no John Lennon here

I have been trying to get to one of these places since I started the trip, but for whatever reason it never worked out. A year is a deceptively short period of time, and now, as I'm watching it approach the last months I realize just how little I've seen. This is not regret, simply observation. I wouldn't have traded a single experience along the way for other ones I'd hoped to have...not even the Galapagos. It just means that, well, I'll have to come back. To me that is the farthest thing from sad, that is what I call, motivation. :) Next time I'll climb more mountains, scale sheer rock walls, raft wild rivers, overcome that fear of giant spiders and sway in a hammock sucking in heavy, earthy, amazon air...next time I'll have company.

But that is for me to ponder later. This trip still isn't over, and I've found myself nestled into another type of community - a hare krishna community. This is new for me, pretty much everything about it, minus that I recognize a word here or a deity there. But that is pretty much where it stops, at a very superficial recognition of some concept I've heard faintly about. So I came here to learn.

I am not looking for a new religion. The one that I have serves me quite well, but yoga is also a fundamental part of my life and this was an opportunity to explore that in a little more depth. It wasn´t just that, I'll be honest, I was drawn to these communities for a variety of reasons, and it's not surprising that one of them is food. I love food. I especially love fresh food heavy in vegetables, fruits and dairy. It seems the vast majority of Latin America does not share that same sentiment...this is carnivore country with potatoes served simply to soak up the blood. I appreciate meat as much as the next person.  Clearly, as a guest in someone else's home, I will not turn it down but be grateful for the gesture of hospitality. However, nothing has occupied my mind more that the thought of days and days of vegetarian food. That's a given here, along with some other rules of monastic living: no drugs, alcohol, foul language, or sexual relations. This is a place for clean living, spiritual inquiry and service to God.

I also get to learn some other cool things while I'm here...that's part of the trade. I volunteer for 4 hours a day in some kind of service. It can be working the land in the farm that provides a lot of our food, maintaining the gardens, working on construction or renovation projects, or general cleaning and maintenance of the place. I get to pick, and lovingly devote my time and energy to that cause. Then in the afternoon there is another 2 hour window where I can learn about vegetarian cooking, baking, mantras and chanting, conscious art or yogic philosophy. I get a place to sleep, 3 meals a day, a yoga class and I get to be surrounded by lovely people in a beautiful place. My exchange of a few hour of labor (which is still teaching me a lot) and $10 a day, seems almost unfair.

But we learn from each other, me and these ashram dwellers. I am a window to a world very different from the one they live in. I have experiences, skills, talents and opinions to share, and they have openly taken me in curious about what exactly makes me, me. We chat with my forearms covered in flour as we knead bread. I am invited to the front of the room to guide a yoga class in my broken spanglishskrit and they mimic my movements with warm, glowing smiles. I am greeted as madre (mother) followed by a prayer to Hare Krishna. I am surrounded at breakfast and lunch by new faces...some old and wrinkled like a ripe grandmother, others overflowing with energy that comes natural to children. They ask...How long will I stay? They want to know...when will I come back?

I am not a member of this community, simply a guest curious about a different way of life. I don't subscribe to all their traditions, rituals, beliefs or superstitions. It's ok, I don't have to. They simply ask that I respect them while I'm here. That's easy enough, they aren't pushy about it, but have an open door if I want to walk through it. I may not buy it all, but I'm grateful to be here, to have the chance to sit on the fringes and watch their beautiful rhythm unfold in these green Colombia hills. I may not drink this particular brand of Kool Aide but those who have, sure are nice people; really trying to live in harmony with what they believe. That is an easy thing to respect.

It's a drastic change to compare that to one of the other volunteers that showed up. This new guy, he is going to serve as an interesting teacher as well. He carries with him an air of arrogance, one of those holier-than-thou types who acts as if he always knows best. It is a constant reminder for me to keep my ego in check. I want to continue to grow but not become blinded by my own sense of right. He's one of those "yogis" that is obsessed with how only alive foods are good, vegan and raw is THE only and purest way to live and harshly judges those that don't conform his strict way of being. He's convinced that somehow his diet is going to bring him spiritual enlightenment...I think, well, how about not being an asshole to people. Let's start with that maybe? I tried to have a conversation with him, asking him the why's of his chosen path. He seemed so confident of his direction and I wanted to know why. What drove him to make these choices? What can I learn from your experiences?

It didn't take long to realize that he is still trying to figure that out. He's latched on to certain recommendations or guidelines without ever fully understanding them...without himself ever having asked why? So his actions and his presence are one of a challenge, I dare you to live differently from me and then I can feel superior living an enlightened life with my raw food.

So I try to love him. I try not to react to his comments and judgements. I try to see myself in him and mould the parts of myself I don't like. I see my interaction with him as practice for all the similar creatures that I know will come across my path. So I try to be grateful, I try to be open, I try to see the god in him...because
that, not the almond cheese, is really his true nature, even if he doesn't know it yet.

In a world free of modern conveniences and distractions, I have plenty of opportunity to devote myself to this loving practice...to bite my tongue and smile...to rehearse my own personal mantras gleaned from my weekly bible lesson, to stain my fingers in blackberry juice while plucking fat berries from the vine. I have pockets of stolen moments to sit in the sun reading,  marinating in the knowledge buried in these sacred texts. Night comes early and my path is lit by glowing flashes of fireflies...five...twenty....hundreds...turning on and off. I sleep, on a hard bed that is nothing more than a thin mat over wood slats, a heavy, mostly dreamless sleep. The kind of sleep that accompanies a content and innocent consciousness.The kind of sleep that even drugs can't buy.

It rains here all the time, it must be the secret to the green. But the rain is like rebirth, every morning is washed clean, every day is a new start. I hear it tink-tink on the roof of the simple house at night when I curl up with my books and in the morning it is accompanied by the sound of a conch shell ushering in morning prayer. Good morning, I am still here...let's work on being that light, let's work on being that joy, let's be that love...as I make my way to breakfast and prepare for my morning of selfless service.

I am ready before my fellow volunteers. This is not new, it happens every morning. I sit waiting at my usual table for breakfast. Govinda, the devotee who works with us volunteers brings me breakfast and sits across the table. How are you doing? she asks. I tell her I'm well. She looks me hard in the face and asks me again. I guess, I'm an open book to everyone. So I come clean and confess that, well, maybe I am a little tired. Is it the others? she asks. I admit, there are two other volunteers with me, the aforementioned guy and his "girlfriend."  They fight a lot and complain about most everything: the food, the weather, the work, each other. They try to put me in the middle of their bickering and I refuse, but yes, it can be exhausting. I came here to get away for a while, to work and learn and grow...not play babysitter to tweedledee and tweedledum. I don't want to be harsh, I don't want to judge, but honestly the complaining just gets old and I am not sure what else I can do. What did they expect to find that they seem so unhappy with what is there? With a pleading look I asked her...are most of the volunteers like that? Isn't it clear in the website and the orientation what this community was about, what was required of volunteers? Was I crazy to expect more from my peers?

Govinda smiled her radiant smile and she told me to be patient. Not everyone is like you, she reminded me. You are very blessed. Yes I know, I agreed. I have been very blessed, my life is full of blessings. And I don't expect everyone to be just like me...that would be quite boring.

She shook her head like I didn't understand. "Claudia," she says,"let me tell you something. When you first arrived here I was surprised by how much I was drawn to you. You have a beautiful presence and a foundation that is so clear and so strong and it draws people to you. You have a sincere love that radiates and welcomes people in. You are blessed to have a starting point that other people may spend their whole lives trying to reach and because of this your actions are sure. Be patient, love them, we are not all as lucky as you are."

What could I possibly say to that? I never saw myself in that light. In fact I see myself as a work in progress, very much in progress. This was the kindest spoken criticism and most beautiful compliment I had ever heard. I was speechless, this strange battle of embarrassed and proud moving through my thoughts. With that Govinda stood up, responding the sound of the bickering in the distance. The other 2 volunteers were coming and she was off to get them breakfast.

"Hare Krishna," she called to them with that same radiant smile as made her way across the grass.

Yes, I get it...Hare Krishna

So you think YOU can dance?

It's Sunday morning, and we’re sitting around the breakfast table drinking fresh hot chocolate, speaking a medley of Spanglish, laughing at stories of the antics we pulled as children. We are getting caught up in the loves and heartbreaks and flings and passions of our recent past. We are decoding the differences of our two distinct cultures. We are being introduced to new fruits and new foods with silly names and stranger compositions. We walk the patio and marvel at the color of the gorgeous tropical plants. We meet ALL the family dogs, Arnold (the giant black lab), Yoyo (the troublemaker beagle) and Lolo (the chi-chi monster yorkie that hates people other than Carmenza and Juliana). We talk about school, university programs, work, businesses started and failed and soon to start with assured success. We talk about music and dancing and the culture of “rumba” in Cali.

We finish eating breakfast ans they ask us what we want for lunch. Lunch? Already?

It’s a sunny day so we take advantage of it to sit buy the pool. Stephen needs to work on his tan bad-like and we don’t really have anything we need to do.  So we all migrate outside…and we talk, and we talk, and we talk, and we talk, and we eat, because that is what family does and this is family.

Stephen exposing himself to some much needed sun. I've had a little bit of a head start :)

Cast from left to right: Juliana, Alvaro, Stephen, Carmenza, me

In all honesty talking and eating constituted most of what we did in Cali. I may be halfway around the world, but this really does feel like home. I admit that nothing outside the gates of the house is familiar, but the warmth, this love, this…this I know. I keep finding it, I keep rediscovering it, I keep learning it with everywhere I go and everyone I meet. This fullness isn’t just in my belly, it’s an overflowing hospitality that’s wrapped it’s arms right around me like the long lost daughter I never knew I was. This is latin culture. This is that amazing thing my mother was willing to leave behind but was determined to recreate in her new life in the states. This is that thing I think I was trying to find….and all of a sudden things that I never understood start making sense. Maybe I’m not a total gringa after all.

But we can’t just gorge ourselves and marinade in the comfort of this house. There is some exploring we have to do. So we create an itinerary for ourselves to get to know Cali a bit, to reunite with Amparo on her little ranchito, to head back down to Popayan. We have a few days to play with and pack those full in the company of wonderful friend and family. I get to wrap my arms around my adoptive grandmother…it’s been a long 10 years since we saw each other last. She looks wonderful, so glad to see my brother and I that happy tears roll down her painted cheeks. She lives in a small town in a rustic little house surrounded by lush vegetation…edible vegetation: corn, gigantic avocados, coconuts, fruits I don’t know. We sit together and talk well into the night, laughing, crying and laughing more. But it is a short visit, too short after so much time apart, but we drink in every moment and I promise to come back again, soon. 10 years is too long and she is too important and this place is too beautiful. In a bittersweet embrace it’s time to go. Time is playing those evil tricks again and it’s managed to steal a day…but we have to go. We bus all day to get to Popayan to really only have 1 day there. That too is kept short because we have to be back to Cali on Friday night with enough time to make ourselves look respectable. We have been invited by Alvaro and Carmenza to a salsa/circus show…where I was told that I will be expected to dance.

Let’s be honest, I have overcome a lot of my fears on this trip. I’ve faced some bragworthy challenges head on. I’ve grit my teeth through cold and wet and painful. I’ve blinked back tears of sadness and frustration. I’ve taken big bites of “regional delicacies”. I’ve woken up with a roach inches from my face. I’ve got lost, been burned, tired, hungry and scared…but nothing, I mean nothing is more terrifying to me than the thought of being expected to salsa dance in Cali. Nothing…I’d rather face those jellyfish in Ecuador again.

This isn’t just salsa and this isn’t just any town. This is Cali, Colombia, the world famous and rightfully so. The capital of rumba and of beautiful people who make sweating look sexy. If salsa wasn’t born here, nobody would ever guess it. This is where babies start that fancy footwork with diapers on. It’s where women AND men shake their hips like they’ve been disconnected from the rest of their bodies and manage to look good while doing it. And you want me to what? Dance, in front of these people…in 5” heels and micro-mini to boot?

I take back what I said; maybe I am a total gringa. That’s not soooo bad. At least then I’ll have an excuse to look like a dying fish or a robot. In the back of my mind I keep thinking maybe I’ll be able to get out of dancing if I politely refuse. Worse case worse I can fake a cramps.

But before all that I have to make myself look respectable. Not just any kind of respectable either, we’re talking Colombia nightlife respectable. I could see the look of despair on Carmenza and Juliana’s faces. I’m a backpacker for crying out loud, whose “nice” clothes mean anything that is mostly clean. I don’t have a party dress in there, or heels, or hair straightener, or make-up or jewelry or magic body scrub that can legitimately clean 10 months of travel off my skin. At least I got that pedicure in Quito…at least all my toenails have grown back.

However I was in the company of two beautiful Colombian women with a good sense of style and they were up for the challenge. It must have been like playing dress up… I would get hangers and hangers and hangers of dresses, pants, skirts (if you want to call them that) handed to me to try. Each combination was paired with different shiny, strappy, very high heels that would then coordinate with some dangly earrings and bracelets. They were going to make me Colombia pretty if it took everything in the closet to do it and succeed they did. Unfortunately the outfit didn’t automatically make me a dancer. For that I was going to be left to my own devices and hopefully a very, very good partner.

Stephen got cleaned up pretty good too. At the end of the night we were quite the handsome crew, all 8 of us all spiffy for a night on the town. What a treat it was. The show was incredible, the costumes, the music, the dancing…all of it. Stephen was quick to find his way to the floor rotating between Carmenza, Juliana, Susie(Carmenza’s sister) and Laura. It seemed like he’d never forgotten the practice he got in his year spend living down here. I got mostly through the night before the pressure was really turned on. If Stephen can dance, then clearly I can too. But that was where they were wrong. All my modesty, all my hesitation could only resist for so long…when Stephen came and asked me to dance I was about ready to kidney punch him for selling me out like that. Even if I said no it wouldn’t have mattered; you can’t really say no.

So reluctantly I let myself get pulled to the dance floor, with eyes wide with fear and far more of my legs exposed than would be considered appropriate back home.

The music pretty much moves you, and even if you don’t want to, you can’t stop a little wiggle in the hips. He kept it basic for me, avoiding the turns and twists that were guaranteed to trip me up, and we had a great time. Brother and sister, in borrowed clothes, re-united after a few years of absence to a place of one of our most significant childhood memories, with our new family, dancing salsa in Cali…and I liked it.

And just when I think I’ve seen it all, life school gives me this. 

After 20 years it's all brand new

Plans are changing again. I had a plan...it seemed like a good one and it involved me climbing Cotopaxi, spending a couple weeks in the jungle region of Ecuador, spending a couple weeks in a yoga village on the fringes of that jungle, then slowly working my way through Colombia, exploring the virgin Caribbean coast and then spending my last month on the beaches of Costa Rica before flying home.

Then 2 things happened. First of all, I found work in Chile, which meant that I would spend the ski season in the Andes...so that pretty much wiped out all of plan A. Then I was surprised to hear that I would have another visitor; my brother was coming down for about 2 weeks and wanted to meet me in Colombia - over Memorial Weekend. That was less than 2 weeks away, and, well, I was still on the Galapagos. So now I was going to have to run through Ecuador, completely skip the jungle, the mountain, the yoga village and get really comfortable on a bus to get the Cali in time.

All that time crawling on the Galapagos was flipped in an instant. Days were moving by so fast, so were cities, towns, buses, faces and families. They all just zipped by. I crossed the border from Ecuador into Colombia trying to wrap my head around what just happened. Who was I just with? What did I just see? What did I miss? Ecuador, like most places on this journey has been flagged as one of those countries I'll just have to come back to...somehow, someway, someday.

But Colombia holds a special place in my heart for a variety of reasons. I consider Colombia a strand in my cultural roots, a place that is connected to me even if I never really understood how. My mother was raised in Colombia and brought with her parts of her traditions when she came to the United States, and I, unknowingly adopted parts of those traditions. But perhaps the most significant reason is that Colombia was my first ever international travel destination. I was a small 8yr old girl, with a 10yr old brother and a stuffed animal named Bumbum to count as my friends when we boarded that plane to Cali 20 years ago. My mom had arranged for us to stay with her best girlhood friend for nearly 2 months. My brother and I didn't know them (the family we would be staying with), we didn't know the language, we didn't understand the culture...we didn't even really know where we were going other than it was really, really, really far away.

That was 20 years ago. It's incredible how memories change, evolve, fade. I was about to walk back in time those 20 years and see this family and this culture again...but really for the first time. And like that summer so long ago, I would have my brother by my side. In all my planning, I never imagined this. But really who could have? I split up my ride from Quito to Cali for a brief stay in Pasto and then Popayan. In Popayan I was hosted by some fantastic couchsurfers who made me feel like a best friend with hours of our meeting. I didn't want to leave, but I had to. My brother was flying in from New Jersey and in all honesty I hadn't really spent any quantifiable time with him in nearly 4 years. It would be despicable to show up late today. My new friends made me promise to come back with my brother so they could meet him too. Even if it wasn't for my great hosts I would have come back with Stephen. The town is beautiful, colonial, small, and the entire historic center is painted white like something out of a movie.

From there I got on a bus to Cali, onto the chaotic sprawl of Cali. It was dark when I arrived and the route takes you through the poor areas in the south of the city; it takes you past homeless people huddled around barrel fires, sleeping in doorways and under overpasses, and past poor street kids knocking on car windows for change. I didn't remember any of this, I just remembered a very nice house, a country club with a really, really high dive, and a live-in maid with a daughter about my age...the memories of an 8yr old. In reality nothing about my memories said “Colombia” it could have been a beautiful house anywhere.

Stephen and I arrived at about the same time at 2 very different locations, one at the bus terminal and one at the airport. This was my fault; I should have left Popayan earlier. In the end it all worked out and before long we were all in the car: Alvaro (my host dad), Carmenza (my host mom), Juliana (it's latin america, we'll call her my cousin), Stephen and I. It was almost the same cast of my childhood, minus Alvaro Jose(the son) who was out of town. Once he got there it really would be a reunion...a phone call would have to do until he was back in town. 

We were all sitting together at a restaurant along the river eating empanadas and playing catch up. I felt bad; they kept asking me if I remembered things: people, places, events, food. I always thought I had such vivid memories of Colombia, turns out they were spotty at best and mostly limited to the layout of an otherwise beautiful house and the bickering of children trying to play games lost in translation. But there we were, all grown up, and I could swear I’d never been there before, never met THESE people. But I recognized the faces and I knew the names, but that was where it stopped.

We would have a few days to actually get to know each other. Plus I would have a couple weeks to get to know my brother again. We would go and spend some time with Amparo, a woman I consider to be my grandmother, explore a new city (Medellin), and spend time with Stephen’s adoptive family in Bogota. Colombia, it seemed, was going to be a lot of family. To be frank, I was totally okay with that and thrilled that I would get to share these long overdue reunions with my brother. It was definitely different from everything else I had done to date. After 10 months…it’s all still new.