Author: Daniel Samper Pizano

Act I. The Spanish poet Antonio Machado once wrote, “My childhood memories are of a patio in Seville and a sunny garden where lemon trees ripened;…” Since I am not from Seville nor am I a poet, and have neither a garden nor a lemon tree, my childhood was a lot less lyrical: a soccer ball, homework, a loyal dog, a vacant lot and a group of friends. One of them was the son of a top executive of the International Oil Company in Colombia and his name was Billy. His family wanted him to study in a Bogotá school and with schoolmates from Bogotá, instead of confining him to the usual “ghettos” where the children of diplomats and foreign business executives usually end up. There, they grow up speaking their native tongue, surrounded by other pasteurized kids and, like them, homogenized and protected from dangerous childhood adventures like organizing beetle races on a track of sand or sneaking into an empty house in search of ghosts.