R.I.P. Christopher Kavanagh, ‘The Mick’

UPDATE: If you want to read Christopher’s memoir, I’m sending it out soon via the email newsletter. Subscribe now to read the book FREE.

Christopher Kavanagh, formerly known as “The Mick” on this blog, has died of a heart attack in Bogota, Colombia. He was 68 years old.

We first met in 2009. I was walking through Plaza Lourdes when an old man called to me in English. I assumed he was a panhandler and tried to brush him off. He slowed me down to see my St. Patrick’s Day t-shirt. He explained that he was from Dublin, had lived in Bogota for over 20 years and hadn’t met a gringo in a while. He invited me for a coffee.

Christopher came to Colombia in 1986 to bring cocaine back to Ireland. He was busted on his first try and served three years in the La Modelo prison, which he said was great. He learned Spanish. After getting out he stayed in Colombia. Drugs were cheap and the 90s were a great time for a degenerate. “There was no control,” he fondly remembered.

Christopher said he wanted to write a book about his life. I told him about this blog. We agreed that I should start publishing his stories. Six years later we published his memoir, “Mad Outta Me Head.”

When we met in Bogota, I had recently quit drinking after hearing about scopolamine. I didn’t hear the specific name of it, I just heard of somebody who woke up in a hotel room after being drugged, with nothing but his pants. This was my sophomore year in South America and, given how my first year went, I knew they would get me with whatever they got him with. It was just a matter of time. I decided to take a break from the booze and get the lay of the land before going too wild. I was also trying my hand at self-employment and needed to focus on money.

Coincidentally, Christopher was also off the sauce. He had about a year and a half under his belt on the day we met, which I believe is the longest he would ever go outside of prison. He was “California sober” and attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I started tagging along with him. We would get baked before going in, which I imagine bothered the Colombians, but nobody ever said anything. He credited yaje, known outside Colombia as ayahuasca, for his abstention from booze. In the coming years, medical research would show ayahuasca’s potential in treating, among other afflictions, alcoholism. We went about three or four months before we were both drinking.

Christopher didn’t like the book. He wanted it to be humorous and in the voice of Frank McCourt, a kind of happy-go-lucky Irishman stumbling through hilarious adventures. If you read the book, I think it’s fair to say that’s a tough sell. Could it have been funny? Maybe I just wasn’t the guy to bring his vision to fruition. I unpublished the book. I am not proud of it.

You can listen to some of his prison stories on the podcast.

He taught me a lot about Bogota, Colombia and Latin America in general. After about my five-year point I began recommending that newly arrived gringos get a mentor if they can. Someone with a decade is good, but hold on for dear life to anyone with 20 years in country. I later realized I was crediting my experience with him.

You learn a lot in your first year, and the following years. But like anything, there are diminishing returns. Eventually you’re just doing the same tricks, playing the song on repeat. But to get true expertise, you have to go through those long-tail years to get every last bit of fruit. That’s why I recommend finding a mentor with that kind of experience.

My favorite lesson is what Christopher would call, “You have to play with them.” He was trying to explain how to bribe cops, but it can be applied anywhere. I describe it as being comfortable with ambiguity. It’s getting used to the Latin flow of deliberation. I applied what I learned from him in an anecdote years later titled “The Time I Told Wife to be More Latin.”

I think Christopher wanted the book to match his personality. He embodied the stereotype of the smiling, chuckling Irishman. I always told him he could’ve made a career bartending in the States. Christopher was fun, always looking to have a laugh. And he was my first mentor in Latin America. Rest in peace, old friend.