Write an essay about trees.
Of Roots and Trees
Since I was only six years old at the time, I have a fuzzy recollection of when my dad told me that we were moving to Colombia. I remember confusing Colombia with California and thinking that it would be awesome to live where the movies are made. Eventually my parents explained that we were actually going to the land of Shakira. I had lived in [city] for my entire life. I was shy and introverted. I loved spending time with my cousins and going to my grandfather’s farm. Life was simple. Life was good. We moved out of the house my parents had built and where my father had planted a number of pine trees. The next thing I remember I was sobbing and hugging and kissing my cousins goodbye. Just as my roots had begun to take hold in the soil of the Valle de la Ermita, I was uprooted as a sapling and sent off to a foreign land. Although I left parts of my roots next to those pine trees my dad had planted, my immediate family and my memories of Guatemala became the first branches on the tree I was growing into.
In April 1999 we arrived in [city], which, at 2640 meters was intimidating. Even though everyone spoke Spanish they had a “weird” accent, and I couldn’t always understand them, nor could they understand me. My new school was on a mountain and my mom repeatedly told me that unlike [city] in Guatemala, where students only spoke English half of the day, at [city] we would have to speak English the entire time. I took this to heart and even spoke English on the playground until I realized that I would not get in trouble for speaking Spanish.
This marked a turning point for me in Colombia because, although people initially laughed at my accent, I, unlike most foreigners at the school, spoke Spanish. This allowed me to mix with the locals who made up 85% of the student body. I grew to love Colombia and became so much a local that at school only my closest friends knew I wasn’t, and when I went back to Guatemala for summer vacations my cousins would laugh at my rolo accent (a term used by Colombians to refer to people from [city]). I loved my school, I loved my friends, I loved the eucalyptus tree in the backyard. I
grew to love Colombia and its people whose optimism, courage, and unrelenting struggle against terrorism had began to bear fruit. The election of Alvaro Uribe gave people the seemingly banal opportunity of leaving the city without having to fear for their lives. I was convinced that I would spend the rest of my life there. I would read the senior wills in the yearbook and couldn’t wait for that to be me. My plans, however, came to an abrupt end.
In late 2003 my parents told us we would be moving to Brazil. I was heart-broken. After six years in Colombia I could not even begin to imagine what my life would be like in yet another country. Although I was young my roots were deep and strong, stronger than they had ever been in Guatemala. Like the Australian eucalyptus trees that dotted the mountains around [city], I had been brought to that foreign land and had made it my own. And now, once again, I was being uprooted. The process was prolonged due to my mom’s pregnancy. For me that meant eight months of crying every afternoon, hoping for a miracle that would allow me to stay. The miracle never came. In July 2004 we moved to Sao Paulo. Once again, I left some of my roots, this time with the eucalyptus trees in [city], and new, Colombian branches were added to my growing tree.
After the torrent of tears before coming to Sao Paulo, it came as a shock to me and my entire family that I adapted to my new school so quickly. I made a new friend, a half Colombian half German boy who had been born in Chile and was coming from five years in Istanbul. Being a truly international school (only 40% of the students here are Brazilian), Graded is extremely easy to adapt to whether you’re coming from Bogotá, Detroit, Shanghai, or Melbourne. I instantly became a part of the sixth-grade Hispanic “mafia.” Our conversations were riddled with a mixture of Argentine, Ecuadorian, Colombian, Guatemalan, and Panamanian accents and, of course, the ever present Spanglish, a result of being Spanish speakers educated in American schools. Speaking Spanish made learning Portuguese easier but it was never a necessity. Due to laziness and a lack of confidence in my Portuguese skills, I would avoid using the local language as much as possible and never hung out with the Brazilian crowd.
The summer was hot and the eucalyptus trees had been replaced by palm trees. I began planting my roots but I quickly learned, at the end of the seventh grade, when my best friend moved to Switzerland, that my roots were grounded in unsteady territory; that the community I belong to in Sao Paulo is nomadic, and at the end of every semester I have had to say goodbye to people I have grown to love. Despite my realization it was very hard for me to break the social and language barriers and start hanging out with Brazilians. It wasn’t until ninth grade that I was finally able to break into the truly “Brazilian” world. A new kid who had transferred from a Brazilian school sat next to me in math class. The son of an Israeli couple who had immigrated to Brazil, Rotem’s English was not great so I broke my rule - I began speaking Portuguese with him. As in Colombia, this was a turning point for my social interactions. It became infinitely easier to make friends with Brazilians at my school once I had the courage to speak Portuguese with them.
Today my group of friends is composed of Latin Americans from every corner of the continent plus Americans, Asians, and Europeans. Yes, I still have to say goodbye every semester and the process has never gotten easier, but my roots and branches have become more flexible. I have come to understand that as painful as it is to leave or to be left, it is a process that makes me grow as a person and it is also a privilege. A privilege because I’ve had the opportunity to learn from so many people of such varied backgrounds, and because I know that if I ever go to Quito Felipe will give me a place to stay, or if I’m ever in Basel I can call Nathalie; the same thing applies to twenty other cities scattered across the globe.
What about my roots and branches? My roots are strong and flexible. They are spread across the continent and my branches across the world. Just as I have left roots in the places I have lived in, the people who have left me have contributed to the growth of my branches. I am one- fourth pine tree, one-fourth eucalyptus, one-fourth palm tree, and the last fourth is nowhere and everywhere, adaptable, ready to plant its roots in new places and allow new branches to grow.