How In Colombia I Grew In Mind and Soul (and nowadays grow in girth)

This short essay or piece of writing I want to write for Colombia and its warm people, although the country’s capital must be the focal point since it is the only city in Colombia I have lived in or wanted to live in. (Bogota isn’t ‘Colombia’ just as New York City isn’t ‘The United States’.)

I had read a great deal before coming to live in Colombia in 1977 at the young age of 27, but not enough, of course. However, here I began to read even more heavily and diversely. Two particular libraries still in existence that offered check-out privileges (for privileges they were) for books written in English were the Colombian-American Center, where I taught for two years, and the British Council. I visited both, one after the other, joined them, and read for hours in their reading rooms and/or happily took my ‘tomes’ of new knowledge home for a few days. Some of those tomes were hardbacks; others were paperbacks. Fortunately, let me say, I had a wife who fussed/nagged very little about my reading habits. She didn’t read so much at that time outside of reading at work, but nowadays reads as much as I do or more and nags me mostly about my girth.

Where I grew up in Georgia we had practically no access to modern British prose and poetry, so, I was in ‘heaven’ a few years at the British Council. Also, in this new South American life, it was not uncommon on any given day to meet someone from any of half a dozen European countries or Canada and Australia. Some of them were just passing through; others were living here for some unknown length of time. Those occasional new acquaintances were fun and educational. Besides reading, there were opportunities to go to the old colonial theater called The Colon (means Columbus, as in Christopher) or to the new theater called Colsubsidio for concerts, operas, etc. Don’t worry about pronouncing the names of the theaters if you don’t know the words.

But one of the most amazing and interesting aspects of the capital city was the ‘free’ (well, nearly) entertainment that you could get in the streets. A list of it would be endless but would include snake handlers, clowns, jugglers, mimes, the music box man and his monkey, acrobats, fire eaters, joke tellers, racing mice and on and on. All these entertainers asked for was a few coins from the onlookers. Some of these street acts still take place after all these years.

To conclude, I’ve been rather lucky all these years to have had two ‘countries’. My treatment by the Colombians here has always been the best. Only once or twice was I told to ‘go home’. I didn’t let that bother me very long. The good treatment, while a great thing, makes me feel sad sometimes for I know how hard the average Latino has it or has had it in our country. I know how much s/he must struggle just to get a foothold established, you might say.

Today is May 03, 2007, and I’m still here. I hope to spend the rest of my days here for I’m happy in this city called Bogota. I am happy, though, to go home often on vacation. So why change? I just hope Colombians will not hold it against me when I fail to resist the urge to criticize their country now and then. It’s getting harder for me to keep my lips sealed now that I’m older. Plus, I worry about the arrival of some future day in which no one will be able to say anything in this world that is not "approved" by the ‘powers that be’. Also, I have a Colombian wife, a Colombian daughter, and now, eat your heart out, a Colombian grandson and son-in-law. Does this fact not give me a shred of license? Thanks a million for reading.