Un camino hasta Colombia.

I’ve always been fascinated by languages, accents and dialects. I love studying them. At school study of French was mandatory. I also had the option to study German, which I did accept. I did quite well at French, but I found German to be really hard work!

Before 1989 my knowledge of Spanish would have been restricted to vocabulary such as ‘Buenos Días/Buenas Noches’, ‘Maňana’, ‘Gringo’ and the odd word or two picked up from listening to Victoria and Manolito in the 1960s TV serial ‘High Chaparral’. I just never went to Spain. Most holiday trips into Europe were to the Swiss Alps. Then everything changed. A ‘missed phone call’ message left on my office desk one afternoon in April 1989 led to a four month work secondment in Bogotà, Colombia commencing in September of that same year.

So that gave me a couple of months to get my head around what I had, all of a sudden, taken onboard. How to prepare for a lengthy stay in a country that I knew almost nothing about? … other than its official working language was Spanish…..and at that time a certain Mr Escobar was still at large, Colombia was the notorious narcotrafficking centre of the World and kidnappings, assassinations and car-bombings had become regular occurrences.

My first step on the language learning ladder was the purchase of the Teach Yourself ‘Spanish’ book. Twenty four chapters in total. By the time my bags were packed and I headed to the airport I had managed to plod through twenty three of these chapters….all done from the comfort of my armchair …. not a particularly realistic simulation of what I would soon be having to face ….. but at least it was a start. On the outward flight to Caracas I had the relative luxury of all in-flight announcements being delivered in Spanish and English. Then the connecting flight to Bogotá, but this time the announcements were in Spanish only, the ‘plane was jam-packed full of Spanish speaking passengers, and so now the fun had really begun. Time to reach up into the overhead locker to read the final chapter 24….’The Imperfect Subjunctive’!!! …I remember it well! At the airport (Aeropuerto de El Dorado de Bogotá) I was met by my two young hosts Anselmo and Lilliana whose knowledge of English was about the same as my knowledge of Spanish so it made for a most entertaining first encounter whilst they drove me to the Hotel (Tequendama) in the city centre and escorted me up to the room suite to which I’d been allocated (yes I really do mean suite …two very large rooms with a connecting passageway and space enough to have accommodated a dozen people let alone just 1!!!).

At the Institute where I was working only two of the staff could speak English. So these were the circumstances within which my learning of the Spanish language was to begin in earnest. As I had anticipated that the language barrier would be a significant early problem I took the Collins English/Spanish Spanish/English big! big!! big!!! dictionary with me. Responsible undoubtedly for a good portion of the checked-in baggage weight, it did turn out to be worth more than its weight in gold in those first few weeks. I took it every day into the office where I was working and which I shared with about eight of the Institute’s staff that were my temporary work colleagues. In the days before Google Translate it became a very well thumbed document .

Fortunately I found I was amidst a great group of people. They made a huge fuss of me. My whole time there was great fun and hugely enjoyable. It proved to be a most rewarding and reassuring learning environment. All I had to do was make the most of this wonderful opportunity that I’d been given. When you’re in at the deep end the only way out is to swim. Every day I recorded in my notebook the most common expressions and most common words that were being used in course of conversation. The foundation building blocks. Sometimes the context within which the words were being used made it fairly obvious what they meant. Every evening upon return to the hotel I’d cross reference all my notes with the dictionary to fully ensure I understood the meanings .

Meanwhile life goes on outside of work…

Left to my own devices I would have been content just to get on with the tasks of :-(a) performing the job that I had been seconded to do and (b) quietly absorbing and assimilating the language to which I was being exposed to daily…..and the rest of the time staying within the protective womb of the hotel. The Lonely Planet guide to Colombia goes out of its way to remind prospective visitors that walking around unaccompanied in certain areas of Bogotà is not the greatest idea in the World. A shame really because love of travel and exploration of new places are two of the defining qualities of those with the Gemini birth sign. It was at that point that fate and destiny entered in upon the scene…in the guise of Maria from the Institute and her ‘friend’ from the University! We were on our way supposedly to the Museo de Oro (Gold Museum). Before we got there Maria decided to head off somewhere else!!! So that’s how I met my wife!

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As time went by we did see the other ‘sites’ of the city. Members of staff at the Institute would also invite me to see other sites of interest in the areas around the city. All in all I was well looked after in that first 4 months.

I returned to Colombia in 1990 and 1991 (not for work this time). In 1991 we were married out there. My wife joined me in the UK in 1991, where my daughter was born in October that year. My wife was keen to bring up my daughter in a bilingual home environment. In fact Spanish was the only language my daughter was regularly exposed to in the years before playschool and whilst I was at work most of the day. Suffice it to say that my daughter literally ‘sailed’ through Spanish lessons at school and went on to study it with French at University. Of course my own knowledge and ability with Spanish has had the benefit of being constantly refreshed by the day-to-day contact with the language that I have at home. My wife has been very successful teaching Spanish in the UK. So there!!!