Getting Settled and Learning To Love It

 I
My first year in Colombia was filled with self-doubt. I didn't know what I wanted; the only thing that kept me in one place at that time was my boyfriend, who I was to marry a couple of years later, my rock, my stability, my anchor. (Figure that now, 45 years later I still use the same formula in my relationships :). It works fine for me, I suppose.
At one time we even went and filled an application to emigrate to Canada, but they didn't want us there. I guess they had already too many young college dropouts already without us engrossing the numbers.
I was learning the language, but not fast enough, because I thought (and Fabian heartily agreed) that it would be good if we spoke English to each other. He had been studying to become an English teacher at ILCA (Instituto Linguistico Colombo Americano) at the Colombo after dropping out from  university  as industrial engineer at the Universidad Tecnologiga de Pereira. Back in Cali from rainy, noisy party town Pereira he had dated a couple of gringas and got interested in becoming an English teacher. He spoke fairly good English at the time we met, but needed more practice with his woulds and shoulds so it became a lot "I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail, yes I would....."

But yes, I was picking up the language slowly but surely, at work and shopping (Fabian would not go in the women's clothing store to help me buy underwear ...), visiting his parents at San Fernando. and that first Christmas in Cali, when my brother went on a hunting safari with his new friends (Colombians) to the llanos and shot a farmer's prized breeding pig; I was abandoned and miserable in the apartment in Juanambú. We had moved from the three-bedroom flat behind Sears where you could hear the winds wailing like folks was out there dying ....

to a two-bedroom mini-flat just a few blocks from Colombo, up the hillside. It was a long climb and good for young poor people (like us) or rich old people (like our German landlord and landlady). It was a lovely neighborhood, very affluent and the houses with stone fronts were surrounded by gardens and protected by surrounding walls with broken glass set on the top to slow down prowlers. The nights were perfumed by fragrant, night-blooming flowers and bushes and the gardens and patios homes for colibries and other tiny birds that flew in and out in huge flocks.

Christmas Eve 1970 I was alone in that tiny flat and I wasn't a happy camper. Alone, the very first time, at Christmas, very far away from home and feeling lonely and homesick, I accepted happily to spend that Christmas at my boyfriend's house with his parents and family in San Fernando. That was my first sancocho de gallina (I hated it), my first arroz con leche (it was ok) my first dulce desamargado (weird) but where was the pig?  I learned to smile politely and say ....si gracias, muy rico, just not that hungry....
Getting to like the food was an ordeal. I lost a lot of weight, got amoebas from drinking tap water and missed my salt herring and boiled potatoes to no end. Fabian visited me every day after work and brought me a different tropical fruit. I liked the veggies, but not platanos, not for a long time. I liked the chicken, but not that Colombian passion of cooking everything, even the scrambled eggs, with lots of onion and tomato. I liked to visit the produce market and pick my own fruit and vegetables but I was still living in Juanambú with my brother and did actually very little cooking. That winter (I would still call that time of the year winter, Artie was dating a lot of local girls, often from poor barrios, and I was going steady with Fabián, eating out a lot, struggling with my Spanish and my amoebas. I was getting up very early in the morning and catching a bus to Yumbo on Calle 15 at 5 a.m. to be on time at the parrochial school I was teaching English.

Cali in those days was like a big town, the traffic was slower, people walked a lot, especially in the north of the town where I lived, the buses were always crowded and in bad shape, there were street kids, gamines, beggars and  garbage pickers all over the place. I learned how to pick my way on the sidewalks downtown not to stumble on people lying there with festering wounds and flies buzzing around. I also learned how to look the other way, just like my fellow Colombians did. It's incredible how adaptable a young person is. I had never seen a beggar or street person before or somebody who had so serious medical problems that were not being taken care of. I gave money to everybody who asked, until I was rebuked severely and told not to do it.

II
1971 was a lovely year, I was 23 and a blonde gringa in a city where foreigners were not so common and looked like everybody wanted to be my friend.  I was working from 4 to 6 hours a day, making just enough money to get by. I got treated for my amoebas, finally, and with the returning health my life was good. My brother started dating his students from the Colombo, among them was a pretty paisa girl (actually from Caldas, I think) Adela R. that he eventually married and took to live in the States with him. I was a good friend with Adela, a friendship that survived long past their divorce.
That year we also went to Juanchaco and Ladrilleros on Easter break, made trips to Silvia and Popayán with the Vegas in the dear old Guanabana (Chevy Bel-Air -54) and  were part of the sports event that Cali still remembers, the Panamerican Games.

Job Hunting

These were the early days of a new decade and things were on the move. I was, literally, taking my walk in the sun. The wheel had been set in motion, a choice had been made and could never been unmade. (I didn't know then that this was going to be my home for the next 12 years, had somebody told me that I would have laughed....no way, hell, I'm staying max a year, learn some Spanish and it's back to my uni).

There were a lot of young foreigners, mainly USAmericans, in Cali at that time. The war in Vietnam was still dragging on and many young men had chosen to move abroad instead of being drafted and sent to kill the yellow man and die in the swamps in South East Asia. My other brother, the one who had stayed in the States, had been drafted and eventually served a short period there, but that was yet to happen. At the time he was doing basic training and his wife was expecting their first child. The other young foreigners were Peace Corps volunteers; young men and women that have chosen to enlist to Peace Corps that was connected to JF Kennedy's Alliance For Progress program and had been  had been sent to less developed countries to serve. Then you had your ordinary pot-smoking hippies...


In March 1961, President Kennedy proposed a ten-year plan for Latin America:

“

...we propose to complete the revolution of the Americas, to build a hemisphere where all men can hope for a suitable standard of living and all can live out their lives in dignity and in freedom. To achieve this goal political freedom must accompany material progress...Let us once again transform the American Continent into a vast crucible of revolutionary ideas and efforts, a tribute to the power of the creative energies of free men and women, an example to all the world that liberty and progress walk hand in hand. Let us once again awaken our American revolution until it guides the struggles of people everywhere-not with an imperialism of force or fear but the rule of courage and freedom and hope for the future of man.[1]"

Finding a job in foreign city with no skills and no connections was never a piece of cake. The only option was to teach English, the only skill we had that was of some use to the local community. Not that I really qualified, for that either. Having majored in English Philology at the university I had a fairly good grasp of  grammar, but my spoken English was still...well...piping hot from the oven ;) Eventually, I landed a part-time assignment at the Colombo, teaching in local schools. (These were the jobs nobody would touch with a ten-foot pole).  I also started training at Bill Myer's place on Avenida Sexta A; not a job yet, but the elderly Argentinian loved his audience and took aspiring teachers to his training classes without a promise of a job. I think Victor Quintanilla was still director at the Colombo, where my brother had gotten a job. Our friends Bill and Kelsey got jobs at Meyer's that only hired native speakers.

With an income, albeit a very modest one, I felt like it might be able I'd stay the year out. I was still planning to travel back to Finland at that time. (I found a letter at the old farmhouse in Finland. It was written at that time and I was telling my parents about my job at the parochial school in Yumbo, catching a crowded bus at downtown Cali at a quarter to five in the morning and about the amoebas I got from drinking the tap water at the school. I  wrote about my the kids, the different racial mix, the joys and difficulties and told them I would be home for for Christmas! Many, many Christmases were going to pass, before that...)

Time Slid Out Of Focus

Time slipped out of focus when the red-eye flight of Ecuatoriana de Aviación, proceeding from Miami. having left at 00:30  with a stop at Panama in the dead of the night touched the runway at Palmaseca Airport in Palmira, Colombia, in 20th of August, 1970. Time and Place too, as a matter of fact. We walked down the steps emerging into a hazy dawn of the Valle del Cauca Province,. I was groggy from lack of sleep and the strain and stress of the tumultuous last weeks and a last minute decision to follow my brother down to Colombia instead of returning to Finland or trying to stay in USA and getting my situation there sorted out, perhaps by marriage or getting a student visa.

"

Yes. my brother had gotten himself a job at Centro Colombo Americano and while still back in Florida and preparing for his trip he asked me if I was going back to Finland or follow him to Colombia and I said not Finland. He offered to pay my ticket whichever way and I said yes, sure; Colombia here I come. I barely knew where Colombia was located on the map but I knew they spoke Spanish there and learning a new language sounded like a fun thing to do. "I'm going to teach English". he said, what could you possibly do there? "If you can teach English certainly so can I"
"My future students are all professional adults, doctors, lawyers, engineers...you're just a little wisp of a girl, a college drop-out, almost a child still". "Yes, but I can speak English, these people can't". Naturally, it was an overstatement as my English as a Second Language was piping fresh from the oven. But at 20 you think you are invincible." (from a post in MangoBiche, my social network site I had a few years ago)

Cali, the seductress of the Valle, La Sultana, was just waking up to a new day, the sun had barely risen and the Lady of the Valle was streching and yawning still, not quite ready get cooking. The nightly mists were hanging over the cordillera (the western finger of the Andes) and the hazy morning air was inmpermeated by the heady aromas of sticky, sweet molasses from the sugar mills and smoke from the cane fires. The alienness of it all struck me and I remember thinking that I was walking into somebody else's dream, not my own. No, not my own.

There were dark, small people all over the place. After we cleared the immigration we took a taxi to downtown. My brother was the only one who spoke Spanish. So who were "we"? We were four people, my brother and me and a friend of my brothers and his girlfriend; they were the original group who had been planning this trip  for a long time, I was a last minute addition to the group. Both men had been recently divorced from their Florida wives and wanted a fresh start, Why Colombia? I still don't know, perhaps because it was so close, a short flight straight down, going south.

We rented a room, just one room with four beds at Casa del Viajero, a hostel right in the middle of everything, on Avenida Sexta and Puente Ortiz, a short walk to downtown banking and shopping, to English Institutes concentrated on barrio Granada between the Cali River (Puente Ortiz) and a few blocks north (Avenida 22 North). The place was a dump, but they cleaned and changed sheets and towels every morning and there was a shower (a cold one) in the room; the toilets were down the hall. Next to our hotel there was a streetside cafeteria where we ate breakfast (scrambled eggs with tomato and onion) before going back in to sleep out our travel weariness.

 Snoopy's on Avenida Sexta, Norte. Puente Ortiz and the very first pictures of me and latest flame, taken by a street photographer ;)

The next few days (eventually weeks) we spent in getting our bearings. We walked the downtown area with stately old buildings (The Alferez Real, Plaza de Cayzedo, Hotel Aristi, Edificio Botero, ate in small restaurants (my deep mistrust for mondongo and other dishes prepared from bovine offal dates back to these first days in Cali) but I had a hard time adjusting to local cuisine. I ate hotdogs at Snoopy's, a little hole-in- the wall fast food joint run by two Americans, Cliff and Nick. They played cool music and the place was crammed with young expats, mostly Americans, the majority of them English teachers employed by The Centro Colombo Americano, Meyer's (used to be located in a beautiful Republican house that was later demolished to build that god-awful Palacio Rosa.

Married Life Is Suiting Me Well

 (This is the continuation to "Hey, I'm Getting Married".

The ”house” part consisted of a small hall that opened into a sizable living/dining room next to a a small patio with stone paving and bars and net for roof. There was a corridor through the house and on the right side there was a social area restroom, a large kitchen, maid's quarters , clothes patio, two bedrooms and a the main bathroom with a shower cabin and a large water heater. The other water heaters were located in the kitchen and in th back bedroom that gave out on Cra 43.

On the left hand side of the corridor there were two bedrooms in continuation to the living(dining area and the decorative patio.

The ”school” part of the house consisted of a swimming pool, four rooms, lawn, garage and a bathroom. We built a sandbox and brought in the slide, the wooden furniture for the school classes in geometrical forms and bright primary colours, the metallic desk and the swiveling stool, the file cabinet and the copy machine. We had a secretary working part time, a student from the institute whose name was Inés, with big brown eyes, but she didn't stay long, we really neither needed nor could afford to have a secretary.

The summers were always slow and lazy in Cali. Unproductive, too. The pre-school setup that we had named rather pompously ”Windsor School” at the insistence of our upper class friends to find a neme that was both in English and associated with high class and Europe. (Now, a lifetime later, I thing Hyacinth Bucket School would've been funnier, or Onslow Academy for Spoiled Little Brats). Anyway, Windsor School was on summer break from June to the end August, leaving us the income earned teaching English at Harris, which was also slow in the summer and the annual registration and income for ”matriculas and materiales” that trickled in slowly during the summer. People would come at any crazy time to enroll their kids and we were conned a couple of times too; making change for bad checks paying matricula for nonexistent kids. Living right next to your business was both good and bad. At the beginning, we had no privacy at all, people stopped by on Sundays, late in the evenings to look at the school, to discuss teaching methods (I didn't have the slightest idea of what they were talking about, but kept reading my book ”Kindergarten in USA” and finding answers....or making them up.) Once a lady stopped by to ask if we taught palmer method...err???I THINK I said that we use updated, modern methods which was probably the right answer anyway, since Palmer is a very outdated handwriting style, lovely, but no kids nowadays in Europe anyway can even read it nor can their parents.

The first couple of years we were pretty much fumbling in the dark. Neither of us had any experience with kids (except some English classes taught to age-integrated children groups at Harris on Saturday mornings), were not especially into children or child-rearing or pedagogy for that matter, we considered ourselves language teachers , nothing else. I had just turned 25, Fabián 27., both of us interrupted college careers behind us, mine in English Philology and World History in Turku University in Finland, he in Industrial Engineering at the Universidad Tecnologica in Pereira. I was good at languages and writing, he was good at math and drawing. None of us could sing or dance to save our lives.

Working with kids had proved to be more fun than what I had imagined. We played ”Ring-a-rang-a rosy” and ”London Bridge Is Falling Down” with the kids, taught them a little English, read books, played with manipulative material, let them draw, paint, work with playdough...nothing very horribly wrong with that. The mistake I made was to learn Spanish too well, too fast and as my Spanish became better, the amount of English I spoke to the kids got less. Fabian drove the bus together with Luis Aulden, the chauffer; we had purchased the second van at that time, the black-and-white Transit that he drove all those years after too, The amount of children increased and we started hiring more people.

That summer of 73 we met Eduardo Parra, the Ibaguereño established in Bogotá and transferred to Cali through mutual friends. He was looking for a place to stay, we had room and needed the extra income. He moved in the extra bedroom next to the clothes patio and we grew to be good friends. I used to invite him on complimentary Sunday lunches, we watched Bruce Lee-movies (”Enter The Dragon” ) with him. Somebody had told him he looked a little like Bruce Lee and he was a fan forever, after that. Fabian loved martial arts too and I liked everything at that time. Eduardo worked as an accountant or something like that at the French automobile franchise Simca (”Sim carro”) and drove company car, getting his simca traded in in every two years and we got to drive it when he was traveling.

A couple of his friends, two Bogotá girls came to visit and we gave them room and board during the week they were in Cali. That Christmas we went to Bogotá and spent a week there and stayed at the house of the older girl and her family. It was a lovely Christmas, Eduardo was with us in Bogotá and drove us all around, on sightseeing, we went to the Gold Museum, the Salt Cathedral in Zipaquirá, Simon Bolivar Museum, the National Museum, Monserrate in the cable car, Laguna de la Guatavita where the myth of the Eldorado has been said to have originated based on the custom of the chibcha

rulers to be covered in gold dust and taken on a royal float amidst the deep waters of the lake and being dipped in the water shedding all that gold in the bottom of the lake on his coronation day.

The original muisca village had been flooded when the river was dammed and a new village for the people had been constructed, in Spanish colonial style, very pretty but not very authentic. I bought some handicrafts from the Indigenius artisans before returning to Bogotá the same day. 

 

We spent the New Year with the Bogotá family we were staying with. We had home-made tamales and sabajon that resembles eggnog, it's made with egg and aguardiente. This was the first time I tasted non-valluno tamales; these were made with rice stuffing and could not compare. Taking showers in Bogotá was an adventure. The family had a tiny water heater for the shower and the water was never hot, just tepid and already cold when it hit your feet. It was cold at nights, just a few plus degrees, humid and unpleasant, with no heating. People wore thick woollen ruanas over their pyjamas for breakfast.

(Ruana is the Colombian poncho. Both men and women wear them out in the country and in the small, cold altiplano towns, Men's ruana has a hole in the middle and is often dark-coloured, stripey or patterned, women's ruana is open front, in bright colours and you wear it like a huge scarf with one end thrown over your shoulder.)

Traffic in Bogotá was terrible, a total chaos at that time. It doesn't look anything like that any longer, with the transmilenio transport system and bikeways built under Mockus' and Peñalosa administrations Bogotá became a modern city, a transitable city. They haven't been able to do anything about the lousy weather though. Cold and rainy at nights, mild and rainy during the days, no real warmth due to the altitude, except for short moments at midday sun and you need a jacket and an umbrella every time you leave home.

Hey, I'm Getting Married!

With the premarital instruction sorted out we concentrated on our wedding plans. The chapel was booked, the paperwork sorted out, the wittnesses for the notary registration of the marriage were to be my in-laws, the matron-of-honor a good friend and her husband was to be the best man, I selected three bridesmaids, two of them were my students and the third one was Adela Perez Restrepo, engaged to my brother and soon to travel to USA to marry him in Florida. The gown material was bought, the bouquet was ordered, yellow roses and queen-of-the valley orchids, the cake, the wedding invitations, all the small and big details that have to be taken care of when having a formal church wedding.

Soon after we had told his family about our wedding plans my future Mother-in-law paid me a visit. It was cordial yet strained. I spoke enough Spanish now to carry a conversation and we had been getting along quite well, but never got close. She wanted to know my reasons for marrying her son. (This scene is just like out of a tv soap opera or telenovela in Spanish)

Doña Cecilia: ” I just want to know what are your purposes, exactly for taking away my youngest son from the family”

Me: ”This is a love match, there are no ulterior motives”

She:” Are you sure my son is capable of supporting a family”

Me: ”Money is not the issue. I can support myself”.” If there's going to be children at a later date (no, I'm not pregnant) we'll both support them, of course.

She:” Are you planning to take my youngest son away from Colombia, drag him with you to the other end of the world where bears roam the streets?”

Me:”There are no bears in the cities, except at the zoo in Finland”

”And no, we're planning to give Colombia a try at least at the time being. We have not discussed moving abroad at all.”

After she left I had an uncomfortable feeling of not having convinced her at all.

The result of this visit was, however, that the Doña Cecilia engaged herself fully to planning the wedding. She took charge of the food and drink, mail wedding announcements and invitations to family members in Bogotá and USA. The Vegas had always been a small family, the paternal grandfather having moved to Bogotá from Bucaramanga and most of the relatives from father's side still living in Bogotá and Cundinamarca. My father-in-law was also born in Bogotá. His father had married a valluna, Carmen Rivera, and moved to Cali establishing a residence in one of the huge old houses of El Peñon, El Charco del Burro, when it was just family houses, before they built the hotels , high rises and restaurants there. He had one brother living in Cali known to be a staunch communist and two brothers in New York and the eldest son had also moved to USA with his Caucana wife and living in Chicago.

Doña Cecilia was the illegitimate daughter of Eva Brandt and (probably) some guy whose last name was Orejuela. She was, in turn, the illegitimate daughter of Josefina Brandt, daughter to a wealthy German landowner from Tuluá (Gustavo Alvarez Gardeazabal mentions him in his book ”Los Condores No Entierran Todos los Dias). The German had emigrated to America at the beginning of the 18^th century, escaping from the interminable wars in Europe and established his hacienda amids the lushest greenery of the valley of the Cauca River. He had two children, a son and a daughter but had not registered the marriage to the local criolla beauty and his children did not inherit him. The son had gone to seas and was not heard of ever again, the daughter, Josefina, had numerous children by different men and that's the reason why some of the Brandts are quite European -looking (Doña Cecilia had auburn hair, white complexion and hazel eyes, cousin Ana Cecilia is a dark blonde, Fabian had stunning blue eyes and dark complexion) and some are quite dark with black blood.

When the German died he was the sole owner of huge stretches of cultivated land that could not be claimed by anybody. Three Sundays in row a drummer parted from the cathedral steps on the main town scare beating his drum throug the streets of Tuluá shouting his message to anybody who thought himself to be entitled to Señor Brandt's lands and posessions please present themselves at the city hall, but nobody came and the fortune passed to be the property of city of Tuluá. Illegitimate daughters inherited nothing, even if they were recognized by their fathers and carried their last names.

(This is the family story told by Doña Cecilia herself, to me, a few years before she died. I have not been able to verify any parts of it, but the racial mix seems to be about right)

From Don Miguel's side it was all creole mixed with altiplano indigenous blood, perhaps a drop or two of Motilon Indian blood from the Santanderes. They were short and stocky, round-faced and beady-eyed men, hard workers and honest to a fault.

December 16^th was a Saturday and the first day of the Christmas break at work, we had a month off until mid-January and we had little money so we didn't plan any honeymoon, just a trip to a cold-climate hotel in Silvia over the weekend.

Two days before the wedding the phone rang and there was a female voice demanding to speak with Fabian. He never admitted that he might have known the identity of the caller. She begged and pleaded him not to marry the gringa; he would never be happy with her, he should marry a local girl instead. I'm sure there was much more that was said there that he decided not to tell me but I let it be.

The wedding went very well, first at the church where we arrived late because we were ”kidnapped” by the matron of honour and the best man and given a tour of the city while peole were waiting at the church. I thought it was quite silly but they said it was customary....we were supposed to be late. I had a white gown sown by a seamstress copied from a fashion magazine for brides, a diadem with flowers and a half-veil and a short train to my gown, Fabian had a rented smoking. Fabian had been at the church at the break of dawn and received the Communion, it was to be a mixed marriage with no eucaristia offered, We were wedded by the Canadian priest, nobody had any objections, we read our vows from a book and it all was filmed on super8 but whatever happened with that film I have no idea.

The wedding reception was at our school and we drank champagne, ate dinner and cake, danced and had a merry, joyful party with 6 waiters and about 200 invited guests, half of them from the English schools we worked at. I had invited all my students since I had nobody from my family there.

We spent a few days in Silvia at the tourist hotel there, I was longing for a change of temperature and scenery and it was a lovely weekend, we took long walks on narrow dirt roads, hiked a little cross country up the mountains and following the river with the iciest water, there were ancient eucalyptus trees that grew on its banks and the whole upcountry was permeated by the fragrance of eucalyptus, wild herbs and high-altitude grasses. We walked the dirt road at night, with the dim town light far below and the skies were studded with uncountable stars. I don't think I can walk those roads again, ever, without fear, like we did back then, when there were no guerrilla up those hills.

Back to town, we went right back to work. Up at the blushing dawn, picked up children in our van all around the northern barrios, near west and near south, kept them busy for a few hours and then took them home. We had lunch around 12:30, slept a siesta, took a shower and headed off to the Institute to teach English in the evenings.

I was in the middle of an early evening class when the secretary, Maria Cecilia, came to get me, my in-laws needed to see me. Don Miguel had a telegram in his hand; my dad had passed away. I mourned his passing with grief mixed with guilt: I had known when I left my family and Finland that my father was seriously ill and may not live long with the heart disease he had. He had had his first coronary attack years ago and there had been several others after that. He walked slowly, sat around a lot, his tempered had mellowed, but he hadn't quit smoking. He would sneak cigarettes when my Mum wasn't watching but he didn't drink much any longer.

I considered going to his funeral but decided against it. It was a long and expensive trip and we didn't have the money for it. I figured that my presence at his graveside would not bring any joy to him either, he was beyond that. My brother from USA was going with his young son; together with my two sisters they would have to be the support that my Mum needed at that time. I mourned him thousands of miles away, on the other side of the globe, in tropical Cali when he was lowered to his grave on a snowy March afternoon 1973. My mum had said that he died happy about me having settled down and gotten married; I guess he had worried about me being alone so far away. My husband-to-be had written him a letter asking for my hand; he had much appreciated that fine gesture, not that he could have done much about it even if he had objected.

That winter we also had to move away from the nice pool apartment. It was actually a good thing since the place was not that well suited for our purpose for it had no green grass or any yard at all, just huge rooms around a large pool and a second floor with three bedrooms in a row and a bathroom with a bathtub. We had sublet the second floor to Maria Cecilia, Maria Cristina Harris' cousin and the secretary at the language institute and her husband Freddy, who was much older, separated from the first wife and sported glasses and a smallish mustache. They moved out first and we started looking. We saw the ad for the Tequendama house in the newspaper, El Pais, it was a rental agency (inmobiliaria) that was managing it. The setup was perfect: in front of Tequendama park with all the green area you could wish for for small children to play in, quiet, residential neighbourhood and the property consisted of a rectangular one-storey house. The owner had later purchased the lot behind the house that gave out on the next street so it ran acoross the block, with entrance at Cra. 42 B and the grarage at 43. The back part consisted of a semi-open structure with a swimming pool, lawn, garage, two bedrooms on ground level and staircase to an open-air room like a roofed terrace and a bedroom and bathroom next to it. The door in the middle could be closed and thus the job part isolated from the home part. It had two separate telephone lines too, in one word it was PERFECT!

We signed the contract at he agency's office and that Tequendama house was going to be our home for the next ten yers, perhaps the happiest time in my life, in hindsight.

Going South

At that time I was having major trouble legalizing my stay in Colombia. I had overstayed my tourist visa and the extension, paid the fine and applied for work visa through Colombo. I had made one trip to Ipiales and across the border on Puente Rumichaca into Ecuador, the little town of Tulcán that had the nearest Colombian consulate but got no visa...they said that the telegram from the Ministry of External Affairs had not arrived.

That bus trip to Ipiales and Tulcan was a long one: it took 10 hours from Cali to Pasto over and around the mountains, through sleepy Caucan villages, with stops for dinner, breakfast, a cup of hot chocolate at the dead of the night up in the Andes at some tiny Indian hamlet. The scenery was breathtaking, the sheer height of the road and the depth of the gorges beside the road, with tiny silvery ribbons of rivers meagering in the bottom of those chasms was an unforgettable sight. After a change of bus in Pasto the trip from there to Ipiales took about four hours and the road was higher, the gorges deeper, the rivers further away from us in the bus and the road more dangerous. My whole body was aching after a sleepless night on the unconfortable bus seat, but I had my boyfriend with me and felt no fear. The vegetation was more sparse and the land was mainly cultivated: little square patches fenced in, in varying shades of green clinging to the sides of the mountains. Tiny houses stuck on great heights, on the top of the farms and I was wondering how did those people ever have the strength to climb up there after a day of hoeing and scraping on their fields. (I was told that the Indian rode his horse uphill with his woman walking behind the horse carrying a bundle of firewood on her back).

Ipiales is a cold, sad little Indian town right next to the Ecuadorean border. The locals get drunk on weekends and lacking the necessary enzymes to break down alcohol they get very intoxicated and pass out during the night, falling asleep on park benches and sidewalks; a good thing thatthey carry their traditional ruanas on them as a wrap. This was a weekday, however, and we checked in a cheap guest house or hotel and took the taxi over to Tulcan only to be sent away without any stamps in my passport.

Fabian suggested that since we were in Ipiales we should go and see the Cathedral called Las Lajas. He told me the legend that gave birth to the construction of the church: a little Indian maiden had seen the face of Virgin Mary on a flat slab of stone and the cathedral was built at the spot over a gorge with a great height and stunning scenery; it was and still is a major site of pilgrimage for the local indigenous population and people from other parts.

I made another trip to Ipiales, later that fall of 71, by plane this time and was sent back again, no telegram, no authorization, no visa. The DAS was looking for me, they had visited the apartment earlier and I was getting worried. I went and talked with Colombo's immigration lawyer again and finally it turned out that the authorization was never sent from Bogotá because Colombo had refused to pick up the tab for the cable since I was no longer working for them. They just didn't think it was important to let me know, so as soon as the Ministry informed that the authorization was granted I travelled to Ipiales, but the telegram was not sent because nobody paid for it. I offered to pay for it myself and that worked!

Two weeks later the cable was sent to Tulcán and I bought a plane ticket to Ipiales.

The 6th Panamerican Games in Cali

That was a memorable year in Cali: the city had been selected to be the seat of the 6^th Panamerican Games and went through a fabulous transformation. The sports arenas that Cali has today were built at that time: the Panamerican Swimming Pools and Baseball diamond, the Bicycle Velodrome, the Pascual Guerrero Stadium already existed and the Gimnasio Evangelista Mora next to the Football Stadium completed the sports installations.

 (In the back of the photo, written with a delicate hand by Leonor Cuervo:
Cali, Julio1971
"La pareja tricolor"
Uno de los ensayos previos a las justas panamericanas")

 The student residences at Univalle were converted into Olympic Village, the fountains and parks on the Fifth Avenue were constructed, the whole city vibrated with energy, renovation, growth and joy. A totally new traffic police corps was formed:Los Guardas Bachilleres, they were high-school graduates all in their new nifty blue uniforms.

We were, of course, in the middle of it all. My boss was in charge of providing the city the group of bilingual personnel that would be employed as interpreters and translators at the different events. Both my brother and my boyfriend took the training, for some reason that I don't recall, I didn't. It may have well been that I didn't feel confident enough with my Spanish at that time. I sat with Fabian in the classes and even if I didn't get full credentials I still had a badge and the sleeve with ”Interprete Oficial” written on it. We were att he initial Press Conference with the delegates from different American countries; we were interpreting for people from Barbados and I remember understanding only about half of what they said. Then we all got our assignments, some people got sent to Lago Calima for the sailing and yachting competitions, my brother was assigned to the Country Club for the shooting events and we went to the newly built velodrome with a track made of wood imported from Africa. We were assigned a booth right next to Radio Todelar and the Colombian TV. Fabian announced all competitions and the results in Spanish, I did the same in English. The media people sent us food and soft drinks hoping to be first to get the official results before their competitors, nothing was allowed to go out before we said it. It was a lot of fun and totally exhilarating to announce the new Panamerican records made by Martin ”Cochise” Rodriguez and hear the whole velodrome, all 20 thousand people jammed in there burst into cheer and applaud. I was complemented a lot for my good media voice and diction.(perhaps I should have chosen to study to be a journalist anyway, like I had initially planned when graduated from high school).

On our free time we went to every sports event in town, the swimming competitions at the Olympic

Pools, the football matches at the Pascual Guerrero, we didn't pay for the entrance and went before others in the lines. What a summer! In the fall, after the Games were over, Fabian's parents went on a trip to USA and Fabian got to use the family car, a 54 Chevrolet BelAir meantime. It was kept in mint condition of course and he had promised to take good care of it. We went for picnics and rides, visited the neighbouring towns and villages, drove to Pereira where he had studied industrial engineering at the Technological University but had quit because he was sick all the time (bad climate) and saw naked Simon Bolivar statue. The car broke down, though, and he started a frenetic race to get it repaired before his parents's imminent return. He believed that they would never let him have the car again if it was broken at their return. The mechanic screwed in the last new part the day before mum and dad came home.

Fabian had been teaching at Colombo, mostly in high schools and also as Spanish teacher before the games; yet Colombo had decided NOT to give their teachers leave of abscence to work as interpreters at the games, probably out of spite because it was the competition, Donald Harris who obtained the contract to provide this personnel. People took time off anyway for the games and my brother was eventually re.-hired, but Fabian decided to look elsewhere. I spoke with my boss and Fabian was hired to teach English at Harris Institute together with me.

SPRING BREAK AT JUANCHACO

We had moved from the 13^th floor apartment next to Sears to a tiny two room and a kitchen apartment in Juanambú, just a few blocks away from Colombo. It was a house owned by a German couple and they had rebuilt the house so it had a rentable apartment with its own entrance. The neighboring house was owned by the same family, a daughter, I think and they had done the same thing so we were a bunch of young foreigners living up the hill there. It was a steep climb and very lovely up there; in the evenings the camias and palosantos would spread their almost intoxicating tropical fragrance all over the barrios: Granada, Juanambú, Centenario.

That was before those lovely, old-fashioned barrios were sacrificed to the progress of the city of Cali and the Republican-style homes became offices, boutiques, restaurants and bars, the gardens with camias and jasmins became the thoroughware between the north and the south of the city and the charmful villas were removed to build the bridges next to Intercontinental Hotel.

There was a discotheque called Saint Tropez, not far from the Cafe de los Turcos, that we used to go to, very popular with the foreigners. We never hang out with my brother, except on a few occasions when we went hiking up the Three Crosses hill, or followed the Pance River up the hillside to a swimming hole with icy, crystal water.

We went to Juanchaco and Ladrilleros beaches on the Pacific coast on one Easter week holiday, together with Arties new girlfriend, Adela and her two sisters that she had to bring along to be allowed to go on a trip with the gringo. (They rented a cabin for three in Juanchaco and my brother had to sleep on the beach;( ) We took a bus to Buenaventura and Fabian bought a bottle of aguardiente at the docks, he later claimed that the aguardiente was bad, but it was probably just his own natural intolerance to alcohol which made him a useless, miserable drunk the first day of the vacation. The trip from Buenaventura to Juanchaco took almost an hour in a tugboat and there was no peer, we had to walk on some planks to get ashore and got really wet. We rented a cottage, which was...very rustic to say the least. It was made of grey, unpainted boards, the floor was made of planks with a centimeter or two-wide cracks between each board and the furniture consisted of two beds, That's it. No electricity, no bathroom, nothing but walls, roof, floor with cracks and two beds. And a drunk boyfriend who was in a black, horrible mood.

The tropical night fell on the beach, grey, wide, shallow water and clean shoreline; there were a lot of people mostly from Cali, university students, couples, groups, young people and it was party on the beach, bonfires, aguardiente, guitars and singing. We fought, made up, fought and made up again and finally Fabian fell asleep drunk and exhausted.

The next day was a little better; we swam in the ocean, walked on the beach and dealt with a lot of issues, most of them stemming from our different cultural background and upbringing. He had a horrible hangover and was very remorseful: he said he resented the fact that he was not the first man in my life and that was very much in love with me but felt that he could not trust me entirely because of the different values we had. We sorted out a lot of personal stuff that day, never to take them up again. We ate lunch and dinner at the local eateries: rice, fried plantains and canned tuna: the fishermen had not brought anything back in their boats. We drank cocacola and postobon direct from the bottles and probably got amoebas anyway.

The third day we hiked with a bunch of other young people through a neck of woods on a narrow path to another, smaller but whiter beach, Ladrilleros, a perfect half-moon of a beach, clean and pristine. On the way back we followed the shoreline and stopped at some frehwater falls to bath in the warm, sweet shower plunging down over a cliff formation. My sandals broke apart there and I got to walk rest of the time barefeet. I also got one of my most horrible, painful sunburns I have ever had; with resulting fever, blisters, peeling and unbearable itch all over my arms, face, legs, back and neckline.

Roots and Feria: Sugar Barons and Conquistadores, Indigenous Tribes and Beauty Queens

FERIA DE LA CAÑA DE AZUCAR

Santiago de Cali was founded in 1536 by a bypassing Spanish conquistador, Sebastian de Belalcázar whose statue still stands, horseback and ironclad, looking over the city from a vantage point on the Avenida Circunvalar. He came from the south, having started out from the Viceroyalty of Peru and following the ancient Inca roads crossed the border to the viceroyalty of Nueva Granada with a small warband, founding cities on his way, He had just founded Popayán and was on his way north to meet up with the other conquistadores and join them in their search for El Dorado, the Golden One.

There were native tribes living in the area: the Calimas with beautiful golden handicrafts, the Yanaconas of the mountains, originally from the south (they're related to Incas), the ferocious Jamundies of the River Lilí Valley and the settlement grew very slowly at the beginning. The Spanish and the Criollos who moved in the area were struggling until at the beginning of the 18^th century the sugar cane started to be grown in the fertile soil of the valley and with the cane came the economic prosperity. The area around Cali had agricultural importance the soil being of top quality and lots of other foodstuffs had been grown and continued being cultivated both in the lowlands and on higher elevations: cotton, rice,corn, vegetables and fruits; this was the first place where I saw a pineapple field too. But the backbone of the Cali economy was to be the intensive cultivation of sugarcane and the sweet smell of cane juice impermeated the very air the caleños breathed. Cutting cane is a backbreaking job and the poor populace of the countryside around Cali was employed at the fields: even today you can drive up the road to Palmira and beyond northward and see men carrying machetes going to the fileds, in small groups, at the first break of dawn. After being cut, the cane is transported in ”cane trains”, carts loaded with cut cane and hitched to each other and finally to a tractor that pulls them and transports this cane to the sugarmills where the juice is pressed out of the cane and the sugar is processed. The brown sugar is pressed into blocks of panela, a staple in the Valluno kitchen and all over Colombia. The leftover (bagazo) is used in making paper or burned to fertilize the fields. There's smoke hanging over the fields at certain times of the year, after the harvest from the cane fires.

The Sugarcane Fair or just the Feria of Cali as the festival is also known will forever be part of my Christmas memories. It started on Christmas Day, with Horse Parade, when people mounted their horses dressed up as Spaniards or mestizo cowboys would ride on a prearranged route, usually a main street or throughfare. Beautiful horses from the country clubs and outlying fincas, people all dressed up and perhaps a few aguardients under their belts already; it was a pleasure to watch. (The horse parade had to be suspended lately, because of the drunkeness and disorder, animal cruelty and abandonment; several horses had been flogged to death and left to die after the drunken riders had gotten off them...this is part of the loathsome legacy of the drug cartels in Cali.)

The next day there would be the beauty queens parading through the city in carrozas or decorated floats: I was mesmerized to see so much colour and decorations, such tropical splendour and lavishness. It was this year that the Cali newspaper started printing colour photographs and I used to clip them out and send them with my letters to my mum and sisters.

Señorita Do You Know The Way To Ipiales?

SEÑORITA DO YOU KNOW WHERE IPIALES IS LOCATED?

I just stared at the pilot. Was he kidding? No...it didn't look like he was kidding. Isn't he supposed to know where he was flying to or how to get there? ”No”. I answered. ”Isn't it your job to know that”? ”Well, yes”, he said, ”I had no trouble finding it yesterday and that was the first time I flew there.” ”All these mountain villages look the same”, he added. His radio was on and he was communicating with flight tower in Pasto. ”We're flying over a town with a football stadium in the middle”, he said to the radio, ”that can't be Ipiales”. ”No, that's Tucarres” came the answer, more to your left...and then coordinates and instructions. ”Gods alive” I thought, ”he really doesn't know! I'm the only person in addition to the young pilot here in this 20-seat air taxi who knows that we're lost in a tiny bimotor over the Andes.”

The whole trip had started out rather badly. The night before while I was getting my stuff together my brother just had to come with a nice piece of information of an Avianca Air Taxi that had just come down on the Andes near Manizales, all 18 passangers and the pilot dead. In the morning Fabian drove me in the Guanabana (the family car's nickname) to Calipuerto, the old airport in Candelaria instead of Palmaseca that had just opened. He had to step on it to make it on time to Palmaseca and I almost missed the plane, they were taking the ladder away when I was running on that glass-walled corridor and the police there yelled at the personnel down there to wait for the señorita. When the señorita got on the plane the only seat available was up front right next to the pilot. Of course I sat there, he wasn't intimidating in any way, a young caleño about my age, looked friendly enough. I had a pretty pleasant flight chatting with the flirty captain until he asked me if I knew where Ipiales was located.

Well, he found Ipiales, right next to a frightful chasm and an airstrip that stopped abdruptly at a mouintainside. I said goodbye and thanks no sweat, took a taxi to town and checked in a hostal downtown, my appointment at the consulate was for the next day. I guess it must've been for the scare I had or something but I got my period right there in Ipiales and I was not prepared. So, I went out to buy a tampax. I walked in a drugstore and asked the employee since I saw no tampax or tampons anywhere....he had no idea what I was talking about. No luck in the three or four other drugstores I found, so finally I gave up and bought a package of old-fashioned sanitary pads, thick and unconfortable. Back at the hotel I ran into A Swedish guy and spent the rest of the evening in his room talking about lingonberry jam and meatballs...nice guy.

The next day I took a taxi over the Rumichaca bridge, stopped at the immigration and customs to get a stamp, went into town and into the Colombian consulate, on time. The lady looked at me and shook her head....”Sorry, we have no stamps”. ”Oh no, not again!” ”Did you get the telegram?” ”Yes, we did, but we are out of stamps for resident visas, you'll have to come back another time.” She was flipping pages in my passport and suddenly she looked up at me. ”But you are not a Norteamericana?”No, Ma'am”, I'm from Finland, Europe”. She told me to sit down and wait. I walked out of that Consulate with an Official Visa, no fee. She had a chip on her shoulder against gringos.

I made it back to the airstrip and this time the plane was slightly larger but the pilot was the same. I sat up in the front again (he invited me to the tiny cockpit) and had a lovely albeit bumpy flight back with turbulences, talking with the pilot and with a magnificent view of the Maciso Colombiano, the place where the three Cordilleras meet in the south.

Cali Before The Rise Of The Cartels

Cali Before The Rise Of The Cartels

Cali before the rise of the culture of drugs and raunch was a rather pleasant city; quite provincial, quite parrochial and proud of a lot things; its climate, its women, its sugar cane fields and and the still rather new industrial zone in Yumbo producing cement and paper and other stuff for all Colombia, its proximity to the Pacific coast and the main port of exportation of the country, Buenaventura, its fertile valley where you could throw a clothes pin of wood and a tree would grow, its afternoon breeze that cooled the homes and streets after the past noon heat peaking at about 2 p.m.; the festival of the kites inthe Panamerican park in breezy August days, the new sports installations built for the Panamerican Games held in Cali in 1971; this event gave the city a total facelift and made everybody very proud of their lovely city.

Cali was founded early on, in 1536 by a Spanish conquistador Sebastian de Belalázar coming from the south, the viceroyalty of Peru traveling along the Andes and founding cities and towns. There's a statue of the Spaniard on a hilltop, in the western suburb of Santa Teresita, on the Avenida de Circunvalación where the iron-clad soldier is pointing towards the Pacific. People in Cali used to joke about the statue saying Don Seba is asking where is his gold and pointing to the statue of Cristo Rey (indicating the monks), Cristo Rey says I dunno ask my mum, the Virgin of Yanaconas whose statue is behind him, further away on a mountaintop.

This is agricultural zone, early on planted in sugarcane in the true colonial monocultivation fashion and the wealth of Cali was produced in these ingenios(sugar mills). The town itself languished in provincial stupor until in the turn of the century (1900) it started slowly growing and finally its growth was vastly accelerated with the period of internal conflict called La Violencia in the fifties, when there was a massive migration from the countryside and especially from the coffee-growing area in the north of the Valle to relative safety of the city.

Coming Out Of The Mountain Cold

into the deepening dusk, shadows lengthening and the sky turning into shades of violet contrasting with the greenery of the valley and the sloping foothills of the western cordillera, the mountainside turning into a twinkling wall of yellow lights, coming back home to Cali from any destiny on the cold mountain was sheer pleasure. Especially ay nightfall, when the contrasting play of the artist's palette created the most exquisite nuances all tinted with homecoming and warmth.