Fifty Years On...
Fifty years on. A half-century ago, I was a six-year-old boy who lived in a large apartment in Bogota with my mom and two live-in maids (Lily and Olimpia). I was about to start first grade at Colegio El Nogal, a private Catholic school run by Nidia de Hakim, an acquaintance of my grandparents and mother. I don't remember much about the school now; fifty years on, I only have vague fragments of memories; the campus was a remodeled mansion with many rooms and long dark hallways...the pencil sharpener was in a closet outside one of the rows of classrooms, and we had two meals on school grounds during the school day: onces (which was a mid-morning snack), and lunch (around one in the afternoon). I also remember that we wore uniforms to school; blue-black-and-white plaid shorts, knee-high blue socks, blue-white wingtip shoes, white dress shirts, and blue sweaters with the school's monogram (EN)) in white letters on the upper left of the chest area. School days began at 9 AM and ...