To Colombia
Tonight, I fly to Colombia. Medellin, specifically. Yet again, Latin America continues to play a role in the on-going drama of my post-college life. Yet again, this vibrant multinational culture pulls me back into its midst.
I’m following my dreams to Colombia. I mean that quite literally. Two weeks ago, I experienced a vivid dream that I was walking through the streets of Medellin, surrounded by people that I knew. Except truth be told, I can’t name who those people were. All I can say is that they were familiar, so to speak, and that in Medellin, I felt like a more complete version of myself.
If there’s anything I’ve come to believe to be true in life, it is that the subconscious world of dreams is psychologically significant. Not literally true, not prophetical, not superstitious, but meaningful, profound and important in an ultra-personal way. Dreams serve as messengers from the depths of our unconscious beings, giving us indication of who we are and what we want.
When I experience a dream that feels important to my personal growth, I have learned to listen and follow.
Perhaps this is foolish and irrational. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it.
But I think not.
This has worked for me before.
I spent a total of a month in Mexico in 2017, and my adventures below our southern border proved to be life changing in surprising ways. Mexico was not on my radar in any meaningful way before I watched the James Bond Spectre movie, which proved to be a terrible film but opened with a dramatic Dia de Los Muertos scene in Zocalo, Mexico City’s central square. Though Mr. Bond quickly moved on to his traditional tropical locales (and the story deteriorated from there), I was left stunned by the epic proportions and cultural flair that the Mexican metropolis had to offer.
This was followed by several dreams where I was exploring the streets of Mexico City, visiting bars, literally booking Airbnbs (goes to show the extent that tech has permeated our collective consciousness), and more. These dreams were characterized by a certain layer of fear — after all, I knew nothing about whether Mexico City was a safe place to visit. But at a deeper level, there was a simple knowing that I would be visiting sooner or later.
And sure enough, last February, I found two weeks where I could work remotely and flew down. Though I had a few loose connections in the city, I essentially knew no one. Without detailing my whole journey, I became a lot closer to several of those friends over the two weeks, and was introduced to a whole community of people that dramatically shifted my ideas of what friendship, hospitality, and connection meant at its most fundamental levels. Four days into my trip, my friends- some of whom I had not planned to visit or had not previously met- told me that they were going to hang out with me every single day for the remaining ten days of my trip. No matter how busy they were, they would make time for me so that I felt welcomed and at home in a foreign city. I have never experienced this in the United States.
This is a testament to my friends in Mexico, but even more so a testament to Mexico itself, which contains cultural and social riches that most Americans cannot possibly comprehend without visiting. And I was back to Mexico in November, this time for a wedding in the Yucatan peninsula, and then returned to Mexico City for another week.
Americans are blind to what lies in plain site. Our country is filled with Mexican immigrants, who bring the joy and the soul and the food of their country to our doorsteps. And yet we disparage this nation as though it were overrun by violent crime, a similar argument to saying that the United States is being destroyed by gangs because our inner cities are filled with drug wars. Despite all of Mexico’s problems, the negative perception is statistically and anecdotally false.
But I digress.
Colombia will not be the first time I journey to a coffee-rich Latin American country with more than short-term plans. In 2014, after a short bout of corporate America, I quit my job at a commercial bank and departed to Costa Rica in search of something more. I planned to find an internship at a coffee plantation, and see where it led. Unfortunately, it turns out that coffee growers find little value in non-Spanish speaking idealistic millennials. And though perhaps I could have prevailed with a little more persistence, I found that I was not yet emotionally or linguistically prepared for this experience. What I had hoped to be a whole summer in Costa Rica turned out to be only two and a half weeks.
But despite my failed attempt four years ago, I learned many lessons about how to quickly integrate into another culture for short to medium periods of time. Including: speak the language. Take advantage of platforms like Couch-surfing to quickly make friends. Pick the right hostel where you’ll find the people you’re looking for. Don’t plan too much, because the locals know better. And more.
This time, I venture to Colombia after having spent the past five months studying Spanish five days a week by video-chatting with my Venezuela-based teacher Gabrielys. I go to Colombia with no expectations, no defined goals, no immediate concept of what I’m supposed to get out of this country. And I’ll arrive in Colombia with an overwhelming sense of trust that I did not have in Costa Rica.
And so, as I sit in the airport and wait to board my Copa Airlines flight, I hope that whatever I get out of this country, it will be worth writing about for the blogs that I post over the six weeks. Stay tuned.
Hasta Luego,
Jeff
