:+ de julio ao++

vov.v, coioxni.
D
ear friends,
I have been thinking about unex-
amined dimensions of the theory of relativity.
Although I only traveled ve hours by plane
from the southeastern United Stateshardly
a trip into the stratospheremy experience
of time has changed. I left Atlanta on +: June
and have now been in Colombia a little over six
weeks. But it feels like more than six months,
sometimes much more: when I return to the
States, will friends and the landscape have aged
beyond recognition. Vill I have any connec-
tion at all.
Since coming to Iopayn I had been look-
ing for work teaching English, something to
extend beyond my volunteer assignment with
Sueos Compartidos. Te volunteer phase
ended aa July. Two weeks ago I was oered a
position at a private co|cg:o, or high school, and
decided to stay at least until December. My
host has oered a room in her house. I also
have two private students, a +o-year-old and
a +a-year-old, and will continue teaching ten
local English teachers two afternoons per week
at Asoinca, the teachers syndicate in Cauca.
I do not have extraordinary events to nar-
rateno last-second escapes from the r.c
or torrid aairs. I did see a horse separated
from its driver streaking in panic the wrong
way down a thoroughfare leading to the Ian-
American Iighway. It pulled a cart that, as
motorcyclists swerved to get out of the way,
sideswiped a commuter bus and smashed the
front window of a taxi and caved in its hood.
Te horse, cart still attached, sprinted out of
view, its hooves clapping the cement. Shouts
and horn blasts followed it. No one was hurt,
but everyone was stunned by the capricious-
ness of daily tra c that must accommodate
pedestrians, bicycles, mopeds, motorcycles,
cars, buses, trucks, and animal life. Together
the various modes of transportation create one
heaving, chaotic lump.
Te house I live in with Luz Dari and her
family is in the barrio named after Camilo Tor-
res, a revolutionary Catholic priest. Te barrio
is on the city fringe, abutting the small airport.
Te neighborhood seems to be in process,
piles of sand and mortar on the sidewalks
and streets that end in vegetation or heaps of
rubble. Te football eld a few blocks away falls
o on one side into a valley of tall grasses and
grazing horses known as the hole. Its a dump-
ing ground for garbage and, if the wind is right,
smells of raw sewage that courses through the
river and culverts after rain. Te Iurac volcano
to the east creates a dark backdrop for the
dome of Iopayns white cathedral. Te clouds
that usually obscure the volcanos peak glow red
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when the sun sets: rainbows
appear then disappear in the
green mountain crevices.
Te neighborhood comes
to life early, around o ..x.,
although roosters start crow-
ing around +::o or :. Te man
who operates the small bakery
across the street is always at
work. I admire his industry and
even envy the predictability
of his routine. Every day he
is there, shaping pastry, stu-
ing empanadas, frying them
in vats of oil. Every day the
same. Appearing in slippers
and house dresses, as if they
were wandering through their
own living rooms, women stop
to buy his bread. Teenagers
on their way to co|cg:o at o::o
slink by, morosely, the girls hair
still straight and damp. Tey
are dressed in school uniforms
with checked skirts, white socks
pulled to their knees.
Music is distorted and
persistent, Latin instrumen-
tal recordings at hyperkinetic
pace coming from an unknown
sourcefrom the open bays of
a car repair shop. from a neigh-
bors courtyard. from a street
vendors megaphone. Ampli-
ed voices, sometimes live,
sometimes recorded, bellowing
between snippets of annoying
tunes like Te Entertainer, sell
newspapers and pizza and fruit.
Raucous laughter spills into
the street, onto Carrera as in
Camilo Torres, and it is at such
moments that I want to refer
to Clarice Lispectors descrip-
tions of Brazilian life. So much
was happening in Brazil, she
said, so much dance, so much
commerce, so much football,
that she felt diminished by my
smallness.
I know what she means.
I admit to great discomfort
at being in a culture oriented
around joy, raucous laughter,
celebrations, dancing, week-
ends, holidays. Im not accus-
tomed to it. Im an anti-Tolstoy,
terried by vitality but, at times,
an eloquent author of pain. I
hear laughter everywhere, and
I feel excluded from almost all
of it, staccato Spanish idioms
ying by unparsed, exploding in
peals of glee. Sometimes I pre-
tend to understand, sometimes
I look gormlessly toward the
ciocwisv rox rov, iuz n.is c.c o
coioxni. invvvnvcv n.v: rnv ocv
iovv srov, . ocoic woyrr.: noiin.v
r.rric: .rviv wirn nv vrvvrro.
wall. Tis happens daily in the so|o c
projcsorcs at my co|cg:o. Between pe-
riods the teachers gather and sit for-
mally at white school desks, drinking
coee served by kitchen sta. I keep
busy preparing class materials but
sometimes, after screeching and
chortles, sense I am being discussed.
Almost always, though, Colombian
curiosity and openness toward the
stranger bridges the distance. Tis
past Friday I arrived at school to nd
all grades, rst through eleventh,
in quasi-rigid formation out front,
listening to the Colombian anthem
blare from loudspeakers. As usual, I
had no idea what was going on. One
of my co-teachers saw me standing
apart at what turned about to be
an awards ceremony for the previ-
ous semester and took my hands in
hersDont stand alone. Keep me
company, she saidbefore rejoining
her ninth-grade biology class, which
was dissecting bovine brains.
I have spent more time by
myself this past week, trying to keep
up with class preparation, grading
papers, and editing and writing as-
signments from the States. Luz Dari
sensed this and yesterday suggested
I go with her brothers adopted
daughters to a sport eld near their
house. Ve played basketball and
ju:oo| c so|r for almost two hours.
I felt more connected and felt that
I had burned o at least part of the
days lunch of lentil soup, rice, fried
plantains, egg, tomatoes, and masa
morra, a cold soup of milk, congealed
corn our, and sugar cane.
I feel the absence of my friends
and co-teachers Randy and Martina,
who left a: July for Venezuela. Tey
had done many gracious things for
meproviding me organic health
supplements when I was sick in late
June and even an English-language
book, lc K::c Rurrcr, when I told
them I had lost all my books on
intercity buses. I have nished lc
K::c Rurrcr now and have down-
loaded free English e-books, includ-
ing Mooy-D:c|, of which, I confess, I
have only managed to read half after
assorted attempts.
On the last excursion with
Randy and Martina we hiked to a
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La vida es una oportunidad,
aprovchala.
La vida es una belleza, admrala.
La vida es un sueo, realzalo.
La vida es un reto, afrntalo.
La vida es un deber, cmplelo.
La vida es un juego, disfrtalo.
La vida es preciosa, cudala.
La vida es riqueza, consrvala.
La vida es amor, gzala.
La vida es un misterio,
descbrelo.
La vida es una promesa, pgala.
La vida es tristeza, suprala.
La vida es combate, acptalo.
La vida es una aventura,
emprndela.
La vida es felicidad, mercela.
La vida es vida, dendela.
Madre Teresa de Calcuta
(on the wall of la sala de
profesores, Colegio Cimnasio
Moderno, Iopayn)
More writing from Colombia
See In Colombia, a Soccer
Iaradox, New York Times,
July r.
http://goal.blogs.nytimes
.com/:orr/o;/or/in-
colombia-a-soccer-paradox/
thermal spring in Coconuco, an hour outside
Iopayn, near the Iurac volcano. It was not
the conventional tourist experience. Friends
from Martinas English classes led us along
a cow path and over a mountain ridge for
several kilometers until we descended to Agua
Iirviendo, one of two springs operated by an
indigenous peoples organization, not unlike
attractions in or near Native American reserva-
tions. Te springs, which are open twenty-four
hours, leave the skin smelling of sulfur, or like
rotten eggs, as Luz Dari said. Iere a restau-
rant served one of the best lunches Ive had in
Colombia: sancocho followed by fried trout,
rice, plantains, french fries, salad, and a blended
pear and guava juice.
So far the transition from volunteer Eng-
lish teaching, which is what I had done for the
most part in Atlanta, to a paid experience has
been di cult. Te dierence, I suspect, is in the
shift from students whose sole motivation is to
learnwhose lives, in some sense, depended on
acquiring the languageto students who |ovc
:o learn English as part of a curriculum that also
includes mastery of the Spanish subjunctive
and the anatomy of cow brains. For teaching
seventh through eleventh grades I will be paid
one million Colombian pesos per month, or
about s::o. Tis is an extravagant amount for a
schoolteacher, more than three times what some
public-school teachers make here. Co|cg:o teach-
ers, at my school and others, comment on the
culture of student indiscipline, which is certainly
not endemic to Colombia. I would guess that my
students have seen numerous movies and televi-
sion shows about American student malaise and
mimic what they see. One seventh-grader asked
me if American schools really had combination
lockers in which students could keep their books
and clothes. Ie seemed quite envious about this.
Irimary- and secondary-school students do not
have books, not even in small, a uent, nomi-
nally Catholic co|cg:os such as mine.
Tis isolated passivity should not distract
from the overwhelming resilience I witness in
Colombia. For each teenager who responds
that her greatest desire in life is to nd the
perfect man there are dozens of others who
bear extraordinary grief, such as the orphans we
met who lost their parents during a hazardous
bridge crossing. Love, celebration, and self-
regard are things I continue learning. Tis is not
a society of mourning or di dence. Colombians
have learned to ght for themselves and for their
rights. So often they have seen them abused.
Aorozos y ocsos, ion
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