They were very kind to invite and receive us into their annual family reunion. Colombians really like to get together with the family—being much like my wife’s family in that respect, and little like mine. They find it strange that in the USA some people hate the holidays when the family all gets together because for most of them here, there is nothing they enjoy more. They love that everybody is there, that the kids are running around, the mayhem, chaos and conviviality. Especially those with large families.
And all sorts of relatives show up: not only the spouses, but the spouses’ niece was there; not only the son-in-law but also the mother-in-law was there; and various neighbors or unexplained relations—half the town I guess. So we didn’t feel strange being along or being something of the guests of honor: it could not have been strange.
A Uncle George
Uncle George was the most colorful. He’s always telling jokes. His older brother also tells jokes but Uncle George does it with greater success. He came for the slaughter of the pig but didn’t actually do the slaughtering. He did a lot of the butchering and cooking though.
He sells clothes. First thing we did there after breakfast was see if Maria Katrina wanted to buy any of the shirts he was selling. She got one. He also sold a shirt to just about every female relative there present. He went out on Friday with his business partner—the daughter— to sell shirts, but the women of those regions are apparently too fat for the shirts he brought.
He isn’t so slender himself. A hearty trencherman and a bit of a wag, uncle George is jovial in every dimension. Used my name in vain, but then I forgave him when during the soccer game he dubbed me ‘Forlan.’
B Waldemar X
I have mentioned Waldemar X before. He is a bit strange for me, so I protect his name according to my subtle, ingenious, devious methods. I have mentioned how he is a bit over the edge on his delight in guarapo. We were walking along with him into town when one of his phones went off. After he had dealt with the call he asked me if I had identified the ring tone. I had not. It was Simon and Garfunkel, he told me, and it was that because he believed that Christians should love beauty. He expounded on this love of beauty for a while.
We had a conversation that night in which he revealed to me in what high regard he held the writings of Sir Francis Schaeffer. I am no hand at apologetics—which is I think what the conversation ended up being about—but we discussed things. I left with the idea that future conversations would need to have the argument drawn on a piece of paper in order for it to come off better.
Not that we were anything but cordial. We disagreed with great reasonableness and with sincere questions and all in the spirit of calm. He is strangely logical, this man, and I hope I can have other conversations with him. I also hope I can get him reading other stuff. He lives in Bogota and attends the northern, sister congregation of our church. It was he that brought along his mother, a lady of pastels.
C Ingrid
The entrepreneurial daughter of uncle George is Ingrid. She and her family live in Pereira and so are considered “paisa.” Paisas are good business people, and I have no doubt that among them, she is one of the better ones. When Maria Katrina paid for the shirt, Ingrid accepted the cash. She was also reckoning up the accounts on the last night.
She works for the National Chocolate company selling and gets around Pereira on a motorcycle, but of course she works on the side as her father’s business partner. She is going to be rich because she’s dedicated and competent; of that I have no doubt. She is concerned and bossy, a natural leader of a woman.
D The Jolly Aunt
The home is run by the jolly aunt, Maria Eugenia. Since grandma is 84 years old, though she still gets around and can handle three hours of washing out pig guts besides all the rest of the day’s work, Maria Eugenia runs the place with a lot of hard work and a lot of cheerfulness. She is our hostess, and of all the rooms in the house, I believe she gave us hers.
When I first met her she was swathed in a large towel.(one got used to that after a while there; I think I must have seen almost everybody at one point clothed in a towel). It was almost 6AM when we met on that Friday morning. After that she would wear shorts and a t-shirt, and an apron made out of an old piece of clear plastic folded over a string knotted around her middle.
She runs a day-care out of the home when it is not overrun with hordes of relatives. She stayed home to clean up the disaster on Monday when everybody went to the river because on Tuesday she had a bunch of kids coming to overrun the premises. She snatches life out of a lot of business, and is quite cheerful about it all.
E The Daughters
The jolly aunt has two daughters, one of whom was in Bogota with us at our church for a while, and both of which are back home for the present. They are of the age at which they spent a good while dressing up to go to the park on the evenings.
There were other daughters besides the three mentioned already. The aunts are all daughters, and there were five of them there. One, a very determined lady, is married to Waldemar X. She it was that realized the need for coffee and supplied it. She also made arepas and on an evening walk, identified many of the trees. One I talked to had been in Bogota for a while, but the whole thing failed to work out for that family so they were back in Campoalegre. The oldest daughter in that family also lives there and I played soccer on the same team as her husband—a cheerful old cove if not a great hand at soccer. There was a birthday party at the house of the oldest which we avoided, with the result that we had a welcome and quiet Sunday evening (the Missionary Alliance not being in particular Sabbatarians).
Two daughters were pregnant. Waldemar X is soon going double the number of grandkids he has from 2 to 4.
F The Sons
Three of the sons were present, so that only one was missing. One came from the USA where he is involved in church work among Latinos. He’s the one with the money. He came bearing chewing gum and probably other things as well.
One of them was moving back home from Neiva: he was the one who bought me the first empanadas and the youngest. He drove us out—in the rental car in which the USA brother arrived—to the cemetery. There he and the sister that brought us, Marcela who is closest to him in age, showed us the gate past which the road ran toward their home. Three of their siblings who died in infancy are buried in the cemetery within view of the wall to which the gate is perpendicular.
The road the gate shuts off runs parallel to the cemetery wall (that’s how cemeteries are here: walled), but the gate is about a foot away from the wall so that there’s a little space for people to squeeze through—since the gate is usually shut. Through that space they used to pass when they were kids, and it terrified them because of their siblings in the cemetery. They would dash over the little sty-like ledge, squeezing through as quickly as they could. They’d throw their bike over the gate heedlessly in their frantic rush.
The strangest thing I found out about the sons was that uncle George had been to the Missionary Alliance seminary. He’d flunked out of English and music, he told me. He helps with the preaching in his church. Waldemar X, I learned, used to be a Dispensationalist and now warns against it. His eldest son preached for us that Sunday morning we were there, and at night he slept in a tent.
One of the cousins of the kids of the sons was Weimar. A nice chap. I talked to him because he wanted to know how one formed the habit of reading. Colombians have no habit of reading. He’s bright and plays the guitar; plays the bass guitar in the Missionary Alliance praise band, I understand. They are people of the Missionary Alliance, though I doubt Tozer today would recognize it, which is a shame.
G Dubious, Distant Kin
Sons and cousins, aunts and grandparents made the family tree a bit complicated. There was a guy there who is also an American citizen who is married to a sister’s daughter and whose sister is married to his wife’s mother’s brother (making one of them brother-in-law and uncle both, and the other brother-in-law and nephew both). His American mom came with a missionary who died, so she married a Colombian, and his older sister married the brother that has the money and lives in the USA.
I don’t know if all the kids running around constitute distant kin. I’ll close with the picture of an unrelated—as far as we could tell—little girl that appeared quietly in the corner on Monday evening and was very well behaved and sweet.
Unknowing 