Travel Tips

The following is taken from my book (published by Random House) titled Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals. For more information, visit www.wendydale.com.

I had no choice but to accept the fact that most houses in Colombia had no hot water; what seemed unreasonably cruel was the fact that the shower nevertheless had two knobs: the "C" knob which stood for cold and the "H" knob that I assumed stood for Ha Ha because it did absolutely nothing.

Bathing in ice-cold water gave whole new meaning to the phrase "refreshing shower" — because if you weren’t awake after a Colombian shower, it was because you had just consumed two codeines and a bottle of rum, in which case you were guaranteed to enjoy the experience immensely.

With time, I figured I would get used to my daily dousing of cold water, but I doubted I would ever grow accustomed to the electrical shocks in the kitchen — the other source of physical anguish in my new household had become the stove. A typical hour of cooking would go like this: I would be happily watching my pot, waiting for it to boil — which was basically a painfree experience (other than the fact that I wasn’t much enjoying my new role as Person Who Cooks) when I would attempt to stir the chicken soup that my boyfriend Francisco had taught me how to make. This did not seem like an irrational thing to do — after all there were many recipes in the United States that went so far as to advocate stirring constantly. However, in Colombia, whenever I reached into the pot with a metal spoon, currents of electricity would race through my arm. The first time, the shock was so unexpected that I quickly flung the utensil into the air and ran screaming into the other room.

I complained to Francisco that the stove wasn’t working properly, that it was out to get me and at that very moment was planning my death. Francisco sat me down and calmly explained that all stoves in Colombia were that way. It wasn’t the appliance’s fault; I was the one to blame: after all, how could I possibly think of cooking on an electric stove without wearing rubber-soled shoes? I told him that in the past, I really hadn’t ever thought of cooking; how could he expect me to know that I had to don a special kind of footwear?

Realizing I was new to all this (after all, in the States I’d always had stoves that used gas), Francisco explained the other precautions I was to take in order to prepare the midday meal: if I were to stand on a board on the floor, use a wooden spoon instead of a metal one and ensure that my hands were completely dry before attempting to stir, I would be sure to diminish the electric current running through my body to levels far below those used to get essential information out of prisoners of war.

***

In an effort to fit into my new household, I had also tried to get over my cultural prejudices regarding food. In Cali, I sportingly sampled what I had formerly refused in Costa Rica — rubbery tripe and canned sardines — but chicken soup was what never failed to defeat me. It wasn’t the broth per se that creeped me out; it was the little chicken feet with their little chicken claws that lined that bottom of my bowl that I was not too enthusiastic about. But Francisco took to these extremities the way I gobbled down Reese’s peanut butter cups: licking off the outside and sucking on the yellow goo on the inside.

Another day as I watched Francisco devour a suspiciously familiar piece of a cow’s anatomy, my American breeding came through again and I couldn’t help but comment on the disgusting nature of what he was putting into his mouth.

"It’s delicious," he said, apparently completely oblivious to the fact that he was eating an animal’s tongue. "Do you want some?"

I shivered in revulsion, looking at all the hairs lining my beau’s meal.
"You actually expect me to kiss those lips?" I asked.

"You’ll like it," he said, pointing to his mouth. "Two tongues inside."

***

My first three weeks in Cali slipped by, day after day of domesticity in one of the most dangerous countries in the world. During that time, violence was something distant we just heard about on the news. There would be a guerrilla attack or a paramilitary massacre in some city with a foreign name far away from us, but this had as little direct impact on my life as gang violence in South Central Los Angeles.

A year or two earlier, I might have gone running off to the jungle in search of adventure, but now I wanted to revel in a quieter existence. My travels had been adventurous and exhilarating but also emotionally draining. I wanted to sit back for a while and enjoy being part of a family — no prison escapes, no bombs, just a simple life with Francisco spiced up with a dose of Colombian flavor to keep it from being bland.

Melba’s neighborhood of Jamundí seemed like the right place for it. It was a planned community, which would have been mind-numbing and depressing had it existed in Orange County, but located on the outskirts of Cali, suburban life was hardly sterile and dull. Even though the streets were nearly identical when looked at from a distance — each block consisted of one long rectangular building divided up into separate townhouses — when you moved in closer, you realized that the whole place was swimming in a flurry of activity, music and commerce.

There wasn’t a commercial property in the whole neighborhood so the residents of Jamundí had transformed their living rooms into stores, restaurants and any other enterprise imaginable. With the addition of an oven and some glass-enclosed cases, a family was suddenly in business as a bakery. Fit the place with some shelves, dry goods and vegetables and they transformed their place into a small grocery store. Everyone was a budding entrepreneur. There were living room restaurants that dispensed soup and a different lunch every day. Other places specialized in nighttime snacks. On outdoor barbecues on the sidewalk, women grilled hotdogs and hamburgers or corn patties with melted cheese called arepas. Our neighborhood also included a video store (whose merchandise consisted of grainy movies recorded off of HBO), two arcades (a living room equipped with several Nintendos where kids sat down and rented the games by the hour) and a drug store (staffed by a knowledgeable pharmacist who would diagnose your condition, sell you medication and even inject you with your purchases in the back room). And there were several makeshift businesses as well. Sometimes there would just be a handmade sign outside of someone’s home: "Clothes for sale" or "Homemade ice cream" or "Mechanic."

In Jamundí, the arepas came hot off the grill, the papas relleñas were prepared as you watched. Milk was lukewarm, fresh from the cow and clothes were tailor-made. For the price of a pair of socks at the Gap, a professional dressmaker would create a garment from scratch made to fit your measurements.

Living there was peaceful and predictable in a comforting sort of way. Every morning began the same way: Francisco and I would walk over to the "bakery" where we’d pick out breakfast, which varied depending on what was due to come out of the oven in our baker’s living room. My favorite was the pan de bono, small donut-shaped breads made with fresh cheese that we’d gulp down with sweet cups of Colombian coffee.

It was a simple life, the kind that would have bored me to exasperation two years earlier, but Francisco's imprisonment had put things in perspective for me. The six months I had spent not having Francisco made having him all the more poignant. So while I grumbled about the difficulties of squeezing us both into a tiny twin bed or voiced my opposition to the over-charged electric stove, the truth was, I didn’t care where we lived or what our circumstances were.

We had waited so long to be able to be together in Colombia. And now that we were finally here, I couldn’t help but think that everything was going to be okay, that the hard part really was finally over.

I figured that all I had to do was stick to my domestic existence, and nothing terrible would occur. I simply had to avoid prisons, crime, drug cartels and guerrilla war, and life would turn out just fine. But the problems plaguing Colombia crept in insidiously. They attached themselves like a virus to the poverty that flowed into most Colombian homes. And not even Jamundí was immune.

For more information, visit www.wendydale.com.