Your Cookies or Your Life! Colombia’s Wild West ‘Tollbooths’

Children, some cute as a button and others subtly menacing, come running as your vehicle approaches the leather band strung across the desert road. Tires on either side mean circumvention is impossible.

Adults, parents or other family members, sometimes wait in the distance…just in case.

Just in case you don’t have cookies.

Cookie Tollbooths

That’s right. These ‘tollbooths,’ run by Wayuu indigenous children, require galletas–cookies–and if you don’t pay, well, I don’t know what would happen.

You might not be able to pass, for one thing–and that would mean that you wouldn’t be able to complete the journey to Punta Gallinas, the northernmost point in South America, an other-worldy Mars-like area with gorgeous sand dunes that are something out of a dream. As in, this photo below.

Taroa Beach Sand Dune, Punta Gallinas, Colombia

Anyway, these kids  take their ‘business’ quite seriously. Very few smile or say ‘hola’ when they approach your car. The cookies are simply expected.

Sometimes the kids ask for mas galletas. More cookies.

What If You Don’t Have Cookies?

If you don’t have cookies with you (and I think most people who venture into this part of the country remember to buy them), you might have to cough up some Colombian pesos.

Well, actually, they’ll sometimes ask for money in lieu of cookies. Or their parents will.

I witnessed this at one point. A Wayuu woman was asking for a ‘toll’ from the driver on the other side of the toll both. According to my tour guide, she was most likely asking for money. He did say that most often, however, tolls aren’t required of other Wayuu. Just of the tourists.

But in La Guajira, where the people govern themselves however they choose, the rules probably changes as often as the wind blows.

Why Not Ask for Water?

Something I didn’t understand, when I was there, was why no one  asked for water. There was a serious drought at the time. Wouldn’t water have been more logical? About 15 kids died in that drought, by the way.

A few times, we did offer water to the kids, and they accepted it. They gulped it down, their thirst quite evident.

Other times, we met kids who were not running toll booths who also wanted cookies. Some of them were sweet and didn’t demand anything. They just stood, waiting patiently, and we gave them cookies.

At times, we gave them extras because they said thank you. And we gave them water. These were some of those kids.

Leaving the Guajira, I had an encounter with a girl who was charging money for the use of a really awful bathroom across the street from a restaurant. I’ve seen this in many countries and so, I’m used to it. I get it. It’s a way for them to make money.

I went to use the bathroom after my friends did and the girl told me, in Spanish,  that my friends had not paid. I paid for myself and she insisted that I pay for them. I did not. When I went back to the restaurant, I learned that my friends had, indeed, paid.

I went back and told her in Spanish that it wasn’t nice to lie.

Mixed Feelings about the Toll Booths

I had mixed feelings about the cookie booth tolls.

According to my tour guide, the local Wayuu ‘build’ the roads (clear and flatten the sand enough for vehicles to pass). So in a sense, they function as the the public works arm of the government. So maybe a payment of some kind makes sense. There aren’t many roads and it’s easy to get lost there. Fortunately, there is a main road of sorts and side roads, where a tire or a shirt hanging on a stick indicates the presence of a community.

What I found sad was that many of these kids don’t attend school or they only make it to middle school. Instead, quite a few are collecting tolls. A shame, I think. Most of the girls are promised to a man for marriage around age 12 and sometimes younger than that.

Scorched earth, La Guajira

Your Thoughts?

What do you think about these ‘cookie toll booths’?

Good idea–something fun for the kids? Or a bad one (the cookies are usually Oreos or some equivalent, full of sugar and preservatives)?

Would water or money make more sense? And maybe even just standardize the tolls–75 cents for each one? (Note: we went through about 4 over the course of an hour.)

Photo credit: Evan-Amos via Wikimedia Commons.