Paul Bass Photo
Rosalba Vera.
“Welcome to Little Colombia!” a woman declared at the restaurant’s door. Then she went to call her mother, Rosalba Vera, the owner, to the door.
Vera would never have imagined that her daughter would be working alongside her — much less in the United States.
Twenty-four years ago, Vera came to the United States in search for a job. She did not have with her grandiose dreams of becoming rich; Vera just wanted to be able to afford education for her two daughters, Isabel, 12 years old and Natalia, 9 years old. She had had to leave behind in Colombia, in the care of her sisters.
“My husband and I came to work in the U.S. to get money to educate our children in Colombia,” Vera said. Matter of factly, she added, “No, our two daughters did not come along.”
For Vera, the decision was the only logical one. Back home in Colombia, she said, people depend on costly private schools for quality education. Though she had a “so-so” job at a local bank, Vera said, she couldn’t afford her daughters’ education.
“It was hard. Very hard, leaving the two behind,” Vera said. “But being able to educate them, that was my strength for fighting through. That kept me going forward.”
To make matters worse, at the time there was no Internet, Skype, Facebook — “any of those websites!” — to help mother and daughters connect.
All they had for communication were phone calls, and expensive ones at that. Each long-distance call to Colombia cost $1.25 a minute. “It was too expensive to talk for even ten minutes,” Vera said.
After 23 years of touring the country, working at various Hispanic restaurants, Vera and her husband, Julio Vera, have settled down in East Haven. Jst last year, their two daughters joined them, making the family complete once more.
Touring The U.S., By Restaurant
Vera and Julio landed first in New York, N.Y., where the two worked at various Hispanic restaurants. The restaurants “simply had to be” Spanish-speaking, as neither Colombian spoke English at the time, and could not afford either the time or money to pay for English classes.
“I only knew what they taught us in school, and that wasn’t much,” Vera said. “Door. Table,” she said, pointing at the items. “You can’t have a conversation with people just using those words.”
Given her long working days, there were no hours left over for her to attend class. And Vera did not want to spend her hard-worked money, which went almost entirely to funding the education of her two daughters.
After a few years, the two moved to Houston, where they stayed for two and a half years before moving back to New York. “We followed the jobs,” Vera said. “We went wherever they were.”
From New York, they moved to Orlando, Florida. Then they came back to New York — for what turned out to be their final stint in the city. Julio heard of a job opening for a cook in an East Haven restaurant.
Vera was skeptical at first.
“We came to visit East Haven, and it just seemed terrible,” Vera said. “We were used to big cities, and this just seemed far away from civilization.”
So her husband moved to East Haven, and she stayed behind in the Big Apple. She lasted only a few days before moving to join Julio.
“I spent the first year in a funk,” Vera said. “I didn’t like it.”
She was soon converted to the suburban lifestyle, realizing that life was much more tranquil in East Haven and noting a significant increase in their quality of life.
“We didn’t want to go back to New York,” Vera said. “There’s nowhere to park your car!”
The couple worked at Pueblito Restaurante for four years, and it was that employer that helped them get their legal papers to stay in the US. After Pueblito, Julio had a short stint at another Colombian restaurant in Hartford while Vera worked in a factory.
Then one day, Julio had a striking thought.
“We’ve worked for the entire world,” he said. “Now, let’s work for ourselves.”
Little Colombia
There were a few test runs before they settled down in Little Colombia, the restaurant they own today.
Their first restaurant, in nearby Bridgeport, was too little Vera said. The second, in downtown Bridgeport, lasted another four years before the two made the move to their East Haven spot in 2014.
Though opening up Little Colombia meant yet another move for the restless couple, Vera said the two were very well-received by the entire community, and that the Colombians soon felt at home.
“I don’t want to leave this place anymore,” Vera said, indicating that Little Colombia might be the last stop in their series of endeavors.
The multiple Colombian flags throughout the restaurant make very clear the owners’ allegiance. But their customers, Vera said, come from all around the world.
“Italians, Americans, Puerto Ricans, Venezuelans, Guatemalans, there’s a lot of variety,” Vera said. “And our employees, too. There’s some from Ecuador, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica. The list continues.”
But the true heart of the restaurant, Vera said, is her husband, the chef.
“It’s because of him that all of this works. He loves to cook,” Vera said. “I tell him to take a rest, but he says ‘No! I love to cook! I do this because I want to.”
The two of them work from 8 a.m. until 9:30 p.m. While Julio keeps the customers fed, Vera works the front of the restaurant, doing “a little bit of everything” around the place.
“I’m always here,” Vera said. “Making sure to keep the clients happy.”
After nearly two years, the restaurant has established a solid client base. Many return often, signaling to Vera that the business is on the right track. She recalled a recent customer who dined at the restaurant two weeks ago, and recalled him being one of their very first customers.
Despite the hard working hours, the couple has found their happy place.
“I work a lot, but I move forward,” Vera said. “That’s possible in this country.”
In fact, Vera said, it is more unusual for the two of them to not be working. She recounted a time when the two traveled to Colombia to visit family.
“We were away from the restaurant for ten days! Ten!” Vera said, her eyes open wide as if in exasperation. “OMG,”she tacked on at the end, switching from her native Spanish to use the common American expression.
A Newfound Home
Her acclimation to the U.S. goes beyond adopting slang.
“Much like everyone else, we have our roots, and we love our country,” Vera said. “But I have much to thank this country for.”
She highlighted particularly the high quality of life she’s able to have here in East Haven — the liberty, the tranquility with which one can live in the U.S.
“When I am back in my country, I miss everything I left behind here,” Vera said. “The laws in this country, you miss the organization that everything has here. The respect. You have rights here.”
Vera motioned to my bicycle, parked at the back of the restaurant, unchained. “You see, that? You could never do it back in Colombia. It would be gone in a second.”
Now that her daughters moved to East Haven last year, Vera has even less reason to return to Colombia, she said. The sisters, now 39 and 35, both have children and work at their parent’s restaurant.
When asked if it was hard leaving her two daughters behind at the start of her journey to the U.S., Vera’s eyes instantly teared up.
“Very. Very, very, very, very, very, very difficult,” Vera said.
But her tears soon dried. Isabel came into the restaurant’s dining hall area to pour us another glass of water, reminding Vera that her daughters are now close by, and the mother’s eyes shone with happiness instead.
Click on the above sound file to hear a previous WNHH “Open for Business” interview, first in English, then in Spanish.
WNHH’s “Open For Business” series on WNHH-FM and in the Independent is made possible in part through support from Frontier Communications.
