Last Saturday we went to my host mom's Finca, or farm, which was an hour north of Bogotá in a municipality called Cajicá. We left around nine in the morning, and upon arriving I ate a delicious breakfast of pan de yuca and coffee with freshly-milked milk.
One of the workers on the farm was Venezuelan, and he was willing to be interviewed for my thesis – I'm glad to have recently made the habit of always having IRB consent forms on hand. He and I sat on benches across from one another for the interview, and he told me about a the long process of finding work in Colombia: knocking on doors looking for work in Cajicá, and people asking if he had a permit. When he didn't have a permit, they would say "sorry, we can't take you." But even once he did have a permit, they would take down his data and never call back. He briefly spent time working in Medellín, picking coffee – but he explained that he only earned 10 mil pesos (2.28 dollars) his first week, and 50 mil pesos the next week (coffee pickers were paid by the total amount they collected, and according to him the only ones that made a good wage had been picking coffee since they were very young, and so were extremely fast.) He had returned to Venezuela two times during the pandemic, before deciding to stay in Cajicá because of more work opportunities.
After this interview, I went on a jog through the forested part of the farm:
Towards the end of my walk it started raining lighting – a kind of weather that I love, especially when surrounded by forest and meadow. The leaves and foliage turn a much brighter green after rain, and I feel so happy to be surrounded by nature.
I then visited the vegetable garden, full of delicious fruits and vegetables. I used to have a community garden plot and contained garden when I was in elementary school, and I was also involved in starting edible gardens at my elementary and middle schools. For whatever reason, edible gardens have always brought me joy – I think it might have to do with the fact that they are both beautiful and useful at the same time.
Garden fruits: tomate de árbol and ripening blackberries
There were also some adorable puppies – just two weeks old – that my host brother and I played with.
Host puppies
I wanted to see the other half of the farm, and my host mom recommended that one of the domestic employees of the farm – I'll call him Oscar – give me a tour. As Oscar and I walked by the lake, I asked him several questions, about the plants in the area, and how long he had worked on the farm. He explained that he had practically grown up on this farm. I asked if that was because his parents had worked for my host mom's family, and indeed his parents – and even his grandparents – had worked on the property for this family. Oscar said that my host mom's mother (now in her 90s) was like a second mom to them. I found it fascinating that his family had worked for my host mom's family for three generations – part of me felt that it must be quite fulfilling and comforting to have that level of continuity over so many years, and another part of me felt that it was so sad that Oscar's family had not been able to rise out of being in the lower-income "serving" class even over so many generations. On the latter point, I felt that if my host mom's family had known his grandparents and parents so well, couldn't they have helped their kids to get an education and go to university? Or perhaps Oscar and his siblings were fine with the arrangement, and didn't have higher aspirations. Maybe I have a very American mindset to think that one want to see significant social mobility across generations.
Scenery as I walked down the riverside with Oscar
As Oscar and I walked past the lake, I pointed to some plants with yellow fruits (pictured below) and asked if they were lulo, an acidic but delicious fruit that I first learned about in Colombia. He said he wasn't sure what they were, but that they likely weren't edible otherwise the cows would eat them.
Unidentified non-edible fruit bush
In the distance I could see some buildings – Oscar explained to me that the family who owned the adjacent plot of land, who were actually cousins of my host mom, had sold part of it for development. I thought about the demand for land and housing near Bogotá, and the level of density in those apartments compared to on my family's farm. Low-density, more rural living is wonderful in so many ways – but is it sustainable so close to an ever-expanding capital city? Newly-elected president Petro has proposed a land reform program that would require people to sell land that is not being used – I wondered if the many acres of meadow on my host mom's finca were the target of this policy.
River (sadly contaminated) with high-density housing in background
Oscar explained to me that the river was contaminated – I asked for how long, and he said it has always been that way. I didn't mention my concern about the whether it was healthy to eat vegetables and fruits grown in a garden so close a contaminated lake: they were delicious, so once we returned I ate more anyways. Towards the end of our walk I mentioned to Oscar that I had gotten the impression during in my time in Colombia that inequality is a big problem in the country, just as it is in the United States. I asked whether he thought that inequality has lessened over time. Among other things he mentioned that he felt that inequality was partly the government's fault – because there is a lot of corruption, and it can be hard to get health insurance – and that it is partly people's own fault, because they have kids too young. He said that people need to wait to have kids until they have a stable job and enough resources to support a family. I thought about an earlier conversation with a Colombian employee of UNHCR, who had mentioned that many poor people in Bogotá have huge families – and often it's because they were originally from a rural area, where having many kids made economic sense because it meant you had more help on the farm. All of a sudden you move to the city and the large family that used to be an economic benefit has become an economic burden.
As we headed along the river back from the outskirts of the property to the farm house, we saw my 16-year-old host brother playing with a nerf gun. He saw that I was carrying a cattail that Oscar had helped me pick from a bush next to the river bed, and he said "That's cool, I want one!" So the three of us walked back to the cattail bush, which was several yards back down the river, and Oscar asked my host brother which one of the many seeded stalks he wanted. He pointed to a particularly bush one, and Oscar pulled it out for him. Throughout the interaction, I noticed that Oscar referred to my host brother using "Don" – a prefix similar to "Sir," but with a colonial connotation of "master," at least to me. I thought about this strange power dynamic where my 16-year-old brother was the (at least soon-to-be) master of the property that Oscar had tended since his childhood. For a 16-year-old to be referred to with usted and "Don," by a 35-year-old seems strange to me.
Butterfly houses (source)
Before the sun started to set, we packed loaded the car with fresh vegetables, fruits, and cheese from the farm. On our drive back into Bogotá, we passed by a series of colored houses. My host mom and host brother explained that if you are in a plane, you can see that the colors combine to create the shape of a butterfly. "You'll see it when you fly home," my host brother said. "Yeah, you'll be swooping north from the airport, so you'll definitely see it." To get a sneak peak I looked it up on google images (see above).
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