Greetings from Mykanos.
I am sitting here, on the veranda outside the bedroom, looking across the palms and bougainvillea, past the towering guadua undulating in the morning breeze, at the neighbour’s house, which is currently being further enhanced by another bungalow. Like us, he has been in uninterrupted residence for almost a year and seems busier and more enchanted with his spacious surroundings than ever.
The sun, just rising over the mountains beside us, is only a month or so past the extremity of its Southern declination so instead of shining straight into my eyes on its first appearance, its rays are blocked by the adjoining bathroom and the sunshine slants across my feet and legs, which is very pleasant in the slight chill of the morning.
When one considers the trials and tribulations so many in the world are suffering, one can only feel extremely fortunate and savour such moments as a blessing.
Here in Colombia, January was a terrible month, as it was in too many countries. Christmas and New Year celebrations by Latinos devoted to getting together with family and friends ensured super spreading, and the only reason the death toll didn’t go through the roof was because we have a relatively young population.
As of 9 February, Anserma had 703 cases with 47 fatalities. There have been almost 60,000 fatalities so far in Colombia, although the daily rate of infections, hospitalizations, ICU usage and deaths is currently dropping. Recent weekend lockdowns and curfews undoubtedly helped. ‘Pico y cedula’, in which the last digit of one’s National ID card (cedula) determines when it’s allowed to shop or be out and about etc. is still in force. Odds can do it one day, evens another. We can go out on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, although I tend not to go out at all. Adriano does the shopping and banking and business. It seems he prefers me to stay in healthy isolation.
We lost Adriano’s father, Don Narciso, on November 25, the same day that saw the demise of Diego Maradona. He was a week in a clinic in Manizales, the state capital, for a fractured hip, developed pneumonia and promptly died. During that week leading up to the 25th, Adriaino and I drove to Manizales a couple of times as Adriano was his father’s guardian and needed to see both father and doctors. I was just company, as only one responsible visitor was allowed due to Covid. I stayed in the car, as well as doing a little shopping in the supermarket attached to the hospital … cat food and whisky mainly.
A post mortem test showed Don Narciso positive for Covid and they were insisting on cremation, which would be our choice, but Adriano knew his father’s fervent wish was to be interred and fought for that wish to be honoured. They relented. So, the 27th saw us back in Manizales, accompanied by Adriano’s mother and younger brother Fredy, for the funeral. The cemetery was closed to the public, and only two family members were allowed to witness the interment, so Adriano and his mother followed the two hazmat-suited men as they pushed the trolley bearing the casket to the National Police Mausoleum which was to be Don Narciso’s resting place, he having been a member of the police for more than two decades before becoming a coffee farmer.
A symbolic Mass followed for the four of us, socially distanced, in the funeral chapel, with priest, live music, and floral decorations, all supplied at no cost by the National Police Service, along with a glass fronted presentation case containing the Colombian tricolour folded in a triangle. One of the original ‘perks’ of being a policeman in Colombia, other than a good pension which went to his wife on his death, and then to his youngest child on her death, was free medical treatment of a high order and an all expense paid funeral. These were real incentives back when Don Narciso joined the force, as in those particularly violent times a policeman’s life tended to be very short.
Not surprisingly, quite apart from Covid restrictions and precautions, Christmas and New Year were rather quiet and sombre. No big workers’ Christmas party, no decorations, and each occasion marked by just a very nice dinner for mother, Fredy and us.
As noted earlier however, too many people celebrated with big family get-togethers and street parties, as is the norm. Adriano went to nearby city Pereira and saw lots of ‘año viejos’ (old years) on sale. These are life size mannequins, often resembling famous identities, stuffed with fireworks for ignition at midnight on NYE. They are illegal due to the horrific injuries they have delivered in the past, but they were quite openly on offer and, based on past experience in Medellin, I am sure heralded the change of year with a cacophony of deafening pyrotechnic explosions. As I said all those years ago, reporting on New Year in Medellin, it really is a case of ‘light the blue touch paper and run for your life’.
Looking back on 2020 I don’t think we have ever had a year in which we traveled less. Our most recent additions, Joaquo and Emily, have never known a day when we were not in residence and consider us an ever-present fact of life.
For a vast majority in the world it was an horrific year, rife with loss of freedom, loss of income, and loss of friends, family and loved ones.
For us, 2020 was not nearly so disastrous. Apart from the loss of Don Narciso, who was 89 and suffering deteriorating health, we had space and inspiring surroundings, and a business that was needed more than ever to produce food and to feed and employ people. And coffee actually experienced a healthy rise in prices. During 2020 we managed to sell 160,000 kilos of coffee and acquire two new farms.
Adriano and I have spent more than a year in each other’s company so far, and still like each other. We have enjoyed not having to see people to whom we previously had to be polite but whom we would rather avoid. We have enjoyed being uninterrupted in the studio or office and getting on with painting and writing. We have hosted just six dinners over that year, for four of us each time, socially distanced in the outside kiosk beside the fishponds.
Thinking about Adriano’s dinners took me back 16 years to our dear friend James’s birthday dinner at his and Georgie’s house at Shiplake, near Henley-on-Thames. It was a sit down dinner for 24, and featured five courses, if you can call a mint and basil granita a course, rather than just a punctuation point between the mushroom risotto and the boned stuffed pintade (guinea fowl).
We were living in Paris at the time. Adriano was already in London and I came two days later on Eurostar, bringing his chef’s knives and some fresh produce including ceps, girolles and pintades. At the Gare du Nord, security stopped me as the scan picked up the knives. “Ah, you are a chef,” they declared. I said I had a dinner in London, and they asked what I was cooking, before enthusiastically waving me on with calls of “Bon Appétit”. Two days later, at Waterloo station on the return journey, the British security guards at Eurostar confiscated the knives and they traveled in the luggage car, at a cost of £25.
Many moan about not being able to eat out at restaurants but I must admit to be quite happy to dine at home. But then the food here is better than almost any restaurant I know, and I know many. Cooking is Adriano’s passion, it has been since he was a child, and few things annoy him more than getting very average food for higher than average prices. Also we have such good ingredients. That’s one of the bonuses of being farmers. Last week we sacrificed one of our pigs, which gave us 200kgs of fresh pork. Some went to workers, some was sold, and much went into our freezer. One thing that did not go into the freezer were the tenderloins, one of which Adriano turned into a really memorable meal, served with a tamarind sauce. He also decided to smoke some pork belly and make our own pancetta. The result is delicious and strongly confirms my age-old mantra and belief that ‘everything’s better with pancetta’.
So on we go. At the moment we are weeding and getting ready for ‘la traviesa’, the small coffee season starting in April, and fertilizing in preparation for the main cosecha in October. I can’t see much travel before then, other than the odd trip to Bogotá to see how our apartment has fared over the past year by itself, and to pick up my Kindle and other much missed miscellanea.
Vaccination starts here on February 20th for those over 80. I would imagine we might be done around May or June, or even a little earlier. We shall see. It is encouraging news but I can’t help feeling, to quote Winston Churchill, celebrating the defeat of Rommel in East Africa in 1942, that … “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps, the end of the beginning”.
The new vaccines offer real hope of getting the pandemic under control, and I hope will eventually make long haul travel possible. It’s very impressive that they have been developed in less than a year. I must admit, however, to being a bit perplexed that they could come up with vaccines for Covid in just 10 months yet they have failed to come up with a vaccine for HIV in more than 40 years. I imagine it is either because HIV is a much more difficult virus than Covid, or because HIV mostly affects homosexuals, intravenous drug users and sub-Saharan Africans and nobody much cares about them … or that there are not enough of them to turn a real profit.
Oh well. Life goes on, thank goodness, and we hope and pray that you get the opportunity to enjoy every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month and every year of it, for very many years to come.
Love from him and me
Barry
