19.09.24
We have been in Colombia for a month and a day today. We moved out of the Narco’s house and we now have a lovely, modern, two bed apartment in town, courtesy of Airbnb. It’s a different lifestyle. We have a fruit shop one door down, selling local produce -lulo, a sour type fruit, good in a smoothie – it that I’ve made one with it – or breakfast, but not so much on its own, dragon fruit, but with taste and other both recognisable and unrecognisable fruits. I bought my first plantain today. It has yet to be seen whether i’ll cook it. I discussed with the person in the shop how to cook it with the fresh beans I’d bought. However, this discussion was in Spanish, so it’s anyone’s guess if what I took from the conversation was what she actually said.
Lotem has been to school all week. She has cried bitterly, has had some ok times and mostly refused to go into her class. She has relied heavily on Teva, which is taking its toll on Teva, relied slightly less heavily on Negev, which doesn’t seem to have taken any toll and hit the vice-principal; thankfully the Vice Principal was very gracious about it, nonetheless it is a little on the mortifying side. Lotem is very verbal. She had the most wonderful reception experience last year, so her bar is high. This school is meeting none of what she perceives her needs to be. She has told me that she is very good at Forest School, but she is not good at a school where she doesn’t understand, can’t play with the children and can’t express herself – her words. I have told her that I know she can do it, as in go to school, lean in, learn a bit of Spanish and even enjoy herself a bit. Lotem has responded that it is her brain, her feelings and how can I know what is good for her body and brain. She’s tying me in knots!
Teva has also expressed something similar. She’s vocalised that she didn’t like going to school in London, but at least she was learning something and had friends. She found her swimming squad classes that she did really hard, but at least she got better at swimming. Here, it is really hard, really boring and she is not improving at all and doesn’t have friends. Not that she doesn’t have people to hang out with and speak to. The kids in her grade are desperate to spend time with her, but they aren’t real friends, like her friends at home. I guess, if we are talking about the ‘at leasts’- a phrase that I generally try to steer clear of, because of its negation of the actual struggle or feeling that is being felt – but at least I should say thank you that my children can explain to me how they are feeling with words – some of the time, at least.
On the one hand I am finding this very hard to hold. On the other hand, today, after I dropped them at school, Tali and I did an exercise class. It was a dream. The girls keep asking me why we are doing this to them and what is the point. Especially as according to them, they just want to relax on the weekends and not go to different places and see different things. It would appear that the notion of travelling and how mind-expanding and cool it is, is not something that kids have. They seem to prefer familiarity and stability. Oh well, sucks for them. We will rethink though, what the result of the rethink looks like is still on the drawing board, but it might involve spending some time in Chile, in a place where an old university buddy of Tali lives.
This is where we are up to emotionally. We had an amazing injection of short-lived, but nonetheless greatly appreciated joy, in the form of finding a fledgling bird. We think it was a type of finch – note the use of past tense – possibly a greenfinch. It was beautiful and one of the most wonderful things I think I’ve ever experienced, holding a little bird in my hand, and realising it didn’t want to fly away. I found it on the way to pick up the kids yesterday (18.9.24). It was just sat in the middle of the very hot pavement. I approached it and it flew a couple of metres away, and not at a great height. I approached it again, this time much more slowly and it let me pick it up. It was a proper attraction at school. I did a quick research, bought a syringe to feed it, some sunflower seeds and a box. My trusty, considerate partner (Negev) and I sat down on the pavement to try and feed it. A local guy bought a soft banana, said birds love them. A quick cross check found that fact to be true. However, when he offered unasked for help, forced open the bird’s beak, it all started to go wrong. The birds gullet filled up, it’s head was sticky with banana and it stopped cheeping. Within the next few hours, no more Tea Cup – this was the name that was chosen for it. I’ve no doubt, had Tea Cup lived a little longer, the name would not have caught on. Another little foray into life and death and some dashed dreams. I’d had visions of the little bird being free, but choosing to accompany us on our travels, sitting on our shoulders and hands. So far at least, this death hasn’t come back to figuratively bite me. Although it’s only been an hour of awake time with the children since it happened. Not like Coco the rat’s death. We had Coco put down the day before we left to come here. This came up one night when one of the kids was struggling. It came up in the form of “which person kills their favourite and original pet, because they are going away for a year?” I found it a very tricky one to answer. Yes, Coco had a very very large tumour that was greatly hindering her ability to walk properly, but other than that she seemed fine. She was eating, grooming, being groomed. So if we hadn’t gone away, we wouldn’t have put her down quite yet. The nuance of this was clearly too much to grasp, along with all the other changes. Fortunately Coco came up a few times at the beginning, but hasn’t in the last couple of weeks. I’ll keep you posted of the lasting impact of Tea Cup. I will also keep my eyes peeled for another stranded bird. If I find one, I will definitely not feed it a crap load of banana.
We’ve been travelling a little bit around the local area. Much to the dismay of the kids, who as I mentioned, like to ‘relax’ on the weekends. Relax is a euphemism for watching/screen time. We have been trying to give them one day of downtime and one day where we go somewhere and do something. Last weekend we headed to a city called Manizales, a larger City 45 mins north of us. We took a local bus, which was a fun experience. We squashed five of us into the four remaining seats, so we didn’t have to wait for the next bus and headed, with our traveling buddy-family that we met at the Narcos House, to some thermal springs on the far side of Manizales. We had planned to get a bus to Manizales and then a taxi to the springs. However, Colombian people are very helpful and were directing us where to get off to go where we needed to catch the next bus. Let the adventures begin. We got on one bus that took us 5 mins down the road. We were then told us to cross over the busy dual carriageway, with no bridge and catch a green or an orange bus from the other side of the road. We flagged down a bus – think more minivan/overgrown monit sherut, if you know what that is – the driver said ‘the next one’. We flagged the next one, the driver said ‘next one’ and so on, until about 10 buses had passed. Eventually the bus we needed came and we ended up paying about £1.50 for all of us to get to the thermal springs. We drove through a smaller town, which had restaurants and stands and stalls of local food, arepas – the Colombian filler food – rice floured 0.5cm thick pancakes size thing – with very little taste, unless you have a cheese one or put something on it, lots of bean-smelling dishes, chorizo sausage or something else that is meant to be a local delicacy. It smelt great and the scenery was again outstanding.
The bus didn’t go as far as the springs, so the 2 mile uphill walk would definitely have proved a challenge. Fortunately I am married to someone who is unafraid to ask virtually anything, speaks spanish and has the gift of the gab. As such, for a small price, financially, not anything else, Tali persuaded the bus driver to take us up there, so long as we didn’t tell his boss.
These thermal springs also had waterslides, and not just any water slides, but one steep drop slide, one very very fast twisty slide and a slightly slower twisty slide. There was no staff (wo)manning the slide, so there was no height or age limit being enforced. This works particularly well for us as our kids are always ready for adrenalin rides/slides, before their height/age allow. The slides were cold water, but the rest of the pools were varying temperatures and nestled into the mountain. It was an idyllic setting, made even more so by the slides occupying the kids and enabling us to just be for a few minutes.
Later, we went into the city centre area. We’ve only really spent time in Chinchina, which is a small town and has very little diversity, both from a Colombian and a non-Colombian point of view. We went to this crazy monument depicting how Colombia had been colonised. We walked down this promenade, not next to the sea, but on the edge of a mountain. Manizales is built into the hills has stunning views and is pumping. We felt like we were on the Colombian equivalent of the South Bank. There were stalls and food and entertainers. Not so much young people doing circus act, but an older couple dancing the tango and some scary skeleton puppets dancing. We walked down the fairly steep ‘South Bank’ with a road on one side and a steep drop down a green mountain the other, to Plaza Bolivar. Simon Bolivar, not to be confused with Simone de Beauvoir, was the guy who liberated Colombia from the colonists. There are lots of plaza’s in his name and I do recall something about his sword from the Netflix TV series Narcos. From there we took the cable car – this is the fasted up/down method of transport, back to the bus station and then back to Chinchina. During that time there was absolutely no complaining that we had walked enough and that anyone had had enough of seeing a boring city.
Tali and I loved being in the vibrancy of a city. I know how we ended up in Chinchina, but it’s totally random, probably a but like living in Merthyr Tydfil in the UK. Dad, now I kind of get why you got out as soon as you could. Manizales is a very beautiful university town. I think if we were to give any advice at any point, I’d probably recommend a university town over a farming/industrial town. There is likely to be more going on, more diversity and more opportunity to find common ground.
