(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.
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