Page 14 - PPIAC Newsletter Apr-May 2022

yet formally closed their investigation (although they had left many days prior). He suggested we talk to a local,
“Poto” who owned a large lake house and multiple boats to see if he’d take us out anyway. We went to Poto’s
house and learned from him that his house had been the base of operations for the NNP’s investigation, and that
he had loaned his motor boats to the investigation, as all other boats in the area were unpowered. He told us that
approximately fifty people had been involved in the investigation between the NNP and the Nicaraguan Navy, the
largest turnout for a drowning he’d ever seen, and that two divers had gone down 164 feet. He agreed to take us
on the lake, and was unconcerned about law enforcement given the good will he’d generated with them during
the investigation. We also learned from him that an in-shape rower could go across the lake in a kayak in
approximately one hour and 40 minutes. Poto drove us to various areas of the lake. We found some clothing that
had washed ashore, and sent photographs of it to the family, but they did not recognize it. We attempted to report
it later to the NNP, but they seemed uninterested in collecting it.

The Jungle
After identifying multiple points where we saw fishing boats on the shore around the lake, we donned our jungle
gear and went into the jungle to attempt to find the fishing communities. It was hot, and muggy, and there were
mosquitos. It took multiple hours to hike through the jungle to the various one- or two-family huts in the jungle
that subsisted by fishing on the lake. However, we did in fact find multiple witnesses at two different communities.
The general consensus was that they saw Abiodun on the water on the morning of his disappearance and noted
that Abiodun was kayaking from the far shore of the lake back toward the hostel and was paddling while standing
up. Shortly after they saw him, a storm came over the lake and when one witness looked back at him 20 minutes
later, he could no longer see Abiodun. Another witness, Marcio, found Abiodun’s kayak after the storm in an area
of the lakeshore that was consistent with the wind pattern of the storm and the location witnesses indicated on
the NNP map that they saw Abiodun.

Witch Doctors
There were several local shamans and witch doctors, called “Curanderos,” who were known to provide ayahuasca
supervision services. We canvassed several of them, but none of them admitted to recognizing Abiodun, even after
we paid for their “services.” One did “divine,” after looking at the missing poster, that Abiodun was not dead, but
that he was hiding from “something bad,” and that “someone had either violated him, or he violated someone.” It
is unlikely that this was the case.

Diving Expert
One witness who saw Abiodun on the far side of the lake, Manilo, is a diver and spearfisherman, and informed us
that the lake was so deep that the water pressure was too great for bodies to resurface. Both Manilo and the
lifeguard referred us to Tomar, a veteran Red Cross rescue diver in the area, who had successfully recovered 464
bodies throughout Nicaragua, some of which were at Apoyo Lagoon. He was widely considered to be the most
experienced diver in the region and had been doing rescue diving since 1966. Tomar explained that when someone
drowns, barring currents, the body will sink for between 24-48 hours. It will then rise again due to gasses that are
produced by bacteria in the body. However, if the body sinks below 40-60 feet, it will not resurface because
atmospheric, water, and absolute pressure are bearing down on the body and the gasses are not sufficient to bring
it back to the surface. When that happens, the body will float back up to about 40 feet, stay there for a while, and
then sink back down to the bottom. Based upon the police map and where Manilo said he saw Abiodun, he
believed the depth of the lake to be 240 feet in that area. Tomar explained that with surface-supplied diving
equipment and special suits, one could dive that deep, but that the Nicaraguan Navy was not equipped to do that.

Hospital Canvassing
After we spoke to all the witnesses we could find, we went to the two hospitals in the area. Both allowed us to
walk through the hospital under supervision of their legal officer and an armed security guard, to see if we could
recognize Abiodun, and show the poster to the staff there. We did not see him in the hospital and none of the staff
recognized him.