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This article is written by Katie Grey who taught English in a small school attended by the children of coffee pickers in the Santander region of Colombia last summer. It aims to give an insight into the lives of these delightful, friendly people as seen through the eyes of a 20 year old student from England.
If you are reading this, I assume that the picture you have of Colombia is more coffee than cocaine, but to a non-coffee aficionado such as myself, the moment I confirmed the flight details for my trip to Colombia in July and August of this year, all I could think about was being kidnapped by drugs barons, and next seeing my friends in 25 years time after finally being released from my cell in the jungle.
Since the Colombian guerrilla don’t generally let their prisoners publish their experiences on the internet, it’s safe to assume that I made it home on schedule and in one piece. In fact, even better. Without wanting to sound like the irritating gap-year student we all know and hate waxing lyrical about their life-changing experience helping two-headed, one-legged children in Nepal learn to build a cathedral, or something similar, I can honestly say that what I did see and do in Colombia was a real eye-opener, and that I did have experiences I never expected (some of which I hope never to repeat – eating the famed Santanderian delicacy the homiga culona, aka giant fried ant, in front of a class of tittering 15 year olds is one which really sticks in my mind…)
At this point I’d better introduce myself and explain how I ended up in Colombia. My parent’s company, Capital Coffee Roasters is based in London and my Dad, Roy Grey, visited Colombia with the SCAE (Speciality Coffee Association of Europe) in March last year. Whilst there, they visited a small school at the top of a mountain in the Andes which serves the children of the coffee-pickers all over the region. I was looking to go abroad to teach during my summer holiday (I’m studying at Exeter University) which is how I found myself in Colombia for almost 7 weeks, 5 of which were spent teaching English to children in the school, El Bosque, though I myself spoke not a word of Spanish.
I had the most amazing welcome from the children who were all madly waving flags on my arrival – they don’t get too many visitors….. I was then greeted with a speech in Spanish of which I understood not a word and to which I was expected to respond, and an enlarged picture of a group of middle-aged men sitting in the main school room, one of whom the head teacher gestured at, excitedly asking, Su papá? Su papá? The man in question wasn’t my father, but I didn’t want to seem rude and had no Spanish with which to explain, so to this day there are many people in Colombia who believe that I am the daughter of Colin Smith, until recently the President of SCAE. I did feel pangs of disloyalty to my Dad whenever I saw him looking out at me from this picture during my stay, but the deed was done.
This was my induction to school-life in Colombia, and over the next few weeks, I learned to expect the unexpected (I was always prepared to make a speech in Spanish) and got used to the Colombian way of life – eventually preferring many aspects to life in England – steak 3 times a day anyone?! My school had a great sense of fun, and it was clear that both the teachers and students loved being there every day. Despite the fact that my kids had never met an English person, and will probably never travel outside of their village, let alone to England, every single child that I taught responded to my lessons with an enthusiasm that many teachers in England would pay good money for. While at first I think this may have been due to novelty factor (I enjoyed treatment comparable to that of an A-list celebrity during my stay), the fact that every child in the school could hold a fluent, if very basic, conversation in English by the time I left made me feel like a proud mother hen.
On a personal level, this fact is really important to me, as I hope to go into teaching in the UK in a few years time. Although I saw many beautiful landscapes, met many important people and did many exhilarating things while I was in Colombia, it is the day-to-day contact with the kids that I remember. Every child would say Good morning to me at the beginning of the day, the end of the day, and every time they saw me in between, and wouldn’t rest until I had replied to each individually. I was invited to play basketball at breaktimes, where I was revered as a kind of Michael Jordan-esque figure, due to the fact that my 5’8” height makes me a good few inches taller than the average Colombian adult. Each morning at 7am on the dot (excruciatingly early for this typical student), I was collected from the coffee farm on which I was staying by 4 or 5 excitable 7 year olds who presented me with flowers and escorted me on the 2 minute walk to school. A couple of weeks in, when I had got to know all of the children, they would start off lessons begging to play a certain game or exercise that we had done the week before. I never got over the fact that people were thrilled to see me everywhere I went, bringing me presents and telling me how beautiful I was (apparently I look just like Britney Spears…?). It was a bit of a shock when I returned home to family life where my brothers barely acknowledge my presence when I walk into the room.
One memorable morning I was expecting to go into Pinchote (my nearest village, 30 minutes drive away!) to have a breakfast with a couple of people from the FNC (Colombian Coffee Federation) that I had already met. To my complete shock, when I got to Pinchote, I was escorted into a large hall filled with about 200 local people in the coffee industry, where I sat in the middle seat of the front row, and was then presented with an award involving a scroll read out by the Mayor, a badge, a photoshoot and several microphones. Since everything was done in Spanish, I didn’t really have any idea about what was happening until I was able to read the scroll and see that I was being given the top award in Pinchote for ‘social and economic services to the country’. Trying to block out the mental image of my friends and family at home crying with laughter, I attempted to make a thank-you speech in Spanish, although I don’t think anyone really understood it (probably a good thing). What I really wanted to convey though, was my amazement that I was being thanked so much, when I felt that Colombia had done me the favour. I have never been anywhere where the people were so welcoming – from Leticia, Facundo, Paula and Jorge – my surrogate family in El Bosque; Jaime and Alix, teachers in the college and school; Sergio, Ana-Maria and all of the lovely guys at the FNC, and Luis and Vicky Camacho, the owners of Las Flores, my farm, who proved to be my salvation when I discovered they could speak English.
OK, time to come clean about my relationship with coffee. Having lived with coffee conversations dominating my home life ‘till now, I have had a typical child’s aversion to their parent’s obsession (ok, I know it’s funded my life so far…..) – but I still don’t drink coffee and have a very limited knowledge on the subject. In Colombia life is very different, everyone is involved in the family business so it was expected that I could field technical questions about coffee roasting machinery in Europe in the 21st century. Tricky stuff! However, strangely, I actually found it really interesting to learn about the industry from the other side. Coffee is one of the most important industries in Colombia, and in Santander, where I was staying; the mountain-sides are covered in plantations. I was confused when I first saw them, as they don’t look like the neat ploughed fields that constitute farms in England, but more like wild woodland. This is because the coffee in Santander is grown in the shade, so huge banana trees with wide leaves are planted amongst all of the coffee bushes. Apparently this is unique in all of Colombia, and the farmers in Santander are very proud of their coffee, pressing one with samples of the coffee in all its different stages. I do have one top tip for anyone planning to visit a coffee farm: don’t wear flip flops. I made this mistake, and half an hour after my walk through the farm found that my feet had swelled up and turned bright red, due to the 84 ant-bites I received (yes, I counted).
Most of the farms that I visited export their coffee all over the world through the Federacion National de Cafeteros (FNC), a huge organisation who have realised that in the same way that David Beckham is integral to English culture, coffee affects everything in Colombia. The FNC funds schools, homes and builds roads among many other things – and if it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t have been able to fund my time in Colombia.
So now, back in the real world, I’m back in Exeter in my student house, with only my photos and the odd email in Spanish to remind me, the whole experience feels like a surreal dream. University life seems strangely normal: I’ve not been called upon to sing Lionel Richie songs (you’ve never heard me sing so you wouldn’t know what a daft request this was…..), I’ve not been asked to explain the concept of Wales (no, it’s not the same as England…yes, it is in Europe) in Spanish to people who have never left South America…….
How lucky am I to have had that experience – thank you to everyone I met – I will be back!
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