16.9.24
It’s the 16th September. This is our last day in the Narcos house. It’s also Lotem’s first day going to school without me. To say she was resistant is an understatement, but she got in the car and here I am with some time to write, with a stunning view and sat on an adult size chair at an adult size table – as opposed to the kid-size everything I was sat on whilst trying to make use of my time in school.
I’d like to say I feel uncomfortable having sent my child off with big sad tears rolling down her face, and I did for about 10 seconds, but now I feel free. I also know that Lotem will be ok. School is no longer new to her, she knows the routine, she has her siblings there, a 1:1 English lesson we set up with an amazing Canadian teacher, a 1:1 Spanish lesson with an lovely Colombian teacher, a joint spanish lesson with her siblings and dobble – the game that crosses generations and doesn’t require language. She’ll be fine. She just doesn’t realise it yet. All in good time.
So we’re leaving the Narcos house to move into an airbnb in town for a month before we leave Chinchina. We probably won’t return here, unless something crazy happens, like the kids don’t want to leave. As such, whilst I spend my only kid-free moring here before we leave, I’m taking the opportunity to explain what ‘The Narcos House’ means and try and paint a picture of what it looks like.
The house, or more of a two storey plus basement kind of sprawling mansion, is situated at the top of a large hill – flattened out at the top – with a view of the town below. It can be seen from all over town. This is by design. Everyone in the town could see the house and would know who was in control and who had the power. It was built to intimidate. The house was owned and built by a guy who was part of Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel. It is still owned by this person’s widow, who is still alive – but it is rented to the guy who runs the foundation.
The house was a place where business, negotiations and intimidation took place. From what I understand a lot of this was done through parties. There is a disco room, round in shape, which in the day had a huge disco ball, a bar, lots of mirrors in very 80’s decor. The disco ball no longer exists, but the cool glass holders from the bar still do. The disco room, as with most of the house, has a lot of windows. The reason being multi-fold – to break and escape easily if needed and to show the flashing disco lights of the party, to the town and I guess also for the views.
This disco room looks out to the pool at the back of the house, with the view over town. There is also a balcony/terrace – where i’m sat now – looking over the pool.
The pool is guitar shaped and not designed for laps. It is just over a metre deep, has a jacuzzi in the centre, three wider shallow areas that you could lounge around on, drinking and hang out with the women who were brought up to show the guests a good time. This seems to be a feature – the women. They had a big role and zero power – obviously. Their role was to bedazzle prospective partners and if that didn’t work their role was get these people into compromising positions, so that their photos could be taken from behind the secret, two-way mirror in one of the bedrooms. “Bargaining tools”. This place definitely has a dark history. I refer to the heading. If walls had ears, I wouldn’t want to know what they had to say.
Just in front of where I’m sat now, looking at the pool, is a my knee-height raised square, – about 2×2 metres, with a not so secret trap door on the top. This opens to a ladder into a room or more accurately a cell. This was the ‘ripening room’. It was not used for fruit. Anyone who came to do business, but wasn’t quite ready to do the right sort of business, was welcomed into the ripening room, to ripen, until they were able to make better choices and decisions. The ripening room is situated right by the pool, in order for the person in the ripening room to hear the party they were missing out on, going on around them. Kind of like marinating meat in an acidic product to make it more tender. Enough said.
The pool has a slide going down from the jacuzzi – fountain from the inside of the house into the guitar head. This is first view, when entering the house from the main door at the front of the house. Over the “guitar’s” neck is a small railing-less bridge, designed not simply for crossing, but for parading and being noticed.
The first look at the house from the front screams grand. The house is very wide. There is a football pitch and basketball court. The heavy set door leads into an open space, with the aforementioned jacuzzi/fountain. Two – no longer existing – palm trees on either side of the entrance hall – growing out from the basement below. Above is the open planned mezzanine – where traditionally, the head of the house would sit, looking down and intimidating the guest who arrives and is met with the scene of jacuzzi, fountains, women, booze and whatever else was on the menu.
To the right is a wide spiral staircase – but the first half is a slope rather than stairs. At the point of the end of the slope is a door into another section of the house. This section is now the living quarters of the the couple who run the foundation and their three young kids. Back in the day it was a more ominous area. It has the room that is the other side of the secret two-way mirror. This room is a decent size as it had to house all the video/recording equipment needed, which back in the day took up space. This area has another room that is completely tiled and has a large sink, draining structure and is easy clean. It is now used by the couple as a bedroom. It was then nicknamed the butcher room. Again, if walls could speak, I wouldn’t want to know what these ones had to say.
Upstairs, where we have been staying for the past week – we graduated from the basement – is much hotter, has way more mosquitos – although I’ve seen none and been bitten by many – has stunning views of the hills, the town and vegetation. It also has the master suite, where we are not. A beautiful, large airy room, windows with views to the town below, a hidden safe built into the wall of the walk in closet and a secret passage into smaller perfectly round room, with back in the day a round bed. This was disgustingly dubbed the rape room. It was at this point that the ‘cool’ element became less cool. Why this room was for that specifically, with the secret passage, I didn’t understand. I left it fast.
The house also has a much more narrow regular staircase at the other side of the house, for the staff to move up and down unnoticed. This was our old quarters. The garage. It’s an enormous space for the car fleet. Home to two huge double fronted garage doors, no longer in use. The mechanisms have rusted and the cost to fix them is too much. Our hosts have endeavoured to keep the house as much like it was. It could do with a good outside clean and inside paint, but these aren’t their priorities. They have been here about 8 years. The house was previously vacant – barring ‘the little old man’ who’s not so old but looks it – who came with the house. He was guarding the house, from local crack-heads or whatever, from stripping it of anything valuable. He is a coffee picker, has a tiny room in the basement and refuses to take any other larger space, despite being offered. He comes and goes almost silently. During the two weeks we lived in the basement, I think we saw him twice.
So that’s the main story of our first ‘home’ in Colombia. It has a dark history but has been very very good to us.
