The cumbia of the disconnected

This is a belated post about another part of my trip to Medellín: a small protest that I went to with a friend who works for a human rights organization here in Colombia. (You can check out their work at http://forcolombia.org/). The event was set up by a regional coalition of human rights and community development groups and was protesting increased privatization and price hikes in public utilities, both of which make them prohibitively expensive and means that many people end up without water or electricity services.

After a breathtaking and, OK slightly scary, ride up Medellín's cable car I arrived in one of the comunas, Medellín's poor neighborhoods built up the steep side of the mountains that surround the city. Organizers had decided to do the march in the neighborhood rather than in the city center in order to spread awareness among other people affected by the price hikes, letting them know that people are trying to resist them. My friend and I met up with the marchers and started walking along with them. The organizers had made this event a festive one. There were lots of kids running alongside, young boys on stilts, lots of drums, and clowns in tutus. The march was a short walk and didn't have a huge number of participants, but did have a lots of spectators hanging out the windows and sitting on balconies of their homes. The march ended in a litle parking lot, where a guy with a microphone read the banners as they came in and where, eventually, salsa music kept the party-like mood going. One of the best moments was when they played a song someone had written called "The cumbia of the disconnected," a cumbia (another music/dance style here that gets played along with salsa in dance clubs). Despite its upbeat rythmn, the song was a lament about having to decide between buying food and paying the bills.

The event wound down -- with salsa still playing in the background and some people dancing -- with an invitation for everyone to share some bread and cheese and hot chocolate from a giant vat. It still felt like a party, but as scraggly-looking kids came out of the woodwork for some food, it also reminded me of how many people here are hungry.

All in all, the march gave me a chance to feel a little less ignorant about the problems here and about how people at every level are struggling to make Colombia's a less unequal society. I was a million miles from the immaculate and manicured campus of my school, and frankly, I was glad to be there for a change.

Medellín: where orchids grow wild & the mullet is alive and well

My trip last week to Medellín was just a chance to get a change of scenery and visit a new place. After hearing rave reviews, I have to admit I was underwhelmed. I'm not exactly sure what I expected, but it wasn't that.

Downtown Medellín is a crowded, gritty place where street vendors abound. With them, you can make a cell phone call, get weighed, and buy anything from mangoes to porn. Shops in the downtown are a series of consecutive purveyors of all things straight off the boat from China: a pleather shoe store, a shop that sells nothing but flip flops, and lots of places to buy spandex outfits (I decided against it) and multi-pair packs of crummy polyester underwear. It wasn't pretty, but my walk through the downtown area gave me a glimpse of a different side of Colombia than I see in my snooty Bogotá neighborhood.

Besides, I shouldn't have started with the low-lights. My morning exploring Medellín reminded me of being in Mexico City because I was on a mission to see every piece of art by Fernando Botero, just like I was in Mexico City to see evertthing I could by Diego Rivera. I started the Plazoleta de las Esculturas, a plaza full of sculptures by Medellín's iconic native son, artist Fernando Botero. They are just kind of there -- with people bustling all around them, and they are lovely. Then I went into the Museo de Antioquia that's right on the plaza; again, full of Botero sculptures, paintings, and sketches. As if that weren't enough, then I trekked over to another plaza to see the sculptured I most wanted to check out: the dove. Botero made a big bronze sculpture of a peace dove I don't know when, but it was blown up in 1995 in an attack that killed over 20 people. He urged the city to leave the destroyed statue there as a symbol of the violence that continues to affect millions of Colombians everyday. So the warped and gaping sculpture is still in the same spot -- next to a new sculpture of a dove that Botero gave as a gift to the city.

I saw some other sights while I was in Medellín, but I think it would be boring if I just talked all about them here. So I will close with the observation that no blog entry is complete if I don't list a couple of cool or weird or unique things that I have seen in Colombia, in this case, in Medellín.

1. Orchids growing like any other tropical plant on the street near my hotel

2. Many men with mullets, including some pretty severe ones that featured really closely cut hair on top

3. In the botanical garden, a very heavily armed security guard (no big shocker there)... riding a bicycle in circles like he was a 10 year-old showing off to his friends but with a shotgun strapped across his chest.

4. Also in the botanical garden, a guy jogging while wearing a motorcycle helmet on his head

And finally, the best/worst response I've ever gotten upon asking an airline employee about the status of our plane (during a five hour delay): "It should be leaving at 12:30, God willing."

Ommmmmm

It's only taken me two months, but I finally got my sorry ass to a yoga class today. It took me half an hour in a cab to get to the studio in a really fancy neighborhood, and the class was super expensive, but it was so worth it. Needless to say, it didn't hold a candle to Bev's classes in Boston, but it will do.

But probably the best thing about the class was the other lady who was in it with me. Her name is Ita. She is a very suntanned woman who lives in Miami and whose voice sounds like she smokes a pack a day. She said about ten times before we started how happy she was to be there and at the end of class, when the teacher was leading us in this gratitude thing and said something about all the people in the world who don't get to experience the gift of yoga, Ita said "pobrecitos" (poor things).

Very generously, she offered to drive me home. So I got into her big Jeep Cherokee with two-inch thick windows and was off on what turned out to be a hilarious ride. One of the first things she said to me was that I should get a boyfriend. I tried to point out that you don't really just go out and get one, but she was not convinced. She asked how old I am and seemed to be thinking really hard after I told her I am 34. As it turned out, she was going through her mental Rolodex of anyone she knows who's my age. She came up with two married couples who don't have kids and should have some friends for me to meet. She did have a follow-up question and asked if I was Jewish. Since she had already told me that her son is studying at a yeshiva in Israel, I knew that no was kind of the wrong answer. "But Sarah is a Jewish name," she said. And then she launched into a spiel about Sarah and Abraham and Ishmael and Biblical numerology. When we pulled up at a stop light with a bunch of street vendors, she bought 2 packages of garbage bags (a very popular buy-on-the-street item here -- go figure) and insisted on giving me one. What a trip!

Yankees go home!

I saw that spray-painted on a wall this afternoon, and it just got me thinking about the war here and how removed from it I am and how little I know about it. I am a long way from my Witness for Peace days when I could have told you a LOT about the armed conflict here. While I remain buried in work, I know I need to come out of my bubble of ignorance. I depend a lot on my old Witness for Peace and other human rights worker friends to help me have a little bit of a clue.

So for this post, I am cheating, and I am just posting a link to an article my friend Moira wrote. I came home and read it just to get a clue. You should read it too.

http://thewip.net/contributors/2009/09/colombias_war_hes_giving_our_c.html