The Musician and the Ostrich.
Sergio Vélez was born in Colombia a country far from the African meadows and deserts where ostriches also live. Eventually, he became a Swahili of life and discovered that he was a Mtu Mlinzi, a protective man. He was a pianist who had an orchestra in his heart. Sergio’s spirit knew the sound of the Kitara from a very young age and that is why Rock’n Roll music remained in his soul. He was a child full of dreams who dared to live life to the fullest and abandoned several times the ships that forced him to navigate existence over the waters of routine. He liked to move fast, like an ostrich, to escape monotony and pursue creativity and freedom. He was also the captain in charge of other companies that required art-sensitive and brilliant-minded people. Mtu Mlinzi possessed the spirit of the artist, he was attracted by the rhythm of African drums, the sound of electric guitars and the undulating walk of women.
In his youth he went off to sea and formed a band that broke the sound of the immensity of space and rigidity of the Naval School of Cartagena. One day strolling through the T-zone of Bogota his great love appeared inside a wine cellar. She was a beautiful and intelligent woman who came from the United States. Mtu instantly knew that she was his muse and did his utmost to conquer her with his courtship. He did it with an English song on the piano and his telenovela acting skills. The rest is history. The couple has children with wings that fly and who who will achieve their dreams as their father has done so far. Sergio is a patriarch in love, open-minded, curious, restless, and now guardian of ostriches.
Mbuni, a male ostrich, emerged from a giant egg laid in the Sahara Desert inside a tough padded nest built by the alpha male of the African herd. The shell of the egg from which he came served as a vessel of water for a thirsty desert traveler. As a baby he looked like a loving fluffy ball that over the years would become a giant bird with two claws and a strong temperament. Mbuni was also destined to be a protector like Sergio. At the age of seven, he had long, thin legs that allowed him to run across the African plains at a speed of sixty kilometers per hour, had two wings that did not fly and feathers on his body soft and black but white on his tail and wings. He could make 10-foot strides and as other males in the herd he helped to safeguard the eggs from predators. He was a brave ostrich and never hid his head in the sand, a myth invented by humans. Only if he was in danger would he lie on the ground flattening his head against the floor to look like a black mass from afar and confuse hunters.
An English millionaire visiting Africa bought the ostrich for a lot of money because his spoiled child wanted to have a pet, but Mbuni could not be locked in a mansion. He needed open and wild spaces to run and relax. The millionaire had to give him away and the giant bird ended up in a natural refuge in Colombia without knowing how.
Fate brought together Mtu Mlinzi, the protector man, and Mbuni, the alpha male, at Villa de Leyva. The turns of life allowed two exotic species to meet in a fantasy project far from the grasslands of the hot African Continent. Today both are very close to the heart of Colombians and foreigners who love to visit the most magical town of Boyacá to enter the interesting “Granja de Avestruces”, a place that pays tribute to the exoticism of the fauna. Some days the valleys and mountains of Boyacá witness the gusto of people learning the dance of the ostrich while in the wind one can hear a music with a tempo that transports the dancers to the infinite and mysterious African plains of the Serengeti under the blue sky, the sun, and the gaze of those immense eyes of the ostriches at Villa de Leyva.
