24.8.24
Well, some dreams maybe, but this one turned out not to be.
So we are here in Colombia. We left a week ago and arrived almost a week ago to Pereira, Colombia. A city I didn’t know much about, but liked the sound of it.
It had me at “foothills of the Andes”. Reality is somewhat different, mostly because the dreams don’t hold the small details, or at least my dreams don’t. The small details being three kids, jet-lag, no spanish, very local aka no tourist industry and a difficulty to imagine finding a common ground.We spent a couple nights there, seeing a very very small portion of the city – but mostly waking up early. Some of us either started work at 3am others were jetlagged. Not me, I am a genius sleeper, it is on my list of talents – coach car parks, work disabled toilets – you name it, I can probably sleep there.
We swam in the heated to almost bath temperature pool, and tried to persuade the kids that leaving the hotel would be a good idea and possibly even fun….Turns out leaving the hotel was not so fun. The soundtrack of our first Colombian city was overridden by emotional needs. So what’s new? Well, everything actually aside from that not so small detail. You’d think I’d have learnt how to manage this by now.
I am writing from a place called Chinchina. It is in the heart of the coffee region. I can see smoke periodically billowing out of the coffee factory or lab as it is called here. Sounds a little ominous, but judging by the coffee berries lining the paths of everywhere we walk – that’s not built up, I think it really is a coffee lab. There is also a coffee-like smell in the air, similar in nature to the hoppy, beer smell around Strangeways Prison.
We have found ourselves in Chinchina post a short two night stay in a little paradise near a small town called Santa Rosa de Cabel, close to where Encanto is based, hence the mini Encanto House we visited. Santa Rosa de Cabel is not just famous for being the birthplace of a very wonderful old friend of Tali’s – Oriana, you know who you are – it is also famous for its thermal pools. They are very thermal, very busy and very beautiful.
We had a fantastic time in the finca (farm) we stayed in – found reliably on hotels.com, chosen by Tali, who vetoed the place I’d found with a pool but a review which mentioned dirty sheets. We hand milked a cow – who knew how useful self pumping to fend off mastitis would prove to be; it turned me into a natural. We rode horses – Macarena, my horse, facilitated a return to memories – I wouldn’t say skills – of rising trot. We scrambled over boulders and through small rapids, learning to assess current strengths, using sticks to measure depth – Lotem’s safety tip – and accessing our grip feet technology created by the one and only God – or whoever you believe created skin.
After two nights, we left to begin to build our new reality. The uncertainty of how the future would look was beginning to get too hard to contain. In addition to this, we are not travelling light. This is an understatement by the way. We have enough luggage to sink a small ship. Too much to get in any normal taxi. My dream of a r ucksack each didn’t happen. I will have to think up other ways to justify spending time researching the rucksack market. It turns out packing up your house and choosing what to bring needs some whittling. Alas there was little or no whittling done – time was against us, consequently we have 8 suitcases, a large car seat bag – with two boosters I cannot see us ever using – and a backpack each. Our visit back in October will hopefully see the return of more than half our stuff. This may well be my new rucksack research justification. I’m pretty sure it’s vital for us all to have our own mid-sized pack we can carry on our backs. I may even need a midsize and a large size…
So we moved on to Chinchina.
Chinchina is a small city/town of about 50,000 people. We got to this place from a fortuitous google search – “worldschooling hubs in Colombia” – about a week before we left. I came across this place called Minga Foundation, clearly not run by a Brit, (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=minger). The place is nothing like it’s British slang name-sake. Embedded in the heart of the coffee region, it is lush and green and hilly, sporting some crazy colourful insect life. Our best find yet is a rhinoceros dung beetle, a huge 10 pence piece sized electric green and black half camo patterned and half ridged, horned beetle. It is also home to bamboo so thick you can build houses with it, providing you harvest it during the right cycle of the moon, apparently this is vital.
The town itself has a plaza, with a giant lizard – a bit similar to the Miflezet in Jerusalem minus the slides. Currently we are staying in the aforementioned Minga House. It’s owned (or rented really) by the guy who runs the foundation – an american dude. He and his family live here . It is nestled in the hills, surrounded by coffee plantations and apparently is an ex narcos house. Story to follow later, when I find it out. I can believe it though, it is huge. It is housing three families – including ours – and a good few volunteers. It is reminiscent of hostel/communal living. It’s taking me back to my student days, when I shared a fridge and when I honed my skills of ‘borrowing’ food without it being noticed. Obviously now I’m a mature grown up, I’d never take anything without asking. I’m also being super neat and tidy in my cooking and storing of food, much less reminiscent of my student days. This is quite effortful actually, but the pool, the view and the company for the kids, and us too I suppose – were I to spend any time thinking of my own needs – more than makes up for this. We are living in the garage, we have three double bunk beds in our room, our own bathroom and our own fleet of live and dead cockroaches. Turns out you can get used to the scurrying little suckers, even when they are on the mat in the toilet in the middle of the night and you accidentally flick it on yourself. That was the last time I put my glasses on to go to the toilet.
This more or less sums up our first week. We are taking each day at a time. Deciding whether we can make this place work. We are all out of our comfort zones, the kids are doing really well considering what we are asking of them. They have all questioned in their own way, (be it verbally, be it physically) why we are here, why they can’t go home. They have all expressed how much they like and dislike us – to a greater or lesser extent. It does make me question myself to be honest, but here we are. We will try them out in a local rural Columbian on-its-way-to-being-a-bi-lingual school. There are four other English speaking kids, two permanent and two passing through. It’s a big ask of them.