Colombian Convenience

Monday night I got a call from the director of my school, “Hi Leanne, this is Dianne. I’ve got a big problem.”

Those are words that no one wants to hear. The highest-up in the school specifically calling you on a day off to tell you something is wrong. My thoughts started racing, “What could I have done?”

She proceeded, “You know that this week the soccer team and girls and boys volleyball teams are travelling to Medellin to participate in the binational games.” ….side note: Medellin is a city 5 hours from Pereira and the binational games is a huge tournament that happens every year between 12 bi-lingual schools throughout Colombia. Every year the games change location and this year they happen to be in Medllin….”Well they are leaving tomorrow morning and I was supposed to go with them as a female chaperone, but I’m really sick and don’t want to risk going. Can you go in my place? It would be from tomorrow (Tuesday)  until Sunday”

Can I go in her place? I paused for a moment…heck yes! I’d be missing the entire week of school, the only other chaperones are males and don’t speak English, I don’t know a lot of the kids, but yes – I knew it would be an invaluable experience.

Tuesday morning came and I went to school with my bags packed.  We were scheduled to leave at 8:30. The school had rented a giant bus so that all 40 of us could pack in a ride together. By the time we were all on board and ready to go it was 9:00. I was impressed that we were able to leave that early! The plan was to arrive at our hotel in Medellin by 3:00 in the afternoon and relax for the rest of the evening. 1:00 hit and by that time we were all ready to get off the bus. Suddenly we hit a traffic jam.

So it wasn’t a normal traffic jam. The road to Medellin is a normal road but it snakes up and up and up an up the mountains and then it snakes down and down and down and down until we arrive in the city.  On the way up we were stopped because a huge truck had lost its breaks on the way down the other side, collided with some cars and cause a huge wreck. Then, on top of that, some cars tried to pass the wreck and crashed head on with another car. In total 6 cars were completely smashed and 2 people had died. It was really a tragic situation. Well, that meant our bus was stuck in a huge line of traffic waiting for the wreckage to be cleared. 1:00. 2:00. 3:00. 4:00. 5:00. 6:00. Until finally at 7:00 we were able to continue. This wasn’t because the traffic jam had cleared, but rather by “Colombian convenience”. It turns out that one of the volleyball player’s girlfriend’s dad just happened to be the chief of police of Medellin and to help us, decided to send a police escort so we could move to the front of an over 3 mile long traffic jam so that when the road was clear we could go through. Seriously it was so strange. The police just came, turned on their lights and lead us through the mountains.

The volleyball coach looked at me and simply said one thing, “Welcome to Colombia.”