Mount Ayr Record-News
Mount Ayr, Ringgold County, Iowa
Thursday, May 2, 2002, Pages 1 & 16

Going camping with friends and playing soccer in Des Moines have been some of the more memorable experiences for exchange student Danny DUARTE of Bogota, Colombia during his year in Iowa.

DUARTE has been a student at Mount Ayr Community high school this year. His host family is Rick and Marilyn HAWKINS and sons Forrest and Lyndon of rural Mount Ayr.

DUARTE has enjoyed his experience in the United States and his year of study at MACHS even though it was a great cultural change to move from Bogota, a capital city of six million people, to a rural county in the rural state of Iowa.

And although he sees the U.S. as offering great possibilities, he is eager to return to Colombia, despite knowing he'll return to a country with serious social problems.

DUARTE has lived in Bogota with his family since 1991. His parents are Teodoro DUARTE, an oil engineer, and Claudia GARCIA, a graphic designer. He has a younger sister, Jennyfer.

Because his father worked in the oil industry, the family lived in several other cities before moving to Bogota, including Medellin where Danny was born. For the past three years his sister and father have lived in Bucaramanga, Colombia, a city north of Bogota.

DUARTE says he was not originally eager to be an exchange student. "My dad encouraged me to think about being an exchange student." DUARTE said he was afraid of the language difference although he has studied English since fourth grade.

He also feared that someone would "hurt his feelings" because of the drug problem his country is known for. During the first month at MACHS he did receive some unfriendly comments from students but he learned how to handle the situation. "I can live with the jokes about drugs, but I learned to play with the jokes and they finally stopped."

But mostly DUARTE has received warmth and interest from peers and teachers. "The people here, they want to know how I live in Colombia, what is the difference in the countries." He has found that especially the teachers are interested in learning about his home.

His favorite class at MACHS was speech with Mike REYNOLDS. He found it a good opportunity for others to learn about his country because he made different speeches about Colombia. It was a good way for him to learn from the other students, also.

In Colombia, DUARTE would have already been in his first year at the university but he is glad he had the chance to attend school in the United States.

"The United States is a great country and it gives you a lot of possibilities," DUARTE believes. He sees how the young people here have more opportunities for work while they are students. Most of the teenagers he knows in Colombia don't have good opportunities for employment.

On recalling some of his more memorable experiences in Iowa, he started by telling about his first day of arrival in Iowa. The HAWKINS had told him that they would meet him at the airport and they would be very tall and have a Colombian flag. When he saw them, he couldn't believe how tall Forrest and Lyndon actually were. And he recalls that the first morning he woke up and wanted to see the neighbors, but "there were no neighbors."

He was also surprised and happy when the HAWKINS gave him a surprise party for his birthday in September. They went to Breadeaux Pizza and several of his friends were there and he liked that.

In January DUARTE traveled to Des Moines to play in the indoor soccer field. He was invited by a fellow Colombian who was an exchange student three years ago and now lives in Creston. As soccer is one of his favorite activities in Colombia, he was really glad to have the opportunity to play.

Recently, he was invited to go camping with some friends. He says he will never forget this experience which included learning to hunt for mushrooms. He now is able to find mushrooms by himself but still has not had the chance to taste them. He hopes to be able to go camping again before he leaves and says, "If I am here in Iowa, you have to do that, go out and live with nature."

Coming from a large city, he has found living in Iowa refreshing. "You open the door in the morning and it smells like spring," he said. "I like it."

[Page 16] He says he loves animals and has seen lots of wildlife at the HAWKINS' home and has done some fishing.

Perhaps on of the few unpleasant memories that he will take back to Colombia with his is his short stint with the MACHS football team.

He played the first two weeks of the football season but quit because he couldn't understand the roughness of the game. "You take the ball and they come and hit you," he said. "That's not for me." He says he would get bruises playing soccer but not like in football.

In describing his country of Colombia, DUARTE acknowledges, "Colombia has lots of problems, like social problems in a big city. It's very different than here." He compares Colombia to Afghanistan as another country with real poverty and terrorist.

"In Colombia we have terrorists and they are bombing in many parts of the county because they disagree with the government, and they take hostages," he explains. This reality hit close to home for DUARTE and his family several years ago when his uncle was taken as a hostage off an airplane and held for 14 months.

He also sees the economics of the U.S. and Colombia as very different. "The money is different," he said. "One million pesos is equal to $500. There is a lot of poverty. You can easily see the difference between the high class and low class."

But DUARTE feels the government is trying to improve the country and one way is by improving the public schools.

Despite the problems in Colombia, DUARTE says he loves his country. "I know that my country has social problems," he says, "but I think that in this moment all countries have problems and with problems or not I continue loving my country. I really feel very happy because I'm a Colombian. I love my country. It is part of me."

In Colombia DUARTE attended a very big, private school that was located outside of Bogota. The classes in this school were completely different from the school in Mount Ayr because the students never changed classrooms, it was the teachers who would come to the classroom.

He attended the same school for eight years and says, "I really love my school because the people are very friendly."

He likes living in the big city of Bogota. In the city and also at his school there a are lots of different soccer clubs. "I can be all day outside playing soccer with my friends and never get tired," he said.

Another one of his favorite things to do in Bogota is to go to dance clubs with his friends. The types of music he likes to dance to are salsa, merengue and techno music. "This is the kind of music that the teenagers usually like," he explained.

Two of his favorite places to visit in Colombia are the cities of Medellin and Cartagena. Medellin is a beautiful city with friendly people. His grandmother lives in Medellin so he visits there often.

Cartagena is a port on the Caribbean coast with historical and other interesting sites. A fortress wall surrounds the city and there is also a castle in the city. DUARTE enjoys all these sites as well as the beaches all along the Caribbean coast because he loves the ocean.

DURATE will return to Colombia in June. He is eager to return to his country and begin attending the university that many of his friends are already attending. He plans to study engineering and although his father is a successful engineer in the oil industry, he thinks there may be more opportunity in the field of hydrological engineering.

DUARTE says he will miss his house brothers, family and friends here in Ringgold county but knows that he will always have some "family" here in the United States.

Colombia is a republic in the northeast corner of South America. The country has a total population of 40,349,388 persons with 6,288,000 of the population living in the capital of Bogota. Medellin is the second largest city with a population of 2,951,000.

Colombia has a coast along both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The three chief ports of the country are Buena-ventura on the Pacific Ocean and Barranquilla and Cartagena on the Caribbean Sea. Cartegnea was founded in 1533 and is one of the oldest cities in Colombia.

The country gained its independence from Spain in 1819 and was called Gran Colombia with Simon Bolivar the first president. The current president is Andres Pastrana ARANGO.

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, August of 2012