Chapter 3 - The Messengers of the Sun

September 1^st. Back to the Funhouse. After a long summer full of graduation, prom, fiestas, goodbyes and bienvenidos I began my volunteer service in the Colegio Educativo Suazapawa on a Monday. Very fitting.

This is my school:

The Colegio is beautifully situated in the hills outside of Duitama. It crawls up into one of these green, rocky, steep mountainsides like a traumatized man in the embryo position. I promised myself that I climb it before I leave, but sneakers won’t be enough equipment. The students come to Suaza, how the school is commonly known, from three different towns: Duitama, Nobsa and Sogamoso. Home to about three hundred students, they are taught in flat white rows of blocks, each row a little bit higher in the mountain than the previous. The school grounds also include two soccer fields, a playground, two tennis courts, a pool, a garden, a pond, a family of ducks, various cows and goats, cats, a library and an auditorium. However, most of the sporting fields are kept in a rather appalling condition and cannot be compared to those in Europe or the States. Suaza is a private school, only twenty years old, whose reputation at the country’s universities is bad; one says that many of the graduates have serious trouble entering higher education.

These are the school colors:

White for Peace.

Green for Nature.

Red for Love.

This is what I do:

I am a teaching assistant for English. What I really do, I have yet to discover. The first weeks I have been a teacher for the kids ranging from kindergarden to fifth grade. In all classes, but with the smallest ninos y ninas, I generally collaborate with another English teacher named Vicky, who has been at Suaza since its founding. The few hours I spend in transition I teach with a wonderful woman named Janeth, who is one of those teachers you simply cannot imagine having chosen any other occupation in this world.

Although the students start very, very early practicing other languages, the standard of English is simply devastating and it seems the older they get they are less and less capable or willing to put two words or more together to a sentence. And I haven’t heard any student speaking two or more sentences in English. All hours also follow the scheme and guidelines of the English book used at the school and there is little room for improvisation. Normally, Vicky and I change the spot in front of the blackboard after each exercise, she corrects homework and I correct homework and I help a lot with pronunciation, spelling, style and grammar. Nevertheless, she remains the person of authority in class. Partly because I am simply too young to be a great person of authority for the kids and partly because my Spanish is in the end not yet sufficient to explain everything or install silence in class by uttering slight hints of intimidation or threats of disciplinary actions.

The following weeks I will start to glimpse into the older grades as well, working closely with two teachers named Sofia and Bijan. Sofia is a very beautiful Colombian woman whose smiles could make any day; Bijan is originally from Arabia and about the most popular and widely respected man on campus. He limps, too. Sixth to Eleventh grade, that’s how many there are in Colombia, have one conversation class a week meant for practicing talking English only. Those I will help teaching. But this is another chapter.

These are my students:

Last Monday Vicky was gone to visit her sick mother in Bogota and in consequence I had to teach all classes myself. Chaos. All the time: ¨Where is Vicky? Why is she not here? She could have explained that to us! In Spanish! ¨. We got to where I wanted the students to be at the end of the day, but my voice became sore and more than once I threatened students I would have to write to their parents (one of them even cried; in a sadistic way a very satisfying emotion). Remember this about students in Suaza: They are never silent. They are never tired. Nobody raises his hand. When students want something from you, they make sure they get it by walking up to you and tearing at your sleeve.

Don’t be tempted to judge too early, there are good times and good students as well. Students hugging you at the beginning of each class just because you are there. Students that don´t care that you don´t understand a word of what they are saying because with the genius of innocence they know that it is such a small part of life and that talking is not equal to communication. Students who show you proudly how they have finished the latest sentence correctly and you must smile at this accomplishment, theirs and yours. There is Camillo in kindergarden who tries to jump up on you every time he sees you. There are five kids climbing onto you while watching a Disney movie because it is just more comfortable. There is Caterina in second grade and her eyes suddenly make you understand why people ever hunted for gold or flowers or any kind of obsession whatsoever. There are the girls from fifth grade who give you a little chicken on Secret Santa which strangely is in September in Colombia. There is Carlos in Eighth who says you look a little like Harry Potter and you grin and say: ¨That is absolutely right! ¨. And on goes the list.

The problem remains, the student do not seem to have a genuine interest in knowledge or its pursuit. I cannot figure out if the solution to this problem is to be found at home or in school. However, it has to be solved one day or this will be a very long year in Suaza.

Those are great moments, too:

When you play soccer in a game of teachers against students, but it is not like regular soccer, it is called microsoccer and the ball is much smaller and the game is much faster. And you wonder why Brazil and not Colombia wins the World Cup and why none of the other players sweats as much as you do. They just laugh.

Or when you go out with all the other teachers celebrating the twenty year anniversary of the Colegio and you drive to the restaurant in a bus with green lights and you feel like a wave in the Pacific is going to swallow you. And all the female professors stand up and start dancing and you are about ten years younger than anybody else and you think to yourself: Has anyone ever counted how much life there is? Out there?

Or when the principal tells you she loves you and you are not sure if she really knows what she is saying.

Or when you eat lunch with the others and you recognize what you already knew. People are not so different after all.

Or when you have the blues and spend too much time thinking about home and realize that you don´t believe in God and are blessed nonetheless.

Or when the bus driver waits for you at 6:55 in the morning.

Or when the school coordinator shows you a picture of the Buckingham palace, a cheesy imitation, and you say yes, you have been there once in a different live.

Or when the school dance teacher asks you if you would like to participate in a dance performance of the teachers during cultural week and you say yes because you didn’t understand everything. And you find yourself practicing with three other teachers some Mexican dance. And then it’s Friday, the day of the performance and you get your clothes and you wear a biblical sombrero and the women look like double-rainbows and then you step on the stage and the entire school is watching you and your third step is wrong but you just don´t care and in the middle of the dance you find yourself yelling with glee because life is so surreal and beautiful and tragic and you are the hero of your own story and you know that life gives you things just to take them away from you and that tomorrow you are vulnerable again but right now you just don’t give a fuck. Those are great moments, you know.

I began my volunteer service in the Colegio Educativo Suazapawa on a Monday. Very fitting. We met the principal in her office. Suazapawa is taken from the indigo language, she tells you and points at the schools banner behind her desk. Sua means sun and Zapawa means messengers.

Chapter Two - Dogs All Along

Imagine Bogota as a city midst a green cauldron of mountains and a transparent cloud of smog hovering above.
Our first week is a time of continuous waiting for a starting shot. Before the volunteers would be brought into their own seperate provinces to begin their job as a teacher AFS Colombia had organized orientations, speeches, and a tour of the capital. Raul, a man from the Colombian Red Cross in Bogota gave us a lecture on security issues in Colombia. In the big cities never take a cab from the street, about 2000 pirate cabs cross the avenues of Bogota waiting to pick up a foreigner, take him to the next bank and force him to take out whatever is left in his account. Is it safe to go to the Pacific Coast from Cali? He looked at the ceiling, then said firmly, no. The Amazonas? Hm. Rather not. And better not go through the streets alone at night, that would be naïve. The complete opposite the day before. An attractive Colombian woman of about thirty speaking to us about her country´s culture. We have everything, she said, a diverse landscape, rich soil, great people, famous musicians, writers, painters, the most orchids in the world, oceans, deserts, the Andes - but we don´t know how to use what we have. We have been devastated by war, it was terrible and many people in the USA still think it is to dangerous to come. But things are getting better now. Colombia is passion!
The country is changing rapidly.
In general, everyone we meet is worried about Colombia´s picture abroad, everyone wants us to have the time of our lives. In the plane I met a woman from Belgium wearing an ocher wool sweater. She tells me that she hast lived in Colombia for forty years, that things are getting better, that Uribe is a great president and she shows a picture of Belancourt on the face of a french newspaper, points at her and says ¨Ingrid!¨. She smiles.

It is Fiday evening now and we will be picked up for a Chiva tour that was organized by AFS Colombia as the highlight of our one-week stay in Bogota. A Chiva tour, that means that our group will be picked up by a bus which takes us to a club in the mountains surrounding the city where we will stay for several hours and afterwards the very same bus will bring us home safely - we hope - to our hotel. Outside the bus is colored in bright yellow and red and appears as one of those massive automobiles of the old times that not even walls could stop. But there are no windows and no carriage either - the entire sides of the bus are panorama views of the streets passing by. A glimpse inside gives away what the bus was really destined to be. There are four or five leather benches filling up half the interior space but in front there is a tiny dancefloor and a poll that promises a lasting experience. The ride begins. We are greeted by the tour guide with aguidiente, Colombian whiskey, that tastes like jungle war. The music shakes you to the bones. Redefine HipHop, redefine dirty - and all of that in Spanish. I cannot drink tonight because my stomach has been a coward since the previous night, but I dance upfront anyways. The ceiling is low and my head must still wear scars of my jumping that night. Along the way we scream our glee at people on the streets of Bogota, pick up friends and when we arrive at the club the roof is on fire. The disappointment follows with the next steps. Not a single Colombian in this club seems to be under thirty. Oh well. What do we care. We dance on the bar. There is even a dance group comprising two men and one woman that show off a slasa and dance persormance whenever people are tmepted to leave the establishment. You have never seen this much makeup on a female body (I feel like I will regret this statement sometime soon). When they start dancing to YMCA I strongly feel that it`s time to leave. So I go up to the upper level and try to catch some sleep, but the DJ thinks that this is obviously the right time to play some Electro. So I go down again and resume dancing, step on the bar, dance some latin with a Colombian girl, listen to a black rapper on the upper level who moves his hips like they are a cocktail in the making and his mind is the barkeeper tonight. Things that pass the time.
Around two in the morning we leave, upfront we drive the club's dance crew home. I am astonished that people decide to continue dancing on the way home, especially because some of the guys get close to the ten-beer limit or maybe exactly because of that. I take a seat at the very edge of the very last row and watch Bogota as we descend into the cauldron. It's a chilly night that tries to maintain the balance with the steaming city days and I zip my jacket up high though it is of no use and I am shaking nonetheless. Entire Bogota is illuminated and it's a sight that I need to drink up alone. At this moment I think that the lighted city looks like one of those coral reefs at night in BBC documentaries or like a map of the United States in one of those old cold war movies in which every light represents one town to be hit by a Russian bomb but right now, before the first explosion, every light is still on. Metaphors break too, you know.

The next morning my new Colombian family picks me up and we drive to Duitama in the province of Boyaca - it is only a 180km ride but a six-hour experience. There are street blockades, police controls, road construction sites, we stop everywhere along the way to eat, buy meat, cheese, desserts, eggs, meet a worker of my father's finca, there are animals on the street, cows, horses and dogs, dogs, wild dogs running around without any fear of traffic. I sleep, I look outside the window. The altitude is about three thousand metres and the clouds can almost be grasped with your fingertips. This evening my sister gives me a tour of Duitama and her face reveals her worries that I might not be suited for a small town life. Once we walk up one street and turn at the corner where I almost stumble into a pitch black dog, invisible against the grey sidewalk. For some reason I think this is a significant moment though I still do not know why. The dog does not look up.

On Sunday, the end of my first week, the entire family has lunch at grandmom's house. It's a feast and before we begin everyone raises their glasses to me and speaks with earnesty:
"Bienvenido!"
And my mother continues:
"We have our arms wide open for you."
I mumble a thank you and look at me shoes, then think better and look up again.

The starter's gun at last.

Prologue

Greetings from Kassel!
This is likely the last you shall hear from me in Germany. In fourteen days, seventeen hours, fourty-eight minutes and thirty second my plane leaves for Paris and then for Bogota.

The next eleven months I will live, work and strive as a teaching assistant in the small town Duitama in the province Boyaca north of the Colombian capital. The school that hired me carries the resonating name Centro Educativo Suazapawa. English will be my subject to teach, other than that I don't know much. However, I will be living with the host family Rodriguez (picture above). I have never spoken a word to them (and I have never spoken Spanish, either).
Colombia will be the biggest challenge of my life thus far. I could go on and on and on filling this blog with all the things I do not know yet. Just a little longer. If you want to see how I will flood my unknowledge with experience until it is nothing more than little islands in the Pacific Ocean sit back and keep reading.
This will be an adventure.
I can't wait.
I can't wait.
Can you?
I can't wait.

The Page Before It Begins

no leaders, please

invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,

don't swim in the same slough.

invent yourself and then reinvent yourself

and

stay out of the clutches of mediocrity.

invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,

change your tone and shape so often that they can

never

categorize you.

reinvigorate yourself and

accept what is

but only on the terms that you have invented

and reinvented.

be self-taught.

and reinvent your life because you must;

it' your life and

its history

and the present

belong only to

you.

- Charles Bukowski