Coffee and friends

For me coffee is a great social drink. Since I was very young I have shared it with my friends. During my college years I spent many hours talking with my classmates in any of the coffee shops on campus. There we talked about everything and thanks to those nice meetings I was able to understand many things that were important in my life.

Years later, when I finished my university studies, I began to work in a high school in a semi-rural area of Venezuela. There, too, coffee helped me to get to know my co-workers. Every morning, before classes began, some of us teachers would meet for coffee, and while we drank it we would talk about many topics, including comments about our students and our families.

Those conversations contributed to form an atmosphere of trust, camaraderie and familiarity among the teachers, and opened the door for me to make friendships that lasted for many years.

At that time I was very young, barely twenty-one years old. The students in the upper grades were almost my age and the others were only a few years older than me.

As most of them were very poor boys, I had the habit of giving them some breakfast in the morning breaks. I knew that many of them left their homes with only a few sips of coffee.

I remained friends with many of those students after they finished high school. But one of them was always very special.

I met that boy in one of my second year history classes. He was thirteen or fourteen years old and I was twenty-two. He was a very restless student who seemed to know about everything. He was actually much more advanced than the rest of his classmates. You could see that he was not like the others who just repeated what they heard from their teachers. This young man had another background, I later learned that he loved reading.

Fabian was his name and he was always ready to discuss with me, he asked me all kinds of questions, and very often some of his questions left me thinking. I loved having him in my classes, he was that kind of student who forces teachers to prepare, who doesn't accept simple answers, who loves to dig deep.

That was the only year I had Fabian as a student, then he changed schools, but he always managed to keep in touch with me. From time to time he would come to my work site and inform me of his progress. Sometimes he would ask me to recommend some reading, he would get lost for a while and then reappear.

After finishing high school Fabian began to study medicine, but in those years there were many interruptions in the Venezuelan university, so he decided to go to Mexico where he studied half of the career, the other part he did here in Venezuela.

Whenever he had the opportunity he would visit me, sometimes at the high school or if not, he would come to my house here in Maracay.

Once he became a doctor he decided not only to be my friend but also became my family doctor.

At the time of the pandemic my father got sick and it was very difficult to get attention in the hospitals, everything was collapsed and the transit of people was forbidden. Fabian used his safe-conduct to come from where he lived to attend my father at home. Many times he came with his son, who also decided to become a doctor. I will always be grateful for those attentions to my father.

Nowadays we maintain permanent communication, every time he can he comes by my house to have a coffee and talk about the readings we are doing. We both love reading and often exchange book recommendations. Our friendship has lasted for more than forty years.

Coffee has given me countless good times with my friends. A hot cup of coffee is the ideal intermediary for a good conversation.

Thank you for your time.