Greetings from London.
Yes it’s true. I have forsaken the Bush for a bit to visit two of my Godchildren, help the lovely Caroline if she needs any assistance promoting “Was Gabo An Irishman”, continue to wonder what to do with my book “Letters From Colombia; the pleasures and peril of learning to grow coffee”, remind my clients that I am still alive, and catch up with people we see all too rarely.
It’s the quiet time back on the farm, with the next cosecha not due until October. We are still selling plantain every two weeks, and we have maize, and citrus fruit, but it is not quite as busy as when the coffee is ready to harvest. Interesting. You might remember that the government offered us a little support last month, which we thought was an attempt to persuade us to back the President’s Peace Plan. We now believe it might be part of an effort to discourage farmers from pulling out of coffee. The situation has been so dire, and the lack of support from those who are making so much money out of what we grow so complete, that many traditional coffee farmers are switching to cattle, citrus, avocados, asparagus, anything that isn’t so closely controlled by monopolists, middlemen, multinationals and market manipulators.
If there is an upside it could be that there will be less quality Colombian Arabica being produced, which might push the prices up. It’s a sad observation, as there is no decline in demand, but we are keeping our fingers crossed and keeping in coffee.
Just before I left we had the annual Junior Tour cycle race pedalling and puffing past the front gate. Adriano, Horacio and I watched the leaders as they powered up the hill and then followed on foot, as we had to sign papers at the Co-Op and the road … the Pan American Highway … was going to be closed until all the riders had passed Anserma, and that was going to take another hour.
I can now confirm that it is 5km from Mykanos to Anserma, and all uphill.
The peloton and the stragglers passed us en route, and as the Tour de France was also happening at the same time it was easy to imagine that the lycra clad lads had turned left at Carcassonne instead of right and had ended up in an Andean alterative universe. Actually it was lycra clad lads and lasses as, for the first time, women were racing along with the men, although they tended to be towards the rear of the pack. Knowing Colombian women I doubt they will stay at the rear for very long.
For those who were wondering, yes we did eat the pumpkins featured in the last Letter. Lucero cut them up and filled a few refrigerators with the result. We had them roasted, sautéed and as a delicious soup with chilli flakes and sour cream.
In my last Letter I also mentioned the removal of internal fences, the voracity of the ducks and their penchant for young tilapia, and the arrival of new guard dog Yolo.
I don’t know whether Checho was reading over my shoulder when I wrote it, or had snuck a look when I was not at my computer, but he decided to take advantage of no fences to seek a final solution to the tilapia pilfering by systematically wiping out the ducks; killing one of two each night. He didn’t eat them, just kill them, and then bury them in the huerta (vegetable garden). We locked him up at night after that, and thought that might work on a temporary basis. It did until a day or so later, when I heard a great hullaballoo and there, in broad daylight, was Checho sinking his teeth into Father Goose while he fought back and the rest of the Goose family protested loudly. Lucero came running from the kitchen with a broom but I shouted his name very loudly and Checho immediately released his prey and came running down with tail between his legs and pressed himself against the ground just near my window. At a few more harsh words he slunk off to his house (a.k.a. prison cell) and sat sorrowfully inside.
Alvaro, one of our regular workers caught Father Goose and we found that, even though seeming okay, he had an injury on his chest where Checho’s teeth had penetrated right through his flesh. I got a needle and thread and Alvaro sewed up the gash and applied some disinfectant. We kept him inside overnight to keep him from swimming and getting the wound wet. Next morning, on release, Father Goose inspected his wound and then waddled off to join his family. On his arrival at the pond Mother Goose immediately jumped into the water and swam around in small circles, like doing pirouettes, while the five kids … they are now too big to be called goslings … all lowered their necks and bowed their heads to Father Goose not unlike Japanese salary men greeting their new CEO.
I told Alvaro that he had a bright future, either as a surgeon or a tailor.
As for Yolo, well he was quite pretty but had neither personality nor projective instinct so it was not easy to evaluate his potential. Then, however, he committed the unforgivable by chasing the pussies. Nobody but Adriano is allowed to do that They are fast and it is usually Pispirispis and Mafeluchis who decide when they want to be caught.
So Yolo has left us for other pastures. He has however already been replaced by two female criolla (crossbreed or mongrel to you) pups called Chacha and Pacha. They really are quite small and will need some determined upbringing but at least the habits that they adopt will be the ones we encourage.
Pacha
Our Colombian friends and workers were a bit concerned about me coming to London as they regard Europe as very dangerous, particularly after the atrocities in Paris, Brussels and Nice. Here in London we have been advised that it is not a matter of ‘if’ there will be a terrorist attack but ‘when’.
This is hardly new however.
On my first trip to London in January 1976 I was staying in a cheap hotel at Marble Arch and went to see my Dad who was in the considerably less cheap London Hilton. As I walked down Park Lane I wondered if any of the litterbins I was passing would blow up. When I arrived at the Hilton I found the lobby being rebuilt after an IRA bombing a few months earlier.
In fact, on thinking back to the 70’s, when the IRA, the Red Brigade, the Baader Meinhof Gang and Red Army Faction, the Weather Underground, and even the Symbionese Liberation Army, were bombing, murdering, kidnapping and robbing, I could not help feeling that the current climate seems relatively tame.
Maybe these things go in cycles.
I have long had a, not necessarily flippant, notion that the current problem with Islamic fundamentalism is that it is about 600 years younger than Christianity. If we go back 600 years we had the Puritans (not dissimilar to today’s Taliban) on the Protestant side, and the Spanish Inquisition on the Catholic side, both ruthlessly pursuing their particular form of fundamentalism. These days neither the Protestants nor the Catholics take themselves so seriously and peace more or less reigns, other than in those situations where the real reason behind the conflict is politics and power. So maybe it is just a matter of time.
But that is all much too serious for a letter From Colombia.
Instead we can celebrate a new batch of duckettes that turned up yesterday, two new Angel sculptures from Adriano, the start of the new vertical garden at Mykanos, and Adriano’s imminent arrival here in London.
And that’s just for starters. Not bad at all.
Love from him and me
Barry
