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

Ahhh, the funny things continue

This past Friday stood in stark contrast to the 7-Eleven musical booze-fest of last Friday. I went with my friend to the "Zona T," the upscale, hipster part of Bogotá. Skinny jeans and high-heeled ankle boots were in abundance, as were big boobs and big earrings. Looking decidedly less fancy and not giving a rat's ass, I was so excited because we went to this pan-Asian restaurant called Wok. People: I can get Thai green curry in Bogotá!!! Some of you know how major that is. I am beyond thrilled, especially since it turns out that there's another Wok like 15 minutes by foot from my apartment.

I can't remember if I have written about this before (I must have), but some of my new gringo friends and I have started a tradition we call "Mimosa Sunday" which, big shocker, involves getting together early on Sunday afternoon and putting back a bunch of mimosas made with Colombia's finest sparkling white wine. (It's not as bad as you might think!) Anyway, this week our usual plans were thwarted by the Liberal Party's election of their presidential candidate: election/voting day = no alcohol for sale. After discovering this on my way to the get-together, I ran back to my house to grab the only alcohol I had: a bottle of Havana Club rum. So this week, along with our kind of brunch-y food, we had a rum and coke Sunday.

But possibly the highlight of my day yesterday was the journey to my friend's apartment. Another friend and I took (me for the first time) the TransMilenio -- Bogotá's express bus/trolley-like service. It's pretty lame that it has taken me this long to ride that stupid thing. It's a 15 minute walk from my apartment, goes pretty much everywhere, and costs 75 cents. Anyway, so I finally navigated it with some help (it IS a little confusing at first). It was fitting that at one point I got to experience it as the "TransMilleno." (Lleno means full, and I have not pushed so hard through people to get off a bus for a long, long time). But, hands-down, the highlight of this trip was the discovery of a commuter habit I have never seen anywhere in the world. As eager as they may be to snag a seat on the bus, Colombians apparently do not like to sit down on a seat that somebody else's buns have already warmed up. So, they claim a seat, but then they don't sit down. They squat/hover over the seat in order to give it a chance to cool off, and only after a minute or so of giving their thighs a good workout do they park their butt in the seat. I was fascinated. It was awesome. Even more awesome than this sight I saw today: a guy on a Vespa with a black Lab and a Goldren Retriever perched in the front. Yeah, you can't really make this stuff up.

Unexpected entertainment

As if it weren't awesome enough that you can go to the Colombian equivalent of a 7-Eleven, sit at microscopic tables, and drink beers, last night the experience got rounded out by a band. They came into this tiny place with giant amps, booted me and my friend out of our table (which the "waiter" parked in front of the entrance to the building next door), and were set up in like two minutes. When the accordian came out, we knew we were in for some vallenato, a uniquely Colombian style of music that is ubiquitous at clubs, on the radio, in taxis -- you name it.

Little did we know, this band was sponsored by Aguila (one of the Colombian beers). How did we find out? When they busted out and put on matching yellow vests with the Aguila logo on the front and the back. They looked like some kind of U.N. observer vests with a beer logo on them.

Ah, but when they got going, making conversation 100% impossible, they were a trip! First of all, they didn't suck, which was a relief. They had a lot of heart. The lead singer worked up a sweat from singing and playing what looked like a cheese grater. The accordian player -- also very sweaty -- closed his eyes and was clearly on another planet. The bass player, like many I have seen, actually, kind of stood off to the side, head down, and did his own thing. The only thing missing was his hair hanging down in his face. The guy playing the bongo drum just rocked out.

If I hadn't been starving (the yucca chips were just not cutting it), I would have insisted that we stay longer to people-watch if nothing else. There was a table full of young people plowing through beers like it was their job, a middle-aged couple serenely sitting next to one of the amps, and a lady with a laptop strapped to her chest offering free lighters and electronic gambling of some sort. Even my gross chicharrones that I had for dinner couldn't overshadow the fact that it was a great night to be in Bogotá.

A little homesick, actually

After having another great weekly online chat session with one friend last night, after missing another dear friend's mom's memorial celebration on Saturday, and after laughing my ass off in a wonderful Skype session with still another friend last week, I decided today that I wasn't quite sure I could make it til Christmas to see everyone. Even though I already have tickets to go to Medellín and I know it's pretty wussy and I know I haven't been gone very long, I decided to look at fares to go to Boston during my five days off next month. In the hour between the time I decided to look and when I actually did, I started to get really excited at the prospect of seeing people. In the subsequent five minutes -- in which I ascertained that the ticket would be like $700 -- I got really bummed, really fast. Oh right! This is what it feels like to be far away from people you care about. You can't just get on a plane and go see them because you want to. You have to suck up the fact that you don't get to see them or give them the big hug you'd like to, when you'd like to. This is really the first time I've felt this way since I've been here. I guess Skype and G-chat and all that stuff is a double-edged sword. While it makes people feel less far away, it tricks you into forgetting how far away they actually are. So for all of you, including those I mentioned here (you know who you are), I miss you. And I am trusting that December will be here before we know it.