About

A Little Background Stuff

Hello! I’m Laura. I live in the north end of Bogotá, in Colombia, South America. You might wonder why.

Me, summer 2009

I fell in love with Bogotá, Colombia in 1972, where I’d gone to participate in a university exchange program. When the program ended, I found I just wasn’t ready to leave the country, so I got a job teaching English and stayed for two years. Married a Colombian, moved back to the US with the intention of saving a little money and returning to Bogotá as fast as I could to live happily ever after in this great city – or at least somewhere in Colombia… Naturally, life interfered and before I made it back to Bogotá nearly thirty-five years had passed.

In the summer of 2005, divorced for many years, my two children all grown up, a career change finally brought me to Colombia for a week’s work with a dyslexic teenager. It felt like I’d begun to breathe for the first time in decades. A few months later, in early 2006, I flew back to Bogotá hoping to discover whether or not it was still a place I could love, a place I could live. It was.

In short order, with the help of a great lawyer, I had a Colombian business and resident visa. Today business is great and I own a small apartment, high on a hill in an area called Usaquén. I can visualize myself moving to another, perhaps smaller town in Colombia when I decide to retire some years from now. But I can’t imagine ever moving back to live in the US.

Oo-ick! Colombia?

Mention “Colombia” and people think of drug cartels, murdered journalists, disappeared union organizers… They may have heard that Colombia has been fighting a civil war for the last 40 years. I wouldn’t even try to suggest that Colombia doesn’t have some serious problems. On the other hand, looking at my own country from outside its borders, I have to recognize that we have some pretty intractable problems too! Yet there are many things about the US that make me proud; and there are many things about Colombia that its citizens can be proud of too.

Today never entirely lets go of yesterday in Colombia

When I moved here, I began to write home about what life is like here, hoping to show that there’s nothing more scary about living in Bogotá than there would be living in any metropolis of seven or eight million. You have “up” days and down, go to work, make friends, play, watch a few movies, have great meals now and then, and ordinary meals the rest of the time … do all the stuff humans do everywhere across the planet. Some parts of life are easier here; others, a little more challenging. It’s not that different from life anywhere. So my postings aren’t full of “great” events, but mostly just the little ones. The details of life we hardly notice, but that add flavor to every day, although some pretty strange things do  happen now and then…

Why “Hippo” Blog?

Speaking of strange things, in early May 2007, I wrote about two hippos who escaped from Hacienda Nápoles, a compound that at one time belonged to now long dead drug lord, Pablo Escobar. That crazy hombre turned his hacienda into a wildlife preserve, not for local Colombian fauna, but for exotic animals imported secretly and illegally from Africa. After his death many of the animals were sold to zoos, but a sizeable herd of hippos, a tad heavy to relocate, had remained on the hacienda living in ponds built especially for them. Nobody paid much attention to them – until two decided to make a break for it and headed for the Magdalena River. At the time, it was thought that the two hippos were both males. Later, we learned that the escapees were a couple, and produced a baby.

From the start I found the hippo story very appealing. There they were, strangers in a strange land, looking for a kind of freedom they obviously needed. Accepted by some, hunted by others. I, too, had escaped an unsatisfying life, into a new, more fulfilling one. And yet, like the hippos in the Magdalena, I’m here alone, never quite fitting in, always an outsider. While for the most part I’m accepted and feel safe (nobody’s hunting me!), this is not my native land or culture, and for all it offers that I find nourishing, it will always be possible for me to misstep, offend, misunderstand a legal requirement, get myself into trouble…

Bogotá - a city of over 7 million in 2009

So I watch the progress of the hippos as I watch and write about my own, wishing them well, hoping they and I are permitted to enjoy life in Locombia for many years to come. I invite you to read about us here!  Everything starts in 2006.  Right now, the most up to date categories are 2006 and 2009. But I’m slowly adding the postings from 2007 and 2008, so do check back now and then, if you’d like to know how I got  from testing the water in 2006 to buying my home on a hill by 2009!