My Life Should Be a Sitcom

After three months of training, I have moved from Barranquilla to my permanent site placement in Cartagena! “Golden Girls: Colombian remake” take one; my life as a sitcom has commenced! Life with the cohort of Colombian women commenced as I arrived to my new front porch filled with ten ladies peeling potatoes. Turned out to be a birthday, and therefore instead of unpacking I met about 30 family members and friends while eating my bowl of vegetable and cow stomach soup (sopa de mondongo) and cake.

 

I’ve mentioned my new host family but let me reiterate because it’s just too good… I will be living with three old ladies: Aura (the youngin, in her 50s or 60s) and her two aunts, Celia (81) and Edith (73). The two aunts wear nothing but nightgowns; I might have to purchase one for myself to fit in. Pastimes include: watching soap operas and the Price is Right, cooking, sitting around talking, giving me life advise. But the fun doesn’t end there folks… they have here for the past 50 years, and, house by house, the family is taking over the neighborhood. Next door lives another aunt in her 70s along and a sister and her family while two more sisters live down the road. Coming from a family of four with no relatives in the same state, I have to admit I’m a bit jealous. It’s my like childhood summer vacations in New Hampshire all year long here.

This overabundance of estrogen and people may sound overwhelming and I do miss my family in Barranquilla, but the reality is I’m very comfortable and have much more independence. This house is much more spacious (6 bedrooms, a huge front porch and back patio complete with a GIGANTIC mango tree, my room size tripled and I have my own bathroom attached). If I close my door I am never disturbed and I can come and go and generally do as I please. Nonetheless, maybe most exciting is the change in diet, HALEYLOOYA!… this time around I approached the subject very differently, saying that I’ve had a really hard time with the endless fried food and rice, using positive reinforcement by excessively praising any vegetables that appears on my plate, and pleading please NO bollo limpio (corn meal that is extra processed so all color and nutrition is taken out, leaving behind only the taste of cardboard). We’ve arranged that they will cook me lunch (and they are fantastic cooks; even made the cow stomach soup delicious), will buy me stuff for breakfast and I am in charge of my own dinner. I about cried the first morning when, low and behold, instead of a fried aprepa with salty cheese, papaya and a hard-boiled egg awaited me. Unfortunately I bought a six bag pack of milk (yes, milk comes in bags and is not refrigerated), and only after opening the first bag found out that instead of skim I had bought a two months’ supply of whole milk… guess that makes up for the lack of fried food. I do have to boil my drinking water, but I guess that’s the Peace Corps experience coming through.

Tis the Season

I’d heard of and studied “The Happy Planet Index” in University. In short, a new way to measure development apart from more conventional Gross Domestic Product or the Human Development Index methods. The HPI considers health, education, income, inequality, and environmental sustainability, among other factors. According to the 2011 report, Colombia ranks #6 of all countries. Not too shabby. Turkey is 83^rd and the US is 114^th. (http://www.happyplanetindex.org/) Is your stereotype of a bleak, violent, disadvantaged country disintegrating yet? Because it should.

I agree; people here seem extremely happy. I attribute part of this to the lack of stress and furthermore to the plethora of festivals. National holiday, birthday or a Thursday night, Colombians know how to celebrate. December had no lack of celebrations; here are the major ones:

Dia del Inmaculada Concepcion, December 8. Something along the lines of how the Virgin Mary’s mother was also a virgin when she was impregnated with Mary. Hmmm, okay then. To rejoice the family-linage of virginity we started off with rum, of course. Then came the food, then more rum, then more food… At 1am, when the true festivities began, families lit candles in front of their houses, set off fireworks in the streets and the dancing really started (it was all still happening when I went to bed at 6:30am!).

 

Colombian Soccer Championship, December 21. JUNIOR WINS!!! Yes, the Barranquilla soccer team won the Colombian championship for their second year in a row, and in a shoot-out no less. I have nothing to compare it to, maybe something along the lines of winning WWII or the Berlin Wall coming down… Hundreds of people flooded the streets, set of fireworks, climbed on top of buses, danced, and SCREAMED Junior chants.

Christmas, the night of the 24^th.  My host-mom makes and sells Christmas decorations from our house, so we were in no shortage. I love it, although the nativity scene complete with giraffes, cows and moneys took some getting used to. At 9pm we went to an uncles’ house where 35 family members all partook in more rum drinking, sitting in white lawn chairs talking, listening to music, dancing, and feasting. Upon arriving home at 3:30am, we began opening presents. A bit anti-climactic here; my host brothers picked out and played with all presents beforehand, although presents were wrapped and put under the tree the day before in true Christmas spirit.  My family got me a shirt and a Junior jersey. On actual Christmas day, about 20 members of our Peace Corps group held a potluck dinner. Peace Corps also organized a lunch (complete with Turkish/Middle Eastern food!) a week earlier where we had a Secret Santa exchange.

Although I was expecting it, it was hard being away from Colorado on Christmas. Being with my family and drinking hot chocolate as it is snowing outside is just not the same as sweating in my dress eating fried cornmeal. That being said, my host-family took good care of me and thank you to everyone who called and wrote me, it made a huge difference.

New Year’s, December 31^st (obviously). I decided to leave the concrete jungle and ten people, two dogs and three birds that were sleeping in my house on New Year’s for Tayrona National Park. Seven other volunteers and I spent four days and three nights hiking the lush jungle, exploring ancient ruins, lying on picturesque beaches, and sleeping (aka freezing our butts off) in hammocks. Tayrona National Park is about 3 hours north-east of Barranquilla and is where the Sierra Nevada mountain range hits the Caribbean. We rang in 2012 on a white beach next to giant mountains; couldn’t be beat. To top off our unbearably rough life, we were forced to take another day of vacation because none of the buses were running on the 1^st. Gotta love Colombia.

Where we slept the first night

 

I leave for Cartagena and my real Peace Corps job on January 15th; thereafter I promise to have updates with less beach stranded-ness and rum drinking. However, as someone living in the 6^th happiest country in the world, don’t expect the celebrations to run short anytime soon.