Memories of Medellin

I was graduating mid-year from Duke. In the fall the Duke placement office received info from the American private school in Medellin, Colombia, The Columbus School, that they had an opening for a 2nd grade teacher for the January-November school year. The 1st grade teacher was a Duke grad I knew who had practice-taught under the teacher I was then training with. She offered to let me share an apartment, furnished by the school, with her and another teacher. I applied and got the job and headed south in January of 1962.

I hadn't studied Spanish in school, but I had Latin at Central Junior High and French at good old Greensboro Senior High and in college. One of my college roommates had a tough time with her Spanish studies, so I had helped her and learned a little bit that way. I took classes in Medellin and by June was fairly fluent. It's so much easier to learn a language when you're young!

The Peace Corps arrived soon after we did. In Spanish, Peace Corps is Cuerpo de Paz. We called it the Cuerpo de Paseo or Party Corps. Most volunteers worked out in the boonies and when they came into town they gravitated to our apartment or homes of other English-speaking young people in the city. We had some wild times! One of my favorite volunteers was named Bob. I don't remember his last name. He was a big black guy from Memphis, TN who was teaching at the University in Medellin. He had been a PE major in college and had studied ballroom dancing. He was one of the best dancers I have ever met. We went to an American-style night club where we waltzed, tangoed, and danced the polka to the amazement of all the other patrons. I wish I could find his name and find out if he is still alive.

Medellin was a dangerous place even then. There were double locks on the door, bars even on 4th floor windows, and our maid rarely left the apartment except to go grocery shopping once a week. Our building guard was Jesus (pronounced hay-soos) who lived in a room by the entrance to the apartment building. (Wouldn't you feel safer with Jesus living downstairs?)

The maid, Eudocia Soto, lived in a room with a bath off our kitchen with her 6-year-old son Alfredo. She was a Protestant who had been raised in a missionary setting, and thus was not accepted by Catholic employers. She knew how to cook "American style" and fed us well. She could cook a 3-course meal over a single gas burner when the power was off (which was often). We gave her a certain amount of money each week (I think it was the equivalent of $20) with which she purchased all the ingredients (except for meat which we bought from a nearby German meat market) for the six days of meals she planned and cooked. She did all our laundry by hand and kept our apartment spotlessly clean. She didn't say anything about the occasional Peace Corps volunteer who ended up sleeping on our couch. I don't remember how much we paid her; it wasn't much, though. Alfredo attended a Protestant mission school. In the 2 years I lived there he never learned to speak any more English than to answer, "Fine, thank you, and you?" when asked "How are you?" He would be in his early 50's now. Unbelievable.

Other teachers and I travelled around the country during our school vacations. By far the best destination was the island of San Andres off the coast of Nicaragua. I was even able to fulfill my dream of being a cabaret singer there.

I came home for Christmas between the 2 years of my contract, and left for good in November of 1963 on the day Kennedy was shot. What a great homecoming!

I had met Bruce, my husband-to-be, at a party in Medellin. Though he was raised in Elmira, NY, his family lived in Connecticut and he was a Spanish teacher in a private boys' school there. We became engaged on the 28th of November, 1963 and married the 28th of December so our wedding wouldn't "compete" with brother Preston's already-scheduled wedding the next June. (It was not acceptable to live together "without benefit of clergy" back in those days.) I wonder if we would have gotten married if we had waited--but that's a question for another time.