First of all, a warning.
This article is not going to give you a single answer to the question that all Colombians ask themselves: “why do we get up so early?”.
There is not one reason, but several, and none is definitive.
Custom, religion and geographical location would be some of the keys to why the alarm goes off every day at five in the morning at Yurlenis Moya's house.
About why she and her five-year-old son get on the bike and pedal in a still dark city to arrive at school at 6:15.
About why they won't see each other again until 13 hours later, when she gets off work and can go pick him up at grandma's house.
A routine that will not surprise any reader in Colombia, but that in most countries is inconceivable.
A mother transports her son by bicycle at dawn in Bogotá.
NATHALIA ANGARITA
A report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ensures that Colombia is the country that rises up the earliest in the world.
On average, Colombians open their eyes at 6:31 in the morning.
For comparison, in the United States it would be at 7.20, in China at 7.42 and in Spain at 8.05.
Honor or punishment?
For many Colombians, getting up early is synonymous with discipline, commitment, effort and work.
But the report contradicts that version.
Colombia is also the least productive country in the world despite these awakenings and having the longest working day (48 hours a week, the same as Mexico).
The Government of Gustavo Petro seeks to reduce it to 42 hours with the labor reform presented this week, but this is another matter.
Average wake-up time (am):
🇨🇴Colombia- 6:31
🇮🇩Indonesia- 6:55
🇯🇵Japan- 7:09
🇲🇽Mexico- 7:09
🇩🇰Denmark- 7:19
🇺🇸US- 7: 20
🇩🇪Germany- 7:25
🇧🇷Brazil- 7:31
🇨🇦Canada- 7:33
🇬🇧UK- 7:33
🇮🇳India- 7:36
🇨🇳China- 7:42
🇹🇷Turkey- 8:02
🇪🇸Spain- 8:05
🇷🇺Russia- 8:06
🇬🇷Greece- 8:25
🇸🇦S.
Arabia- 8:27
— World of Statistics (@stats_feed) March 11, 2023
Stories about proud early risers are numerous.
Collaborators of Álvaro Uribe count calls from the former president at 4:30 in the morning and the presentation of Juan Camilo Restrepo, appointed Peace Commissioner in 2021, is still remembered on the official government website: "disciplined and early riser paisa."
These two people from Antioquia -Uribe and Restrepo- serve as an example of how this culture of getting up early, more typical of the countryside and the center of the country, ended up marking the rest.
No one gets up early more than the paisas.
In Medellín, for example, classes start at the university at six in the morning.
Colombia industrialized with the beginning of the 20th century.
If in 1900 75% of Colombians lived in the countryside, in 1980 the situation had been reversed and that 75% of the population was already in the cities.
Faculties, factories and companies were opened, but the schedules were maintained as if everyone continued working in the coffee plantations.
Historian Pablo Rodríguez explains that the transition from the countryside to the city was extraordinarily fast.
"Customs and mentalities don't change so quickly, people moved the schedules," he adds.
And in the fields you work from sunrise to sunset.
An article by Camilo Andrés Salcedo, from 2016, on
Family strategies, work and origins of small coffee producers in Huila, Colombia,
includes an interview with a small producer who says the following: "With the five children we used to get 300 arrobas a week, they were 30,000 pesos.
And that was a lot of money.
That is why he made his children get up early and work like a boar”.
Work in the fields began as soon as the sun came up.
In the coffee plantations, the scene of the country's economic engine for decades, it began at the time in which the color of the coffee beans could be distinguished, between ripe and green.
Street vendor, serving coffee for passersby.
NATHALIA ANGARITA
Colombia is a country crossed by the equator line.
There are no seasons or time changes.
Throughout the year it rises around six in the morning and sets at around six in the afternoon (at night, they would say in the country).
"Colombians suffer from an advanced sleep phase, they go to bed with the chickens and wake up with the rooster," says Dr. Steve Amado, president of the Colombian Association of Sleep Medicine (ACMES).
For adults, he explains, this may not have consequences if a schedule is established and enough hours of sleep are achieved, which is not always possible, but it can cause problems for children.
Initiatives to let schoolchildren sleep more have multiplied in recent years in different countries.
Behind there are scientific bases.
Numerous studies ensure that delaying the start time in schools would improve student performance.
In the United States, in 2019, the entrance of high school adolescents was delayed after 8:30.
In Bogotá, in 2009, it was decided that the youngest schoolchildren would arrive at public centers at 7:30 instead of 6:30.
The situation in private schools in Colombia is no better.
Most of these centers are on the outskirts of cities, so it is not uncommon to see children taking the bus before sunrise to get to class at seven, the time the day usually starts.
Users line up to board public transport at dawn in Bogotá.
NATHALIA ANGARITA
The Colombian Association of Sleep Medicine is going to sign an agreement with the NGO
Start School Later
, a movement that was born in the US, to start a campaign and raise awareness in the country about the need to reach new agreements on schedules for the benefit of children.
A subject that is not easy.
Minors enter schools early because parents enter jobs early, so it would be necessary to change the entire system to accommodate both.
In cities like Bogotá, we must add the problem of traffic.
The Colombian capital occupies sixth place in the ranking of the cities with the worst traffic in the world, according to the INRX Global Traffic Scorecard study.
In addition, the offer of public transport does not cover all the demand.
To get to work on time, thousands of people need hours to get around the city, hours that take away from their sleep.
And if they have children, they need schools that open very early so they can drop them off earlier.
Who gets up early, God helps him?
There is another reason that the experts consulted point out behind this eagerness to start the day at dawn.
It is the religious component in one of the most Catholic countries in the world.
“There are a series of symbolic religious traditions that have permeated popular culture, especially among peasants, who easily wake up at four in the morning,” says sociologist Carlos Charry.
They are values that speak of sacrifice, where laziness is considered a cardinal sin.
Science now refutes those ideas.
Physiologist María Ángeles Bonmatí assures in this interview published in EL PAÍS that for "most people getting little sleep will mean being much less productive in their day-to-day lives and having their physical and cognitive abilities diminished."
In line with the results of the OECD report.
More and more voices are raised against the “God helps those who get up early” that is heard so much in Colombia.
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