Colombia Forum

Vikingo
Joined 2009
Posts: 1680

3 years ago

Calamity struck a famil

3 years ago

Calamity struck a family member
Two years ago the wife's then 18 year old nephew and four of his friends were rounded up and forcefully taken away to a marine base on the Atlantic coast by armed military recruiters from the wife's hometown in the Putomayo department.
He had just started a family and they had a two month old daughter which he didn't see again for the next couple of years. His mandatory military service was supposed to last only a year but because of Covid and luck of flights from the base it dragged out to this January 20th.
So finally the flight arrived in Bogotá, all five of them had a debit card with about 3 million pesos each to start a new life with, their sold of 150 mil pesos a month that they had no way of spending at the base because of lack of ATM's.
They couldn't return to their hometown because the indigenous and local coca farmers had the roads blocked with the help of FARC 'milicianos' (FARC militias), the area is swarming with them and any bus, car or moto caught outside those small towns would be burned by them, it was announced. Flights of course were unavailable.
So they decided to take a bus to Pitalito with roads open in that direction, to get out of dangerous, cold and expensive Bogotá. They split up into two groups and took taxis to the bus terminal. Being practically country boys, they were no match for Bogotá and as bad luck will have it, the taxi with the nephew and his comrade drove into Suba and stopped in front of several ATM's. Y'all guessed what happened next, the infamous 'paseo milionario'. They not only lost their 3 million savings, but wallets, cellphones and their backpacks with their clothes too. The other guy refused to give his ATM key to the rateros and one stuck a knife in his hand so he would comply.
It happened around 7 PM and they wondered around lost until they encountered a kind person who let them use his phone and the nephew called my wife with the bad news. The young man never knew his father or his godforsaken mother, she left him as a newborn and took off to Brazil with her boyfriend, to be never seen or heard from again.
The wife got busy, called a girlfriend, a teacher who has a brother in Bogotá. The brother went to pick up the two lost souls, took the injured one to a hospital to get stitches and his hand bandaged and waited patiently with them to take them to his home for the night. They called the bank and were told to come in at 8AM in the morning when they learned the bank doesn't cover robberies at ATM's (unlike in the States).
The last hope of recovering their savings gone.
The wife sent money for bus tickets so they could leave that dreaded city and I helped out, paying for replacement 'cedulas' for the two and buying him a used Samsung Galaxy cell phone which should arrive any day now.
He still can't be united with his family but at least he is in a safe place with friends now.
Wife tracked down the other guys mother and we learned his extremely poor family lives in an encampment outside of town without running water or electricity called the 'Invasión' filled with hapless displaced persons, living in bamboo huts driven from their land and homes by the FARC and ELN. He could have used the 3 million pesos more than anyone. We will be feeding him for a while too, buying him a change of clothes until both of them find work and good luck with that during the pandemic.

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