The Peripatetic.

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Part I: College

“This guy has figured out the secret of life!” That was the first time I heard about Mario, and that may be high praise for an uptown girl to give a kid from a farming family in Pasto, but it may hold true.

I was sitting at a Brazilian restaurant in Beijing across the table from one of my best friends. A lovable skeptic about everything and everyone, she used to keep the whole class waiting while she asked “just one last question!” (There are always, always more “last” questions).

But this time, however, she didn’t question; Mario knows the secret of life, period.  She had just gotten into town for business, and most of the hours we spent to catch up were really just her telling Mario’s story.

In Colombia, they have a special word for “dumb”: pastuso.  Mario is from pastuso’s namesake, the city of Pasto, Colombia, nestled next to Ecuador, far from the capital, and the butt of innumerable jokes.

His parents grow potatoes and maintain livestock — mostly cows, whom they name after cherished friends.  His mother also works with underprivileged children who struggle to find money to eat and go to school.  When Mario failed his college entrance exams his family told him that he, too, must settle down and work the land.

Photo courtesy of M. Torres

Instead, Mario moved himself to the capital, Bogota, and managed to talk himself into school.

He was doing pretty well when he heard a governor from another part of the country giving a speech.  Barely one in a hundred Colombians knew who this guy was, but Mario was moved.  He went up to the man and told him, “I like your speech. I think you’re going to go very far, and I want to help you.”

That man is the current president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe Velez.  Mario participated in one of the most successful presidential campaigns in Colombia’s recent history.  He ended up working in Uribe’s government for three years and with thousands of youth on anti-corruption projects.

All was going well, but Mario thought, “I’m not going to get anywhere if I only speak Spanish. I need to learn English.  I should go to graduate school in the U.S.”  The only school he knew of was Harvard, so he moved in with his uncle in Nantucket thinking it would be close to the university (it is just over 100 miles away).

For six months, Mario studied English and researched his options.  He worked at a valet service and as a bus boy in a Boston restaurant seven days a week “to survive,” as he put it.  He found out about Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).  He applied.  He was admitted.

It seems like a good story to tell now, when colleges and graduate schools are confused about whom to accept, now that everyone is poorer than they were when they applied.  Who can afford school?

Mario definitely could not.  Broke, a foreign citizen, no credit history and no assets to his name, he could not even secure a loan.

To be continued . . .