Week 4: Moving into Normality

After the mother of my house moved from washing my dirty clothes to the clean ones, I was by this time a little annoyed. I explained that I could put the dirty clothes on the floor so they don’t get confused. Except that, instead of floor I said ceiling.

Yesterday a tortoise tried to walk into the house. That’s when I discovered that we have two resident tortoises.

I don’t think my style has ever been so little appreciated. Or I’ve just never been made aware of it being so little appreciated. But, either way, I will never keep up with the gangster bling.

Things have suddenly got incredibly sporty.
And what’s more, I’m actually really enjoying it. Laura and I discovered a class at the gym. It’s on three times a week and involves wiggling to Shakira. It is particularly difficult for us because most Colombians have a bum that is somehow detached from their body. In fact is also a spectator sport for the men who unabashedly stand at the side and just look.

On Saturday there is a capoeira class. If I can learn to do anything that resembles the demonstration I saw last night then that would be very cool.

A chico from the café at school plays baseball professionally and invited us to go along on Saturday. I hadn’t quite realised this meant me doing baseball too. Having never even seen baseball before except in American peliculars it was quite exciting.

I need to up the factor of my sunblock. I got burnt and the headmaster called me a camaron (prawn).

The girlfriend of the baseball player wants to study English and asked me if I’d teach her. She invited me to her house in the city. Talking on the phone to make arrangements seems a near impossible task.

The disparity between the city and this pueblo is enormous. Any’s house had more than one floor and everything was painted white (My house in Puerto Colombia doesn’t have a floor in the kitchen, which has the advantage that you can spill anything you like on it and it doesn’t matter). After this she invited me to university with her and I went to one of her classes. It was amazing to be somewhere so big and with so many young people and somewhere that was air-conditioned! I want to go again to use the library but apparently I will have to make up a lie to be allowed in. I wonder if lying is different in another language.

So all is good except I didn’t sleep very well last night because I went for a walk with Laura yesterday evening and we were attacked by hundreds of mosquitos and then I got home and my room was full of mosquitos and then I had dreams about being attacked by droves of mosquitos in the thousands.

But it’s Semana Santa from tomorrow and I’m looking forward to a week off (although every week is like a week off here as people work so little).

Just in case you were wondering, the insanity continues. We went clubbing in a Karaoke bar and our friend won a chicken (an actual live chicken). Laura lives with gemelos (twins). They had their 18th birthday last Saturday. John is studying medicine. His girlfriend is 13…

Laura and Alex have confirmed that they are leaving the week after semana santa. If I stay this means my status in the village will move from the only blonde in the pueblo to the only gringa. I'm not sure how I'll fare going weeks without speaking English...

Week two: things are looking up, A LOT.

I went into Barranquilla city properly for the first time, 20 mins away on a local bus. It was like entering into a different world, suddenly chain stores and comida rapido (fast food). I bought cereal from a supermarket. To counteract the offence this might cause at home I bought Miladys a present.
My family seem to have accepted that I have strange eating habits and things have improved. Vegetables do exist. I’ve seen them; lurking away in shop corners saying, “choose me”, choose me”. Usually for lunch Alex and I have rice and meat. Yesterday I had rice and a fish head. One advantage however is the animal population within houses. Every house has at least one hungry cat or dog. Laura had complained about carbs to me before I arrived and the lack of vegetables. Yesterday for lunch I had oily pasta, with rice.
The people here are friendly. One day I was walking along the street and one of my students shouted to me to come over and she invited me into her house for lunch. Her mother told me all about how much she fancies Hugh Grant and Gordon Ramsay.
Then I got an eye infection. Something flew into my eye through the window on a bus. The mother of Laura’s house suggested putting breast milk in my eye. Why milk, and why specifically breast milk I wasn’t able to fathom.
One day last week as I was leaving the school a rather dodge looking hombre started speaking to me. I softened as I noticed that he too appeared to be suffering from some sort of eye irritation. Anyway, it turned out that he is from a newspaper and wanted to interview me for the television. It seems our foreign presence here makes newsworthy material and I am on TV at 5pm three days this week. It is quite embarrassing largely because I am having difficulty communicating with the interviewer throughout much of the interview. Apparently some other news channel heard of it so I am on National TV and not just a local channel.
I have made some Colombian friends. They work at the Café in the school. This forces me to try harder at my Spanish. We have a week off school for Easter soon and they have invited us camping by the beach. I am very happy to be living somewhere where people go camping by beaches when they have a couple of days off.
The best news to recount is our weekend adventuring. We went to the famous colonial old city of Cartegena, which is two hours away by bus. It was very strange to see other gringos at the hostel and hear people speaking English. I felt somewhat sorry for the lone Argentinian guy who couldn’t speak in his own language.

We went to a mud volcano. I think that and the pictures reveal all. It was fun. You can’t sink. You just slide around in a state of immobile buoyancy. It has enriching properties for the skin and afterwards we swam in a conveniently placed natural lake.
The next day we journeyed to Playa Blanca, which, after a local bus, boat and a half-hour moped ride, proved itself enormously. Palm trees, hammocks and moonlight swimming in the Caribbean Sea. Need I say any more?

The first week: One or two episodes

By the first weekend I was starting to panic about two things, the level of expected food consumption and the possibility of suffocation from motherly embraces. I thought travelling halfway across the world alone was an independent thing to do. But far, far away is reality and my Colombian family. There have been one or two rather amusing episodes which I’ll now recount.

The mother, Myladys, is caring, kind and delivers considerable over-compensation for the last 8 years lack of mothering. When I enter the house or exit my room into the shared living area I am followed about wherever I wander. This includes almost coming into the toilet with me. Every time I say something she approves of she squeezes me. Sometimes a part of me and sometimes all of me. I felt a strange reluctance to improve my Spanish because of this. I’m not quite sure why I tense up so much, as if every fibre of my English body is against it.

The episode with the toallas. On the third day of meeting her she followed me into my room. My Spanish has improved a little since but at the time most communication was being made through actions. Grinning and with raised eye gestures, she whispered, “toalla”, “toalla”. I just stood. She put her hand between her legs and started hopping and grinning more and repeating “toalla”. She looked me in the eye. I gaped helplessly hoping for the love of God that she wasn’t trying to ask me about what I thought she was trying to ask me about. I decided to play dumb. She called her daughter into the room to use the dictionary. In slow but never-the-less comprehensible English came “sanitary towel”. I could only frown, “Si. Por que sanitary towel?” The next day there were two sanitary towels lying on my bed when I came home from teaching.

Some food-related episodes. The day after the day I was given a bowl-full of the-day-before rice and meat at 8:00 am, I waited two hours before going to el bano. By this time I contemplated if long-term early avoidance of rice and meat could cause long-term bladder impairment. After visiting el baño I was given a bowl-full of nondescript fried carbs/oily pancake thing and deep-fat fried chicken and she watched as I ate.

I feel quite ashamed of this emergent fussiness, like every sitting is an ordeal. One day I was given something seemingly breakfast-like. 2 boiled eggs in a bowl with bread. The eggs were oh-so-salty. Like two rotund sea creatures. And the bread had oh-so-much sugar. It was like a kid at school had put sugar in the salt shaker. I took to playing psychological games in my head, “mmmm sugary salty eggs, my favourite food. Salt and sugar together are yummy. mmmmm”.

Every day I eat lunch with a different family. The idea behind this is so that we are not a burden to any particular family and so our presence is shared in the community and increases cultural interaction. Every time I enter the house where I stay Myladys tries to make me eat and drink and appears upset if I refuse to eat or drink. Every day I or laura, or Alex explained that we eat lunch with another family and we couldn’t possibly eat bowlfuls of rice and grisly meat because, as Alex explains it, ‘hay no mucho espacio en mi stomago’.

I brought a big Cadbury caramel chocolate bar with me because apparently Colombian chocolate is bad. Seemingly the mother knows it too because she ate all of it.

The father is a fervent communicator. He offers hugely elaborate but equally hugely indeterminate actions to aid comprehension. I particularly like his drawings. One evening I was going to another family on the outskirts of town to teach their children in exchange for dinner. Here people get about on ‘motos’. There are men wearing luminous orange vests who taxi you around on mopeds for a nominal fee. The father, Carolos, did not think it was a good idea for me to get on the back of just any-old moped. I agreed. He chose a driver he knew and took the man’s phone number and gave me his phone number. The evening was quite a success. After getting a little lost trying to find the address I taught two young boys and they coloured in stuff and I ate nice food and it was all very nice. When I got home later Carlos explained that I mustn’t get a moped with a person who doesn’t know him because they will take me to another part of town and rape me and murder me. To ensure I understood he made an impression that I’d be keen to forget of someone both raping and murdering me (I think by pulling my head off).

So as not to alarm you, there is not any especial risk of this. People here suffer somewhat from paranoia. We are told to wear sandals in the house in case we cut our feet, and the father suggested I take my earings out before I swim in the sea in case they rip my ears off.

Sitting at the table one morning, eating my bowl of fried carbs (property unknown), it came to my notice that the parents were watching a TV show in German. By now, thinking the pair of them was at least a little loco (crazy), I didn’t think much of it. They probably watch programmes in German all the time. What do I know? Still, I was sure they didn’t know any German, yet they watched it quite contentedly, expressionlessly. After some time one of them turned to me and asked if I was enjoying the programme.

I said, “si, esta bien. Pero, no hablo Aleman”
“es Aleman”?
“si”
“No ingles?”
“no”

The channel was changed.

Everything here is surreal. A friendly student at the school caught me in the street and I helped him with his English HW. He and his little sister walked me home at 10pm and he offered to give me a piggy-back for the last 100 yards. Living and teaching in a pueblo (village) here means:

Not needing a door key because there’s no such thing as all family members being out of the house at the same time.
Having plenty to do but also plenty of time to do it.
Students offering to give you piggy-backs.
Having iguanas come into your classes.
Students and teachers going to class if they fancy it or going home if they don’t.
Being related to, or knowing, everyone else in the pueblo.
All the women being called Myladys or Ladys.

It's also so hot and humid that you can't wear make-up because it just melts off your face, and you seem to sweat even in the shower.

I learnt the past tense. Story-telling makes more sense now.

On Friday night we discovered there was a boxing match. I have never been particularly interested in the idea of watching boxing, thinking it would be both violent and boring. It was violent but not boring. It was actually very exciting. When I got home we had a family bonding session. The daughter, Milagro and her cousin, who also lives with us, put on some music and started dancing. Dancing in Colombia is like nothing I've ever seen before. Reggaeton. They danced together (very close) and the daughter pole-danced whilst the mother clapped. In all it was very enjoyable, if not again surreal.

Las Aventuras de Fiona

"Colombia, the only risk is wanting to stay"

Or so read the notice at the aeropuerto. Let's hope so...

Unfortunately the chocolate bunnies, after almost devouring them on so many occaisions, have been had by the sun and are good to no one.

"Mi Casa es tu casa"

My family welcomed me with open arms and have told me that now I am their hija (child). This is confirmed by numberous hugs and copious quantities of food. My Mama even makes note of the clothes I have worn and washes them whilst I am out. There is no common language and explanations are difficult. On the path to el bano this morning I was given rice and meat and a large class of milk.

The most common questions from the ninos at the school are "tiene un novio" (have you a boyfriend?) or "donde esta Shreck"? It seems that although isolated, some things do reach here. I am not best pleased con Mike Myers and whoever else was responsible for that pelicular. Sometimes I hear "Shreck", but it's just an innocent cough from the back of the room. Apart from that the kids are charming and I only find myself alone for two minutes before I have a crowd around me.

I will follow this with some photos soon enough. The other two volunteers, Alex and Laura, are jolly and have been very welcoming and we went swimming in the sea yesterday, although the sand is black and most photos on google images in fact reveal tropical paradise in Puerto Colombia Venezela, not Colombia (???).