From Palmira to Madrid and then London, a life shaped by work, adaptation and the need to start again. Today, while her daughter and granddaughter also live in the British capital, she works seven days a week and considers starting over once more in Colombia
Marcos Ortiz F.
Slight Madrilenian tones can be heard in the Colombian accent of Sandra Lopera Montes. However, the curious mix disappears when she utters a sentence in English and a London tone rises to the surface.
Simply exchanging a few words with this 66 year old woman, is enough to begin to predict a story that spans over three countries and that goes back almost two decades, when she decided to leave Valle del Cauca, in her native Colombia. “29 years ago, I came to Europe looking for better opportunities. In our country, we have a good quality of life, the problem is that there is no work. At our age they will not give us work and in Colombia if you do not finish high school you can not find work anywhere”, she explains without ever losing her smile.
Just like that, she left her life behind in the city of Palmyra. Her devotion to her home and life with her three children was put on hold when, accompanied by her partner, she decided to cross the Atlantic. The early days in Madrid were the most complicated, living in the house of a hairdresser from Manizales. Sandra and her partner paid 70 thousand pesetas. “I thought we were going to get to a room, but we slept on the floor for a month. There were about 12 people in total and my partner and I slept in the living room, on a sheet”.
Conscious that she needed to build a better future for herself, Sandra immediately went out looking for work. “I worked looking after children, cleaning houses, cleaning offices. On weekends she made tamales, empanadas and stuffed potatoes and sold them to other Colombians on request”, she recalls.
Sandra has conflicting memories of those early days away from Colombia. “The first few years were illegal. Getting to Spain was easy because there was an open border, no visa. The hardest part was being around people who had already lived there for many years and could provide a better service, but all they wanted was money”.
“It was very hard and humiliating to get the papers. To register we had to go at dawn. We arrived around 12 at night, to only be attended to at 9:30 in the morning. We had to sleep out there. In summer it was no problem, but in winter we had to bring blankets because the cold in Madrid is tough. The process of getting the papers was a battle”. But the effort would be worthwhile. Sandra and her husband found the longed for stability and were finally able to make a living for themselves. The hardships of the first few months became a thing of the past.
Until the crisis arrived in Spain. “The economy crashed. There was no work and we had to eat, pay the rent and help our families. We had to emigrate”, he explains.
“It’s difficult to make this type of decision because there, you already know people, you have friends. We each had our own car, we lived in a completely independent house for two people. Then we got to London and had to start from scratch again”.
Sandra began cleaning offices, she worked cleaning the house of a female millionaire, and rebuilt her life. “I’ve done a little bit of everything. Little by little we have been making progress”, she says proudly.
These days, he works as a janitor during the week in Camden and spends the rest of his time cleaning cabins for tourists at the zoo.
It is while working (seven days a week) that Sandra thinks about her eventual return, to start from scratch for the third time. “I really want to go back to Colombia soon. I really do. If you are a person accustomed to working hard, I think you can do it. ”
In London, where her daughter and her granddaughter already live, Sandra strolls through a neighbourhood surrounded by Latinos. “I come here because I know people, I have friends, I lived here for a while. I come to chat for a bit, to have fun. You are drawn to your own, your land, your people”.
*Name changed, real story
(Translated by Shanika Whight) – Photos: Pixabay
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