Tubará

I don’t know how to describe my new home. It’s weird even writing that. Home has always been where my parents are. And home will ALWAYS be where my parents are. But if I’m going to be living for somewhere for two years that place becomes another home, a different home, but a home nonetheless. Home has always been a feeling for me and it’s hard to find one defining feature. Maybe it’s the smell of garlic recently pulled from the garden or the sound of a Giants game playing in the background or the comfort of curling up in the big armchairs in the living room or the sizzle of cooking and the clatter of knives. Home means falling asleep to the quietness of a suburban street with the moonlight falling across my bed. Home sounds like classical music and The Beach Boys. Home is Dad reading cooking magazines in his green chair, marking recipes to come back to, and Mom eating cereal on the front step, basking in the warmth as the sun hits her face and she finally pulls off her worn slippers. Home is running out to the garden to cut fresh herbs or pull up a head of lettuce and letting my feet sink into the cool dirt and having Dad beg me to please, for Pete’s sake, put some shoes on because who knows how many nails and tools have been dropped out there. Home is Dad looking up from reading this, peering over his glasses, and saying “For Pete’s sake? No, for YOUR sake!” Home is Mom’s voice floating up the stairs, calling me down for breakfast and pulling fresh berries from the fridge to plop on french toast or cereal. Home means something different for all of us but we all know the feeling. I think it’s simply the feeling of belonging somewhere.

When I first saw Tubará I immediately felt like I belonged. As we drove up the mountain from the highway along the ocean I had my nose pressed to the glass. Hawks were swooping through the valley and, to me, it looked like they weren’t even hunting; they were diving and playing simply to experience the joy of having their wings unfurled and the wind rippling through their feathers. Of course, they were probably hunting but I was trying to draw some major metaphors to my new life. When we got to the top of the mountain I jumped out of the Peace Corps van. It was hot but there was a nice breeze (a very welcome change from Barranquilla) and big fat white clouds scuttled across the sky. The houses were painted bright colors and the roads were dusty. There were butterflies everywhere. They danced from tree to bush to flower and came teasingly close before floating away in the breeze. The people walked slowly and said hi to everyone. Well, they said “adios” which as most of you know means “goodbye”. But here, in Tubará, the people said goodbye to say hello. It’s endearing. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, famous Colombian author of “100 Years of Solitude” and a multitude of other well-known works, used to come to Tubará to get inspired for his novels. Tubareaños (the people of Tubará) claim that Tubará is the de facto village of his novels. You may or may not know that Gabriel Garcia Marquez was known for his use of magical realism, which is a little difficult to explain. It’s essentially that things are pretty normal, but maybe someone lives for 150 years and maybe you can talk with the ghost of your husband for a little bit. Almost normal, but not quite. Tubará has been here for almost 500 years. I mentioned this to one of my friends and she said, “I mean, that’s not super impressive.” But you forget that the US is only 239 years old. So take everything that has happened since 1776 and double that time. And one of the most amazing things is that a lot has remained the same. The people working in the fields have worked in those fields for hundreds of years (well, the families have). The streets were just paved six months ago. Donkeys are still used to carry heavy loads and word of mouth travels faster than the unreliable internet. People believe in ghosts and almost everyone has a story of an encounter. The neighbor boy was nice enough to tell me he saw a ghost in my house a few months ago. Dwarves and witches apparently run rampant in the town but I have yet to notice either.

The accents are difficult. It’s almost like, after 400-odd years, people no longer need to pronounce syllables or differentiate words. The conversations flows like a literal babbling brook and I am often left nodding along, pretending like I’ve understood even one word. People are patient though. They repeat words and try to find other ways of saying things. And they love it when I try to use costal (costeño) slang. It cracks them up to hear their favorite phrases come out of my mouth with my gringa accent. But what they love even more is that I’m trying. I’m trying so hard to fit in. I’m literally the only white person in a town of maybe 1,500. I recently learned, when my friends came to visit, that if you ask pretty much anyone, “Where does the gringa live?” they will happily point you in the direction of my house. They literally just asked a random person walking in the plaza.

So I might never look like I belong here but I already feel like I’ve been searching for Tubará for a long time and I’ve finally arrived.