32. Medallin, Columbia

32.

Medallin, Columbia:

I buy rice and stew in the open air bus station of this mountain town. I do not finish everything on my plate and when I stand up to go I am almost knocked over by three hungry shoeshine boys in their eagerness to gobble up my leftovers.

South of Medallin, the bus climbs into the Andes. Tiny villages appear, first high above, then far below the twisting paved highway. The tiled roofs of the mountain cottages are fifty pretty shades of red—smoke leaks through other thatched cottage roofs like smoldering piles of leaves in autumn.

The workingmen here wear dark wool ponchos and carry wicked looking machetes. The women wear shapeless woolen dresses.

When the bus stops in villages, children sell the passengers blocks of white cheese wrapped in a waxy green leaf. It is delicious!

On some adobe walls the Communist’s hammer and sickle symbol are crudely scrawled in red with the slogan in English, “Yankee Imperialist Go Home!” I don’t feel much like a Yankee imperialist, though I probably am one of the few Yankees that will actually see the signs. I think the “Go Home” refers to the coffee and banana economy of this part of the world. There are acres of these plants growing alongside the road.

My wandering mind imagines this drama: Mrs. Olsen, the actress always raving about Columbian coffee on TV is riding in this bus and she becomes offended by the attitude of some of the local people. She asks her son-in-law, the chemist who invented the 100% chemical orange drink, “Tang”, to come up with a coffee substitute which looks, smells, tastes and stimulates just like Columbian-grown coffee, but which is made with good old American chemicals. I ask my imaginary Mrs. Olsen what will become of the coffee based Columbian economy when all the Yankees have indeed gone home and she suggests that they grow bamboo shoots to export to China since bamboo grows as well as coffee here. That way the next time I ride a bus through Columbia I will see “Chinese Imperialist Go Home” written in Chinese on the village walls.

On a more serious note, I have drunk my share of coffee in my time and that probably qualifies me to be a “Yankee Imperialist”. The farmers here are surely as poor as people can be and if my countrymen are gouging them I am sorry. The Columbians I talk to as I travel treat me very well and I wish their economic problem were one I could help solve but it is far beyond my understanding or power. Here and everywhere, the Golden Rule is always a practical economic guideline, it seems to me.

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