How am I ever going to get out of this country?
I was having visa troubles, mainly I hadn’t applied for a new visa since I had arrived in October, it was now April, and I really didn’t want to stay any longer either. My problem was, ¿how to leave?
I was staying illegally, working illegally and also having my pay withheld, with the promise of future pay of course, but each paycheck kept getting smaller and my ‘savings’ kept rising. Frankly, according to my visa situation, it probably would have been more illegal to pay me, but either way, I was in a pickle.
Supposedly, in Colombia, when the new year hits I automatically ‘received’ another ninety days of tourist visa, not permission to work, but at least I wouldn’t be staying illegally. I still don’t know if that was a fiction I easily believed or not, since I waited until it become a moot point sometime in April to really start thinking about what needed to be done.
I began to moonlight some freelance hours on top of my day job, which due to the forced savings plan wasn’t making ends meet. Slowly, throughout February, March and April I tucked away cash hidden in the single room I rented. With this money, I thought, I would have to find a way to buy a plane ticket back to a country that wouldn’t charge me for existing, the country where my parents just might miss me enough to give me a place to stay while I figured things out.
I re-enrolled in University of Wisconsin Whitewater, where I had dropped out of two years earlier, for the following semester; I even had a summer job lined up back in the States. I just had this small problem of being illegal and exploited in a foreign country. Oh, and I didn’t have a credit card.
Time was when you could travel internationally with cash. I never knew those times. I needed to find someone trustworthy to help me make a purchase, to buy the plane ticket to get out of the predicament I was in. I didn’t want to be illegal; I had just….somehow let it happen. Maybe it was my nascent sociologist creeping out, maybe I wanted to feel what it was like to be existing in an illegal fashion. Although maybe it just slipped my mind.
I continued to work, night and day, taking my first private class at 6am downtown before the offices officially opened, and finishing up late at night, often as late as 10pm, far from home in some residential area of Bogotá. I walked through parts of the city most people only bused through to save fares; the problem with private and professional English classes is you can only really give class before work, at the lunch hour and after work. Those large stretches of time my students were working, I was trekking across the city to add the bus fare to my coffer.
In late April I made an agreement with one of my 6am students; the next class, after the weekend, I would bring him the cash, hundreds of thousands of pesos, enough to buy a one way flight back to the United States, and he would help me buy the plane fare. I was so happy, finally I would make good on months of planning and be able to buy a plane ticket back! That night I carefully tucked the money into the class text book to be sure not to forget.
I finished out the week upbeat; I really did enjoy teaching English. I was good at it! My students were nice and they loved me, since I was simultaneously learning and perfecting my Spanish, I embarrassed myself plenty for them not to feel bad making mistakes in English. We had a great time and it was the first professional job where I, at least with the students, was treated like a professional.
I came and went, trekked throughout the city and helped each one of my students learn at least something new each day. I reviewed their progress and made suggestions, often suggesting audio, video, books and even other classes and free resources available to keep practicing. Many of my co-workers preferred to stick to the class text, but I treated my students how I had always wanted to be treated, with free reign to explore the parts that most interest me!
On Friday that week, early in the day, I was invited by some co-workers to go downtown salsa dancing that night. I quite enjoy free motion and other types of dancing without rules, like reggae for example, but I could now passably step to a salsa rhythm after spending many months in Colombia. It seemed like fun, and a good thing to do before I left the country.
Late that afternoon, I arrived home, and began to prepare for a night out. I had class the next day, and would probably stay downtown with a co-worker and leave from their place in the morning. I packed my bag, clothes, materials, and got everything ready. After a quick bite of my specialty cheese sandwich diet, I headed off into the city without calling ahead.
Now, for those of you who do not live in a tropical area, or latin America, or anywhere where clock times are flexible and plans are allowed to flow and become different plans, you might think that I had already confirmed the plans earlier that day, which I had. But in Colombia, that wasn’t enough. I should have called ahead that night, mere minutes before leaving, to confirm that the meet up place and time had not been changed. But I didn’t.
I made it to the Las Aguas downtown bus stop, and from there it was only a few blocks to a large residential apartment building where I thought we were meeting. I went up the front doors, saw that there was quite a bit of security inside and, without any sort of knowledge of the proper ritual, I pressed a buzzer.
After much banter back and forth through a push button voice box, it was determined that those who I sought were not there. I didn’t quite understand; I think the security guards felt bad, and let me in. They spent the better part of half an hour trying to explain to me that, basically, I had been left behind. During this time I tried a dozen phone calls to each one of my friends, but it seemed as if, wherever they were, they were already having too much fun to bother answering their phones.
Having left messages, on phones and with the lobby guards, I had in my mind waiting around the central park to see if maybe, just maybe, somebody would remember me. Maybe.
I walked the few blocks over to the park, ‘Las Aquas’ back near the bus stop. Near a giant statue and rotunda, of which people argue who the statue really represents (This is one of the only ones that is not Simón Bolivar!) there is ample seating along the edge of the grassy areas of the park. A cement border separates the higher grassy areas from the lower, sunken cement walkways, and all along the edges people can sit.
Down the way a bit were three young guys, who appeared to be smoking. Not long after I sat down, one of them hollered over to me, ‘Hey you! Don’t you want some of this marijuana?’
I said, ‘No, no thanks, I’m fine’, and suddenly all three seemed more interested in me. ‘A foreigner? Where are you from?’
I told them that I was from the United States and one of the young men seemed very interested. He slid down the concrete border as he asked me questions until he was seated very near to me. I could understand his interest, although not frequently in Bogotá, when I left the city I was an anomaly. This was 2011, but even then Colombia still held a stigma and did not attract much international tourism, except of course by ‘foreign direct investment’ type people.
As I answered and explained a variety of questions, all of which were common for people to ask me immediately upon meeting, the other friends of the young man drew nearer as well. This was not unusual; it never crossed my mind as unusual! I lived as a fish out of water in Colombia, I was interesting to people!
The two were sitting at my sides, asking me questions, when the third appeared at the front, with a knife. ‘We’re going to need all your money’, he said.
I instinctively tried to squeeze out backward, but now all three had knives and the two on my sides just gently put their hands on my shoulders and shook their head. I took a deep breath, feeling a tightening knot in my solar plexus. I reached for my wallet and pulled out everything I had in it.
‘Here’, I said, ‘take it’, as I handed them 17,000 pesos, about nine dollars at that time. They weren’t impressed, and the apparent leader leaned back and began to open my backpack and try to see what was inside.
‘Books!’, I squeaked, ‘its just books!’, realizing what else was hidden in those books I suddenly felt like the stupidest person on the face of the earth. If they took my plane fare, I was doomed.
‘Hmm, yeah it is just books. Where are all your dollars, your euros?’, the leader asked? The other two seemed pretty dubious, still with their knives out. ‘I work here, teaching english, helping bilingual students and university kids! I earn pesos and spend pesos, I can’t remember the last time I saw a dollar!’, I explained to them, probably squeaking the whole time, that it wasn’t easy living in Bogotá but that I did have a job and it was just enough to get by.
They seemed to consider this, as I babbled on at least the leader’s heart seemed to soften.
‘Alright guys, give this guy his money back, This isn’t the gringo we’re looking for’
I was shocked, speechless as I found the money being shoved back into my hand. They got up, so did I. I began to slowly step in the direction of the bus stop.
The third guy, less convinced than the other two, eyed my necklace, given to me my mother after my first communion, a catholic tradition. ‘Why don’t you give me that necklace then’, he ‘offered’.
‘This is from my mother, I’ve had it since first communion, I’d rather you take the money!’, I blurted out, savoring the taste of foot in my mouth. As he seemed rather pleased and I realized I may have mis-stepped, I re-considered what I said, realized it was true, and looked at the money in my hand.
‘Here’, I said, giving him 5000 pesos. He had a huge smile on his face as he grabbed it and ran off, the leader chuckled and said, ‘So he can buy more marijuana’.
I began walking towards the bus stop, not eager to keep waiting around. ‘Bye! ‘, I waved back over my shoulder.
I was walking swiftly, heart beating, head spinning, trying to understand what had happened, when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone following me. I was close to the bus stop now, I didn’t stop, but looked over and saw the leader of the group following me a bit behind and to the left.
‘Where’re you going?’, I asked, trying to sound nonchalant and failing.
‘I just want to make sure no one else robs you tonight’, he replied, accompanying me to the safety of the bus stop.
My landlady was almost angry. ‘They never would have given money back to a Colombian!’.
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The Lesson
I have taken many lessons from this episode and others immediately surrounding it. I would like to give you all a chance to post in the comments about what you think the lesson of this story is.
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Participate in the 