I left my heart in Barranquilla

I had decided to take a sabbatical from work after my father passed away. Something in me needed change. I had always been curious about Colombia, and so I decided to buy a one way ticket to Barranquilla, and spend some time there. The point was not to leave forever, but just have an open-ended return date.

The first 2 or 3 weeks were mostly about orienting myself to the new culture. It was at once extremely poor, and opulent. I found myself most interested in the boys and girls who sold cigarettes and chewing gum out of boxes, and the little shoe-shine kits some of the boys carried. My heart went out to them.

I was watching them from an outdoor cafe one day, one of the boys I had come to recognize who was a shoe-shiner. We exchanged smiles now and then, and today was no different. He came up and wanted to know if I wanted to have my shoes shined, and I smiled and said no, and he smiled back and turned to leave. There was a lady sitting at the table next to me, and when he left, she said, ‘His name is Arturo.”

“You know him?” I asked.

“Yes, he sometimes goes to my school.”

We talked for a while, and I learned that Clarisse was running a school for street children. Mostly a safe space for them to eat a good lunch and play. If they learned something along the way, that was fine. But the focus was on giving them a childhood and a healthy meal.

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She invited me to visit, and I came the next day. There were children running around chasing each other, and others sitting at a table drawing. There was a greenhouse on the roof where they grew veggies for the lunches. There were some educational posters with the alphabet and other things like that, and educational puzzles and books, but mostly there were toys. Metal trucks, dolls, puzzles, paper and drawing tools. The kids looked like they were having fun. When lunch came out it was nutritious and tasty.

“This is wonderful,” I told her. “How do you pay for it?”

“Mostly donations,” she said, “from people like yourself. The largest donor is anonymous, and without him we could not afford to do any of this. We still struggle to make ends meet, but we get by.”

After a longer conversation, I went home and my mind was buzzing. Is this something I could somehow help with? I knew that donating would be difficult as I was traveling and unemployed, and would have to get back to it sooner or later, but I wondered if I could lend a hand during the day.

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I went back the next day, and spoke again with Clarisse to see if there was anything I could help with other than funds, and she suggested that I help with the greenhouse which needed repairs and also to be planted. She said it would be great if I could involve the kids.

So I hatched a plan, and came the next morning (and for many mornings after that) with tools and seeds. The first order of business was to get more dirt to use for planting up on the roof, so I gave the older kids some buckets and toy hand shovels and sent them on their way. And the younger children taught me songs that they knew in Spanish while I had them use their index finger to make seed holes.

“A to ambo materirerirero
Qué venís a buscar materirerirero
Un paje de oro materirerirero
Qué nombre le pondremos materirerirero
Le pondremos cara de burro* materirerirero 
Ese nombre no me gusta materirerirero 
Le pondremos …………materirerirero
Ese nombre sí me gusta materirerirero 
Cantaremos todos juntos materirerirero.”

Other days I lined them up in a row, and told them that I would say the word ‘cucaracha’ and everyone would poke their finger in the soil, and I would go over their heads dropping a couple seeds in. The trick was they could only do it on the word, ‘Cucaracha.’ And so I played with that, and would say. ‘Curitiba.’ or something like that instead, and the losers of the game had to put their finger on their head and turn around in a circle 3 times.

It was great fun, and the noise of the children laughing was infectious.

Eventually I got to know their names. Not just Arturo, but Paco, Luis, Felicia, Xochitl (which was the hardest for me to pronounce). They were all fabulous workers and in a few weeks the little sprouts were just getting big enough to identify the plants. We got so caught up in the game of it, I forgot what we planted where.

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Afternoons were free after volunteering at the school, and so I would walk around the city and the beach. My favorite was Playa Palito. A bit off the beaten path, when I would put out a blanket and read.

It was a long walk from the little one-room apartment I was renting. And on the way back one day I thought I saw Luis from the school, one of my gardening pals. I tried to catch up with him. He was a half a block ahead of me with his little candy box. And then I saw the unthinkable happen. Two men jumped out of the car, grabbed him, shoved him in, and sped off.

I could not believe what I was seeing, to be honest. I immediately called Clarisse and asked her to meet me to talk. We met at a cafe, and she spoke first. She said she understood that eventually I had to go home, but she wished I would stay. I explained to her that I was happy to stay, but that is not why I wanted to talk, and I recounted what I saw.

After getting the details from me, Clarisse had a sad distant look on her face.

“He was taken. There is nothing we can do.”

“Where?” I asked.

“We don’t know where. He won’t come back.”

What?!? I was in shock. “What do you mean,” I asked.

She went on to explain that between organ harvesting and the sex trades, it was hard to know exactly. She said it happens sometimes that they lose students that way.

“Have you ever tried to stop it or bring those doing it to justice? Have you seen it happen?”

“Yes, I have seen it. Early when I first got the school together. One of my favorite little girls Carlota was taken in broad daylight, just 40 feet away from me. I know you come from a different culture. And maybe where you come from the authorities and the police are clean, but here they are not. People who look too hard, end up going missing themselves.”

We kept talking but I had a hard time following. My mind was blown.

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A few days later, after lunch dishes were done, and I was about to leave, I asked her if we could talk about it again. The kids were gone at this point, and we talked at the school. She reiterated what she had said before. That she wished she could do something but she was unable to because she was scared for her life.

Just at that point she received a phone call and answered it. The look on her face was drained. “Claro que si, Don Roberto. Ahora voy.” (Of course, Don Roberto, I’m coning now.)

She looked at me and said, “We can’t talk about this any more. I have to go.”

“Can we continue our talk another time?” I asked.

“I’m afraid not,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I have to go now.”

I can tell you I did not sleep that night. This was something so unexpected and my mind was trying to make sense of it.

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When I came the next day to do the gardening lessons, the school was closed. I tried the next day and the next. I tried calling Clarisse, but she never answered my calls.

On the third day, I went to her home, and knocked on the door.

She opened the door and had a black eye and her face was swollen and bruised.

“Ohh my goodness, what happened?” I asked.

“I am so sorry, I can’t talk to you,” she said.

“What about the school?” I asked.

“I lost my funding,” she said. “I can’t talk about it, you have to go.”

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I obliged her wishes, and left. As I turned the corner from her house, I noticed I was being followed. I kept walking for blocks and blocks, turning corners, heading into buildings and back out, and still the man was following me. I did not want to go to my apartment because I was scared to lead him to where I was staying,

Finally, I got on a bus, and lost him.

But in general, I was starting to put together a story in my mind. It was still not well formed but I was clear that it was time for my Colombian vacation to come to an end.

When I did get back to my apartment, there was an envelope with the words, "Go home Americano” written on it. Inside there was aitline ticket back to Denver where I had been living. How did they know where I was from? How did they know my name?

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I took the hint. The ticket was for later that evening, which did not give me much time. My mind was racing and I felt panicked.

I packed my things. When I got to the gate, I noticed more men here watching me there. My heart was racing. I got on the flight home.

Somewhere over the Gulf I came to a realization that I did not want to confront. I wondered about her anonymous donor, and whether that money was paying for her silence. It was the only explanation that made sense to me. And I sunk into that realization.

I don’t think I will ever know the whole story. I carry it now like a constant low-grade heartache. I wonder how those children are, and what becomes of them with no one there to protect them.

My friends had a welcome home party to find out more about the trip. I couldn’t figure out how to talk about it.

“Who’d you meet?” they asked. “Poor sweetie got her heart broken”, another said.

“I did get my heart broken,” I told them. They wanted details and instead I excused myself and went to the bathroom and cried.