The Road Less Traveled
After all of my trips around the world, I come home with a warm feeling and a whole new perspective in life, with memories that have changed me forever, and anecdotes no one can ever share. But I must tell you my friend, that there was one trip that marked my soul like a name chiseled in stone.
I had being spending a few days thinking about where my next trip was going to be, I am a free soul that wants to explore the world’s secrets and all that it has to give, so I finally decided I would go to Medellin, Colombia, wich nowadays is the second largest, and most progressive city in Colombia. A friend of mine recently had told me of a neighborhood called Santo Domingo Savio, considered the most dangerous neighborhood in all Latin America. What a better place for me to go explore the world’s secrets!
So I booked my flight and after some hours I arrived in Bogota, the city was wonderful, full of color and spectacular flora, but my destiny was Santo Domingo Savio, so I took a bus and arrived at nightfall to my little room in the basement of an old woman’s house.
The room was cold, nearly empty and the only color in it was the blanket that was left for me so I wouldn’t freeze and die in there… The old lady made me dinner and warned me about the situation in the neighborhood, because my Spanish isn’t that good, I understood half of what the woman had to say, but it didn’t seem to matter anyway…
The next morning, I woke up and the sun was piercing through the windows directly into my eyes, the day was beautiful and I was ready to go haunting for some adventures. As I stepped out of the house, the scenario that was in front of me leaved me breathless, it was like a funny joke of life, the sun as bright as I have ever seen it and beneath it, the world at its worse, I’ve never had seen poorer houses, saddest people, grayer air, and an environment so tense. The whole thing took a sarcastic laugh out of me; it seemed like an ironic picture of life and death, heaven and hell, black and white.
The only warning I had taken into consideration was that after sunset, I must not, by any means, be in the streets,
“I have quite a lot of time to explore the surroundings” I said to myself. And at this point of the story is where I met Paola.
Paola. What a beautiful name, that’s what I thought the first time she told me her name. She was a little girl, about ten or eleven years old, her skin was deep and so were her eyes and her long hair, they say eyes are the windows to the soul, well let me tell you if it is so, that girl must have had a fully made of pure gold soul, because I have never seen eyes so bright as those little chestnut balls.
The little girl made so much impact in me, that I asked her if she could show me around, I knew I would never find a better tour guide, than that local beautiful girl. So Paola and I went straight into exploring her barrio, as we went walking by, I saw hundreds of teens and children buying cocaine in broad daylight, maybe you don’t know this, but Colombia became a major narcotics trafficking center in the 1980’s, that was the time I met Paola. I was impressed by the drug abuse in that neighborhood; Paola could see my amazement and laughed at my bewildered expression, her laughter was so sweet but with a strong tone, it made me remember my mother when she laughed after scolding me for running in the house with my shoes all muddy.
Paola and I walked for some time until we finally arrived to a cliff, she started running down to a side of the cliff and I followed, when I finally stopped, I saw her sitting down in a little cave inside de mountain, it was like a niche carved up in the cliff’s rocks, the view was wonderful, beneath us, a darkness I have never seen, it seemed like the devil’s mouth waiting for us to throw at him, and in front of us, the sun and what seemed like a forest, so green and big it seemed like you would never get to see the end of it.
At the sight of this beautiful landscape, Paola told me some stories about her barrio, herself and her family.
“The police enters the hillside neighborhood only when they have overwhelming numbers” she said to me, without even blinking she continued
“Young toughs maintain a tight grip by standing on a ridge, binoculars in one hand and a sub-machine gun in the other, it is very scary to see them, not only that, one of my cousins was killed when he refused a man's demand to give him free merchandise at a store he owned, my best friend’s brother was killed when he failed to pay protection money” –Then she made a comment that chilled me the spine and filled my body with goose pimples- She said:
''That's where my father was killed,'' she said, pointing down to her right. She then pointed down to her right ``and that's where my brother was killed.''
It had finally got to me how dangerous this neighborhood was, not only there were dead bodies on the streets, children buying drugs and violence all day long, this was people who knew and killed each other, and no one cared about it. There needed to be a change in that barrio. A serious change.
“You know” she said solemnly at me, with a tear falling down her dirt-covered face “I don’t want to die here, I want to live, explore, and change the world I live in, all my relatives always say that it’s the governments fault, that it’s Pablo Escobar’s cartel wich has made this barrio and this country into broken remnants, but it’s really us who don’t make a difference, it’s really us who don’t care about the people being killed, we say there is nothing we can do, I say there is nothing we can’t do.”
“Little girl, come here” I said, and with a slight movement she hugged me with the force of a lightning striking the earth “If you knew how right you are, you would never shed a tear again in your life” and gently cleaned the tears running down her cheeks.
In today’s society, we rarely care about what others have to say, we dismiss ideas that sound mad instead of making them into realities that are so mad they can change this crazy world, those were Paola’s shoes, in a neighborhood so violent and were all its habitants were so scared, progressing wasn’t an option, surviving was. But who said you couldn’t do both?
That night, down in my cold room, I couldn’t help to think about Paola, she was magnetic “such an incredible child, left to die with her ideas and mind in a livable tomb” were the words that came to my mind. Such rage possessed me with the hold of that thought, how was it possible that the government didn’t want to help these people, they are not only more mouths to feed, more houses to be built, more jobs to be handed, or more babies to be born, they are a great number of people who may have brilliant ideas, revolutionary plans, world-changing missions, amazing stories to be told, destinies to be fulfilled, lives that have to be lived! They are not only a demographic explosion that it’s better dead than alive. So many brilliant minds have been wasted, and who can remember all those souls left to die, left to think they are mad just because a smarter person didn’t agree with them. –and I say smarter because they must’ve been smart to play them fool –Who were these people to decide who should deserve to progress, to have opportunities, to live!? The late hours and the sweet light of the moon finally put me to sleep.
***To be continued***[i]
It must be difficult to learn a second language well enough to write a story. You did a really good job.