Bridges connect remote villages

"It's not a story of engineering, but a story of love," 41-year-old Swiss Toni Rüttimann - better known as Toni El Suizo - announced in Spanish to the 20 or so audience members who came to see his recent presentation at Prague's Municipal Library. The posters and the leaflets labeled Rüttimann as a bridge builder, but, once the slides rolled to an end and the lights went on one last time, that appellation seemed inadequate.  

An older lady from the audience strolled down to the stage, inquiring whether El Suizo meant "Jesus" in Spanish.

"That's the thing: We're not saints," Rüttimann said later, describing the do-gooders who, under his mentoring, construct pedestrian bridges in disaster-stricken areas.

In the past 22 years, Rüttimann has worked with communities in Ecuador, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Burma to erect 144 handmade - or "love-made," as Rüttimann would say - suspension bridges.

The May 28 Prague presentation, like the preceding ones in Rome and Milan, was a side gig of Rüttimann's venture to secure retired cable-car lines in Switzerland and pipes in Argentina for more suspension bridges.

Once the materials are secured, he'll return to Burma to continue constructing emergency passages to alleviate the infrastructural devastation of last year's Cyclone Nargis and search for other needy communities.

An ardent bridge builder, Rüttimann says the bridge-to-be materializes in his mind right when he arrives at the prospective location. "I'd walk up and down the river quietly by myself, see how the river's flowing," he says, describing the process while strolling along the Vltava.

Sofía Janíková, whom Rüttiman came to visit in Prague, grew up in the small village of Lago Agrío in northern Ecuador, near where Rüttimann constructed his first bridge 18 years ago.

"The government concentrates money where its voters are, leaving rural areas underdeveloped," she says. "Some people are cut off from shops and schools, on the other side of the river. When it rains and the river becomes wild, you can't just swim across it. You can lose your children or the goods you're carrying to try to sell on the other side."

Janíková and Rüttimann met shortly after Rüttimann first arrived in Ecuador nearly two decades ago. She recalls her friend dragging her to take a look at the young foreigner who was building the long bridge.

Later, when the two got to know each other, Rüttimann would take her out to the movies - the only luxury he'd allow himself. They couldn't enjoy a pizza in peace because the locals always wanted to take pictures with Rüttimann or to touch him, Janíková recalls.

Janikova says Ruttiman never liked the "circus" that came with his work. "I never knew where he was. He left, then came back. Then I saw him on TV, and he was in Colombia."

Linking people

Rüttimann believes he was born to be a bridge-builder. After seeing an earthquake cripple Ecuador on television, the then-19-year-old Swiss too his youth-savings, along with gifts from friends and neighbors (the equivalent of about 6,000 euros) and flew to the devastated region, where he "fell in love with being useful."

Together with a Dutch engineer who provided the know-how, the teenage Rütimann employed locals to build their own bridges from cables, pipes and wooden boards.

He's followed a strict path of withstanding institutionalization and not selling out. His proposals free of economic and political interests intrigued the government of Burma and Cambodia, for example.

In 2000, he more than symbolically built a bridge between Honduras and El Salvador - nations divided by a recent war. He recalls having to "swim every time to another country," to assess the progress.

During his presentation, Rüttimann stressed one statistic: the number of people they've aided. One million, Rüttimann circled in red on the screen.

The cold Prague weather made his muscles ache. As he exercised his fingers, he pointed to some of the muscle control he never regained after Guillain-Barré Syndrome paralyzed him for two years in Cambodia in 2002.

He recalled how the nurse at the Sirindhorn clinic in Bangkok - where he was transferred - approached him and announced frankly that he should consider changing his job.

Contrary to the doctors' expectations, he recovered, though slowly. In the meantime, he devised step-by-step instruction for fellow bridge-builders who follow in his footsteps. "Mentally," he joked, "I've been trained for nuisance and suffering for 15 years."

Martina Čermáková can be reached at
specialsection@praguepost.com