Well it’s happened again . We got into a discussion with someone selling us tools that we want to ship to South America . When we mentioned the tools were going to South America and that we had a house in Colombia he gave a blank stare before asking …
” Is it adobe … do you have electricity ? ”
I informed that it’s not adobe as the house is in Colombia and not New Mexico …. furthermore …
” Yes .. we do indeed have electricity there . That’s what we use to operate the TV , refrigerator and even my computer when I access the internet…..unlike many in New Mexico ”
I bit my tongue and didn’t mention the fact that my wife’s sister in Colombia has a domestic employee that come’s every day to clean and cook and that domestic employee lives in a much nicer home than the shack this guy was living in right here in Florida . But it it did bring some memories from a long time ago when things were different …. maybe I should have been a little more forgiving of his thoughts on this …
I’d got out of bed early just about an hour before the sun showed and showered before breakfast in mountain spring supplied water so cold that it caused gasps that literally prevented drawing air into the lungs. Breakfast was an arepa made of corn flour and water with an egg partially fried on a flat piece of iron placed over a clay wood stove along with a slice of avocado and the tiny remnants of the evening priors rice and beans . This area of the Colombian Andes mountains had received electricity just two years prior to this morning in 1989 and everyone present was very proud of that achievement in their mountains.
Someone had arrived in the dark of that morning with hopes of a breakfast in reward of information that the Communist guerillas had passed in the night and were likely four hours away by now meaning it was probably safe for the “Gringo visitor” to move . The plan of the day was to visit an elderly woman who lived deep into an area down the mountain side that still didn’t have electricity . She was the aunt of the woman who cooked my breakfast and still lived as farm workers in those mountains have lived for centuries and at that time due to advanced age she earned a living stealing coffee beans from the local farms and selling lunch to coffee pickers . She served me a lunch of a soup heavy on locally grown yucca and plantains boiled over her wood stove and refused any and all attempts at payment from me. She was very proud that a Gringo would make the effort to visit her home and I’m prouder still to brag that I did and make her acquaintance .
Her abandoned home still stands today on that spot though she is long gone . There are still people living on that mountain that remember her and that remember the day she was visited by a Gringo . And they watch television, and pull a cold one from the fridge as they enjoy life that does nothing but slowly improve . And as long as their lives improve down there … we have no need to keep repairing a wall we’ve erected here.
That’s the wall …. that’s the wall
