In with the East Wind: A Mary Poppins Kind of Life - ABC Lands: Colombia
So, okay, I never visited Colombia. I wanted to, but when I
had a ticket in hand, the country was suddenly in chaos and the job I was
working at refused to allow me to go. (And yes, it was the kind of job that
could make that kind of dictate.) So, I never went. But nonetheless, I feel
like I sort of have been there because of all the work I have done with
Colombians for Colombia.
Back in the early 1990s, I was the head of an organization
called the American Global Studes Institute. We had tentacles in a lot of
countries, mainly working in international education outreach. In support of
our mission, we produced a number of books on learning styles, learning
strategies, foreign language education, and general education. At one point, we
were approached by the Andean Pact Countries organization to let them translate
the books into Spanish and ell them in South America. The contact was from
Colombia. There were, as well, three people on staff from Colombia involved in
various aspects of language instruction. So, Colombia felt like the “city” next
door.
Wind the tape forward a little more than a decade. The
institute had closed, but the friendships with two of the Colombians were still
vital and are to this day.
At that point in time, along came Padre Julio (Fr. Julio)
from where else but Colombia. He celebrated the Spanish Masses at our Mission,
but he had a mission of his own: to save the children of a 7-city are in the rural
Colombian region of Palomar from lacking an education and growing up and being
pulled into gang activity as the only “employment” available.
A rural community in the Chocó region of western Colombia,
near the foothills of the Andes, Palomar is known for its lush tropical
landscape, agricultural livelihood, and small population centers that depend on
subsistence farming and local trade. The seven surrounding towns and villages often
associated with the Palomar region include San José del Palmar, Pereira, Quibdó,
Cali, Manizales, Cartago, and Buenaventura—municipalities connected by trade
and migration routes across the western Andes and the Valle del Cauca corridor.
These communities form a network of small urban and rural settlements that
share cultural and economic ties, particularly in agriculture, education, and
local Catholic missions.
Padre Julio’s dream was to establish a working farm and a
school to provide sustaining employment and a good education. He and is
brothers had become priests thanks to Padre Roberto, who had taken them in and
educated them during their school years—and they walked miles every day to
obtain that education. One of my Colombian friends, a language teacher from
AGSI and a professional translator, took on the task of helping with Padre
Julio’s website, Por Amor a Los Ninos de Colombia. I helped organize and
structure it and translated the original Spanish language documents into
English while my friend translated the original English language documents into
Spanish. My husband did the graphics; one of my sons, a web specialist, did the
webmastering; the other son set up the online financial documents, at that
time, before online credit card use was popular, online checks. (He did not
speak Spanish and accidentally set up the To line on the checks as Pora Mora,
which is what it sounded like. We laughed. He fixed it. We still laugh.)
Then, my younger daughter needed some modest brain surgery
at Stanford University Hospital, 90 minutes away. Padre Julio found out and
came up to be with us before the surgery. While there, he mentioned that he was
going to have to start celebrating English Masses that month, per directive of
the bishop. He did not speak English and wanted to know where he could find the
quickest crash course in English. Seriously? My house! Seriously! No school
would be able to move as fast as he needed, provide the level of individual
attention he needed, or bend the content to liturgical needs. My house, it was.
Padre Julio came nearly every evening, and I combined sources in Spanish (Santa
Biblia, La vida y fe) and in English (Bible, online homilies)
to teach the lexical items he would need as well as grammar soaked in those
words. So, when mastering the English tense system, we did not drill the boy
went to the store yesterday, the boy goes to the store daily, the boy will go
to the store tomorrow, but Jesus met the woman at the well, Jesus meets the
woman at the well, and Jesus will meet the woman at the well. In-context
grammar not only gave him an understanding of grammatical structure but whole
phrases he could use the following
Sunday correctly. We worked together for nearly nine months before Padre
Julio was transferred to another diocese.
I never lost touch with Padre Julio. When we bought our
house, he and his brother, Padre Mario, came from three hours away to do a
powerful, inspiring joint blessing. When Padre Julio was transferred to San
Diego, my husband and I took a short-hop flight down to spend some time with
him in his first days there. (We knew the area because our kids had lived in La
Jolla and attended a college and the University of San Diego.) We attended one
of his first Masses there, as well, where he introduced me to the congregation
as his English teacher—from Russia? What?? All that time, and he did not
realize that I was an American of long vintage. (Admittedly, I was frequently
traveling to Russia and that time and was surrounded by a lot of Russian and
Russian-speaking friends.) Amazing, what we don’t know that we don’t know!
Padre Julio is now back in Colombia. At first, he stayed
with his mother (I called her Mama) in their rural, rickety home, but he had
Internet there. And Mama, whom I met when she came to visit her son in
Hollister, would repeatedly insist that “Colombia no es peligrosa” and beg me
to come visit. But I was still working that job, and Colombia was still
considered dangerous from a perspective that I could not completely share with
her.
Since returning to Colombia, Padre Julio has been able to
establish his farm, the project he started while in California, with two
tractors donated by the Salinas Rotary Club and the financial help of many
other people. He established the school, too, and now he is teaching seminary.
His efforts and those of others have now led to Palomar being noted as an area that “gained
attention after humanitarian and educational projects were established there to
support children affected by regional conflict and poverty…and [is now] a place
where humanitarian, educational, and faith-based initiatives converge to
strengthen local resilience (Colombia Reports, 2024).”
He also conducts a daily Mass online from Colombia, which I
sometimes join. I joined every day when my husband was dying; every day Padre
Julio included my husband in the intentions. One time, he devoted the homily to
him.
So, perhaps you can see why I feel like Colombia is one of
my Mary Poppins countries even though I have never set foot there. I just feel
that I have!
Volume 1: ABC Lands
by Dr. Betty Lou Leaver
For more posts about and from this book, click HERE.
For more posts by and about Betty Lou Leaver, click HERE.
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