I don’t remember how many times I heard people around me, friends included saying “it’s so easy for foreigners to work in Colombia, especially if you’re French!”. Now, here’s a thing to remember: there is absolutely nothing easy, especially if you are a foreigner.
Having spent 5 months going through job interviews, notary -you always have to get something legalized- and immigration offices (next time, I’ll ask for a loyalty card), I can objectively say: you’re in for a goddamn mess!
Yes, it’s part of the whole experience. One of my friend told me: “it all depends on the person you’ll deal with”, he was damn right. And this goes not only for Colombia but for France as well, or any European countries and I’m pretty sure there’s a tiny office in the North Pole where it can happen too. No offense to Santa Claus and his employees, sorry, elves.
My goal was to get my hands on the Holy Grail, which is also known as visa, to be able to work and live in Colombia. Wrong decisions with the wrong people surely didn’t help me getting what I wanted, but it helped me being more careful with my choices. Some experiences can be hard to handle and challenge you so much that you can easily say to yourself “Ok, I’m done!”, pack your bags and go back to your home-country, with a huge and unpleasant feeling of having failed everything you’ve tried so far to make it work. I had that feeling, once. Then I decided to think different. I thought maybe, it wasn’t just the right time for me, things can be delayed and it was ok in the end.
After all, if things were easy, it would be boring, wouldn’t it?! I do love challenges and I probably said it way too loud this time, I think I’m in for a pretty big one here. I might begin to look for some knights “for hire” and a round table as well… See you on chapter II then!
My Colombian Voyage 