The Glorified Gypsy
The travel writings of a vagabundo
the Colombian journals
the glorified gypsy
Carlitos de Jeffers spent four years living and travelling in Colombia. Though he spent the majority of his time living and working in the city of Cali, he kicked off his odyssey in the country’s capital of Bogotá. These journals document his experience in South America’s most spectacular country.
Bogotá
I also envisioned a scenario where one of my students - an olive-skinned beautiful older woman called Nhora - a Colombian Monica Bellucci - took me in as toyboy. Nhora’s slightly indigenous features and wide-set almond eyes had withstood the test of time and, I can only assume, poverty. I foresaw life with her thus: I’d basically idle around her pad, hang on her arm at social occasions and be her sexual plaything.
Gilberto and Ana Lucia’s was a typical Colombian love story. He met his first wife Olga in his home town of Cali when they were both young. They had two beautiful daughters together. As the daughters grew up, however, Gilberto traded Olga in for a younger, newer model. Ana Lucia. Gilberto would have been mid-fifties when I came to stay.
As I walked to Salome’s house it occurred to me I was about to enter the home of a stranger in Bogotá. No one knew where I was going. Still, I was set to earn a cool COL$40,000 for two hours work. The possibility of Salome and her family keeping me in captivity for years or harvesting my organs was a risk I was willing to take.
My reasoning was simple. What puts people on edge? The answer: crazy people. Think about it. Imagine you’re on a quiet train trying to read, say, Ian Fleming’s From Russia With Love. The gentle lurch of the the carriage is the perfect setting to read of Bond’s escape from Turkey on board the Orient Express. Just as it dawns on you that this is the second Bond novel in which Bond falls in love with a woman described as a man, the train pulls into a station on gets a crazy person.