Volunteering at Hogar Arco Iris

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When I went to meet the kids I was planning to volunteer with they were sitting quietly watching TV but I was immediately jumped on and hugged by 4 little monkeys called, Jhon, Yahaira, Nicole and Cristian Duane. I clearly wasn’t the first foreign volunteer they had seen and without any further questions or introductions I was dragged out to the patio area where they had all their toys to play with them. I had wanted to do some volunteering firstly to improve my Spanish and secondly to get to know one place from a different perspective. I thought that a month chatting and working with the staff at the home would give me this, but as soon as I arrived that first day I was left alone with the kids and so I quickly realised that all I would be learning was the imperative tense - phrases like... Jhon stop hitting Nicole and.... Yahira don’t put that in your mouth!
There were also two little babies at the home who were generally left to their own devices in bouncy chairs or in their cots all day except for feeding time, and even then they stayed in their chairs to be bottle fed. The kids played all day on the second floor either doing tasks like writing and colouring, or just playing with their toys. Their favourite pastime though was doing jigsaw puzzles or for the girls, playing mom with the toy babies (or sometimes the real ones) and brushing my hair. Jhon was the eldest at 5 and should have been in school with Cristian Duane but had missed the entrance date. He was bright though and obviously a bit lacking in attention and stimulation and used to go into a sulk if I wouldn’t play with him or let him do something. He go and stand in the corner with his arms crossed and a frown on his face but couldn’t keep it up for more than about 10 seconds if I ignored him and carried on playing without him. Nicole was a cheeky little madam and full of confidence while Yahaira was quiet and often would just walk off from the game and sit on her own or just come and sit quietly on my lap while I helped Jhon with a puzzle.
I caught the bus down the Quinta to Exito supermarket every day, from where it was a short walk to the house for 9am, and then left after lunch spending most of the afternoons preparing stuff to do with the kids the next day. In addition to endless jigsaw puzzles I also managed to get them to make animal masks, kites to fly in the park and attempted to teach them where the UK was and then we all made royal crowns and pretended to drive around in our horse and carriage waving regally to the masses.
The climate in Cali was lovely, the days are generally sunny and hot but the nights are cool. At the moment it is the start of the rainy season and the occasional rainstorms were refreshing and tropical. There would be a few hours of heavy rain, which you can always see or hear coming a few hours in advance giving you time to get inside, and loud rolls of thunder which went on for ages rolling all the way down the valley.
Normally in hot weather a cold shower is not much of a problem but here in Cali the water comes straight off the mountain side and was shockingly cold. I resorted to alternating - washing my body one day and my hair another, because I couldn’t stand getting both under the shower at the same time. I even got my dive computer out at one point to see what the temperature was but it only registered a seemingly reasonable 19 degrees but it felt icier.
Apart from my days volunteering I had also been thinking I would fill my nights with salsa dancing, but that was not going to plan either. I have about 6 friends in Cali who all work for a Language institute but they often had classes late into the evening and early in the morning so I would pop round to Patricks house for a cup of tea at about 9pm when he got back from work then he would kick me out at 10 because he had to go to bed in order to get up at 5am. We did go out one night to an electronica club on the sexta but I had agreed to take the kids to the zoo the next day so I called it a night early on, had it been salsa I might have soldiered on but after a year of listening to that kind of music I’ll be happy if I never hear electronica or reggaeton ever again.
I spent a nice afternoon with my friend Steve who took me out on his motorbike up the valley above the city and another afternoon the head of the foundation took me to the poor barrio called Aguas blancas where the terminally ill parents of the children lived in a kind of hospice. I was hoping to get to see first hand some of the real poverty that is often hidden behind all the wealth that is evident in Colombia, but the area of the barrio where the hospice is located was surprisingly well maintained and spectacularly clean. Sister Maria Consuelo did say that further in to the barrio were areas though where it was not safe to take me, however, the well off Colombians always tend to exaggerate these kind of things and I was a little disappointed not to have seen it all.
One evening after a number of failed attempts to get people to come out dancing with me, I tried to take the bull by the horns and went to a class that I had found on the internet. When I got there they told me that it was a 3 month course so I stayed just to watch for a bit. The instructor turned out to be a girl that had stayed in the Taganga apartment with us briefly, she was also competing in a competition that weekend so I bought 2 tickets and persuaded Patricks housemate Sita to come too. Finally it was all coming together a few days before I had to leave. On the Thursday night we went out with a friend of Sitas, who was a salsa instructor, to a club called Blues Brothers with a live band. There doesn’t seem to be a culture of men asking random women to dance here so we both had to share him, but he was quite up to the challenge and we even danced in a three with him spinning both of us at the same time.
My theory is that its not the done thing to dance with anyone other than a partner or close friend because the Colombians are so jealous and possessive. This is mainly because they have to good reason to be of course.... both men and women are very unfaithful and it breeds a lot of insecurity. I cant figure out how they still seem to be happy enough together though, middle aged couples still show affection to each other on the street and hold hands, maybe if your husband is always attentive and affectionate after years of marriage it is worth turning a blind eye to extramarital affairs? It probably beats a faithful man who no longer makes you feel cared for after a few years. Or maybe the Latins are just more realistic about the wandering eye and celebrate sex more openly. The women here are certainly pretty forward too.
The men also seem to put up with a lot of “annoying” female behaviour, women are always fawning over their men and grooming or picking at them like monkeys. Either that or they are doing the opposite and being obstinate, stroppy and moody while the men just seem to take it all calmly. Even after all this time here I cant decide who has got it right, the equality-based semi-independent Northern European style relationship or the passionate, tempestuous sex and food based Latin one (unfortunately the South Americans don’t quite hit the mark on the food though, unless rice and chicken is an aphrodisiac that us westerners have missed).
My last big night out in Cali (supposedly) was spent in a hot and sticky little bar where a great DJ, called Quantic, was playing. I have some of his albums at home and couldn’t believe that it was actually going to be the same guy, but it seems he is engaged to a Colombian here in Cali. We danced all night to some great music and then all went back to a friend Ians house with a load of drums and then carried on dancing till sunrise back in Patricks house surrounded by his artist flatmates paintings of women. Not only are all the walls in the house covered in these pictures but the women are all stark naked and suggestively exposing their err.... poonani, it made for a surreal hangover.
On the Sunday before leaving I went with Sita to try to find a capoera group who were supposed to be meeting in a park, we didn’t find them in the end but stumbled across the cyclovia instead. Every Sunday roads are closed off through out the city, as in Bogota and other Colombian cities, and every man and his dog turns out to walk, bike, run, exercise in some way, or just socialise.
We watched some break dancers and very energetic aerobics/salsa/samba exercise class and sweated in the shade just watching them. On our way back for a siesta after all that, we bumped into a friend Ali and went to one of the classic bar cum shop affairs that are common here and sat drinking beer on old cable drums and watching the world go by our little corner of San Antonio. Me and Sita then toddled off to this salsa competition that I had tickets for. It started off a little strangely at first, with everyone waiting expectantly round the dance floor for the main event to start and only a handful of couples actually dancing. Again no-one asked me or Sita to dance and finally when a great song came on we had to dance with each other. We had hoped that that made us look pitiful and desperate enough to get some men but still no luck. In the end we had a bit more rum to give us dutch courage and then I cornered some poor guy and asked him to dance which he did without much enthusiasm and that was all the action we got!
Luckily we were rescued from further embarrassment when the competition started. It was a special type of Salsa called Rueda Casino which I used to dance in the UK. The couples are all in a circle and the leader of the group shouts moves which they all follow like ochenta y ocho (88) and which involve lots of spinning and occasionally passing the women on in someway or other to the next guy in the group - Dame una. It is fantastic to dance, full of energy and equally fun to watch. There were some amazing dancers especially when the instructors of the various dance schools came on, including my friend, Caterine.
As we were leaving the venue all buoyed up by the excitement, but heading off to get the bus home, we were shouted at by a guy getting into a taxi with 2 friends, he asked if we wanted to go dance with them as they were off to a famous area outside the city called Juanchito, where there are no licensing restrictions and the salsa clubs go on until dawn.
Caught up in the moment we jumped in and sat on peoples laps, trying not to worry about how we were going to get back with only our bus money left. The guy turned out to be the Salsa World Champion and we had a great time dancing with him even though his friends were incredibly dull, which meant when Sita was dancing I was stuck with them and vice versa. But we didn’t have to pay for anything so I guess what goes round comes round, the inviting system here does have its paybacks sometimes (I think being female and foreign might have had a lot to do with it too though).
All my Cali friends turned out on my last evening there for a few beers in a bread shop, where I discovered the best papa rellena in Colombia - kind of a bit like an onion baji made out of potato with meat and an egg inside. I had previously been addicted to the cheesy arepas up the street, so much so that the woman was giving me worried looks when I went in every night. But unfortunately it was time to head up the coast to Cartagena to catch a boat, so although Cali hadn’t quite turned out the way I had thought and I was looking forward to moving on, it had certainly been a different experience for a while and it was sad to leave behind some lovely people.

If anyone is interested in volunteering here in Cali too, I can let you know the contact details of the foundation I worked for. Or if anyone would like to donate money to this worthwile foundation here is their web site address: www.fundanazaret.org and the email of the kids home is [e-mail]

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