 was clearly not the woman she once had been. Life was constantly diminishing her. Now she just sat, looking small and surprised. First, she said, she\u2019d lost her school friends, then her husband (to a woman half her age), and then she\u2019d lost a breast. Even now she wondered when the missionary doctors would return and take other bits away. Meanwhile, all she had left was her mall and her skinny girls, who hung around like a pack of hungry whippets. I think she liked the idea of a new customer, as if I was somehow reversing the trend. Every mealtime, she\u2019d roar when I appeared, and the girls would scatter backwards into the kitchen, and return with something new.<\/p>\n

Inevitably, we\u2019d talk about Jonestown, and this is the story she told.<\/p>\n

This community was smaller then. We was only thirty families.<\/p>\n

I remember Jonestown well. I was thirteen at the time. It was a real nice place. I visited on Sundays. They had a doctor, who used to see patients there, or you went to relax. It was a nice place, sort of normal. We were always given things to eat, good food like sandwiches. They had a nice band, played mostly church music. And there were persons dancing with snakes. I remember they had a chimpanzee too, called Mr Muggs. We were a bit scared of him. But, man, it was a nice place! Clean<\/em>. Everyone worked hard. Sometimes, they also gave out foodstuffs, which was very acceptable at that time. We never had enough to eat.<\/p>\n

Yes, I think it was a happy place. I had some friends there who was going to my school. There was Tommy who was a white kid. I\u2019ll never forget Tommy. And Paddy! She was fat! A lovely girl. I still cry when I think of her. And Derek Dawson, and David George, who was Amerindian, and Jimmy Gill. Jimmy was adopted by the Revd Jones but I think he died soon after. They seemed happy. It was a happy place, that\u2019s what we thought. Later, I heard terrible things about what happened there, but we never see them.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t hear the shooting because I was away at the school. It was a real shock for me, and I couldn\u2019t catch myself. I am still wondering what could spark a man off to do such things.<\/p>\n

I never went back. Never went near it in thirty years. But now I want to, I don\u2019t know why. I\u2019d just like to see it again. Perhaps one day I will.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

While Denise was enjoying the sandwiches and snakes, Debbie Layton had a different tale to tell.<\/p>\n

People still don\u2019t know what to make of the affidavit she swore on her return to the States, or the book she wrote much later. In them, she describes an evil dystopia, a plantation of religious slaves. People are beaten, starved, bullied and harangued, and then punished with sex and stupefying drugs. Life is a brutal cycle of denial, and even toothpaste and knickers are banned. Work becomes a way of crushing the spirit, and the day ends at midnight and begins again at three. No one can escape; nobody knows where they are, and they have no passport,and no money. Besides, everyone\u2019s an informer, and the forest\u2019s full of guards. Even if defectors do get away, they\u2019ll be hunted for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n

At the heart of this vision is Jones himself. He\u2019s now fabulously mad and broadcasts six hours a day. There are even loudspeakers out in the fields, so that no one misses a word. As for \u2018The Cause\u2019, it\u2019s now whatever he says. One theme, however, seems to reoccur: we\u2019re surrounded by mercenaries, says Jones, the capitalists are closing in. He makes everyone practice for a grand, communal death. These drills are called \u2018White Nights\u2019, and involve little cups of coloured fluid. Refusing to drink this, says Jones, is an anti-revolutionary act, and no one dares to disobey. On the orders of its Prophet, Jonestown dies over and over again.<\/p>\n

In Debbie Layton\u2019s account, there\u2019s no room for happiness or jolly Sunday teas. Like their parents, the children are repeatedly made to rehearse the moment they\u2019ll die. Meanwhile, affection is outlawed. Even the youngest children are brutalised and taken from their parents. If they were to survive childhood, they\u2019d never forget it. Often they\u2019re dangled upside down in the well, or nailed up in a box and left for days on end. There\u2019s even a chimpanzee in this version, although now he\u2019s a figure of terror.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For many, Debbie Layton\u2019s story was just too much.<\/p>\n

People assumed it was imagined. Writing years later<\/a>, Shiva Naipaul said it was \u2018beyond the reach of reason\u2019, and that her Jonestown was an \u2018incarnation of comic book evil\u2019. This was a shame because Layton had a point: something was rotten in this state within a state. When her affidavit was distributed, in June 1978, only one paper ran with the story, The San Francisco Chronicle<\/em>. Even the US government remained unpersuaded. That year, embassy officials paid four visits to Jonestown, and \u2013 although they were later criticised for their naivety \u2013 they never found anything wrong.<\/p>\n

But there was one man who wanted to investigate further. Leo Ryan was a large, slightly beaverish man with thick grey hair and an aptitude for trouble. Although he\u2019d been a congressman for years, he\u2019d never quite found his cause. There\u2019d been seal hunts in Newfoundland and abuse in American prisons, but Ryan was often on his own. Now here was something new, the People\u2019s Temple. Soon he became a rallying point for those with relatives in Jonestown. Eventually, he made a momentous decision that would change everybody\u2019s lives: he\u2019d go out there himself.<\/p>\n

Nothing could persuade him not to go. He received over a hundred letters of warning, and Debbie Layton told him he\u2019d be killed. But Ryan had already made up his mind. When the cult\u2019s lawyers warned him against \u2018a witch hunt\u2019, and threatened the US government with a \u2018most embarrassing situation\u2019, Ryan replied that he wasn\u2019t impressed. On 15 November 1978, he arrived in Georgetown with thirteen of the relatives and nine journalists, including an NBC film crew.<\/p>\n

Two days later, they arrived in Port Kaituma.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

As Port Kaituma has only ever had one place to stay, most of the delegation ended up \u2013 like me \u2013 as guests of the African ironmonger.<\/p>\n

The old clapboard house now made an unusual hotel. It was a brilliant baby-blue, and along the front there were coloured lights and a large, pink painting of a couple having sex. The blueness continued inside, although the pink people, it seemed, had long since packed up and gone. These days, most of the guests were miners, Rastafarians with Amerindian girlfriends who padded around like cats. I always liked these miners. They were friendly and reckless and gave themselves nursery rhyme names, such as King Charley and the Golden Cat. They were like drop-outs in reverse, people who\u2019d run away to lose themselves in work.<\/p>\n

\u2018My father was a gold miner once,\u2019 said Kenwin, the owner\u2019s son.<\/p>\n

\u2018But the money was better in iron?\u2019 I ventured.<\/p>\n

Kenwin said nothing. He was unhappy. If his older brother hadn\u2019t killed a man in Georgetown, he wouldn\u2019t be here at all. He was a geologist and saw his life in stone, anywhere but here. He also knew he\u2019d never be the man his father was. Before Mike Charles disappeared\u2013 to rescue his beleaguered heir \u2013 he\u2019d been the biggest man in Port Kaituma. Not only was he an ironmonger, he also owned a transport business. \u2018And he ran the trucks for Jonestown,\u2019 said Kenwin.<\/p>\n

\u2018And what about this place?\u2019 I asked.<\/p>\n

\u2018Also his,\u2019 he replied, \u2018Used to be a nightspot, called the Weekend Disco.\u2019<\/p>\n

My room, as I soon discovered, had been built on the old dance floor. The walls were so thin and impromptu that, where they\u2019d cracked, I had an unwelcome view of the room next door. At night, I could hear my neighbour breathing and muttering in his sleep. It was almost as if the walls weren\u2019t there anymore, and we were lying on the dance floor \u2013 just as the Americans had, thirty years before.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For the journalists, it had been a pointless day. There was almost nothing to report. Soon after they\u2019d arrived in Port Kaituma, Kenwin\u2019s father had driven them out to Jonestown. It had taken an hour and a half, and they\u2019d arrived in the dark. Jones\u2019 wife had greeted them, and they\u2019d all eaten sausages and sung the Guyanese national anthem. Congressman Ryan was impressed. Then Jones himself had appeared. He was eccentric but not obviously deranged. He\u2019d said things like, \u2018I understand hate. Love and hate are very close.\u2019 The only troubling aspect of the evening was that \u2013 although he\u2019d let Ryan stay the night \u2013 he made the reporters leave. Mike Charles had driven them all back in his truck, and had put them up at the Weekend Disco.<\/p>\n

That night, on the dance floor, the journalists drank and smoked and slept. One of them, Charles Krause, of the Washington Post<\/em>, recorded his frustration. He didn\u2019t believe the stories about beatings and automatic weapons. \u2018I couldn\u2019t understand,\u2019 he wrote, \u2018why there had been such fuss.\u2019 His colleagues agreed. It had been a wasted day. What they didn\u2019t know is that \u2013 for three of them \u2013 it would also be their last.<\/p>\n

At ten the next morning, Saturday 18 November 1978, Mike Charles drove them back again to Jonestown. Now they could see it in the light: a camp of neat white huts, with nurseries and classrooms, a large tin pavilion sitting in the middle. Another ordinary day threatened. There was no evidence of maltreatment or starvation, and Krause even found himself admiring the cult. It wasn\u2019t much of a story.<\/p>\n

But then things took a different turn. Jones appeared, looking sickly and aggressive. When accusations were put to him, he would flare up with rage and self-pity. \u2018That\u2019s rubbish! I\u2019m defeated!\u2019 he\u2019d wail, \u2018I might as well die!\u2019 Then people started to cry, and some of the families said they wanted to leave. Jones was now at breaking point, and in the tension, a man appeared with a knife. He made a lunge at Ryan but was overpowered and cut himself, spraying Ryan with his blood. It was time to go.<\/p>\n

As Ryan prepared to leave, it was agreed he could take fifteen defectors with him. Jones gave them each their passports, and a small bundle of cash. Then, when they were all aboard the truck, Debbie Layton\u2019s brother Larry stepped forward and said he too wanted to leave. No one stopped him.<\/p>\n

Soon the truck was off. This time it was heading straight for the Port Kaituma airstrip. They must have made a curious sight: the weeping defectors, the reporters, unsure of what they\u2019d seen, and a congressman spattered in blood. Did a flight from paradise always feel like this? And did it taste of sick and fear? No one seemed to know what to think anymore.<\/p>\n

Nor did they realise that Larry had a gun in his pocket, and that behind them was another truck and a tractor with a trailer. On board were half a dozen men armed with the Prophet\u2019s own peculiar brand of madness, and automatic rifles.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

For those that know this story \u2013 and perhaps live it every day \u2013 it now unfolds like a collision in slow motion. The impact will be catastrophic not because events happen quickly but because of their terrifying momentum. It\u2019s like watching a railway line from above, and the ponderous piston-action of two locomotives, as they billow towards each other, gradually closing the gap. In the carnage that follows, you find yourself asking; what\u2019s the last point at which this could have been prevented? And then you look down the line and there\u2019s nothing there to see.<\/p>\n

One man who\u2019d lived most of his life with this scene was Big D\u2019s uncle. Fitz Duke had a face of sun-scorched hardwood, and his goatee was wiry and white like a clump of platinum filaments. One of his thumbs was missing, and he wore huge shorts and a pair of industrial boots that made tracks like a tank. But despite his demanding appearance, he was a man of reluctant words. At first I thought it was me, but then I began to realise that most things left Duke candidly unmoved. I now wonder whether it was the events of that November which had done this, and whether the shock of having felt so much so suddenly had now left him emotionally inert.<\/p>\n

My second morning, he agreed to drive me down to the airstrip. It was only a mile away, along a road of brilliant crimson. As he drove, I tried to assemble a conversation from syllables and grunts. But then we turned through a gap in the forest, bounced through some barbed wire gates, and there before us lay the airstrip. It was here that Congressman Ryan and his party had come to meet their two small planes.<\/p>\n

The sight of this weirdly open space had an immediate effect on Duke. He suddenly began to talk as if all the different strands of thought had now been gathered up as one. He told me where the planes had stood, where Ryan had waited, where the villagers had assembled to watch the planes, and where the gunmen had appeared, through the same barbed wire gate. At this point, I suddenly realised that not only had Duke seen what happened next, but that it was all still like a film inside his head. \u2018They shouted that they had a sick person on board,\u2019 he said, \u2018and then their tractor drove between the planes \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

What happened next is like the clippings off the editor\u2019s floor, a series of events in uncertain order. A tarpaulin flies back, and six armed men appear. There\u2019s smoke and a cackle of gunfire. Tyres explode with a perfunctory plop, and there\u2019s the ding and thwap of holes bursting in aluminium and in human tissue. A camera whirrs blankly at the sky, its operator gone. Ryan too looks different now, with part of his head swept away. A man called Big Anthony is firing a machine-gun from the tractor, expertly selecting Americans, and punching them down. The dead look like ragdolls caught in a moment of flight. A diplomat is stumbling through the hail shouting \u2018Get me a gun! Get me a fucking weapon!\u2019, and the jungle clatters back. Larry the imposter pulls out his gun but it jams, and he\u2019s beaten to the ground. There are hats and shoes in the dirt as the villagers flee for the trees. Krause the reporter is tucked behind a wheel and can feel his teeth cracking, as he wonders if he\u2019s already dead. Then, suddenly it stops.<\/p>\n

\u2018They\u2019d accomplished their mission,\u2019 said Duke, \u2018they\u2019d killed Ryan.\u2019<\/p>\n

They\u2019d also killed three newsmen and a dissident, and had left five others badly wounded. The bigger of the two planes no longer worked, and the pilots then took the smaller one and fled. The survivors were now alone. As the gunmen sped off down the road, people began to emerge from the trees and dragged the wounded clear. One of them had an arm that was hanging on only by a thread. \u2018And we also found the camera, still running,\u2019 said Duke, \u2018We didn\u2019t know what to do with it. We\u2019d never seen one before.\u2019<\/p>\n

There would be no more planes that night; it was dark and \u2013 just as now \u2013 the runway had no lights. The nearest settlement was a mining post at end of the airstrip, called Citrus Grove. But despite its winsome name, there was little there, and it was better known as Bottom Floor. All that the survivors found were a few shacks and a grog-shop called the Rum House. Here, the dozen or so Americans would spend the most frightening night of their life, listening to cries of pain and the sound of a tropical forest screaming itself to sleep.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t just that they were alone. \u2018As the killers left,\u2019 explained Duke, \u2018one of them shouted, \u2018We\u2019ll be back for Port Kaituma\u2019\u2019.\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bottom Floor has never forgotten that evening either. Little there had changed, except that the Rum House had long since burned down. There were the same lemon trees, the same stilted shacks and the same shadowy lanes. One woman I spoke to said she\u2019d never been back to watch the planes, and that she dreamt about the killings almost every night. I also tracked down a lemon-seller called Poppy Speed. People told me he\u2019d been playing football on the airstrip that day, and that he\u2019d caught a bullet in the thigh. I found him hobbling around his trees, and I asked him if he\u2019d tell me his tale. His eyes narrowed and his hands began to tremble. \u2018How long will it take?\u2019 he murmured.<\/p>\n

\u2018Whatever you like,\u2019 I said, \u2018Five minutes?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Five minutes is a long time \u2026\u2019 he said blankly, \u2018but OK.\u2019<\/p>\n

Then I pulled out my Dictaphone, and he turned and fled up his ladder.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019m not saying nothing!\u2019 he cried, \u2018Not now! Not ever!\u2019<\/p>\n

I suddenly felt guilt rise and catch me in the throat. \u2018I\u2019m really sorry \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

But he\u2019d gone, and all I could hear was him crying like a child.<\/p>\n

Duke wasn\u2019t surprised by this, when I got back to his jeep.<\/p>\n

\u2018People here are still frightened,\u2019 he said, \u2018They don\u2019t know what happened, or who anyone is. They hardly ever seen any white men before. The only ones they saw were people from the Temple, who then starts killing them. Are you surprised they\u2019re still afraid?\u2019<\/p>\n

We drove back along the crimson road.<\/p>\n

\u2018This is where we set up an ambush,\u2019 said Duke, remotely, \u2018We didn\u2019t have much. A few men trained in the military and a couple of handguns. They had assault rifles. We thought they\u2019d come back and kill us. It was a long night, a bad<\/em> night. Then in the morning, one of the survivors came down the road from Jonestown. He told us what had happened but of course we didn\u2019t believe him …\u2019<\/p>\n

An unforgettable night was about to become an unbelievable new day.<\/p>\n

Duke said he\u2019d drive me out there, tomorrow at sunrise.<\/p>\n

\u2018And bring your boots,\u2019 he said, \u2018There\u2019s a lot of snakes.\u2019<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t sleep well that night, at the old Weekend Disco. Perhaps it was the breathing that came through the cracks, or too much of Big D\u2019s boil-ups. I lay awake, taunted by the anguish of Poppy Speed, and the woman who dreamed of gunfire. Even when I did sleep, it felt like a dark trap, haunted by snakes and broken people and enormous lemons. Then at some point there were two explosions in the hall, and I woke in panic, unable to disentangle the imagined from the real. Perhaps the shooting had started again? Remembering that my windows were barred, I crawled across the floor and hid in the shower. Then, after an eternity of silence, I crawled back to bed and lay there, fitfully sifting the sounds of the night. In the morning, I told King Charley about this, and he laughed. \u2018Kids!\u2019 he said, \u2018Kids with squibs!\u2019<\/p>\n

A surreal night was as good a preparation as any for a trip out to Jonestown. For almost an hour, Duke\u2019s jeep soared through the jungle, cresting one great rib of laterite before swooping down on another. The only people we saw were some schoolchildren with umbrellas, and a group of Amerindians who rode along with us for a while, never saying a word. Duke didn\u2019t say anything either, until we reached a clearing and a parade of blackened stumps. \u2018Fruit trees,\u2019 said Duke, \u2018all planted by the Temple.\u2019<\/p>\n

Then we turned off the track, between two posts; the old entrance. There had once been a sign here \u2013 \u2018WELCOME TO JONESTOWN PEOPLE\u2019S TEMPLE AGRICULTURAL PROJECT\u2019 \u2013 but it had long-since been devoured by the damp, along with a sentry box. \u2018Security was very tight,\u2019 said Duke, \u2018they even had a watchtower, so they could see all around.\u2019<\/p>\n

Not anymore. Now the jungle had closed in again, and the path ahead was only a few feet wide. As the jeep passed through, I could hear the thorns squealing down our sides. Duke said you couldn\u2019t walk through this stuff \u2013 Tiger Teeth and Hold-me-back \u2013 and it occurred to me that our day would end like this, lost in the prickles and dark. But then, suddenly, the trees fell back, and we were out in a miniature savannah. \u2018Jonestown,\u2019 announced Duke grimly, \u2018this is where it happened.\u2019<\/p>\n

I peered into the long grass. Out in the middle was a very tall plum tree, and beyond it a distant brocade of forest. From this rank scattering of weeds and scrub, it was hard to reassemble the past. Everything had gone: classrooms, offices, a cassava mill and housing for a thousand souls. No one could even agree what it had looked like. Debbie Layton had said it was \u2018squalid\u2019, and Shiva Naipaul \u2013 who turned up three weeks later \u2013 said it was a \u2018dismal constellation, half-ordered, half-scattered\u2019. But the reporter Krause had described it as idyllic, like an old, antebellum American plantation. Who was right? Was this really an agricultural utopia, or just a cranky sanctuary for the lost and dispossessed?<\/p>\n

I walked forward, and pushed into the long grass.<\/p>\n

\u2018Be careful,\u2019 said Duke, \u2018you don\u2019t know what\u2019s in there \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

I hesitated, but then I noticed that he was following. I\u2019d already detected that beneath Duke\u2019s outer layer of indifference, there was a vivacious seam of drama. We walked on. All around us the stalks swished and cackled, and little gnarly claws of thorn snatched at our legs. Along the way, we found a \u2018Made in the USA\u2019 window fitting and an outpouring of giant, amber ants. \u2018Yakmans,\u2019 said Duke, \u2018Never try and stop them. They eats anything in their path \u2013 rats, insects, even snakes \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

Stepping over these unstoppable gourmands, we found ourselves on the edge of the clearing and squeezed between the trees. Here was what I was looking for: the leprous hulks of the three tractors, a boiler, half a dozen engine blocks, a vast workbench, and the crumbling chassis of an old army truck. Whatever else was happening in Jonestown at the moment it imploded, it was in throes of agricultural effort.<\/p>\n

Duke looked sceptical. \u2018They wasn\u2019t farming. It was something else \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

I said nothing, and we walked on. The undergrowth was being quietly snipped up by leaf-cutter ants, building a farm by instinct, uncluttered by ideas. At one point, we came across an area where the soil seemed to have boiled up, or been ransacked by badgers. \u2018People,\u2019 noted Duke, \u2018Looking for small scraps of metal.\u2019<\/p>\n

Further along, there was an old miner\u2019s cabin, made from twigs.<\/p>\n

\u2018This is where Jones had his house,\u2019 said Duke.<\/p>\n

\u2018Did you know him?\u2019<\/p>\n

He nodded. \u2018Funny guy. Always in shades. Never looked at you straight.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018And did you see inside this place?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Nope, never crossed his gate.\u2019<\/p>\n

We both peered through the twiggy framework. There was nothing there but ant-works and Tiger Teeth. Duke explained that in the days following Jones\u2019 death looters had picked the place clean. I\u2019d also heard that they\u2019d discovered a grisly, parallel economy; the Prophet lived quite differently to his disciples. Apart from the trappings of office \u2013 books, electric lights, a fridge full of del Monte fruit, a double bed, cotton sheets, and two dead mistresses \u2013 there was also a large quantity of Thorazine, sodium pentathol, chloral hydrate and Demerol. It was like a sort of pharmaceutical armoury, with every weapon you\u2019d ever need in the practice of coercion.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Pavilion was over there,\u2019 said Duke, pointing back to the plum tree.<\/p>\n

We set off towards it. Above us, in the tree, a chicken hawk watched, coldly appraising our vulnerability. Then something caught my eye. It was a tiny rotten fragment of a shoe: a woman\u2019s sandal, white with slingbacks.<\/p>\n

\u2018This is where the bodies were,\u2019 said Duke, \u2018All piled up, three deep.\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what happened to the lady in the white slingbacks.<\/p>\n

Shortly before dusk, she heard the tannoys blast into life. \u2018Alert! Alert! Alert!\u2019 She made her way to the Pavilion. The gunmen had returned from the airstrip, and Jones was calling a meeting. She could see him on his throne, beneath a notice that read: THOSE WHO DO NOT REMEMBER THE PAST ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT. Over 900 people now pressed towards their leader. He was recording his last great speech, a valedictory. \u2018Death is not a fearful thing! It\u2019s living that\u2019s cursed \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

She could also see that there were guards posted around the pavilion, and that the doctor was supervising a concoction of Flavor Aid and chemicals. She didn\u2019t know that these included cyanide and tranquillisers, but she knew that this was no rehearsal. It was the final \u2018White Night\u2019, and, this time, even the cooks weren\u2019t exempted from the drill. \u2018It\u2019s over, Sister,\u2019 rasps Jones, \u2018we\u2019ve made that day! We made a beautiful day \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

Everyone\u2019s frightened, and there\u2019s wailing on the tape. \u2018Stops this hysterics!\u2019 snaps Jones, \u2018This is not the way for people who are socialist communists to die!\u2019 But it was the children who went first, with a squirt in the mouth from a toxic teat. \u2018Take our life from us!\u2019 drones Jones, \u2018We got tired. We didn\u2019t commit suicide! We committed an act of revolutionary suicide \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

Then it was the turn of the woman in white shoes. The crowd were still compacted around her. She could hear The Father\u2019s voice above the moans of grief and pain: \u2018Die with respect! Die with dignity!\u2019 Few of her friends had disobeyed (and those that had were dragged to the ground and injected with the poison). She\u2019d watched as those around her took their little cups and drank. They\u2019d wince at the powerful industrial taste, and then lie down as they began to feel the breath no longer working in their lungs. It was not an instant death, she\u2019d notice, but a determined, chemical asphyxia. Confused and panicky, she\u2019d gulp down her own dose, and then take her place among her friends. No one would ever know the agonies she\u2019d experienced in those last few minutes. She, like all the others, would be found in an attitude of sleep. It was almost as if they\u2019d just lain down for a moment, not even bothering to remove their shoes.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

A few weeks earlier, I\u2019d met a man who was one of the first outsiders to get to Jonestown, once news of the massacre broke.<\/p>\n

Joe Singh, it seemed, had been present at almost every momentous event in modern Guyanese history. As a soldier, he\u2019d quelled revolts, fought the drug gangs, negotiated truces with Amerindians, and beaten off foreign incursions, and then \u2013 eventually \u2013 taken command of the army. During the African years, this was no mean feat for an Indo-Guyanese. He had the almost unique status of a hero amongst each of the races. People were always writing to the papers asking that he be made president, or that a street be named in his honour. He was, I suppose, the nearest that Guyana had to a national institution. He also happened to be a friend of a friend, and so we agreed to meet.<\/p>\n

The secret of his survival was soon obvious. Although Joe was generous and magisterial, with his dark tropical suit and hair like silvery pins, he was also deftly illusive. It was as if he only ever revealed a fraction of what he felt. He didn\u2019t even appear in his own stories very much \u2013 nor did anyone alive. Instead, he preferred to foray deep into the past, well out of range of possible ambush. I wondered whether Jonestown was far enough back in the temporal hinterland, and so I asked him. For a moment, I could see him calibrating the possible fallout. As the old Georgetown adage goes, whatever is said today is on the president\u2019s desk tomorrow.<\/p>\n

He hesitated. \u2018Yes. Of course, I remember. How could anyone forget?\u2019<\/p>\n

This is the soldiers\u2019 story:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

News of trouble came through that afternoon. By midnight the army had managed to fly some troops to the far end of the ridge. Under the command of Joe Singh \u2013 who was then a colonel \u2013 they\u2019d marched all night, and reached Port Kaituma at dawn. Later that day, they reached Jonestown.<\/p>\n

The sight that greeted them was incomprehensible. At first they thought that the clearing had been strewn with rags, and then they realised they were people. The bodies lay on their fronts, some with dried blood in their nostrils. Jones himself lay on the altar in the Pavilion. He\u2019d not taken poison but had got someone to shoot him, and now his shirt was bloody and pulled up over his head.<\/p>\n

It was impossible to count all the bodies, such was the tangle and stench. At first, there seemed to be only four hundred, so a helicopter was sent out with a loudspeaker, urging the others to come in from the forest. \u2018We were there some days,\u2019 said Joe, \u2018just searching the site.\u2019 Then the bodies were counted again. There were 909, including 276 children. Even the dogs and cows had been poisoned, and Mr Muggs the chimpanzee.<\/p>\n

Few survivors emerged. Amongst them was a 76-year-old woman, and a handful of others who\u2019d fled. Strangest of all was the TV presenter, Mike Prokes, who turned up with a gun and a suitcase full of money, and said he was heading for the Soviet embassy (six months later, I discovered, he gave a press conference in a motel in Modesto, and read out a forty-page testament before retreating to the bathroom and shooting himself in the head).<\/p>\n

Looters had already begun to prise the place apart. Martial law was imposed. There\u2019d been some curious pickings: spice racks, boxes of Flavor Aid (which no one dared drink) and books donated by the Russians. Meanwhile, Joe\u2019s soldiers would retrieve twenty bows and arrows, thousands of dollars in cash (together with half a million in uncashed welfare cheques), about forty automatic rifles, and a trunk containing 800 American passports. As for the mountains of foul, stained clothes, all the soldiers could do was scrape them into heaps and set them on fire.<\/p>\n

The dead had been harder to deal with. It was obvious the soldiers couldn\u2019t cope. There were said to be only thirty body bags in the entire country. What\u2019s more, the heat was relentless, and \u2013 as his parting gift \u2013 Jones had poisoned all the water. For days nothing happened. When the journalists called by (including Krause, and then, later, Shiva Naipaul), the troops just waved them through at gunpoint. \u2018Keep moving! Don\u2019t touch anything!\u2019 they screamed. They\u2019d had as much as they could bear, and now it was time for the United States to come in and scoop up the mess. \u2018Well,\u2019 said Joe, defiantly, \u2018it was their problem. Jonestown had nothing to Guyana.\u2019 Most Guyanese believed this. As Naipaul put it, in life the disciples of the People\u2019s Temple had been hailed as socialist heroes, and in death they were \u2018hopelessly American\u2019.<\/p>\n

A few days later another small army arrived. They were specialised battlefield technicians, the people who clear up the pieces once the pruning of humans is done. Under the command of four colonels, they moved among the dead, tagging, heaving, bagging, zipping and boxing. They untangled every corpse and gathered every document. Then they sprayed the clearing with so much disinfectant that \u2013 according to pilots \u2013 it\u2019s never been quite the same colour again. People like Joe were so astonished at the speed and complexity of the American operation that they began to wonder if they\u2019d prepared it all in advance (\u2018It was as if they knew something,\u2019 he said, \u2018or at least had something to hide\u2019). Then they were gone: a vast dead decampment, shuttled away in relays of Jolly Green Giants.<\/p>\n

For the sad, swollen followers of Jones, their ordeal was not, however, over. As I\u2019d soon discover, they had a journey ahead of them that\u2019s never quite come to an end. But it was different for Jonestown itself. Haunted, lifeless and antiseptic, it would now lie empty, probably for ever.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

\u2018Since that sad day has strucked,\u2019 said Duke, \u2018no one has ever lived here.\u2019<\/p>\n

We were walking back across the clearing, watched by the hawk. Duke was now deep in thought, and I asked him how the locals had reacted when the town next door had died. He stopped and turned, looking back over the scribble of thorns and rust. At first, it seems, people had hardly given it a thought and seen only a field of booty. \u2018Nothing went to waste,\u2019 he said, \u2018They took the tin and the windows, and all the timber. There\u2019s still plenty of people in Port Kaituma with bedsheets from Jonestown, or perhaps a couple of chairs. I remember they had a big freezer. It was full of food. Full! I tried it but it was locked \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

We walked on. Others had told me that, once everything portable had gone, the urge to forage was replaced with doubt. No one could quite believe that a town just like theirs \u2013 except bigger and richer \u2013 had simply self-destructed. A greater agency was at work. Suddenly mythology was sprouting everywhere, like luxurious clumps of forest. Duke himself thought that Jones was mining uranium, and that there were tunnels deep beneath the forest. \u2018That why they never found the cement he ordered. Five hundred bags! You see any concrete now?\u2019<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t. \u2018But that\u2019s only two truckloads?\u2019 I tried.<\/p>\n

Duke wouldn\u2019t have it, and nor would anyone else. Back in Port Kaituma, I met people who believed that Jones was still alive, that he and his assassins had escaped by plane, and that there was a massive cache of gold. Meanwhile, in Georgetown, it was often assumed that the CIA were involved, and that Jonestown was a dangerous psychological stunt. One politician even told me that the Russians had placed a missile silo there, and they\u2019d all been killed by special forces.<\/p>\n

\u2018So there was no treasure?\u2019 I asked Duke.<\/p>\n

\u2018Nah,\u2019 he sneered, \u2018No-one find nothing.\u2019<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t what everyone said. In fact, Duke\u2019s father was famous for having found $250,000 in cash. His mistake was to tell everybody. He was murdered a few weeks after Jonestown, on the path to Venezuela.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jonestown carried on killing for years after the massacre. It was a curse, like one of those ghostly plastic gill-nets that breaks free of its trawler and travels the oceans in a state of perpetual slaughter. To begin with, there were the unfinished suicides, such as the woman who trimmed her children\u2019s throats in Lamaha Gardens, or television producer Mike Prokes, who ended it all in Modesto. Then there were the reprisals. Even years after the cult\u2019s demise, defectors were still being hunted down and killed. Perhaps the saddest story of all was that of Bonny Mann, the Guyanese ambassador to the United States. Two years after Jonestown, he discovered that his lover, who was also the mother of his child, was not the girl she said she was. Instead, she\u2019d been planted in his life by the People\u2019s Temple and had recorded all their trysts. As Mann\u2019s world fell apart, he killed both mother and child, before turning the gun on himself.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t just the cult\u2019s survivors who were restless; so were the dead.<\/p>\n

\u2018Ask Caroline George,\u2019 said Big D, \u2018Her brother was among them.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ah, yes, David George, the Amerindian boy adopted by the Revd Jones.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Caroline George had a small shop, which sold salt and dried fish, out in Bottom Floor. On my last day, I walked out there and found her stall, up to the eaves in weed. Inside, standing at the counter, was a customer with huge knobbly hands like claws, and a face as wild as the forest. When he heard me mention Jonestown, his eyes widened, and I found myself staring upwards into two great rings of curdled yellow.<\/p>\n

\u2018If you kill one man,\u2019 he growled, \u2018you\u2019re a murderer. If you kill nine hundred, you\u2019re a conqueror!\u2019 With that, he tottered imperiously for a moment, and then lurched for the door.<\/p>\n

Miss George looked at me without any perceptible expression. She was a short woman, rounded by poverty and thickened by work. Yes, she murmured, she\u2019d tell me what happened. I thanked her, and then I must have hesitated, uncertain what I\u2019d find when I clicked the latch of this person\u2019s grief. She sensed my anxiety, and forced an unhappy smile.<\/p>\n

\u2018I think about Jonestown,\u2019 she said, \u2018almost every day of my life.\u2019<\/p>\n

A heartless saga emerged. She told me that her mother was a Carib, that she\u2019d been born at the mouth of the river, and that her father had died when she was small. For much of her childhood, she and her siblings had drifted around like human flotsam. They\u2019d fished and begged, and lived on the water. All that they\u2019d had was each other. At some stage, they\u2019d ended up in Port Kaituma, and then into their lives came the Revd Jones. He was adopting Amerindian children and took on three of the siblings: Philip, Gabriella and \u2018Baby\u2019 David, who was ten.<\/p>\n

\u2018Jones said he would do better things for them,\u2019 said their sister, \u2018They all changed their name to Jones and called him Dad. I think they were happy at first, but we weren\u2019t always allowed to see them.\u2019<\/p>\n

Suddenly, her eyes filled with tears.<\/p>\n

\u2018After it all happened, I went up to Jonestown to look for them. I\u2019ll never forget that day. By then, the dead were all black and swelled to a size. I tried to find Baby George and the others, but I couldn\u2019t stomach the smell, and I had to leave. I\u2019ve always imagined that they died in there, but I\u2019ve never known for sure. My mother never recovered from the loss of my brothers and sister, and died soon afterwards. I\u2019d give anything to have them back again. They were beautiful children. I often wonder what happened to their bodies. Someone said they were buried there, but how can anyone tell? Sometimes I feel that they\u2019re still here, and that\u2019s why I stay. I don\u2019t ever want to leave them.\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But Baby George and the others were no longer here, or even in Guyana.<\/p>\n

Later, I discovered what had probably become of them. In death, the Amerindians had travelled further than they\u2019d ever dreamt of in life. There were perhaps eight of them altogether, including the pseudo-Joneses, and they\u2019d all have been scooped up in the great American airlift. In Georgetown, this great, long-dead expedition was disembarked, and packed onto transports. They were then flown to Dover in Delaware, where they sat for months in giant refrigerators built for the Vietnam dead. During this time, they were fingerprinted by the FBI and then worked over by some thirty-five pathologists, and twenty-nine morticians. By the end, it was still a mystery who everybody was. Once the relatives had retrieved those they wanted, a bewildering 410 bodies remained behind. Of these, sixty didn\u2019t seem to have any ties at all.<\/p>\n

For the Amerindian Joneses, there was still another journey ahead. Boxed up with all the other unclaimed bodies, they were flown to California. There, they were buried in Oakland, in a large, unceremonious mass grave.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

As I flew back to Georgetown, I tried in vain to make sense of all I\u2019d seen. Way below, the forest heaved and blackened like unsettled sky. Great whorls of green gathered together, swelled up, reshaped themselves, formed into vast billowing, black masses of chlorophyll, and then burst, swirling off into the distance. Perhaps Jonestown was like this, I thought: not something made, but a series of random patterns. Take away any single feature from the whole \u2013 the diseased prophet, the badlands, the broken discipleship, the bush, and the threadbare state \u2013 and the landscape would have looked completely different. In fact, Jonestown would probably never have taken shape at all, and the endpiece vanishes altogether.<\/p>\n

But not everyone sees it like this. For many, particularly in America, Jonestown has an inevitable quality, and there\u2019s almost a straight line between the promiscuous Sixties and the tubs of grape-flavoured cyanide. This is to say nothing of the belief that sinister agencies had somehow hustled the tragedy along. Every day on the internet more undergrowth is added to this jungle of myth. Some of it is planted by the descendants of the Temple, but the rest is seeded more despairingly, by those who insist that, in the absence of God, it\u2019s some human authority that determines our fate.<\/p>\n

For the Guyanese, there had been no patterns about Jonestown, and nor had it sat at the end of a line. As far as they were concerned, the whole thing had appeared from nowhere, like a visit from Outer Space. But they also knew that, whether they liked it or not, that day had changed them. \u2018For months afterwards,\u2019 said Joe, \u2018the eyes of the world were upon us.\u2019<\/p>\n

But what those eyes had seen had not always been easy to understand: private armies, stacks of Thorazine, a semi-feral theocracy, trunks full of cash, and a Ministry of Hoods. After that, the great South American African, Forbes Burnham, had never quite regained his composure. Was he really a great liberator, or just a despot from the swamps? Six years later, he found himself in the middle of a self-made famine, and \u2013 without any antibiotics \u2013 he died from a cough. It was the end of the African years, and the beginning of Indian rule. In 1992, Guyana held its first untarnished election for thirty years, and an ailing Cheddi Jegan was hoisted into power.<\/p>\n

Jonestown could now be forgotten.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Back in Georgetown the events of 1978 still had people swooning with denial. Even the rebellious Dr Roopnaraine added his voice to the chorus of indignation.<\/p>\n

\u2018It was an American matter,\u2019 he told me, \u2018Nothing to do with us.\u2019<\/p>\n

But, despite this energetic case of amnesia, Jonestown had proved difficult to bury. Every year, The Stabroek News<\/em> would unearth the facts and parade them over its pages. It was almost as though readers needed reminding that the Temple was part of their story. Some joked that it was the only part. I once spotted a T-shirt in Stabroek market that depicted a map of Guyana under the heading \u2018Sights of interest\u2019. All it featured was Jonestown, marked with a skull and crossbones.<\/p>\n

I sometimes wondered if the government had taken this taunt to heart. Only a few years earlier, the Minister of Tourism had suggested that Jonestown be re-opened, to promote \u2018dark tourism\u2019. In fairness, every other scheme had failed (including a refugee camp for the Indochinese). But tourism? I remember asking my driver, Ramdat Dhoni, about this, soon after my return. Was it his cup of tea, a resort for the chronically morbid? Would he be booking his grandchildren in, and his son, and Mrs Dhoni?<\/p>\n

\u2018Don\u2019t shit me, man,\u2019 he giggled, \u2018You been too long in the bush …\u2019<\/p>\n

Had I? I suddenly realised that I\u2019d only been away for a week. It felt like months. Perhaps that was the effect of the bush, to render time endlessly elastic? Perhaps that\u2019s what had finally toppled Jones\u2019 sanity, an affliction like Dorian Gray\u2019s? This was not a particularly comforting thought as I contemplated my next move. The following day, I\u2019d be heading off \u2013 back inside \u2013 this time far deeper than before.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This account of the author\u2019s trip to Jonestown is the chapter of the same name from his book, Wild Coast: Travels on South America\u2019s Untamed Edge (New York: Vintage Departures, 2012. The book was recently\u00a0nominated by The Daily Telegraph\u00a0as one of “The Twenty Best Travel Books of all Time.” The chapter is reprinted with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":64559,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-64583","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64583"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110231,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64583\/revisions\/110231"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}