Terremoto Blues

Sep 8

10 min read

Updated: Sep 28

We just got back from Colombia which is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful countries I have traveled to, offering a head spinning variety in nature, landscapes, flora and fauna. It is home to over 400 different fruit varieties. A plentiful paradise with a difficult history and an impressively resilient, fun loving and kind population. Colombian food boasts quite a variety of finger licking dishes summarized further below, including some travel tips, Colombian spots in Paris and a playlist to emphasize the unequaled excellence and unique variety of their music.

First, more about our time in Colombia, present and past. Nico and I went to live in Bogota early 2012 for a couple of years, only just pregnant with Nino and with our 20-month-old Pablo. This summer we returned as a family after over 12 years. The trip was long overdue and motivated by the need to close ranks with our Colombian relatives after the heart-breaking loss of Julien (Nico’s brother, our Colombian sister in law Andrea’s husband, and father to nephews Santiago, Antoine and Mathieu) .

Our trip rough started off experiencing, first-hand, the massive earthquake on 10 August which caused over 331 casualties, 4,611 injured and colossal material damage just a few days after the grim presidential takeover of extreme right wing Abelardo de la Espriella Otero.

We were in Montenegro at the time, a 100 km away from the epicenter. The earthquake yanked all 9 of us out of our sleep, we ran out of the rented finca and sat in the garden, unable to stay standing the earth was moving so violently, staring at the pool water moving about like choppy waves on a rough sea during 3 seemingly endless minutes. Way luckier than most, we came out the other end spooked but unscathed, with minor hassles such as non-existent network, broken crockery, fallen furniture, power and water cuts, cancelled return flights, even managing to make our way back to Bogota by car after a few days.

The highlight of our trip, which I cannot recommend enough, was to Serrania la Lindosa in Colombian Amazonia, superbly organized by Geotours Guaviare. We enjoyed every single aspect, lush breath-taking nature, where we were able to observe amazing wildlife, all sorts of monkeys, birds, river dolphins, turtles and more, stunning rock formations worthy of the movie Avatar, fascinating cave paintings, through super fun walks in the jungles, on boat rides or simply from our modest but delightful country accommodation by the lake. We got to swim in crystal clear rivers and tucked away waterfalls. Our guide Milton and all the other guides were very kind and taught us a lot about local culture, indigenous beliefs, animals, trees and plants but also about the succesful peace process in that region over the past 2 decades. Sadly, that transition in now threatened as the new President intensifies operations against armed groups (3 minors were among 10 killed in a military air strike on 27 august in that zone).

This Colombian odyssey has stirred up a lot of emotions end memories. The earthquake reminded me that, a few weeks after Pablo was born, I had the oddest dream. I am lying asleep in bed and suddenly aware of a rumbling noise, the bed quaking, I open my eyes to the sight of a space ship crashing down towards me. I stumble off the bed just in time... Crash, bang, wallop goes the ship... A door on top comes open with a hissing sound, releasing a multitude of hysterical giggling baby aliens (a mix between the ones from the movies Alien and Gremlins 2). They run about the house helter skelter... Not deterred by any of this, I run around trying to catch them, scolding them '' babies, babies, come on now, let me put your diaper on... Come on now, you will get poo all over your little legs...'' On that 1st sonograph, babies are pretty much aliens. When they reach the light of the sun, they look alienish, moving awkwardly, sounding so strange, so unique, with their personalities, their 'souls' already seeping through their gaze, their entire being.

As new parents, we run around deciphering their alien needs, alternating between moments of pure love and joy and great frustration and confusion. Well worth emotional roller coaster though, if only for how funny their perception of the world turns out in those early years:

"Je veux manger du brocolibri (I want to eat brocolibri)!". "Orage, je suis désolé mais je ne t'aime pas (Storm, I am sorry, but I do not like you)". "On tombe sur des tas d'amis au judo (At judo one falls on a bunch of friends)."

Being called maman was baffling to me in those early years. Though I completely embraced that they are my 2 darling sons (who, needless to say, occasionally drive me bananas), and highly aware of their importance to me, I would be startled that I am their mother, of what that means to them. I struggled with that whole concept somehow... I also struggle to understand how some feel that having kids is the safe, conventional thing to do and that they will lose their independence, their lives will be set from then on... It is partly true, sure, but life also and precisely becomes an adventure, at times scary, at times wonderful… You get to re-live a whole range of feelings, you now play the second role to them but you also become painfully aware of your own limitations... Parenting forces you to question yourself constantly. You are never really certain of what you are doing. In fact, best to admit once and for all that you are most likely dead wrong but that you try your best… You try to have an approach that seems natural to you and that takes your child's specific needs and personality into account. You accept that there is no perfect ideal way... Without idealizing any of it, because that parenting shit is ruthless, you use your imagination again in all kinds of ways and often fish out resources you thought you no longer had...

In Bogota, back in 2012, when Nino, at seven weeks, was in an artificial coma in ICU, severely ill with pneumonia, Nico and I would take turns to stay by his side. We were not allowed to stay around the clock, only from 9 am to 7 pm. I went to the lactarium every 3 hours to pump milk so they could feed him with it. He had a tube coming out of his mouth to help him breath, a wide range of medication, cables and sensors all over, making him look like a baby high tec Ganesh with a zillion tentacles. There was not a free spot on his tiny sleeping body and we could barely graze his toes with the tips of our fingers.

Since we could not hold him, I was obsessed with the idea that he should hear our voices constantly. We made a list of songs, printed the lyrics, though we did not really need them, and sang and sang and sang. My compilation was essentially Baul, Beatles, Marley, Dylan, Billie Holiday and Almodovar soundtrack songs. Nico's was George Brassens, Jacques Brel, Aznavour... I also read out loud from Mimlu's book, The Honey gatherers, so the tales of our family would keep him company...

At the time, I remember thinking that though we were far from everybody back home, it was probably a good thing that this had happened in Bogota. Colombians are such warm, gentle people. When we had to leave every night, hoping nothing would happen to him in our absence (my most dreaded fear to this day) I would take comfort at the thought of him being pampered by the kind affectionate ''surrogate mamacita'' nurses, hinting he was getting better, commenting “his cheeks are pinker today”. We would chat with the other families in the ICU waiting room, encourage each other. They would offer their prayers. This moved me to tears, me, with my zero-belief system... We were all on tender hooks, grasping at what made sense to us, they with Jesus and Mary, us with our songs...

That time was ritualistic, like going into meditation camp, with a tight schedule of singing and reading to Nino, as if we were praying to an inanimate statue of a god. Pumping, pumping, pumping. Seeking advice from the wise guru doctors and nurses updating us on his condition...

What saved us every day during this ordeal was Pablo... Suddenly, he got his parents all to himself in the evenings when we were gently pushed out of hospital and, for his sake, we could not go into destructive mode. We had to keep it together so all this would not affect him (too much). He happily accepted our explanation that Nino was ill and the doctors and nurses were taking care of him and proceeded to chat about his day, play with us, enjoy his meal, his bed time story... He was always such a communicative, gentle and calm child… Just like gods who challenge and reward his disciples, children force us to find the strength over and over again...Our children are our gods...

When people ask me what was the best moment of my life, I never hesitate. After 9 days of coma, his condition had improved enough to wake him and take him off the breathing machine... And the medical team warned us... Nino might be "depressed", in withdrawal from all the drugs he received and unable to connect anymore... After all, his link with the world had been brutally severed, only briefly after being born. He woke up quite quickly and they handed him to me so I could feed him. His instinct came back instantly, he sniffed around my nipple, started sucking, albeit poorly, choking a little in his greedy enthusiasm, the mechanism partly lost and regained quickly... Those few minutes were the most intense of my life, I went into a kind of religious trance... The love, happiness and relief I felt then was such that, if there had been a massive earthquake there and then, I doubt I would have noticed...

A little later, we were moved out of ICU into a room. Nino was trembling, a nervous miniature junky, but he smiled as soon as he made eye contact with me, his dad or the nurses. They gleefully exclaimed what a great sign that was... When the nurses would come and change his intravenous on his overused veins way and he would howl in pain, it barely affected me, I tried soothing him with my voice while I floated on a cloud of bliss... He was safe, he was saved...

My immense fondness for Colombia and its innumerable qualities is also somewhat bittersweet, tainted by these difficult personal episodes which, of course, have nothing to do with the country itself. Better yet, and a bit like parenting, I am inspired to be more like its admirable people, more resilient, imaginative and optimistic despite any inadequacies or growing challenges ahead. I must mention Gabriel Garcia Marquez. My absolute favorite is "Love in the times of Cholera" but, when I read "100 years of solitude" before ever traveling to Colombia, I had imagined, like a lot of non Colombian readers I suspect, that the fact that the same names came back over and over again was a stylistic trick meant to challenge the reader. Little did I realise that a lot of people have the same names within Colombian families but also in Colombia more broadly. The amount of Andrea, Oscar, José, Juan José, Juan Carlos, Maria Paola, Paola, Natalias we meet there is simply insane. Nevertheless, despite appearances, humanity is not stuck in an infinite cataclysmic loop. I think most Colombians, through their incredible strength and hope, actually have the power to break the fatal cycle of Marquez’s famous last words “because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth”.

Food and travel tips in Colombia and Paris

Colombian food boasts quite the variety of finger licking dishes. Here are a few classics.

Ajiaco, from Bogota, my personal favorite, a glorious thick chicken soup with 3 variety of potatoes, arracacha (a root vegetable), guascas (fresh herb) and corn served with cream, capres and slices of avocado.

Bandeja paisa, a dish peasants would traditionally eat to face the hard work in the fields, which contains 3 meals in one, red/pinto beans (or sometimes lentils), rice, ground beef, chicharrron (crispy fried pork), chorizo (sausage), a fried egg, tajadas and/or patacon (sweet or fried plantain), arepa (corn cake), avocado, hogao (tomato and onion sauce, and sometimes lorcilla (blood sausage).

Ceviche: latin American seafood dish made from raw fish or shellfish that is "cooked" by marinating it in an acidic citrus juice, such as lime or lemon.

Sancocho: a traditional, hearty chicken, corn, plantain and yucca stew with everything from the finca (farm) thrown in together.

Tamal: a traditional Colombian dish made of corn dough (masa) that is filled with meats, rice, peas wrapped in a corn husk or banana leaf, and steamed.

Lechona: a traditional Colombian dish made by slow-roasting an entire stuffed pig until the skin is crispy and golden brown;

Empanadas a cornmeal patty deep fried with different fillings served with aji (a fresh tomato, onion, garlic and coriander sauce);

You should also try Pan de bono cheese bread with plain flour, pan de yucca cheese bread with yuca starch and finally buñuelos a fried version of the latter.