Lasting Impressions from Colombia

The Pilgrimage

     One community event at the second site I taught at was particularly memorable. It was an annual religious pilgrimage. The people in the vereda invited me to watch them prepare their Virgin Mary statue for the trip, then we got up at 3:30 the next morning (no class that day—a Friday—since no one would be around) to prepare food for the journey and get ready to leave on foot at 5:15 a.m. There were about 30 of us and it was a beautiful 3½-hour walk – a good way to get to know people in the community. When we arrived at the designated site in a field, there were already about 300 people there with lots of dancing, drinking and visiting in progress; it reminded me of a country fair. The priest didn't show up until almost 11 a.m. so some of the fellows were rather unsteady on their feet by the time the mass was said. In spite of protestations and the fact I'm not Catholic, the group I was with pushed me up onto the wooden stage to sit with the priest and all the statues. How embarrassing! Fortunately, I wasn't asked to speak. Soon thereafter the priest left and everyone headed (some staggering) home. Someone loaned me a horse to get to the main road where I soon caught a cattle truck to the nearest town, then a bus home for the weekend.

      Over the years, I've stayed in touch with one member of that community who invited me to stay at her home a few weekends, and whose sisters I met at other sites. Like many Colombians at the time, they had two photos on their living room wall: one of Pope Paul VI, who visited Bogota in 1964, and another of President Kennedy, who visited Colombia in 1961.

Butcher Shop: the burro is tied to the "counter" where meat was sold by someone who butchered an animal each week, rain or shine.. Customers brought their own pan or bag in which to carry purchases home.

Gimme the Keys, Please

     When you rely on whatever form of  wheels that happen by you can find yourself in uncomfortable situations. Sometimes on Friday trips back to the city, the Jeep or truck that happened by was driven by someone who had already started celebrating the weekend, or perhaps atttended a clausura. On one such trip when an obviously inebriated driver stopped along the way for another drink, I suggested he let me drive. He laughed, saying I wouldn't know how to drive a stick shift. I insisted I knew how and, surprisingly, he handed over the keys. The other passengers were men but they seemed relieved and nixed my offer of letting one of them drive. I drove straight to our apartment and handed the keys to one of them. The original driver slept the whole way.

Mule carrying cane that will be processed into sugar, brown sugar (always added to coffee here), or fermented into gurarapo, a strong alcoholic drink.

“Because He Loved Her”

     Something worse than drunk-driving happened as I arrived at the office in the city one Friday afternoon. I was getting my things out of the trunk of a shared taxi when the driver rushed back and pulled me to the ground behind the car. He pointed to the building and we peered above the car to see a man with a gun menacing one of the childcare workers who was supervising children in the big fenced yard. He shot her. The children screamed and ran and someone came out to grab the man, another to carry the girl inside. When the man was under control and the police arrived, I continued into the building and in the confusion was asked to say something to the children. I couldn't speak. How can you explain what they just witnessed to a child? Fortunately, another woman came to the rescue and handled the situation beautifully. I truly admired her calmness and ability to convince the children that if everyone sang for the girl, she would feel much better. They sang and sang through their tears. The girl survived, fortunately. I was still shaken when I went to the SENA offices (my Colombian bosses) a short while later and was distressed when even they weren't alarmed and said the boyfriend had surely done it “because he loved her.” He was apparently jealous when she rejected him for someone else.

Beliefs

     Every culture has them, ones that seem odd to people from elsewhere. I encountered many in Colombia, especially in rural areas. Some were harmless, others had merit. Among them:

Childbirth: after giving birth, a woman was supposed to remain in bed and not bathe for 40 days, resting and eating only chicken and beets (beets were believed to be good for the blood). I never talked with a woman who had done that and can only imagine how difficult it would have been without strong family support since, without the modern conveniences we take for granted (electricity, running water, cooking and washing appliances, etc.), daily life was quite demanding. And chicken was not cheap, even if you raised your own. It was served on special occasions. Besides, how awful would you feel being cooped up so long without bathing or exercise? Childbirth itself would surely have been more pleasant.
     I was told girls and women should not eat limes or avocado during their periods. One group asked me if it was true that women shouldn't look at snake bites then either.
     One woman told the class if you have a nosebleed, you should inhale smoke or put your head over a cup of lime juice (limes were supposed to "cut" the blood).
Asthma: a driver told me that turtle blood is the best remedy.

Year Two in Colombia

Second Year as a Peace Corps Volunteer

     The year was filled with  preparing and teaching eight leadership courses, then visiting the dozen or so communities represented at each course the following month. It meant traveling even more in remote regions but, to me, that was the best part. Visitors were rare and a foreigner even more so, hence the women were most welcoming. Not only was I immersed in beautiful country, but Colombian culture. While I sometimes envied volunteers who spent their entire time getting to know one community really well, I appreciated that I got to see so much of the country and meet so many people (and I'm a relatively shy person!).

    In the end, I extended my service for a third year to work as assistant to the Peace Corps' health and nutrition director. It meant broader travel throughout the country and frequent trips to Bogotá.

Rural teaching site

Both were nice but I still remember the people and time in the remote rural areas best.

     When you extend your service you get a month break at home, in the U.S.. While there, I got a call from P.C. headquarters asking if I'd go to El Salvador for two months on my way back to Colombia, to prepare and execute a training program for women volunteers. It was another unexpected and fascinating opportunity.

Here are two memorable Colombian cultural experiences:

Transportation:

Getting to remote rural areas was often a challenge and a good way for clock-driven gringos to learn to just go with the flow. Often the better part of a day would be spent getting to a teaching site, no matter how early in the morning I'd leave my home base. It usually involved a pre-dawn arrival at the dusty bus plaza where the aromas of coffee, fresh-squeezed orange juice, cigarettes and diesel fuel mingled in the cool air with tinny cumbia or ranchera music coming from transistor radios.

    Young men would stand by each bus to watch for potential riders, sell tickets and bark the bus's destination every few minutes. Inevitably, just as the bus was taking off, they'd be engaged in deep, important conversation with someone a distance away and would have to run to heroically jump on the bus when it was in full motion. Very macho, very amusing, very predictable - and dangerous.

Fellow ag teacher heading to an assigned site

     The bus would arrive in a town or village where one would take another bus deeper into the campo (rural area), usually on bad (sometimes very bad) roads with steep climbs and no guard rails on narrow mountainsides. Fortunately, the view was usually breath-taking enough to keep your mind off the deadly possibilities. These vehicles were called mixtos and were actually wooden frames with bench seats, a flat roof (for baggage, jute bags of produce and often extra passengers) built on a flatbed truck. They were painted in the colors of the Colombian flag: yellow, blue and red. Roll-down canvass covers on the end of each row offered a bit of protection during driving rainstorms. Otherwise, it was all open-air.
     Mixtos were especially fun to ride back into town later in the week, because I knew many of the passengers by then. Everyone else knew each other and would greet the entire busload as they got on. The chilly pre-dawn bumpy, jostling ride was filled with friendly banter and often live animals headed to market at one's feet or back – chickens, goats, or piglets. It was a community on the move, in for a long day at market, appointments, or doing errands. Most would return on the same bus later that day.

     For really remote sites, the last stage of trip was by foot, horse or mule. Someone would meet me at the road – either a woman from the class, or a young boy, usually barefoot, who would walk the whole way if he'd brought a horse or mule, unless I could convince him to take turns riding.

     The mixto drivers were sometimes messengers, as well. Once, I got a message upon its evening return that I needed to call the Bogota' office immediately. I couldn't until the same mixto went back to town at four o'clock the next morning, then phone from the telegraph office. After worrying all night, wondering who in my family had died, I learned it was just a photographer who ended up going elsewhere when I didn't respond quickly. All that worry for nothing.

La Violencia

      We think of the terrible violence that wracked Colombia during the recent decades of drug wars

Hard to imagine such violence  where laundry dries in the street

. However, there was a period called “La Violencia” that began in the mid-1940s as liberal and conservative parties fought over control of rural land. Most fighting took place in rural areas until the killing of a presidential candidate, Jorge Gaitán, in 1948 took it to city streets. Guerrilla groups formed which would eventually morph into now-recognized forces such as the FARC (Revolutionary Forces of Colombia) or the ELN (National Liberation Army).
    The violence became as terrifying as that in Mexico in recent years where the press was driven out by murders and threats, leaving no official record of the number of deaths, though it's estimated in the hundreds of thousands.
     Though La Violencia was supposedly over when I was there, I met numerous families with horrible stories of what had happened to family or neighbors within the previous two decades. It's hard to imagine witnessing such atrocities, most committed with machetes, to women, children, even the unborn, as well men. Occasionally, it would flare up again near sites where I was working. My roommates and bosses in the city monitored news and would send someone to get us if the need arose. Fortunately, it didn't at my sites, though the other volunteer working for the same Colombian organization, was evacuated once when guerrillas were reported approaching her site.

      Ironically, I felt very safe in the countryside – more so than in the cities. If the people I stayed and worked with were fearful, they didn't express it in my presence.

The End of the Beginning

Where coffee beans were processed

     The first course, at Valparaiso, was memorable in so many ways. The class grew to twenty-five.

     Throughout my stay, people invited me to their homes to meet their families and see their fincas (farms). Many grew vegetables, but most produce went to market. They always served strong coffee which they had grown, harvested, processed, roasted and ground themselves. Or, sometimes an alcoholic drink they had made from corn (chicha), sugar cane or fruit (guarapo), or anise-tinged and very strong aguardiente. Often the children would sing, or whoever in the family played guitar. Since there was no t.v., people shared stories, jokes, ideas - real conversation, especially in the evenings.

Adios Mis Amigas!

     At the end of the course, the women prepared a farewell lunch and presented a wonderful "clausura” (closing ceremony). They served champagne, rum and a huge lunch with chicken and a big salad (lessons learned!), and much more. Of course, I was served far more than anyone else, much to my chagrin and protestations. The school teacher had a record-player that ran on batteries so some of the women did skits and folk dancing - it was really fun. Soon, others joined in and the party

Some students & guest at clausura

continued for hours. A visiting agricultural consultant from another organization was invited to join the lunch, as well.

    
     The teacher and I had arranged for a Jeep to come up to get us in the late afternoon, but he didn't show up (not uncommon, and they had no way to let us know they had been delayed or had to cancel), so we arranged to borrow horses to get down the mountain very early the next morning in order to catch a bus to town. A couple of young boys (one just 5 years old) were sent with us – on foot – to guide us and to take the horses back. One led a burro that carried two big pouches of yucca for market, plus my little suitcase. I had to laugh at the sight of my college-graduation present of luggage bouncing on his back. By then I had learned to use only the overnight piece, more like a duffel bag, since almost always at least one leg of the trip would involve traveling on a horse, mule or by foot, often with posters, books and other equipment to carry too.

Eleven More

     The success of this course was most gratifying and, as would continue, I learned as much as I taught. There would be a dozen such courses all told, at a new site every three or four weeks. Each community was different in climate and personality, and class size would vary from a dozen to fifty.   
     Once, at an especially isolated community that had policia stationed there because of occasional flare ups of violencia (more on that later), I was given the police chief's apartment at the back of the station and he stayed at the schoolhouse until another home could be arranged for me. (At the first house, I slept on a cot in a hallway while the entire family slept in the next room. There was no door between us and something big [rat?] kept shuffling about, keeping me awake and clapping my hands to keep it away, thus keeping everyone awake.) The police chief had by far the nicest mattress I'd seen (a real one, not straw), but when I went to blow my candle out one night a tarantula was sitting beside it. He scampered away and though I searched high and low, I never found it again and, fortunately, it didn't find me either. I did review the first aid chapter on spider bites before blowing out the candle, though.

Kicking It Up a Notch

      At another site, months later, Doña Victoria Rodriquez de Herran from the Colombian Coffee

Handsome dudes I met on the road

Federation happened to be visiting. She was in charge of programs for women and children all over the country. I met some truly amazing people in those years and she topped the list. Meeting her changed my path. She inspired me to organize leadership courses for women where I'd teach the leaders from a given region and they would return to their communities to teach what they'd learned. Rather than teach all classes myself, I'd enlist representatives from the various organizations that offered services to rural communities. Through their presentations women would learn what resources and educational opportunities were available. My bosses at SENA agreed it was a good plan. They knew of Doña Victoria and already collaborated with the various organizations she recommended.

       After teaching at a couple of more sites on my own, I would take two months to prepare for the new courses. It kicked everything up a notch and, while I already lived out of my little suitcase at least five days a week, it was about to bounce on the hindquarters of a lot more horses and mules.