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...)
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