Issue #20 (2011) PDF - myweb - Long Island University

Beatriz Alzate Rodriguez
A STORY OF A LIFE SAVED
That place had a name, but I couldn‘t pronounce it at the time, and now I can‘t remember what it
sounded like. I know a few facts. Such as, it was on the Pacific Coast of Colombia, about five miles
from the Ecuadorian border. I suppose I can Google it now, but I don‘t want to. I want to
remember it as nameless place.
It was the summer of 1975, which was the summer after my twelfth birthday, when my sister
and I were in Cali, Colombia, my father‘s birthplace. It would be less than ten years before the world
heard about the Cali Cartel and about five years before I knew what cocaine was. My father had
taken us there to visit his family, my mother stayed behind in New York. He was happy, the
happiest my sister, Rosa and I had ever seen him. It was the first time he had seen his family in
twenty years. To two girls from New York, Cali was only what our father had told us it was -a
beautiful city set in a tropical valley, a virtual paradise. As we were growing up, he told us stories of
Cali. He told us how the city of Cali was a place where everyday was Christmas, just as his father
must have told him that the streets of New York were paved with gold.
We met aunts, uncles, and many cousins, who previously we had only known as faces in
black and white photos in the family album. We were supposed to be especially excited to meet our
uncle, the great doctor, who had been a visiting professor of Medicine at Oxford and soon to be at
Harvard. It was him, who my father used as an example. Study hard so you can be a doctor like your uncle,
my father would say. My uncle the great pride of the family the one for whom my father dropped
out of elementary school to help support. He would hitch rides with truckers, who paid him to talk
enough to keep them awake as they drove all night on treacherous mountain roads. When my father
was old enough, or rather tall enough to reach the pedals he became a driver himself. He did this to
pay for his brothers, and sisters, private school education so they could become members of
Colombia‘s elite.
We enjoyed our time in the city visiting the country club and seeing the colonial churches
filled with their Spanish splendor. One day at the country club my father and his brother sat
together drinking coffee at a poolside table, while we splashed around in the pool. They looked very
much alike they shared the same long nose and black wavy hair, features my sister had as well. I
resembled more my mother. It was some time that day, my father‘s brother, the great doctor, asked
if he could take my sister and me along on his vacation. My father gave him permission.
―Your uncle invited you to go with him to the beach.‖ My father said, before he left Cali to
get back to work driving a truck in New York.
―How far is the beach‖ I said.
―Past the selva,‖ he said. I looked at my sister and her at me. Neither of us understood. My
knowledge of Spanish was limited. I was able to follow most conversations if they weren‘t speaking
fast. I understood everyday words in Spanish, but selva was not one of them.
―What‘s that‖ I said.
―The jungle,‖ he said. My father went on to explain that we would have to take a plane over
the mountains to get there and when we return we would spend the rest of the summer with our
aunts and cousins in Cali as originally planned.
A couple of days later we left on a twin propeller plane. The plane rattled and shook all as
we passed dangerously close to the top of several mountains. We were grateful when we finally
landed on a dirt runaway on the edge of a town. They called it a town. I didn‘t know what it to call
it. The entire place was nothing more than a few wooden buildings along side the dirt road. It was
my first dirt road town, which was quite a shock to a young city kid like me. It was more of a shock
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