The full unedited story appears after the jump, if you're interested:
Monday, February 22, 2010
Pilgrimage to the mother country
The Shepparton News picked up my story on Yugoslavia and gave me a travel cover and a full-page story. They did misspell 'pilgrimage', and in the headline no less, but I can live with that.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Cara Cameron: Just another backpacker... until she was raped in Peru. Now she's fighting the system
When she flew to the small Amazonian town of Iquitos in Peru's north-east, Cara Cameron was hoping to embark on a jungle tour, perhaps see some wildlife. She wasn't expecting a campaign of extended sexual harrassment by her local guide to end in her rape, four nights later.
Cameron is not the first backpacker to be raped while travelling, and sadly she won't be the last. But rather than hanging her head and allowing local authorities to shame her, Cameron is fighting to regain her rights and is refusing to go quietly.
The twenty-four year old model from San Francisco was travelling with a friend when they were repeatedly approached by Victor Escobar Naro and Jaime Mejia Prado selling a tour with Amazon Adventure Expeditions, allegedly based in Los Angeles. The girls agreed to a four-day jungle tour late last January.
According to Cameron's report, during the tour "Victor repeatedly tried to kiss me, touch me and sleep in my bed. I refused very clearly all his advances, but he did stop when I said stop." The girls allege that the freelance guides were afraid of being fired, and convinced them not to report them if a night of food and lodging was paid for.
It was thus that they found themselves in the Las Brisas del Oriente Hotel in Iquitos on 3 February. Cameron went to bed at 10.30pm after having used the internet and shared one beer with her friend, Jane Kathrein. At around two in the morning, she woke to find that her clothes had been removed and Naro was on top of her, raping her.
"I awoke confused, scared then angry and pushed him, hit and kicked him, to get him to stop penetrating me. I grab the pepper spray I keep on the night stand and maced him in the face. I realize he is naked and not wearing a condom, and I am not wearing any other clothes besides my bra," Cameron's statement reads.
While she had been sleeping, the guides had returned for a drinking session and knocked on the door. Kathrein answered and went with them to collect her charger, not realising that Naro has slipped into the room behind her rather than following them down the hall. Ten minutes later, she returned to a locked door which she opened, to find her friend trying to fight Naro off.
When the girls exited the room to call the police, they found the lights switched off. "I have a really bad feeling," Kathrein told Cameron. Cameron kicked out in the dark and hit Prado, who had been standing silently in the dark to block their path. "It's all a misunderstanding," he told them.
The hotel had been padlocked shut for the night and the girls found themselves locked in the lobby with Cameron's rapist and his friend. Shouting and screaming for help through the bars, they attracted the attention of a mototaxi driver who pressed the external buzzer to get the receptionist out of bed. However, he and Prado both insisted that the police wouldn't come, and Prado hung up the receiver as Cameron began to dial.
"They're crazy gringas, don't worry," he told the clerk, in rapid-fire Spanish, Cameron recounts. Prado collected his belongings and was permitted by the receptionist to leave. On his way out he told Cameron, "[the police] will never believe you."
Cameron's experience is disturbing for many reasons. Apart from experiencing a horrible trauma, she is now facing a corrupt legal system that would rather shame and frighten her into leaving the country rather than prosecute the guilty.Cameron held her rapist at the hotel, preventing him too from leaving before the arrival of the police.
Despite an initially positive response (slapping Naro on his attempt to bribe them, taking him to the station and having a doctor examine Cameron and blood-test Naro), things degenerated.
Despite Naro's claims that Cameron liked "rough sex" (to justify the vaginal tears and lesions), the police report concluded that they were the result of a violent sexual assault, and that Cameron's swollen hands were a result of fighting him off.
She tested negative for alcohol and drugs, but while there managed to see Naro's positive bloodwork.
In court the following day, Cameron was told that she would have to participate in a "confrontation" in which she, Naro and a public prosector sat in a room to debate the course of events, without a lawyer or a contact from the American Embassy present.
Furthermore, the judge, Maria Felices, said that if she did not sign her testimony, which had been translated into Spanish, and endure the process, the case would be dropped. "You lose," she told Cameron.
The Peruvian justice system also requires that Cameron participate in a "reconstruction" where all participants return to the scene of the crime to reenact the events.
"No one cares about the psycological damage I have endured or how damaging literally recreating, reenacting my rape will be for me," Cameron says. "We have also learned that our judge has had corruption charges brought against her for accepting bribes, and yet she is still practicing!"
The Peruvian judicial system has made me out to be the bad guy, and I think they are being so dificult so I will drop charges and run home. However, I am a fighter, and cannot leave with out ensuring he cannot continue to do this to other young women," Cameron's statement reads. "I refuse to be raped again by a corrupt Peruvian legal system."
This case is perhaps the most high-profile in a long history of female backpackers being raped during their travels. In many cases, the victims have been pressured to drop charges or have chosen to fly home and leave their nightmarish experiences behind, knowing that the justice process is long and drawn-out and does not guarantee convictions. The law, it appears, is on the side of the perpetrators.
That white female backpackers are at risk is no surprise. They are a vulnerable group, standing out due to their looks, their ethnicity, and their backpacks. Many unwittingly engage in risky behaviour, often due to an ignorance of local customs, or the I'll-take-my-chances mentality that comes with a life on the road. The income disparity between locals and visitors, and a resentment towards tourists from some sectors of society are just a couple of reasons for the violent attacks that have occured against foreign women.
However, Cameron's case is an example of the failure of care of those that are supposed to protect tourists. The local government, tourism department, hotel owners, travel agents, taxi drivers, police and tour operators, are all responsible for protecting the foreigners that are visiting their country. Cameron's is not an isolated incident, and pretending that it was, or that it can be swept under the rug will not make the issue go away.
What is remarkable about this case is that Cameron refuses to be cowed. She has started a Facebook page notifying her friends and family of what has happened, and is begging for help. She wants the media on the case, creating an awareness that she hopes will force the Peruvian authorities to take action. Created in the last week, the group already has almost three hundred members, many of whom are dedicated to gaining publicity for Cameron's case.
"The more people, the more press I get, the safer I am. Please please please help me. Do whatever you need to do, but get the word out," she pleads. "I saw my rapist walking freely down the street today and had a panic attack. Where is the justice?"
The answer is, there's very little. Cameron shouldn't have to fight like this to receive fair treatment at the hands of authorities. Rather than suspending the guides pending investigation, the Amazon Adventure Expeditions has mounted a smear campaign to attempt to discredit Cameron. Carolina Torres, daughter of the tour company's founder, and her American fiance Matthew Taylor, who also works for the company, have categorically denied Cameron's accusations despite all the evidence in her favour.
They posit that her claim is due to jealousy. Torres claims that the girls had been drinking and taking drugs and that Cameron had sexual relations with Naro while inebriated on tour. They claim that, upon their return to Iquitos, Cameron had sobered up and regretted the incident. They claim that Kathrein is her lover and that when she found Cameron with Naro, she was overcome with jealousy and that the girls cooked up the rape allegations together. They also threatened Cameron on the street yesterday, 7 February.
"You better get the fuck out of town before something really bad happens to you," Cameron says that Torres said to her in a pharmacy. Cameron's safety in Iquitos now as she pushes for justice is questionable at best. Ruffling too many feathers could cost her her life, but this is a fight she isn't backing down from.However, there has been an outpouring of support for Cameron on the Peru21 news website that published an account of her rape. Readers have debated the role that authorities should play in protecting foreigners, as well as questioning whether or not Cameron got in over her head and cried rape.
"This is a humiliation for Peru, that our country will look this way to foreigners ... Now the tourist will go and say that she was raped here and we'll look bad. My God, what a shame, and with these corrupt police that we have and these judges that are for sale..." wrote 'Pipe' on 4 February.
"The police should ensure that the gringa hasn't gotten involved with some guy, [panicked], and then said that he raped her. I'm not a machista but gringas are like that, especially when they travel abroad," wrote 'Miguel' the same day.
Cameron has quite the battle in front of her. And regardless of what happens, the image of Peru will suffer, just has she has suffered, which is surely a tragedy for all involved. Peru's image as a wonderful tourist destination, which is surely is, will depend on how authorities handle Cameron's case in light of the growing media attention.
Join Cara's Facebook group and support her at:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=info&ref=mf&gid=295252159409#!/group.php?gid=295252159409
http://www.proycontra.com.pe/2010/02/03/abusaron-de-turista-mientras-dormia-en-hotel.pro
http://www.ojo.com.pe/ojo/nota.php?txtSecci_id=51&txtNota_id=279557
http://peru21.pe/noticia/409715/turista-norteamericana-fue-violada-iquitos
Cameron is not the first backpacker to be raped while travelling, and sadly she won't be the last. But rather than hanging her head and allowing local authorities to shame her, Cameron is fighting to regain her rights and is refusing to go quietly.
The twenty-four year old model from San Francisco was travelling with a friend when they were repeatedly approached by Victor Escobar Naro and Jaime Mejia Prado selling a tour with Amazon Adventure Expeditions, allegedly based in Los Angeles. The girls agreed to a four-day jungle tour late last January.
According to Cameron's report, during the tour "Victor repeatedly tried to kiss me, touch me and sleep in my bed. I refused very clearly all his advances, but he did stop when I said stop." The girls allege that the freelance guides were afraid of being fired, and convinced them not to report them if a night of food and lodging was paid for.
It was thus that they found themselves in the Las Brisas del Oriente Hotel in Iquitos on 3 February. Cameron went to bed at 10.30pm after having used the internet and shared one beer with her friend, Jane Kathrein. At around two in the morning, she woke to find that her clothes had been removed and Naro was on top of her, raping her.
"I awoke confused, scared then angry and pushed him, hit and kicked him, to get him to stop penetrating me. I grab the pepper spray I keep on the night stand and maced him in the face. I realize he is naked and not wearing a condom, and I am not wearing any other clothes besides my bra," Cameron's statement reads.
While she had been sleeping, the guides had returned for a drinking session and knocked on the door. Kathrein answered and went with them to collect her charger, not realising that Naro has slipped into the room behind her rather than following them down the hall. Ten minutes later, she returned to a locked door which she opened, to find her friend trying to fight Naro off.
When the girls exited the room to call the police, they found the lights switched off. "I have a really bad feeling," Kathrein told Cameron. Cameron kicked out in the dark and hit Prado, who had been standing silently in the dark to block their path. "It's all a misunderstanding," he told them.
The hotel had been padlocked shut for the night and the girls found themselves locked in the lobby with Cameron's rapist and his friend. Shouting and screaming for help through the bars, they attracted the attention of a mototaxi driver who pressed the external buzzer to get the receptionist out of bed. However, he and Prado both insisted that the police wouldn't come, and Prado hung up the receiver as Cameron began to dial.
"They're crazy gringas, don't worry," he told the clerk, in rapid-fire Spanish, Cameron recounts. Prado collected his belongings and was permitted by the receptionist to leave. On his way out he told Cameron, "[the police] will never believe you."
Cameron's experience is disturbing for many reasons. Apart from experiencing a horrible trauma, she is now facing a corrupt legal system that would rather shame and frighten her into leaving the country rather than prosecute the guilty.Cameron held her rapist at the hotel, preventing him too from leaving before the arrival of the police.
Despite an initially positive response (slapping Naro on his attempt to bribe them, taking him to the station and having a doctor examine Cameron and blood-test Naro), things degenerated.
Despite Naro's claims that Cameron liked "rough sex" (to justify the vaginal tears and lesions), the police report concluded that they were the result of a violent sexual assault, and that Cameron's swollen hands were a result of fighting him off.
She tested negative for alcohol and drugs, but while there managed to see Naro's positive bloodwork.
In court the following day, Cameron was told that she would have to participate in a "confrontation" in which she, Naro and a public prosector sat in a room to debate the course of events, without a lawyer or a contact from the American Embassy present.
Furthermore, the judge, Maria Felices, said that if she did not sign her testimony, which had been translated into Spanish, and endure the process, the case would be dropped. "You lose," she told Cameron.
The Peruvian justice system also requires that Cameron participate in a "reconstruction" where all participants return to the scene of the crime to reenact the events.
"No one cares about the psycological damage I have endured or how damaging literally recreating, reenacting my rape will be for me," Cameron says. "We have also learned that our judge has had corruption charges brought against her for accepting bribes, and yet she is still practicing!"
The Peruvian judicial system has made me out to be the bad guy, and I think they are being so dificult so I will drop charges and run home. However, I am a fighter, and cannot leave with out ensuring he cannot continue to do this to other young women," Cameron's statement reads. "I refuse to be raped again by a corrupt Peruvian legal system."
This case is perhaps the most high-profile in a long history of female backpackers being raped during their travels. In many cases, the victims have been pressured to drop charges or have chosen to fly home and leave their nightmarish experiences behind, knowing that the justice process is long and drawn-out and does not guarantee convictions. The law, it appears, is on the side of the perpetrators.
That white female backpackers are at risk is no surprise. They are a vulnerable group, standing out due to their looks, their ethnicity, and their backpacks. Many unwittingly engage in risky behaviour, often due to an ignorance of local customs, or the I'll-take-my-chances mentality that comes with a life on the road. The income disparity between locals and visitors, and a resentment towards tourists from some sectors of society are just a couple of reasons for the violent attacks that have occured against foreign women.
However, Cameron's case is an example of the failure of care of those that are supposed to protect tourists. The local government, tourism department, hotel owners, travel agents, taxi drivers, police and tour operators, are all responsible for protecting the foreigners that are visiting their country. Cameron's is not an isolated incident, and pretending that it was, or that it can be swept under the rug will not make the issue go away.
What is remarkable about this case is that Cameron refuses to be cowed. She has started a Facebook page notifying her friends and family of what has happened, and is begging for help. She wants the media on the case, creating an awareness that she hopes will force the Peruvian authorities to take action. Created in the last week, the group already has almost three hundred members, many of whom are dedicated to gaining publicity for Cameron's case.
"The more people, the more press I get, the safer I am. Please please please help me. Do whatever you need to do, but get the word out," she pleads. "I saw my rapist walking freely down the street today and had a panic attack. Where is the justice?"
The answer is, there's very little. Cameron shouldn't have to fight like this to receive fair treatment at the hands of authorities. Rather than suspending the guides pending investigation, the Amazon Adventure Expeditions has mounted a smear campaign to attempt to discredit Cameron. Carolina Torres, daughter of the tour company's founder, and her American fiance Matthew Taylor, who also works for the company, have categorically denied Cameron's accusations despite all the evidence in her favour.
They posit that her claim is due to jealousy. Torres claims that the girls had been drinking and taking drugs and that Cameron had sexual relations with Naro while inebriated on tour. They claim that, upon their return to Iquitos, Cameron had sobered up and regretted the incident. They claim that Kathrein is her lover and that when she found Cameron with Naro, she was overcome with jealousy and that the girls cooked up the rape allegations together. They also threatened Cameron on the street yesterday, 7 February.
"You better get the fuck out of town before something really bad happens to you," Cameron says that Torres said to her in a pharmacy. Cameron's safety in Iquitos now as she pushes for justice is questionable at best. Ruffling too many feathers could cost her her life, but this is a fight she isn't backing down from.However, there has been an outpouring of support for Cameron on the Peru21 news website that published an account of her rape. Readers have debated the role that authorities should play in protecting foreigners, as well as questioning whether or not Cameron got in over her head and cried rape.
"This is a humiliation for Peru, that our country will look this way to foreigners ... Now the tourist will go and say that she was raped here and we'll look bad. My God, what a shame, and with these corrupt police that we have and these judges that are for sale..." wrote 'Pipe' on 4 February.
"The police should ensure that the gringa hasn't gotten involved with some guy, [panicked], and then said that he raped her. I'm not a machista but gringas are like that, especially when they travel abroad," wrote 'Miguel' the same day.
Cameron has quite the battle in front of her. And regardless of what happens, the image of Peru will suffer, just has she has suffered, which is surely a tragedy for all involved. Peru's image as a wonderful tourist destination, which is surely is, will depend on how authorities handle Cameron's case in light of the growing media attention.
Join Cara's Facebook group and support her at:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=info&ref=mf&gid=295252159409#!/group.php?gid=295252159409
http://www.proycontra.com.pe/2010/02/03/abusaron-de-turista-mientras-dormia-en-hotel.pro
http://www.ojo.com.pe/ojo/nota.php?txtSecci_id=51&txtNota_id=279557
http://peru21.pe/noticia/409715/turista-norteamericana-fue-violada-iquitos
Saturday, February 6, 2010
One last border crossing, the baby Jesus, and chicken feet
Monday 09 November, 2009
Alright, so it's not TECHNICALLY on the border... that honour goes to Rumichara, surely an even bigger shithole but half the fun. Ipiales is 2.5km away and the main town straddling the divide between Colombia and Ecuador.
I spent all day yesterday getting here, almost eight hours on a little buseta that hooned along cliff edges and narrow bridges, fearing for my life more than once - although that's a common theme of my South American bus journeys, and I should be well used to it by now.
I arrived at sunset and got me to a hotel, Colombians having warned me not to trot around at night alone with all my stuff looking lost - sound advice, considering the ridiculous amount of stuff that I am currently lugging around, the Colombian postal system being prohibitively expensive and my new studded leather Zara heels too precious to entrust to anyone else. (Yes, I bought heels. Three months ago. No, I haven't worn them. They are magnificent. That is all.)
A Colombian Lurch by the name of Jose checked me in. He wasn't the chattiest of fellows, the only words he actually uttered being "eleven thousand pesos." Still, Jose wasn't going to get me down - I had a triple room and a TV to myself for all of $6.
8.00pm: Even the LP didn't have much positive to say about Ipiales. What they don't know is the shittier the town, the more I like it. I venture out for dinner into the freezing cold... a neat 8*C in good old Ipiales, yow.
8.15pm: I do a lap of the less than inspiring main square and settle on a Piko Riko chicken joint. They bring me a set menu with a soup for starters. It's a godsend to warm me up, and as an added bonus I see that they have given me not one but three chicken talons. How kind. There is nothing like spooning up some piping hot soup only to be confronted by a scaly claw with nails, rudely chopped off at the ankle.
8.20pm: My main arrives. I decide to leave the talons in favour of eating the literal half a chicken they have plonked on a plate with some bloodstained rice, frijoles, salad and a potato that seems to have been plucked directly from the ground and delivered to my plate, dirt and all. Half a chicken. However, it's tasty and filling and only sets me back by about $4. I love Colombian food, I really do.
10.30pm: Bored. Lonely. There are no other travellers in this town; I think they all take off as soon as they arrive. For company I watch some ludicrous Richard Gere film where he is tried in a preposterous Chinese court and the Chinese characters speak English to each other.
11.00pm: I spend the night huddled in bed in my leggings, socks, hoodie, sleeping bag and the blankets from all three beds in my room. It's cold.
8.00am: I wake up early, ready to get a head start on the Santuario de las Lajas, an amazing church built onto a suspension bridge in a ravine just outside of town. I wander out down the main street and find that I have been a little ungenerous to Ipiales - it's a lot bigger than I thought, and this morning it's buzzing. There are a lot more indigenous faces in the street, which I haven't really seen since Guatemala or maybe Nicaragua. Everyone looks windswept and ruddy-cheeked and they are all rocking woolen ponchos. The shops lining the crooked street are the usual: Super Maxi American Discount Store, three enormous blinking casinos, religious kitsch cake shops, a store called Luber that makes me laugh - lube? lover? lube-lover? who knows - an underwear store with an impressive display of croptops for the premature sexualisation of the town's prepubescent girl population, and the same platic-smelling made-in-China clothing stores that you see everywhere. My favourite-named store is "Jesus's Hairdressing". So this is where our Lord and Saviour has been all this time; I guess hairstyling is a step up from washing the feet of his disciples. I hope he doesn't specialize in Latino mullets. That truly would be a sin.
9.00am: The citizens are keen to be of service, bellowing "a la ORDEN!" so aggressively that I am too scared to enter their stores. "Siga, señorita, siga siga SIGA," commands a man who wants me to peruse his hot pink and yellow onesies. Maybe later.
Here's the problem: I only have 11,000 pesos left, which is about $6. That needs to buy me a meal, transport to and from the church, and a cab to the border. It's going to be tight, but I really don't want to get money out, since my Australian bank (looking at YOU, ANZ) is essentially mugging me for $20 every time I get cash out. I would do better if the local kids just held me up every time instead.
Here's the other problem: despite the extreme friendliness of the locals in helping me find the bus stop, there are no buses to the sanctuary today, due to a cycling competition. Of course, on the one day I am in town and keen to get an early start; I tend to specialise in poor timing. A taxi would cost me 7,000, which is out of the question and also not possible, I discover, since the highway to the sanctuary is totally closed until either 11am or 1pm, no one seems quite certain.
(There is actually a third problem, and that is that my nose is running copiously and I also need to go to the loo and not only am I low on tissues but my hostel's price for the night evidently does not cover toilet paper, which I don't want to spend my scant remaining pesos on, but that is really another story for another time. I am pilfering serviettes and cursing myself for being caught unprepared and with my pants down, so to speak.)
9.30am: I decide to embrace my own unfortunate sense of timing and use the next four hours to appreciate Ipiales. Four hours is a very long time. I discover a second, grander square with an impressive Russian-style church, and the market - a bleak concrete square dotted with wooden stalls with slabs of raw meat hanging on hooks. Just the smell I was after on an empty stomach at 9am. Three street dogs get into a ferocious brawl and people watch disinterestedly. I skirt around them and wander up a street full of fruit-sellers. Oooh, it looks good... too bad I can't afford any of them.
9.40am: I give in and decide to get breakfast. The only thing that every sit-down cafe I find offers is eggs, and they proudly deliver me a plate of pale scambled eggs and even paler french fries. "There you go, Mami!" the girl says cheerily. Mmm. I do however wash it down with a lulo juice. Colombia has the most amazing selection of fruits I have ever seen, many of which I had no idea how to eat (and let's be honest, still don't). Lulo is kind of like a sweet tomato, and its juice is delicious. Last week I bought some at the supermarket and not knowing how to eat it, sliced it up and chomped in. It was bitter. "Wow," said Clara, "I've never seen anyone eat lulo like this." She was intrigued. Why, how do you eat it? I asked, keen to learn from a Colombiana. "As juice," she shrugged.
And indeed they seem to blend up all their amazing fruits into juice, rarely eating them raw or plain. Only one fruit per juice. "I got my juice guy to do something amazing the other day: he made me juice with strawberries AND bananas!" Sarah once said triumphantly back in Medellin. And none of them make it into fruit salads, that seemingly reserved for boring staples such as apples, mangoes, papaya and strawberries.
10.30am: A group of people have lined an arbitrary strip of street that smells strongly of urine to watch the cycling race zip past. Well, zip might be the wrong word - every now and then a cyclist comes wheezing up the hill to a smattering of applause. I am shocked to see that they are women, braids peeking out from under their helmets. I've been in machista countries for too long, it would seem. Women can cycle too!
The woman next to me has dolled herself up for the occasion, with red red lips that are lined in black pencil, an alarming sight at best. I do appreciate her sense of occasion.
11.40am: The road is still closed; it is now almost midday. "Twelve-thirty, maybe one," says a traffic cop when I ask him when it will reopen. Sigh. I go for another walk. This time I find another market, the key goods on sale being gumboots and knives. These are a practical people.
12.30pm: Internet. Seriously, four hours is hard to fill when you have nothing to do. A little indigenous girl who is maybe three trots up to me. "What are you doing?" she demands to know. Writing an email to my mama, I tell her. "Scribendo," she tries to repeat thoughfully. She smears her lipgloss on me and runs off chortling.
1.00pm: Finally, the road is open. I hop into a colectivo taxi that zooms out of town, along the edge of a road that looks across rolling patchwork green fields as far as the eye can see. Talk about picture perfect. What's not so picture perfect: the looming clouds on the horizon.
1.10pm: I am dropped of the road and walk down a winding cobblestone path towards the ravine. I pass a waterfall. I can't see the sanctuary. What if it's crap? Did I spend all day here for nothing? I round a final corner and wow - there it is. It is not crap. The cathedral was built in 1916 of grey and white stone and is gothic and imposing, looming out of the side of the valley. A river tumbles over rocks far down below the arches of the bridge. There are pigeons cooing in the courtyard and monks. Real monks. And nuns. I am a fan of people in religious dress and this excites me, but I am not wily enough to snap pictures of them. Monks!
Apparently in 1754 an indigenous woman and her deaf-mute daughter took refuge between the jagged stones of the valley during a storm, when the girl spoke, saying, "the mestiza is calling me," pointing to an image of the Virgin that was illuminated by lighting. I'm not really clear on why the Virgin was a mestiza, but anyway, her vision was basis enough for the church to be built there, a flimsy reason at best. But I can't begrudge that; the cathedral is spectacular.
1.30pm: It's fitting that, as some kind of meteorological homage to the deaf-mute and her vision, it begins pouring with rain, thunder booming in the distance. It will take more than a storm to make a believer out of me, but I see my cue to leave and scurry up the hill into a colectivo.
1.45pm: I'm sharing a taxi with a young indigenous guy, a man who squeezes in the back with us, his daughter on his lap, and his wife in the front cradling a statue of Jesus as though it were her baby. Lightning strikes around us and visibility through the rain is poor so we creep along at a snail's pace.
2.00pm: We arrive back at the colectivo depot. "Here we are," our driver says. It's hailing. Everyone laughs - there is no way any of us are getting out in this storm. We all sit huddled in the cab, watching the rain through the foggy windows. The little girl falls asleep. Presumably, so does the baby Jesus.
2.30pm: I make a run for it, into a cafeteria with a huge painting of Garfield on the wall. My soup again contains chicken feet; always a delightful surprise.
3.00pm: I farewell Ipiales, which is once again blue-skied and sunny, and get a taxi to the border. This is my final border crossing; I am a little sad.
3.30pm: Am highly unimpressed with this border. Not only did both Colombia and Ecuador give me a stupid computer scan instead of proper stamps in my passport, but the Ecuadorian guys are rude, craning to watch a telenovela behind my head, and laughing at me when I try to exit by a locked door. Fuckers. I am officially on Colombia's side in the cold war between the two countries, and all it took was a couple of rude border guards to get me there. I hope they're happy. Humph.
4.30pm: Get a minibus to the bus terminal on Ecuador's side so I can finally leave this border zone that I have been hovering around for the past 24 hours. Over a dozen of us are crammed together in a more than friendly way. The people sitting around me are very sweet, asking where I'm from and complimenting my Spanish. "Will you take me back to Australia with you?" jokes one man. The lady next to me has been travelling for fourteen hours straight, since 3am and is munching on an iceblock for strength.
5.00pm: At the bus terminal, I farewell my new friends and am rushed off the bus, my pack grabbed by a local tout who hurries me onto the 5pm bus to Otavalo, the town I am headed to. I rush after him, concerned that he might be making off with my pack: this is not something that has ever worried me before but I've heard a lot of stories about theft in Ecuador and those Zara heels mean too much to me.
5.15pm: A whiny teenager gets on the bus, seen off by her father. "Oh, I wanted a window seat, I hate the aisle!" she moans, looking pointedly at me. If this little whelp thinks that bitching and moaning will make me give her my window seat, she has another thing coming. I have shifted women five times her size from my rightful seat and I'm not giving up without a fight.
5.30pm: Our bus is pulled over on the side of the highway by the national police who search it, who knows what for. Two shaggy-haired stoner types are escorted off the bus and searched more thoroughly, along with their luggage. The police man comes down past us, and looks at my passport. "Get off the bus, and bring all your bags with you," he tells me. Is he serious? In my previous experience if anything I have been exempted from searches because I am a tourist and they want no trouble. Not this guy.
The eyes of the whole bus are on me as I drag my stuff down the steps and wait by the baggage compartment. This guy doesn't know what he's asking. He doesn't know how finely-engineered my packing is; he doesn't know how long it will take to go through my stuff while the whole bus waits. A German Shepherd prowls the edge of the highway next to me. I might be projecting but I think he's looking at me suspiciously.
6.00pm: The conductor comes round the side of the bus, out of breath from having to assist the police searching the other luggage hold. "Vamos!" he says to me. Not so fast, I say, the cops want to search me and all my stuff. He visibly deflates.
The policeman comes leisurely down the stairs. The conductor confronts him, pointing at me, asking if a search is really necessary. "Look at her!" he exclaims. I find this hilarious. The policeman has obviously forgotten about me, and with a languid wave of his hand, lets us go. I get back on the bus. I smile at the whiny girl next to me and she rolls her eyes: I know she was hoping I would be arrested so she could have the window seat. Not likely, missy.
8.30pm: Finally, finally arrive in Otavalo. I am dropped off on the side of a highway outside of town in the dark. This is clearly the middle of nowhere. "The town's that way," the conductor said, with an expansive wave of his hand. Me and all my bags try to hail one of the few passing cabs, to no avail.
8.40pm: Thankfully a taxi stops. There is an indigenous woman in the backseat who grins and tells me that we came on the same bus, and wants to know my life story. We drop her at home with a big wave, shouting goodbyes.
8.50pm: I unleash one of my patented Great Dane woofing coughs. "Oh," says the taxista, "that sounds bad. What you need is a special Ecuadorian drink, a liquor. It will fix you no problem." What is it? I ask. "Pure alcohol. We can set it on fire! I'll bring you a bottle. One gulp of that and you will be 100%." I didn't take him up on it, but now I think maybe I should have. Welcome to Ecuador, we'll drink to your health.
Monday, February 1, 2010
So, want to know what's going on in Colombia lately?
Tuesday 20 October, 2009
When people think of Colombia, and by extension Medellin, it's hardly surprising that the foremost image to spring to mind is that of mustachioed drug kingpin Pablo Escobar... and cocaine. Travellers who think nothing of gallivanting across Mexico, Gautemala and Brazil draw the line at Colombia, and in doing so miss out on one of the most interesting countries in Latin America.
Okay, so the news is not so good. Trying to find a positive news story for a friend who lives in Medellin so that she could assuage her mother's concerns turned out to be impossible. Here's one, I reported, Colombia is 92% kidnap-free! Oh wait... at the end it says that the Medellin region's crime is increasing alarmingly. Whoops. Don't tell her that. Okay, how about Medellin winning the soccer last weekend? Uh-oh, scratch that, someone died in a fight afterwards. Umm... you could remind her that the weather's always great? Oh, but there is a huge drought at the moment, and looming water rationing. Well, I have this article on tourism in Bogota booming...? Just don't tell her that last weekend twenty-five people were killed in the city.
But if you can get past all the bad news, or you're a journalist who thrives on stories like these, then Colombia is a great place to be. For an adventure, a thrill, and the knowledge that something bad could happen any minute, Colombia can't be beat.
Just kidding... sort of. Crime might be a big part of the country and I would be foolish to pretend that it doesn't exist. Yes, for every night that I've gone out and haven't been mugged, a new arrival to the city has been killed (a Colombian guy we know came back to Medellin for the first time in 8 years and not only was he mugged but they stabbed him for his compliance. The knife nicked his heart and he spent his first week in the city in a coma. But last week he was mugged at an ATM while our tiny blond English elf skips through the city unharmed, so maybe he's just unlucky). I marvel at the safety that I feel when I walk down the street and then am reminded that a few months ago two bombs went off a block away from my apartment building. No... Medellin is not particularly safe. And you only need to look to the news to hear the latest.
The Colombian news is an amazing phenomenon that needs to be seen to be believed. A story that would dominate Australian news for months in Colombia is just one of many new scandals that break every day. 48,000 government officials being investigated for corruption? Check. The President buying senate votes to ensure his re-election? Sure, all he had to do was change the Constitution... and now he's trying to do it again. Check. Vice-President being investigated for ties to paramilitary groups? The President's former adviser is a cousin of Escobar and has his name all over international million-dollar bank accounts that contain Medellin Cartel cash? Of course.
Warlords cut deals with the prosecution to serve preposterously short sentences, the city's crime rate is accelerating due to a power vacuum left by the recently disbanded Office of Envigado gang and homicides for the 18-28 male demographic are booming. Friends reported bus burnings in the north of the country, and the rumour is that the FARC guerrilla group are preparing a large-scale attack for early next year when the presidential elections take place. Investigations into paramilitary massacres continue, with so far scanty results. They are a mercenary army originally founded to protect landowners from the rebels, but have since grown exponentially and exist outside of the law, buying off politicians and arranging hits for political rivals, dominating the Colombian political scene to such an extent that there are precious few members of President Uribe's government that haven't been implicated in parapolitics.
The government is keen to show citizens that it's taking a stand and producing results in regards to the FARC. The civil war has been raging for about fifty years and shows no sign of slowing down. However, the military killing civilians and passing them off as guerrillas is perhaps not the best way to do so. This practice has been going on for years and the family members that are finally taking a stand and protesting have been rewarded with death threats for their troubles. There has been a highly publicized ongoing negotiation with the FARC to release hostages, some of whom have been held in jungle camps for as long as twelve years. Proof-of-life videos released last month showed chained prisoners sending messages to their families, but their haunted eyes and nervous tics would be hard for anyone to forget. Every day there is a new delay in the release of three of the prisoners, and the father of one has threatened to cruicify himself in Bogota's main square in protest.
Journalists are threatened all the time and one recently fled the country due to death threats. Radio newscaster Herbin Hoyos has left Colombia a number of times due to FARC death threats - he broadcasts a hostage radio station, agitating for their freedom. There is a sort of tacit media censorship and any article we translate needs to be carefully read for subtext and propaganda. I filmed part of an almost-riot last weekend and a sympathetic policewoman told me to put my camera away, and that if I was seem filming I could be arrested.
Government agriculture subsidies are being distributed among the rich, a presidential candidate is a former member of the M-19 rebel group, and fake tit-and-assed bimbos on TV are sleeping with each other's boyfriends, calling each other drug molls and suing. So really... Just like anywhere else, no?
When people think of Colombia, and by extension Medellin, it's hardly surprising that the foremost image to spring to mind is that of mustachioed drug kingpin Pablo Escobar... and cocaine. Travellers who think nothing of gallivanting across Mexico, Gautemala and Brazil draw the line at Colombia, and in doing so miss out on one of the most interesting countries in Latin America.
Okay, so the news is not so good. Trying to find a positive news story for a friend who lives in Medellin so that she could assuage her mother's concerns turned out to be impossible. Here's one, I reported, Colombia is 92% kidnap-free! Oh wait... at the end it says that the Medellin region's crime is increasing alarmingly. Whoops. Don't tell her that. Okay, how about Medellin winning the soccer last weekend? Uh-oh, scratch that, someone died in a fight afterwards. Umm... you could remind her that the weather's always great? Oh, but there is a huge drought at the moment, and looming water rationing. Well, I have this article on tourism in Bogota booming...? Just don't tell her that last weekend twenty-five people were killed in the city.
But if you can get past all the bad news, or you're a journalist who thrives on stories like these, then Colombia is a great place to be. For an adventure, a thrill, and the knowledge that something bad could happen any minute, Colombia can't be beat.
Just kidding... sort of. Crime might be a big part of the country and I would be foolish to pretend that it doesn't exist. Yes, for every night that I've gone out and haven't been mugged, a new arrival to the city has been killed (a Colombian guy we know came back to Medellin for the first time in 8 years and not only was he mugged but they stabbed him for his compliance. The knife nicked his heart and he spent his first week in the city in a coma. But last week he was mugged at an ATM while our tiny blond English elf skips through the city unharmed, so maybe he's just unlucky). I marvel at the safety that I feel when I walk down the street and then am reminded that a few months ago two bombs went off a block away from my apartment building. No... Medellin is not particularly safe. And you only need to look to the news to hear the latest.
The Colombian news is an amazing phenomenon that needs to be seen to be believed. A story that would dominate Australian news for months in Colombia is just one of many new scandals that break every day. 48,000 government officials being investigated for corruption? Check. The President buying senate votes to ensure his re-election? Sure, all he had to do was change the Constitution... and now he's trying to do it again. Check. Vice-President being investigated for ties to paramilitary groups? The President's former adviser is a cousin of Escobar and has his name all over international million-dollar bank accounts that contain Medellin Cartel cash? Of course.
Warlords cut deals with the prosecution to serve preposterously short sentences, the city's crime rate is accelerating due to a power vacuum left by the recently disbanded Office of Envigado gang and homicides for the 18-28 male demographic are booming. Friends reported bus burnings in the north of the country, and the rumour is that the FARC guerrilla group are preparing a large-scale attack for early next year when the presidential elections take place. Investigations into paramilitary massacres continue, with so far scanty results. They are a mercenary army originally founded to protect landowners from the rebels, but have since grown exponentially and exist outside of the law, buying off politicians and arranging hits for political rivals, dominating the Colombian political scene to such an extent that there are precious few members of President Uribe's government that haven't been implicated in parapolitics.
The government is keen to show citizens that it's taking a stand and producing results in regards to the FARC. The civil war has been raging for about fifty years and shows no sign of slowing down. However, the military killing civilians and passing them off as guerrillas is perhaps not the best way to do so. This practice has been going on for years and the family members that are finally taking a stand and protesting have been rewarded with death threats for their troubles. There has been a highly publicized ongoing negotiation with the FARC to release hostages, some of whom have been held in jungle camps for as long as twelve years. Proof-of-life videos released last month showed chained prisoners sending messages to their families, but their haunted eyes and nervous tics would be hard for anyone to forget. Every day there is a new delay in the release of three of the prisoners, and the father of one has threatened to cruicify himself in Bogota's main square in protest.
Journalists are threatened all the time and one recently fled the country due to death threats. Radio newscaster Herbin Hoyos has left Colombia a number of times due to FARC death threats - he broadcasts a hostage radio station, agitating for their freedom. There is a sort of tacit media censorship and any article we translate needs to be carefully read for subtext and propaganda. I filmed part of an almost-riot last weekend and a sympathetic policewoman told me to put my camera away, and that if I was seem filming I could be arrested.
Government agriculture subsidies are being distributed among the rich, a presidential candidate is a former member of the M-19 rebel group, and fake tit-and-assed bimbos on TV are sleeping with each other's boyfriends, calling each other drug molls and suing. So really... Just like anywhere else, no?
A day in my fake real Colombian life
Tuesday 27 October, 2009
8.30am: Wake up. Luxuriate in bedroom. I have a gigantic room, balcony and ensuite to myself and after the way I've been living for the past nine months, this is luxury like I have never known. I am not living out of a backpack. My clothes are in a wardrobe. I am not subject to the whims and drunkenness of my loud, door-slamming light-switching 7 or 8 roomates at any given time, and being kept awake by someone's snoring is a thing of the past. Sigh. Life is good.
8.45am: SHIT! Late for university.
8.50am: Scurry around quiet enormous apartment getting ready. I live with five Colombian guys. Not that you would know it - the house is spotless, a far cry from my all-female den of iniquity in France. Here, everyone has their own food cupboard, sinks are divided and there is a comprehensive recycling and cohabitation system that works like a dream.
My flatmates are a diverse bunch: One artist/musician missing the fingers on his right hand (how does he play the guitar?), a telenovela actor, a chef-in-training, another musician, and a Metro guy. Oh, and Leche, the cat. I feel that she dislikes me. Perhaps she doesn't want to compete for alpha female. Whatever, human trumps cat.
9.10am: Get dressed. Discover that at some point over the last month, the cat has pissed in my pack. It stinks. Well played, cat.
9.15am: Walk to the metro. Am frustrated by the inability of Medellin's citizens to walk in anything resembling a straight line. My crowd-dodging skills have been on the up since moving here. Almost fall over a tiny woman who aggressively and suddenly swerves in front of me. The light turns red while I trip over my own feet. A city chicken bus is bearing down on me, tooting furiously.
9.25am: Arrive at the metro, out of breath. All the seats along the platform are taken so I slump down against the wall. "Excuse me señorita, you can't sit here," says a prepubescent guard. "I'm not allowed to sit?" I ask, incredulous. "No. Sitting is only permitted on seats." Unbelievable. I stand, leaning against the wall, and glare at him.
Medellin is deservedly proud of its gleaming metro, as shiny and new today as it was when it was inaugurated 15 years ago. Perhaps this has something to do with the squads of metro police whose jobs entail forbidding eating and drinking within the turnstiles (I was prevented from entering the metro with food more than once, when the guards eagle-eyed me as I gulped down breakfast so I could get on the train). Whatever, it makes the ride to school brief and pleasant. The train is too expensive for the majority of the city's residents: at $1 a ride, it costs as much as the Sydney bus. And given that the daily wage is $8, not many can afford it.
But its pretty... for the portion of the tracks that passes through the city the train is suspended like a monorail, giving a panoramic view of Medellin and its surrounding hills.
9.50am: Arrive at uni. Wrangle with security. No, I don't have a student card, they didn't give me one, I'm only here for a month, etc. "Where's your receipt for payment, then?" a vigilant old guard asks me, eyes narrowed. I wasn't aware that I needed to carry the receipt around with me. What's the big deal, I'm in your computer system, etc. I go through this every day, both upon arrival and departure. They take their jobs seriously.
10am: Spanish class. We are talking about malnutrition in Colombia. Apparently 50% of Colombians are currently going hungry every day. "A taxi driver told me that over by the stadium people are killing and eating whatever passes by," me teacher says. "It turned my stomach." Oh please, I scoff, surely that's some kind of urban legend. She shrugs. "I don't know. There is a whole level of society here of people who are completely lost. There is a dirty sub-level holding up society," she adds. "You know, they say that the mayor has cleaned things up here, and that is true, but it's like looking into a pool of water - its clear on the top but the bottom is murky, and trash is floating up to the surface."
My teacher is a wealthy Colombian married to an Englishman. She seems to be a common example of Colombians who have attained some level of wealth and are now afraid that their countrymen might take it away from them and have to guard it, always looking over their shoulders. She has a lot of empathy for the lower classes and does what she can, volunteering to teach English in poor schools, but neither does she want to lose what she has already obtained. That's natural.
11am: We move on from malnutrition to gangs. The city is experiencing a gang war because of the power vacuum left by the Office of Envigado gang that was recently dismantled. My teacher shivers. "I used to work at the school in the barrio," she says, referring to the outskirts of the city in the poorer neighborhoods of Medellin. "La Violencia here was terrible."
From 1995 to 2005 there was a similar power struggle that ravaged the city following the death of Pablo Escobar. "Kids at school would come up to me and show me their arms, and say 'profesora, look at this!' and there would be a bullet embedded in their skin. And then all the other kids would come over and say, 'profesora, that's nothing, look at this,' and they would show me where they were grazed by bullets from gunfights in their neighborhoods."
Every week she would call the roll. Where are Gustavo, Juan, Giovanni? "Profesora," the kids would call out, "he's gone." The children got caught in the crossfire of gangs. "I would get threatening phone calls all the time, telling me they didn't like my skirt, that my hair was too long. Once a guy stood outside the school looking at one of the teachers and I heard him say, 'I don't like that guy's shirt. If he's wearing it tomorrow, I'll kill him.' It was crazy. I stayed for as long as I could but then finally I had to leave." She spent five years living in the States and London before it was safe enough to come back.
But now the violence is increasing again. Political experts recently said that the dismantling of the Office of Envigado was a bad thing for city security, because at least before they controlled the other gangs and minimised killings. "It's like when a shark passes, all the other fish shrink away," my teacher says.
12.30pm: Walk home from the metro station. The crowd suddenly parts and a couple comes running through. They are followed by a man waving a rifle. I also stop to spectate, wondering if I will witness a shooting, but all three of them keep running. The crowd around me seems disappointed.
12.35pm: I walk up Avenida La Playa, which is dotted with men handing out fliers, like some kind of human obstacle course. Today I don't dodge them, but take a flier. I glance at it, and am delighted with what I find:
Angels of Love and Luck: Difficult love - lost hope? Constant fighting? Have you felt used or humiliated by your partner? Don't suffer any longer: know the truthful and powerful secret of the Angels of Love. RECUPERATE YOUR HAPPINESS! Experts in recovering lost and impossible loves.
I take a second flier. Awesome.
"Don't leave your job until you come to me. Don't put your feelings in the hands of just anyone. REGINA MENTALISTA. Have you visited many places and found no solution? Have you only wasted time and money? 25 years of experience in solving problems of love, luck, and business; curing sicknesses such as impotence and frigidity. Bring a photo, an item of clothing or hair from your partner. I guarantee 100% the return of your love in 3 days. They will prostrate themselves at your feet begging pardon. Consultation: $4.
I can't help but wonder what kind of pressure Regina Mentalista might feel compelled to put on a wayward partner for the princely sum she charges of $4. This is a country dominated by gangs, after all... The reality is probably even more frightening than anything I could imagine.
12.45pm: I am given another flier and the guy says to me, "Hey, are you looking for work?" I glance down. It is a business card for Zandaly Massages. "Discretion, comfort, and pleasure". The black and white photo says classy, and the girl's exposed vagina says business. Hmm. Flattered or insulted? I decide that it comes down to how much they'd be willing to pay.
1pm: Back at work, my boss and I look up Zandaly's website. We know they're classy because they have one. We enter the virtual sex shop and click on the product list. Bizarrely, instead of pictures of sex toys, as advertised, the website's gallery showcases "The Old Town of Montreal". Hmmmm. Kinky in ways I hadn't even imagined!
2pm: Work work work. Today's stories are about the President trying to change the Constitution for a second time to allow him a third term in office. Last time he changed the Constitution he bribed a bunch of senators to do so; that's how they roll. A senator has just finished her jail term - she was busted for working with paramilitaries. The rebels may or may not release some hostages, paramilitaries have admitted to more massacres and mass graves have been found. Barranquilla's Queen of Queens Pageant is on, Shakira may or may not have had plastic surgery and may or may not be engaged. All abortions have been suspended, and Tom Cruise may star in the film adaptation of last year's dramatic FARC hostage rescue.
4pm: My boss announces that we are going on an excursion to visit one of his favourite ladies. I am expecting a prostitute or at least a stripper.
4.20pm: We arrive at Doña Estelle's house. Estelle is a white-haired, sparkly-eyed saucepot of a woman, who leads us through her charmingly cluttered house, past a huge portrait of Jesus and into the kitchen where laundry hangs off every available surface.
"Ahh, you gonorrhea, you sweet little gonorrheito, where have you been, why haven't you come to see me?" She clucks around, making us coffee and swearing fondly at my boss.
"When's the last time you went to church?" he asks her. "That language is so fucking ugly."
"I go every Sunday, she says solemnly. Then she perks up. "Oh, I have to call my son and tell him that you're here!"
She dials as the smell of coffee wafts towards us from the stove. "Hello? Mi amor? Were you sleeping? Oh, I'm sorry for waking you, I just wanted to tell you who's here... guess! No you have to guess! Okay, I'll tell you: that son of a bitch Dutch! Yes! He's here! Okay my sweetheart, I have to go, bye!"
She quizzes my boss about his work, his women, his apartment. "You live with another son of a bitch Dutch?" she asks. I love this lady. She could be my boss's mother; those two are cut from the same cloth.
She brings us all a tinto, a very sweet black coffee that all Colombians drink. As we sit sipping, Giovanni comes in with a square of lawn in his hands, puts it into a plastic bag, and walks out again. Giovanni has five names that people calling the house might use. He works in mysterious ways.
8.30am: Wake up. Luxuriate in bedroom. I have a gigantic room, balcony and ensuite to myself and after the way I've been living for the past nine months, this is luxury like I have never known. I am not living out of a backpack. My clothes are in a wardrobe. I am not subject to the whims and drunkenness of my loud, door-slamming light-switching 7 or 8 roomates at any given time, and being kept awake by someone's snoring is a thing of the past. Sigh. Life is good.
8.45am: SHIT! Late for university.
8.50am: Scurry around quiet enormous apartment getting ready. I live with five Colombian guys. Not that you would know it - the house is spotless, a far cry from my all-female den of iniquity in France. Here, everyone has their own food cupboard, sinks are divided and there is a comprehensive recycling and cohabitation system that works like a dream.
My flatmates are a diverse bunch: One artist/musician missing the fingers on his right hand (how does he play the guitar?), a telenovela actor, a chef-in-training, another musician, and a Metro guy. Oh, and Leche, the cat. I feel that she dislikes me. Perhaps she doesn't want to compete for alpha female. Whatever, human trumps cat.
9.10am: Get dressed. Discover that at some point over the last month, the cat has pissed in my pack. It stinks. Well played, cat.
9.15am: Walk to the metro. Am frustrated by the inability of Medellin's citizens to walk in anything resembling a straight line. My crowd-dodging skills have been on the up since moving here. Almost fall over a tiny woman who aggressively and suddenly swerves in front of me. The light turns red while I trip over my own feet. A city chicken bus is bearing down on me, tooting furiously.
9.25am: Arrive at the metro, out of breath. All the seats along the platform are taken so I slump down against the wall. "Excuse me señorita, you can't sit here," says a prepubescent guard. "I'm not allowed to sit?" I ask, incredulous. "No. Sitting is only permitted on seats." Unbelievable. I stand, leaning against the wall, and glare at him.
Medellin is deservedly proud of its gleaming metro, as shiny and new today as it was when it was inaugurated 15 years ago. Perhaps this has something to do with the squads of metro police whose jobs entail forbidding eating and drinking within the turnstiles (I was prevented from entering the metro with food more than once, when the guards eagle-eyed me as I gulped down breakfast so I could get on the train). Whatever, it makes the ride to school brief and pleasant. The train is too expensive for the majority of the city's residents: at $1 a ride, it costs as much as the Sydney bus. And given that the daily wage is $8, not many can afford it.
But its pretty... for the portion of the tracks that passes through the city the train is suspended like a monorail, giving a panoramic view of Medellin and its surrounding hills.
9.50am: Arrive at uni. Wrangle with security. No, I don't have a student card, they didn't give me one, I'm only here for a month, etc. "Where's your receipt for payment, then?" a vigilant old guard asks me, eyes narrowed. I wasn't aware that I needed to carry the receipt around with me. What's the big deal, I'm in your computer system, etc. I go through this every day, both upon arrival and departure. They take their jobs seriously.
10am: Spanish class. We are talking about malnutrition in Colombia. Apparently 50% of Colombians are currently going hungry every day. "A taxi driver told me that over by the stadium people are killing and eating whatever passes by," me teacher says. "It turned my stomach." Oh please, I scoff, surely that's some kind of urban legend. She shrugs. "I don't know. There is a whole level of society here of people who are completely lost. There is a dirty sub-level holding up society," she adds. "You know, they say that the mayor has cleaned things up here, and that is true, but it's like looking into a pool of water - its clear on the top but the bottom is murky, and trash is floating up to the surface."
My teacher is a wealthy Colombian married to an Englishman. She seems to be a common example of Colombians who have attained some level of wealth and are now afraid that their countrymen might take it away from them and have to guard it, always looking over their shoulders. She has a lot of empathy for the lower classes and does what she can, volunteering to teach English in poor schools, but neither does she want to lose what she has already obtained. That's natural.
11am: We move on from malnutrition to gangs. The city is experiencing a gang war because of the power vacuum left by the Office of Envigado gang that was recently dismantled. My teacher shivers. "I used to work at the school in the barrio," she says, referring to the outskirts of the city in the poorer neighborhoods of Medellin. "La Violencia here was terrible."
From 1995 to 2005 there was a similar power struggle that ravaged the city following the death of Pablo Escobar. "Kids at school would come up to me and show me their arms, and say 'profesora, look at this!' and there would be a bullet embedded in their skin. And then all the other kids would come over and say, 'profesora, that's nothing, look at this,' and they would show me where they were grazed by bullets from gunfights in their neighborhoods."
Every week she would call the roll. Where are Gustavo, Juan, Giovanni? "Profesora," the kids would call out, "he's gone." The children got caught in the crossfire of gangs. "I would get threatening phone calls all the time, telling me they didn't like my skirt, that my hair was too long. Once a guy stood outside the school looking at one of the teachers and I heard him say, 'I don't like that guy's shirt. If he's wearing it tomorrow, I'll kill him.' It was crazy. I stayed for as long as I could but then finally I had to leave." She spent five years living in the States and London before it was safe enough to come back.
But now the violence is increasing again. Political experts recently said that the dismantling of the Office of Envigado was a bad thing for city security, because at least before they controlled the other gangs and minimised killings. "It's like when a shark passes, all the other fish shrink away," my teacher says.
12.30pm: Walk home from the metro station. The crowd suddenly parts and a couple comes running through. They are followed by a man waving a rifle. I also stop to spectate, wondering if I will witness a shooting, but all three of them keep running. The crowd around me seems disappointed.
12.35pm: I walk up Avenida La Playa, which is dotted with men handing out fliers, like some kind of human obstacle course. Today I don't dodge them, but take a flier. I glance at it, and am delighted with what I find:
Angels of Love and Luck: Difficult love - lost hope? Constant fighting? Have you felt used or humiliated by your partner? Don't suffer any longer: know the truthful and powerful secret of the Angels of Love. RECUPERATE YOUR HAPPINESS! Experts in recovering lost and impossible loves.
I take a second flier. Awesome.
"Don't leave your job until you come to me. Don't put your feelings in the hands of just anyone. REGINA MENTALISTA. Have you visited many places and found no solution? Have you only wasted time and money? 25 years of experience in solving problems of love, luck, and business; curing sicknesses such as impotence and frigidity. Bring a photo, an item of clothing or hair from your partner. I guarantee 100% the return of your love in 3 days. They will prostrate themselves at your feet begging pardon. Consultation: $4.
I can't help but wonder what kind of pressure Regina Mentalista might feel compelled to put on a wayward partner for the princely sum she charges of $4. This is a country dominated by gangs, after all... The reality is probably even more frightening than anything I could imagine.
12.45pm: I am given another flier and the guy says to me, "Hey, are you looking for work?" I glance down. It is a business card for Zandaly Massages. "Discretion, comfort, and pleasure". The black and white photo says classy, and the girl's exposed vagina says business. Hmm. Flattered or insulted? I decide that it comes down to how much they'd be willing to pay.
1pm: Back at work, my boss and I look up Zandaly's website. We know they're classy because they have one. We enter the virtual sex shop and click on the product list. Bizarrely, instead of pictures of sex toys, as advertised, the website's gallery showcases "The Old Town of Montreal". Hmmmm. Kinky in ways I hadn't even imagined!
2pm: Work work work. Today's stories are about the President trying to change the Constitution for a second time to allow him a third term in office. Last time he changed the Constitution he bribed a bunch of senators to do so; that's how they roll. A senator has just finished her jail term - she was busted for working with paramilitaries. The rebels may or may not release some hostages, paramilitaries have admitted to more massacres and mass graves have been found. Barranquilla's Queen of Queens Pageant is on, Shakira may or may not have had plastic surgery and may or may not be engaged. All abortions have been suspended, and Tom Cruise may star in the film adaptation of last year's dramatic FARC hostage rescue.
4pm: My boss announces that we are going on an excursion to visit one of his favourite ladies. I am expecting a prostitute or at least a stripper.
4.20pm: We arrive at Doña Estelle's house. Estelle is a white-haired, sparkly-eyed saucepot of a woman, who leads us through her charmingly cluttered house, past a huge portrait of Jesus and into the kitchen where laundry hangs off every available surface.
"Ahh, you gonorrhea, you sweet little gonorrheito, where have you been, why haven't you come to see me?" She clucks around, making us coffee and swearing fondly at my boss.
"When's the last time you went to church?" he asks her. "That language is so fucking ugly."
"I go every Sunday, she says solemnly. Then she perks up. "Oh, I have to call my son and tell him that you're here!"
She dials as the smell of coffee wafts towards us from the stove. "Hello? Mi amor? Were you sleeping? Oh, I'm sorry for waking you, I just wanted to tell you who's here... guess! No you have to guess! Okay, I'll tell you: that son of a bitch Dutch! Yes! He's here! Okay my sweetheart, I have to go, bye!"
She quizzes my boss about his work, his women, his apartment. "You live with another son of a bitch Dutch?" she asks. I love this lady. She could be my boss's mother; those two are cut from the same cloth.
She brings us all a tinto, a very sweet black coffee that all Colombians drink. As we sit sipping, Giovanni comes in with a square of lawn in his hands, puts it into a plastic bag, and walks out again. Giovanni has five names that people calling the house might use. He works in mysterious ways.
Love for Profit: Women in Colombia
Monday, 12 October 2009
Prostitution in Medellin is rife, and cheap. My boss is friends with many prostitutes, and so for his birthday we take him to his favourite strip joint. It is seedy in the extreme. The tables and chairs are metal, the lighting is obnoxious, and the music is pounding. It's a rainy Monday night so the place is almost empty. There is a raised stage with a circular bar running around it with three poles. I have never been to a strip club, and I'm curious. It's disappointing. You know that you're in a sub-par joint when the eighties wedding night home video porn being played across one wall is more interesting that the strippers themselves. Ron Jeremy is a disgusting man.
Every fifteen minutes or so a girl hits the stage, circling the loop, occasionally half-heartedly thrusting on the poles, and removing her clothes with no finesse or drawn-out tease. This is not quite the Vegas showgirl-style extravaganza that I was expecting. It's sad, and it's not sexy.
Everyone at our table except my boss and me says that they don't like places like this and never come here. They're too scared to look around in case someone catches them seeming interested. "This isn't my scene," they say. "Do you know how ordinary all the guys are who come here?" asks my boss. "They are totally average. All of them tell their families and friends that this isn't their scene, and they come here on a weekly basis."
After their 5 minutes, the girls come round to the tables naked and blank-faced to ask for money. Each man gives them 1000 or 2000 pesos. That roughly amounts to about 60c - $1.30. There might be ten men in the room tonight. Still, an average girl might make 50,000 in a night and in Colombia that is good money - the average wage here is 15,000 pesos, or $8. A day. If a customer takes a fancy to one of the girls they can go upstairs for a more thorough service. We see a tubby middle-aged man follow scantily-clad girl who can't be older than twenty through the private door and I cringe for her.
I want to get a good look at their faces, I want to hear their stories, but their empty eyes scare me. I am ashamed, and I look away. Back to eighties wedding night porn, which is safer.
"It's like this," my boss says. "Girls get paid one thousand pesos per drink that they convince the customers to buy. So it's in their interests to drink a lot. In order to sustain their drinking, they need to take drugs. They work all night, go home to their kids and then need tranquilisers to sleep. Six months of that and these beautiful young girls are strung out and wrung out. They work in places like this for a while but the more addicted they become the lower the standard of work becomes until they end up on the street somewhere."
I've seen the street hookers. In the middle of the day we took a stroll through the dirtier parts of central Medellin. The youngest ones might be thirteen or fourteen, faces painted like dolls. They chew gum and lean up against the side of buildings like cartoon prostitutes. The older ones are in their late sixties and have no time to be coy. "Hey baby, what do you need?" demand some, while others hang out of balconies with gravity assisting the display of their considerable breasts.
Like in all third world countries, the women in Colombia - especially those of the lower classes - have it tough. From an early age they are taught that their ability to get a man is what will keep them afloat. They grow up playing the coquette. I visited a high school in one of the city's poorest neighbourhoods to chat with the kids. The girls were 14 or 15 years old and looked 19 at least. One of them said to me, "the men here are dogs. I don't know a single one who's faithful." From childhood, they accept that men have the power. If a girl doesn't have sex with her boyfriend, he'll find someone else who will. To keep him she does, inevitably gets pregnant, and more often than not he leaves. That age-old anti-fairytale.
Without a completed education and mouths to feed, Colombian women become even more desperate to find a man. The country is reputed to have some of the best-looking women in the world, and wholeheartedly lives up to it. Walking down the street can be intimidating; the girls get made up, take care of themselves, and look askance at foreigners who dress scruffily. They don't understand why a woman wouldn't want to look her best at all times. They wear tight, brightly-coloured clothes like plumage, and strut down the street confident that all eyes are on them. They need them to be.
Plastic surgery here is a thriving industry, and relatively cheap, and in order to stay competitive, many women have procedures to augment their natural good looks; boob and butt implants are among the most popular elective surgeries. I studied Spanish at a private university in Medellín and saw first-hand evidence of girls being given boob jobs by their parents for their quinceañera (Latino girls come of age at fifteen). They need to look good to attract a mate, and they need to outplay, outwit and outlast their competition, Survivor-style.
Prostitution is not limited to the lower classes in Colombia. A study conducted by a university recently revealed that 2% of female students in the Caribbean city of Cartagena consider prostitution to support their studies. "The girls appeared to be predominantly beautiful women between the ages of 18 and 25, from upper-middle class backgrounds. They target wealthy men who will provide them with money required for luxuries such as clothes, cosmetic surgery, cars and apartments." However, the study asserted that the girls had been "spoiled but not loved" and were frequently victims of child abuse and neglect.
Although adultery in ultra-Catholic Colombia is considered a sin, in Colombian culture it has been socially accepted for men because of a belief in men's "inherently libidinous" nature. In June 2001 the Colombian government gave bigamy legal status because it was simply impossible to punish bigamous men. They are protected not only by society but by the women who share them, and the lawful acceptance of the practice serves only to promote further infidelity and negatively affect families, especially children, who look to their parents for models of behaviour. At home, women transmit social and cultural codes to their children, thus becoming 'gatekeepers' of Colombian patriarchy.
In 2007 the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt held the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. In their declaration, they denounced machismo as such: "Machismo reduces women to the state of sexual objects, condemns lesbians and promotes sexism, prostitution and trafficking of women and girls, and violence against women [and children]."
The Dictionary of Mexican Cultural Code Words defines machismo thusly: "... machismo meant the repudiation of all 'feminine' virtues such as unselfishness, kindness, frankness and truthfulness. It meant being willing to lie without compunction, to be suspicious, envious, jealous, malicious, vindictive, brutal and finally, to be willing to fight and kill without hesitation to protect one's manly image. Machismo meant that a man could not let anything detract from his image of himself as a man's man, regardless of the suffering it brought on himself and the women around him. ... The proof of every man's manliness was his ability to completely dominate his wife and children, to have sexual relations with any woman he wanted, to never let anyone question, deprecate or attempt to thwart his manhood, and never to reveal his true feelings to anyone lest they somehow take advantage of him."
Admittedly, this becomes a multidimensional concept covering multiple personality traits and behaviors. It is difficult to classify someone as 'macho' or not without administering a full battery of reliable and valid personality tests. Lacking an objective definition, the term becomes an irresponsible way of associating negative character traits with an entire continent of Latin American men.
However, machismo exists and the physical manifestations of it in Colombia are obvious. Gender roles are being played out in such a way as to reinforce the stereotype. To compound the issue, machismo becomes even more pronounced in a country at war, like Colombia currently is, and has been for half a century. The abuse of women becomes a weapon of war, with rape being used to shame other men and bring 'dishonour' upon them by 'soiling' their women.
The prevailing perception on Colombia is that sex crimes are a second-rate violation of human rights. Over the past few years pressure from womens' rights organisations has led to the investigation of 183 cases of sexual violence against women during the Colombian conflict. However, this number is very low when considered that of an estimated two million displaced women in Colombia, one in five has been forced to leave her home due to sexual violence - which could mean as many as 400,000 potential cases of sex crimes in the country.
The situation is not hopeless. There are countless aid organisations working within Colombia to try to raise the profile of womens' issues, and educational campaigns for teenage sexual health. But until Colombian society can take a step back and analyse itself, and until Colombian women teach their children appropriate behaviour and respect, the situation of women will remain the same. Colombia is fighting a civil war, a war on drugs, deeply ingrained corruption, widespread gang violence, a foreign debt of billions and bilions of dollars, and poverty and hunger that is increasing by the day. The country has been teetering on the brink for so long that once again, like everywhere, women have fallen by the wayside. Other things, it would seem, outrank half the population's rights in importance.
"Do you have children?" one of those students asks me. They all listen carefully for my reply. I have already bewildered them with stories of travel and foreign cultures that they could only dream of.
No, I say, I'm only twenty-three. I have to explain that in Australia that is very young to have a family, and many people don't start a family until their late twenties or early thirties. My group of students stares at me, wide-eyed. "Here we start at thirteen," a girl says, looking at me ruefully. "Almost all my friends have kids," adds another.
I am at a loss. I want to give them a pep talk about staying strong, finishing their education, being masters of their own destinies, but coming from a privileged white woman that would sound preposterous. What do I know? I have options. As a foreign woman in Colombia I have control. I am able to choose who I want and in a relationship I can lay down the law, because I have money - or at least, that's the perception. Is that something that many local girls can identify with?
The situation for foreign men is, of course, ideal. Visitors to Colombia find themselves with a bevvy of beautiful women throwing themselves at every gringo they see. A gringo boyfriend is a ticket out. The men are flattered, but they shouldn't be. When your opportunities and options are limited, love is a business - a profitable one.
Prostitution in Medellin is rife, and cheap. My boss is friends with many prostitutes, and so for his birthday we take him to his favourite strip joint. It is seedy in the extreme. The tables and chairs are metal, the lighting is obnoxious, and the music is pounding. It's a rainy Monday night so the place is almost empty. There is a raised stage with a circular bar running around it with three poles. I have never been to a strip club, and I'm curious. It's disappointing. You know that you're in a sub-par joint when the eighties wedding night home video porn being played across one wall is more interesting that the strippers themselves. Ron Jeremy is a disgusting man.
Every fifteen minutes or so a girl hits the stage, circling the loop, occasionally half-heartedly thrusting on the poles, and removing her clothes with no finesse or drawn-out tease. This is not quite the Vegas showgirl-style extravaganza that I was expecting. It's sad, and it's not sexy.
Everyone at our table except my boss and me says that they don't like places like this and never come here. They're too scared to look around in case someone catches them seeming interested. "This isn't my scene," they say. "Do you know how ordinary all the guys are who come here?" asks my boss. "They are totally average. All of them tell their families and friends that this isn't their scene, and they come here on a weekly basis."
After their 5 minutes, the girls come round to the tables naked and blank-faced to ask for money. Each man gives them 1000 or 2000 pesos. That roughly amounts to about 60c - $1.30. There might be ten men in the room tonight. Still, an average girl might make 50,000 in a night and in Colombia that is good money - the average wage here is 15,000 pesos, or $8. A day. If a customer takes a fancy to one of the girls they can go upstairs for a more thorough service. We see a tubby middle-aged man follow scantily-clad girl who can't be older than twenty through the private door and I cringe for her.
I want to get a good look at their faces, I want to hear their stories, but their empty eyes scare me. I am ashamed, and I look away. Back to eighties wedding night porn, which is safer.
"It's like this," my boss says. "Girls get paid one thousand pesos per drink that they convince the customers to buy. So it's in their interests to drink a lot. In order to sustain their drinking, they need to take drugs. They work all night, go home to their kids and then need tranquilisers to sleep. Six months of that and these beautiful young girls are strung out and wrung out. They work in places like this for a while but the more addicted they become the lower the standard of work becomes until they end up on the street somewhere."
I've seen the street hookers. In the middle of the day we took a stroll through the dirtier parts of central Medellin. The youngest ones might be thirteen or fourteen, faces painted like dolls. They chew gum and lean up against the side of buildings like cartoon prostitutes. The older ones are in their late sixties and have no time to be coy. "Hey baby, what do you need?" demand some, while others hang out of balconies with gravity assisting the display of their considerable breasts.
Like in all third world countries, the women in Colombia - especially those of the lower classes - have it tough. From an early age they are taught that their ability to get a man is what will keep them afloat. They grow up playing the coquette. I visited a high school in one of the city's poorest neighbourhoods to chat with the kids. The girls were 14 or 15 years old and looked 19 at least. One of them said to me, "the men here are dogs. I don't know a single one who's faithful." From childhood, they accept that men have the power. If a girl doesn't have sex with her boyfriend, he'll find someone else who will. To keep him she does, inevitably gets pregnant, and more often than not he leaves. That age-old anti-fairytale.
Without a completed education and mouths to feed, Colombian women become even more desperate to find a man. The country is reputed to have some of the best-looking women in the world, and wholeheartedly lives up to it. Walking down the street can be intimidating; the girls get made up, take care of themselves, and look askance at foreigners who dress scruffily. They don't understand why a woman wouldn't want to look her best at all times. They wear tight, brightly-coloured clothes like plumage, and strut down the street confident that all eyes are on them. They need them to be.
Plastic surgery here is a thriving industry, and relatively cheap, and in order to stay competitive, many women have procedures to augment their natural good looks; boob and butt implants are among the most popular elective surgeries. I studied Spanish at a private university in Medellín and saw first-hand evidence of girls being given boob jobs by their parents for their quinceañera (Latino girls come of age at fifteen). They need to look good to attract a mate, and they need to outplay, outwit and outlast their competition, Survivor-style.
Prostitution is not limited to the lower classes in Colombia. A study conducted by a university recently revealed that 2% of female students in the Caribbean city of Cartagena consider prostitution to support their studies. "The girls appeared to be predominantly beautiful women between the ages of 18 and 25, from upper-middle class backgrounds. They target wealthy men who will provide them with money required for luxuries such as clothes, cosmetic surgery, cars and apartments." However, the study asserted that the girls had been "spoiled but not loved" and were frequently victims of child abuse and neglect.
Although adultery in ultra-Catholic Colombia is considered a sin, in Colombian culture it has been socially accepted for men because of a belief in men's "inherently libidinous" nature. In June 2001 the Colombian government gave bigamy legal status because it was simply impossible to punish bigamous men. They are protected not only by society but by the women who share them, and the lawful acceptance of the practice serves only to promote further infidelity and negatively affect families, especially children, who look to their parents for models of behaviour. At home, women transmit social and cultural codes to their children, thus becoming 'gatekeepers' of Colombian patriarchy.
In 2007 the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt held the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. In their declaration, they denounced machismo as such: "Machismo reduces women to the state of sexual objects, condemns lesbians and promotes sexism, prostitution and trafficking of women and girls, and violence against women [and children]."
The Dictionary of Mexican Cultural Code Words defines machismo thusly: "... machismo meant the repudiation of all 'feminine' virtues such as unselfishness, kindness, frankness and truthfulness. It meant being willing to lie without compunction, to be suspicious, envious, jealous, malicious, vindictive, brutal and finally, to be willing to fight and kill without hesitation to protect one's manly image. Machismo meant that a man could not let anything detract from his image of himself as a man's man, regardless of the suffering it brought on himself and the women around him. ... The proof of every man's manliness was his ability to completely dominate his wife and children, to have sexual relations with any woman he wanted, to never let anyone question, deprecate or attempt to thwart his manhood, and never to reveal his true feelings to anyone lest they somehow take advantage of him."
Admittedly, this becomes a multidimensional concept covering multiple personality traits and behaviors. It is difficult to classify someone as 'macho' or not without administering a full battery of reliable and valid personality tests. Lacking an objective definition, the term becomes an irresponsible way of associating negative character traits with an entire continent of Latin American men.
However, machismo exists and the physical manifestations of it in Colombia are obvious. Gender roles are being played out in such a way as to reinforce the stereotype. To compound the issue, machismo becomes even more pronounced in a country at war, like Colombia currently is, and has been for half a century. The abuse of women becomes a weapon of war, with rape being used to shame other men and bring 'dishonour' upon them by 'soiling' their women.
The prevailing perception on Colombia is that sex crimes are a second-rate violation of human rights. Over the past few years pressure from womens' rights organisations has led to the investigation of 183 cases of sexual violence against women during the Colombian conflict. However, this number is very low when considered that of an estimated two million displaced women in Colombia, one in five has been forced to leave her home due to sexual violence - which could mean as many as 400,000 potential cases of sex crimes in the country.
The situation is not hopeless. There are countless aid organisations working within Colombia to try to raise the profile of womens' issues, and educational campaigns for teenage sexual health. But until Colombian society can take a step back and analyse itself, and until Colombian women teach their children appropriate behaviour and respect, the situation of women will remain the same. Colombia is fighting a civil war, a war on drugs, deeply ingrained corruption, widespread gang violence, a foreign debt of billions and bilions of dollars, and poverty and hunger that is increasing by the day. The country has been teetering on the brink for so long that once again, like everywhere, women have fallen by the wayside. Other things, it would seem, outrank half the population's rights in importance.
"Do you have children?" one of those students asks me. They all listen carefully for my reply. I have already bewildered them with stories of travel and foreign cultures that they could only dream of.
No, I say, I'm only twenty-three. I have to explain that in Australia that is very young to have a family, and many people don't start a family until their late twenties or early thirties. My group of students stares at me, wide-eyed. "Here we start at thirteen," a girl says, looking at me ruefully. "Almost all my friends have kids," adds another.
I am at a loss. I want to give them a pep talk about staying strong, finishing their education, being masters of their own destinies, but coming from a privileged white woman that would sound preposterous. What do I know? I have options. As a foreign woman in Colombia I have control. I am able to choose who I want and in a relationship I can lay down the law, because I have money - or at least, that's the perception. Is that something that many local girls can identify with?
The situation for foreign men is, of course, ideal. Visitors to Colombia find themselves with a bevvy of beautiful women throwing themselves at every gringo they see. A gringo boyfriend is a ticket out. The men are flattered, but they shouldn't be. When your opportunities and options are limited, love is a business - a profitable one.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Colombia's Zona Cafetera
Tuesday 06 October, 2009
It's ten in the morning and I am irate. I am in the midst of attempting to photocopy my entire passport in order to obtain a student visa. In Colombia, you can't photocopy your passport yourself. An officious old man takes my passport out of my hands and proceeds to copy my passport so that it is crammed up in the corner while 90% of the page remains blank. I ask him to adjust it and he gives me a withering look. He then gets confused and, holding my passport upside down, photocopies three pages twice while completely ignoring others. When I point this out, he implies that it's somehow my fault, before magnanimously saying that he will not charge me for the pages, but that rather they will be a "gift." How kind.
I have only been in Medellín for two days. I have just left my hostel, am meeting with my future boss and desperately trying to find somewhere to live for two months, and all the while I am being thwarted at every angle by bureaucrats and weirdos - the bossy photocopier, an incompetent Spanish coordinator at the university I hope to attend, a taxi driver who takes me across town, through a traffic jam that I have to pay for, before refusing to take me to the address I need. Why? I don't know, but he forces me out of the cab in the middle of roaring traffic. My bag falls into trash water and now it smells.
I call my boss and tell him I am on my way to his house, forty minutes late, with all my bags. "You're walking? Why didn't you get a cab?" he asks. Deep breaths. "Well you'll be okay... just look out for pickpockets."
The rest of the day goes better: I drop off my stuff, get shown an upstairs apartment in the same building I will be working in, that magically has a huge gorgeous room available, and for cheap. I tell them I'll take it and move in on Sunday, three days from now, repack a small bag in a frenzy and take off across the city to the bus terminal to get out of town for a few days and calm myself right down.
The station is quite a walk, and along a roaring highway, too. But it's okay, I reflect, as the semi-trailers thunder past - my life is in order, I have a doughnut and strawberries and a perfect sunny afternoon. Never underestimate the difference a blue sky can make, that's a lesson I've learned well. And I'm excited: on the road again! Another adventure awaits! I'm addicted to the feeling you get when you pack a bag and set off for the bus, not knowing who you'll meet or where you'll end up or what ridiculous series of events are bound to follow. In Latin America, that's always, and every day.
I get myself a bus ticket at at 4.30pm off we roar. The road out of Medellín is beautiful. The city is nestled in a valley and surrounded by hills, 1500m above sea level. To leave requires a winding drive up through the mountain roads, occasionally catching a glimpse of the beautiful reddish-brown city spread out behind us. The road climbs up and up and I settle back to watch a poorly-dubbed Fast and Furious. It is, if possible, even worse in Spanish than I imagine it to be in English.
A few hours later we are barreling down a mountain road past a military checkpoint complete with soldiers wielding rifles longer than their bodies, and a huge banner strung alongside the road that reads "your army is on the route." This is my first tangible sign that things in Colombia are rocky at best - in all the sunny blue skies and smiling faces of the city I somehow completely managed to forget that Colombia has been engaged in a bloody civil war for almost fifty years. The guerrillas aren't close to Medellín; Medellín is implicitly controlled by paramilitaries. No one really knows who they are or where they are, since they are a mercenary civilian force dedicated to battling the guerrillas, and have informally taken over judicial policing. If the police are too slow to capture someone or do something about it, the paramilitaries will take vigilante justice, which is often no justice at all. A large number of paramilitaries have officially "demobilised", but what that really means is that they have stopped fighting the FARC and instead are running the city's 300-plus gangs. But whatever the reason, it means that Medellín is at least safe from guerrilla attacks... if not from gang warfare.
The evening is descending, veiling everything in a soft blue light as the sun dips behind us. We pass a tree filled with hundreds of white birds that flutter up as we pass.
An hour or two later it is dark and I am treated to my first glimpse of a Love Hotel. These little numbers have flourished in Catholic-dominated Latin America, where people live with their families til marriage and beyond, and privacy is a fantasy. Most young people take to the streets to have a little sexytime, but those with money frequent the love hotels: where you pay by the hour, can choose your level of "service" and "accessories" and enjoy some discreet time alone. However, there's nothing discreet about this love hotel. It wants me to see it. In huge neon letters across the entire front of the building unfurls the script "EROS HOTEL" accompanied with a little cupid and a love heart.
After passing three bafflingly-named bars lined up along the highway ("Remembrances", "Memories", and "Voices of Memories"... wtf?) I finally arrive in Armenia at almost 11pm. Armenia is department capital of Colombia's prime coffee-producing area, the Zona Cafetera. However, don't let "department capital" fool you - it is a shithole. Not entirely the city's fault though; several earthquakes contributed to destroying it, and now what's left is not particularly attractive: squat, utilitarian buildings with zero charm and no sense of humour.
According to my Lonely Planet (a flawed companion at the best of times), the city centre is only 1.5km from the bus terminal. Deciding to be thrifty, I check out the taxis lined up out the front of the terminal and opt to walk. Forget that I have no idea where the city centre is; I just start walking down what looks like the main street, arbitrarily following a taxi headed in that direction and reasoning with myself that that must be where the centre is. My reasoning is flawed. I notice that there are no people around. No, wait - there are several drunk men tumbling in and out of two bars on the corner that resemble nothing so much as a wild west saloon. The music is loud and they are completely wasted. The buildings are shack-like lean-tos. I slow down.
"Neda," I think to myself, "Let's review for a second, shall we? You're female, foreign, and alone. You're walking down a random poorly-lit street late at night in a small town in Colombia, a country not known for being safe at the best of times. Plus, didn't you see the army earlier? Now tell me... do you think you're being smart?"
Answer: Not so much.
So I abruptly about-face, to the confusion of the drunks, and get a taxi from the terminal. Although he has a meter, the taxista and I agree on 3000 pesos for the trip. We set off in the complete opposite direction that I was walking down and I give a mental sigh of relief that my back-up brain is smarter than I am.
We drive down what seems like it should be the main street, but is entirely devoid of life. We are looking for the Hotel Casa Real. My driver confidently says that he knows where it is. We pull up in front of Cafe Real. "This is a cafe," I tell him. Not a hotel. He seems confused. Onwards we go, to my consternation passing Casa Real and stopping at Hotel Cafe Parque. Not only is it not my hotel, the name isn't even remotely similar. I point 20 metres back across the street. "It's over there," I say in resignation, "I'm just going to walk." The driver slams my door shut. "No no, señorita, it's not safe," he says, throwing the car into reverse and zooming the 20 metres back to my hotel, pulling up to a screeching halt. Christ. For some reason he has left the meter on, perhaps so I can see that although we agreed on 3000 the actual metered price would have been only 2000 pesos. Great. At this point, I am so relieved to be here that I don't even scream when a man with a shot gun yanks open my door and welcomes my frozen face to Hotel Casa Real.
The next morning after scouting out the city (hideous, boring) I jumped onto a local bus to a village an hour away. I am dropped off in Salento at a side street on the outskirts of the town where the paved footpath abruptly stops. I pick my way across the gravel towards a spectacular view of the coffee hills and arrive at a finca, or farmhouse, wreathed in orange flowers.
I head off for lunch and find a restaurant that looks like a construction site. There is no one there but the owner and his family, whom I have interrupted mid-lunch. However, they sit me down and whip out a feast of grilled trout, salad, and homemade iced tea. I am the only diner and I feel a bit awkward. Not as awkward as I feel when I try to pay: a man leading a horse shows up at the same time and negotiates with the waiter for a while, before leaving it with him. I think he just bought a horse.
I head back to the finca and sign myself up for a tour of the plantation. Me, some fellow tourists, Andrés the guide, two collies and a mutt called Bon Scott set off down a rocky clay road covered in horse shit, with an amazing view of the hills. At the plantation we learn all about the growing, picking and drying process. I have taken my first three photos of the trip when my camera battery dies. Of course. In my rush to leave Medellin I have not brought any chargers for my electronic gear. Oh, the woes of being a traveller in the modern age. This is not good.
I spend the afternoon sitting in the gutter on one side of the town's main square drinking beers with two hilarious English kids and watching the sun slowly pass across the face of Salento's church before dipping behind it, leaving us basking in the gloaming as old women eating ice creams and friendly stray dogs parade past. We make friends with a happy Colombian man who invites us back to his finca to play music and stargaze. We intend to go, but one thing leads to another and we find ourselves tipsily wandering the aisles of the one minimart looking for dinner ingredients. I am charmed by three kittens frolicking in the back of the mart, ducking in between cans taller than they are.
Back at home we eat and wander across the property, spotting the greenish glow of fireflies and watching purple bolts of lightning flicker soundlessly over the ridge.
Today we have woken up (relatively) early, ready for the highlight of everyone's visit to Salento - a hike through the Valle de Corcora, famous as the home of Colombia's national tree, the wax palm. The valley hike has come wildly recommended so we wander up the hill to the main square. There we are squeezed into jeeps that can really only hold six people comfortably... not that that has ever stopped any Latin American from cramming more people than safe. This jeep is no exception. We crawl into the open back with two narrow metal benches. Four people squeeze onto each bench, and then four men climb onto the back of the jeep and hold onto the roof. The groin of one, festively wrapped in bright blue spandex the better to enhance what nature gave him, is centimetres away from a German girl's face. She is appalled. We are amused, and hope for some sudden braking.
The road is thirty minutes of spine-bumping fun along a cliff-hugging unpaved road. At one point we are forced to stop due to the sedate wandering of a herd of cows. Two Colombian park rangers take this as an opportunity to hit on me. "Are all the girls in Australia so beautiful?" A tired line but I smile obligingly. "Come and rumba with us tonight! Every night is a fiesta here! Yeah!" They start salsa-ing their hips on the tiny bench. The other tourists do not approve.
We start to hike along the valley floor. The hills rise up high around us and we continually hop streams, from side to side as they zigzag across the path. There are fenced in fields on either side of us. In one, a vaquero corrals a not-particularly-intellige
The path winds up into the cloud forest, and we tread rickety metal bridges and hop streams via precariously-balanced rocks. The path gets steeper and steeper, and at about 2800m we finally - thankfully - reach the Acaime Natural Reserve. It is not so much a reserve as a private farm charging entry, we find.
We walked up a flower-lined path towards the farmhouse and who should greet us but the beagle puppy. This is somewhat embarrassing. He has beaten us to the top by quite a margin. Humph. We are greeted by a businesslike woman in her sixties who ushers us in and sits us down with steaming cups of coffee and bowls of hot chocolate. She has kindly offered me a slab of cheese to dip into my chocolate, a Colombian custom. I decline. My attention is drawn by the swarm of hummingbirds whirring around the feeders. Their little wings vibrate as they swoop and dive like miniature divebombers, zooming past us almost too fast to see.
This trek is totally longer than we thought. Partially revived, we head towards the peak. It is steep. I mean, steep. We stagger up, cursing ourselves, and I glimpse the almost hallucinatory sight of one señor Lange Lee riding a horse up an almost-vertical mountain, in a pink poncho, shouting, "the horse won't go down, only up!" He disappears over the ridge. We arrive at the top and congratulate ourselves by falling prone onto a wooden bench and watching the clouds rise up out of the valley against the mountains in front of us. Not a bad reward.
But the real reward is yet to come: the rest of the hike is downhill. And it just gets better and better as every turn reveals more and more breathtaking views of the palms. These spindly trees are unusual - palm trees don't usually grow in cloud forest above 1500m. They can reach up to sixty metres tall and sway with the wind, which can be an alarming sight to behold. We pass through a couple of cow gates and trot down the valley back to our overcrowded jeeps, tired but happy. Even better: back at the hostel is a real, true, hot shower. For the last three months I have been able to count the number of hot showers I have had one one hand so this is a treat and a half.
I take the gang to my favourite construction site restaurant (the only place I had eaten at and favourite by default) for some scrumptious trout. The sixteen year old waiter is fascinated by us and the evening ends with my promising to set him up with my sixteen year old sister, who I promise him is learning Spanish and would like him very much. I suggest that marriage might not be out of order, and a visa to Australia. I give him her real email address. I sincerely hope he gets in touch. This is what is known as "revenge." Revenge for a certain little sister pilfering much-loved items from my wardrobe in my absence.
The night is spent back on the square with the drunks and the strays. I squeeze into the phonebooth-sized bottle shop next to a very drunk old man who regally orders a shot of aguardiente, Colombia's fearsome aniseed spirit, and for a touch of class requests a chopped lime so he can squeeze it in. "Buenas noches y bienvenidos," he toasts me. That's how they roll in Salento.
It's ten in the morning and I am irate. I am in the midst of attempting to photocopy my entire passport in order to obtain a student visa. In Colombia, you can't photocopy your passport yourself. An officious old man takes my passport out of my hands and proceeds to copy my passport so that it is crammed up in the corner while 90% of the page remains blank. I ask him to adjust it and he gives me a withering look. He then gets confused and, holding my passport upside down, photocopies three pages twice while completely ignoring others. When I point this out, he implies that it's somehow my fault, before magnanimously saying that he will not charge me for the pages, but that rather they will be a "gift." How kind.
I have only been in Medellín for two days. I have just left my hostel, am meeting with my future boss and desperately trying to find somewhere to live for two months, and all the while I am being thwarted at every angle by bureaucrats and weirdos - the bossy photocopier, an incompetent Spanish coordinator at the university I hope to attend, a taxi driver who takes me across town, through a traffic jam that I have to pay for, before refusing to take me to the address I need. Why? I don't know, but he forces me out of the cab in the middle of roaring traffic. My bag falls into trash water and now it smells.
I call my boss and tell him I am on my way to his house, forty minutes late, with all my bags. "You're walking? Why didn't you get a cab?" he asks. Deep breaths. "Well you'll be okay... just look out for pickpockets."
The rest of the day goes better: I drop off my stuff, get shown an upstairs apartment in the same building I will be working in, that magically has a huge gorgeous room available, and for cheap. I tell them I'll take it and move in on Sunday, three days from now, repack a small bag in a frenzy and take off across the city to the bus terminal to get out of town for a few days and calm myself right down.
The station is quite a walk, and along a roaring highway, too. But it's okay, I reflect, as the semi-trailers thunder past - my life is in order, I have a doughnut and strawberries and a perfect sunny afternoon. Never underestimate the difference a blue sky can make, that's a lesson I've learned well. And I'm excited: on the road again! Another adventure awaits! I'm addicted to the feeling you get when you pack a bag and set off for the bus, not knowing who you'll meet or where you'll end up or what ridiculous series of events are bound to follow. In Latin America, that's always, and every day.
I get myself a bus ticket at at 4.30pm off we roar. The road out of Medellín is beautiful. The city is nestled in a valley and surrounded by hills, 1500m above sea level. To leave requires a winding drive up through the mountain roads, occasionally catching a glimpse of the beautiful reddish-brown city spread out behind us. The road climbs up and up and I settle back to watch a poorly-dubbed Fast and Furious. It is, if possible, even worse in Spanish than I imagine it to be in English.
A few hours later we are barreling down a mountain road past a military checkpoint complete with soldiers wielding rifles longer than their bodies, and a huge banner strung alongside the road that reads "your army is on the route." This is my first tangible sign that things in Colombia are rocky at best - in all the sunny blue skies and smiling faces of the city I somehow completely managed to forget that Colombia has been engaged in a bloody civil war for almost fifty years. The guerrillas aren't close to Medellín; Medellín is implicitly controlled by paramilitaries. No one really knows who they are or where they are, since they are a mercenary civilian force dedicated to battling the guerrillas, and have informally taken over judicial policing. If the police are too slow to capture someone or do something about it, the paramilitaries will take vigilante justice, which is often no justice at all. A large number of paramilitaries have officially "demobilised", but what that really means is that they have stopped fighting the FARC and instead are running the city's 300-plus gangs. But whatever the reason, it means that Medellín is at least safe from guerrilla attacks... if not from gang warfare.
The evening is descending, veiling everything in a soft blue light as the sun dips behind us. We pass a tree filled with hundreds of white birds that flutter up as we pass.
An hour or two later it is dark and I am treated to my first glimpse of a Love Hotel. These little numbers have flourished in Catholic-dominated Latin America, where people live with their families til marriage and beyond, and privacy is a fantasy. Most young people take to the streets to have a little sexytime, but those with money frequent the love hotels: where you pay by the hour, can choose your level of "service" and "accessories" and enjoy some discreet time alone. However, there's nothing discreet about this love hotel. It wants me to see it. In huge neon letters across the entire front of the building unfurls the script "EROS HOTEL" accompanied with a little cupid and a love heart.
After passing three bafflingly-named bars lined up along the highway ("Remembrances", "Memories", and "Voices of Memories"... wtf?) I finally arrive in Armenia at almost 11pm. Armenia is department capital of Colombia's prime coffee-producing area, the Zona Cafetera. However, don't let "department capital" fool you - it is a shithole. Not entirely the city's fault though; several earthquakes contributed to destroying it, and now what's left is not particularly attractive: squat, utilitarian buildings with zero charm and no sense of humour.
According to my Lonely Planet (a flawed companion at the best of times), the city centre is only 1.5km from the bus terminal. Deciding to be thrifty, I check out the taxis lined up out the front of the terminal and opt to walk. Forget that I have no idea where the city centre is; I just start walking down what looks like the main street, arbitrarily following a taxi headed in that direction and reasoning with myself that that must be where the centre is. My reasoning is flawed. I notice that there are no people around. No, wait - there are several drunk men tumbling in and out of two bars on the corner that resemble nothing so much as a wild west saloon. The music is loud and they are completely wasted. The buildings are shack-like lean-tos. I slow down.
"Neda," I think to myself, "Let's review for a second, shall we? You're female, foreign, and alone. You're walking down a random poorly-lit street late at night in a small town in Colombia, a country not known for being safe at the best of times. Plus, didn't you see the army earlier? Now tell me... do you think you're being smart?"
Answer: Not so much.
So I abruptly about-face, to the confusion of the drunks, and get a taxi from the terminal. Although he has a meter, the taxista and I agree on 3000 pesos for the trip. We set off in the complete opposite direction that I was walking down and I give a mental sigh of relief that my back-up brain is smarter than I am.
We drive down what seems like it should be the main street, but is entirely devoid of life. We are looking for the Hotel Casa Real. My driver confidently says that he knows where it is. We pull up in front of Cafe Real. "This is a cafe," I tell him. Not a hotel. He seems confused. Onwards we go, to my consternation passing Casa Real and stopping at Hotel Cafe Parque. Not only is it not my hotel, the name isn't even remotely similar. I point 20 metres back across the street. "It's over there," I say in resignation, "I'm just going to walk." The driver slams my door shut. "No no, señorita, it's not safe," he says, throwing the car into reverse and zooming the 20 metres back to my hotel, pulling up to a screeching halt. Christ. For some reason he has left the meter on, perhaps so I can see that although we agreed on 3000 the actual metered price would have been only 2000 pesos. Great. At this point, I am so relieved to be here that I don't even scream when a man with a shot gun yanks open my door and welcomes my frozen face to Hotel Casa Real.
* * * * *
The next morning after scouting out the city (hideous, boring) I jumped onto a local bus to a village an hour away. I am dropped off in Salento at a side street on the outskirts of the town where the paved footpath abruptly stops. I pick my way across the gravel towards a spectacular view of the coffee hills and arrive at a finca, or farmhouse, wreathed in orange flowers.
I head off for lunch and find a restaurant that looks like a construction site. There is no one there but the owner and his family, whom I have interrupted mid-lunch. However, they sit me down and whip out a feast of grilled trout, salad, and homemade iced tea. I am the only diner and I feel a bit awkward. Not as awkward as I feel when I try to pay: a man leading a horse shows up at the same time and negotiates with the waiter for a while, before leaving it with him. I think he just bought a horse.
I head back to the finca and sign myself up for a tour of the plantation. Me, some fellow tourists, Andrés the guide, two collies and a mutt called Bon Scott set off down a rocky clay road covered in horse shit, with an amazing view of the hills. At the plantation we learn all about the growing, picking and drying process. I have taken my first three photos of the trip when my camera battery dies. Of course. In my rush to leave Medellin I have not brought any chargers for my electronic gear. Oh, the woes of being a traveller in the modern age. This is not good.
I spend the afternoon sitting in the gutter on one side of the town's main square drinking beers with two hilarious English kids and watching the sun slowly pass across the face of Salento's church before dipping behind it, leaving us basking in the gloaming as old women eating ice creams and friendly stray dogs parade past. We make friends with a happy Colombian man who invites us back to his finca to play music and stargaze. We intend to go, but one thing leads to another and we find ourselves tipsily wandering the aisles of the one minimart looking for dinner ingredients. I am charmed by three kittens frolicking in the back of the mart, ducking in between cans taller than they are.
Back at home we eat and wander across the property, spotting the greenish glow of fireflies and watching purple bolts of lightning flicker soundlessly over the ridge.
* * * * *
Today we have woken up (relatively) early, ready for the highlight of everyone's visit to Salento - a hike through the Valle de Corcora, famous as the home of Colombia's national tree, the wax palm. The valley hike has come wildly recommended so we wander up the hill to the main square. There we are squeezed into jeeps that can really only hold six people comfortably... not that that has ever stopped any Latin American from cramming more people than safe. This jeep is no exception. We crawl into the open back with two narrow metal benches. Four people squeeze onto each bench, and then four men climb onto the back of the jeep and hold onto the roof. The groin of one, festively wrapped in bright blue spandex the better to enhance what nature gave him, is centimetres away from a German girl's face. She is appalled. We are amused, and hope for some sudden braking.
The road is thirty minutes of spine-bumping fun along a cliff-hugging unpaved road. At one point we are forced to stop due to the sedate wandering of a herd of cows. Two Colombian park rangers take this as an opportunity to hit on me. "Are all the girls in Australia so beautiful?" A tired line but I smile obligingly. "Come and rumba with us tonight! Every night is a fiesta here! Yeah!" They start salsa-ing their hips on the tiny bench. The other tourists do not approve.
We start to hike along the valley floor. The hills rise up high around us and we continually hop streams, from side to side as they zigzag across the path. There are fenced in fields on either side of us. In one, a vaquero corrals a not-particularly-intellige
The path winds up into the cloud forest, and we tread rickety metal bridges and hop streams via precariously-balanced rocks. The path gets steeper and steeper, and at about 2800m we finally - thankfully - reach the Acaime Natural Reserve. It is not so much a reserve as a private farm charging entry, we find.
We walked up a flower-lined path towards the farmhouse and who should greet us but the beagle puppy. This is somewhat embarrassing. He has beaten us to the top by quite a margin. Humph. We are greeted by a businesslike woman in her sixties who ushers us in and sits us down with steaming cups of coffee and bowls of hot chocolate. She has kindly offered me a slab of cheese to dip into my chocolate, a Colombian custom. I decline. My attention is drawn by the swarm of hummingbirds whirring around the feeders. Their little wings vibrate as they swoop and dive like miniature divebombers, zooming past us almost too fast to see.
This trek is totally longer than we thought. Partially revived, we head towards the peak. It is steep. I mean, steep. We stagger up, cursing ourselves, and I glimpse the almost hallucinatory sight of one señor Lange Lee riding a horse up an almost-vertical mountain, in a pink poncho, shouting, "the horse won't go down, only up!" He disappears over the ridge. We arrive at the top and congratulate ourselves by falling prone onto a wooden bench and watching the clouds rise up out of the valley against the mountains in front of us. Not a bad reward.
But the real reward is yet to come: the rest of the hike is downhill. And it just gets better and better as every turn reveals more and more breathtaking views of the palms. These spindly trees are unusual - palm trees don't usually grow in cloud forest above 1500m. They can reach up to sixty metres tall and sway with the wind, which can be an alarming sight to behold. We pass through a couple of cow gates and trot down the valley back to our overcrowded jeeps, tired but happy. Even better: back at the hostel is a real, true, hot shower. For the last three months I have been able to count the number of hot showers I have had one one hand so this is a treat and a half.
I take the gang to my favourite construction site restaurant (the only place I had eaten at and favourite by default) for some scrumptious trout. The sixteen year old waiter is fascinated by us and the evening ends with my promising to set him up with my sixteen year old sister, who I promise him is learning Spanish and would like him very much. I suggest that marriage might not be out of order, and a visa to Australia. I give him her real email address. I sincerely hope he gets in touch. This is what is known as "revenge." Revenge for a certain little sister pilfering much-loved items from my wardrobe in my absence.
The night is spent back on the square with the drunks and the strays. I squeeze into the phonebooth-sized bottle shop next to a very drunk old man who regally orders a shot of aguardiente, Colombia's fearsome aniseed spirit, and for a touch of class requests a chopped lime so he can squeeze it in. "Buenas noches y bienvenidos," he toasts me. That's how they roll in Salento.
Fun and Games with Colombia's Bureaucratic System
Saturday 05 September, 2009
Forget the guerrilla, narcotraficantes and paramilitarios - what's really going to kill me is Colombia's insiduous bureaucratic nightmare.
Even though I know that rants about foreign bureaucracy are only really interesting to oneself and other people who have experienced something similar (and usually, not even them - who wants to relive the horror?), I am going to inflict my tale of woe upon anyone foolish enough to read on.
8.20am: Arrive at university campus. My university is private, huge, shiny, and new. It shits all over UTS. It also has some tight security: there are checkpoints at every entrance and you need a swipe card to get in. I do not have a swipe card. Instead, I have to hand the security guard my passport so that he can verify my identity. I watch him rifle through the pages. He stops at my Russian visa. Which, as well as being a visa, has no photograph. He points at the visa number. "Is this your número de identificación?" I snatch the passport back and open it to the information page. In the front. I have to go through this all the time. No one seems to know that personal details are on the first page of a passport. Once a security official tried to write down the number of my French entry stamp as my ID number.
8.25am: The security guard uses two fingers to laboriously type out my name. He then takes five photographs of me with his webcam. The sun is directly behind my head for all of them. I am the faceless woman. On second thoughts, if I decide to hold up the uni, they won't know what I look like...
8.45am: Manage to extricate myself from security and arrive with some relief at the Language Centre. Am here to pick up some simple forms. Very simple - the coordinator, Fucking Juan Fernando as I call him (though sadly not to his face), told me they would take two minutes to prepare. Fucking Juan Fernando is a liar. Last week I came to the office only to be told that some other mysterious person who was conveniently not on campus would have to sign my forms. They would be ready tomorrow.
"Fucking Juan Fernando," I said to him, "I'm leaving town today. My full time job starts on Monday. This is my only chance to sort this out and you promised me it would only take a minute." He says it will be ready by 5pm. Seeing as the office I need to lodge the forms at closes at 5pm, I find this to be a very cruel compromise indeed.
I do what any sane person would do in the face of this crap - I take off to spend 4 days at a coffee plantation and leave the forms to Fucking Juan Fernando. I refuse to miss out on my country weekend getaway just because he is incompetent.
8.45am: FJF's secretary tells me he is not in until 9am. "He told me he starts at eight," I tell her. She shrugs and examines her nails.
8.46pm: Sit down outside to wait. As I sit a huge hole rips in the knee of my old faithful jeans. These jeans have been good companions on this trip. They've ridden horses, has salsa spilled on them, been shat on by monkeys, and soiled in all manner of sordid ways. Their untimely demise is a little sad.
9.15am: STILL no sign of FJF.
9.20am: Wonder if the hole in my jeans is god's way of commanding me to make a pilgrimage to Zara.
9.21am: Decide that it is. Hey, this selective religion thing is great!
9.25am: A bumbling English girl who is clearly in her first week of Spanish shyly approaches and asks if she can interview me for her homework. I am delighted to help. She asks questions such as, 'what is your name', 'where are you from', and my personal favourite, 'how are you... physically?'
9.35am: Fucking Juan Fernando finally shows up at work. He has the nerve to smile and make small talk. I oblige so that I can get my forms and get out of here. Did I mention that I have to start work in half an hour?
9.40am: FJF does not have my forms ready. Despite promising me that they would be ready by Friday (Today is the following Thursday). Despite my emailing to ask him to let me know if they won't be ready. My blood begins to boil.
9.45am: Fucking Juan Fernando spends far too long typing my name. He asks my address despite the fact that I emailed it to him as per his request last week. Then he tells me that the same mystery person needs to sign my forms and is nowhere to be found - will I be around this afternoon?
"NO!!" I explode. "I HAVE A JOB TO GO TO! THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE LAST WEEK! WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH YOU? DO YOU JUST LIKE WASTING MY TIME, IS THAT IT, HUH? HUH, FUCKING JUAN FERNANDO??"
What I actually say is, "I would really appreciate it if you could work this out this morning. I have a job."
Pussy.
9.55am: FJF asks me to wait "five little minutes" while the gets the signature. He is clearly expecting a pat on the back.
10.30am: In Colombia, "five little minutes" means, "however long it takes but we won't tell you the real estimate because we don't want you to go off somewhere to enjoy yourself."
FJF comes out beaming and hands me my forms. I snatch them out of his hands and thank him with a huge fake smile. At this point, I am thanking him for not making me wait any longer.
10.35am: Scurry off to the agency. Arrive. Adorable Veronica is there, ready to process my documents. Adorable Veronica looks like a Latina doll. Her Colombian accent is totally charming as well - here they speak in a musical lilt, occasionally dropping their s's. I like it but sometimes I find it hard to follow. In such cases I use my fallback policy: agree, smile, nod, hope they don't ask my opinion.
10.50am: Things get ugly. Veronica tells me I need to fill in forms, then go to a notary to notarize my letter authorizing her to broker my visa. Oh yeah, and I have to pay an astronomical amount of money for this process - 383,000 pesos. That's fine, I say smoothly, I have my credit card. "Oh no," says Adorable Veronica, "you have to pay in cash."
"Veronica," I say, as her adorable factor rapidly diminishes, "You told me that I could pay with credit. If I withdraw cash it will cost me $20. That's 40,000 pesos, Veronica."
"I know," she says, with a shrug.
I know what's happening here. This trap keeps getting laid for me, and I keep walking into it. Colombians are all very nice and friendly until you actually require them to do something, at which point they tear their smiley masks right off their own faces, M:i-2 style, and show you the true gaping horror that lies beneath.
11am: I'm sent off to get my letter notarized. I have never been to a notary before. Despite writing a series of articles about Colombian politicians being given notaries in exchange for their votes to reelect the president, I am still not entirely certain that I know what a notary is. Or what a notary's office even looks like; Veronica's instructions were a little vague (or maybe it was just the accent).
11.15am: I come across a building with NOTARIA written across it. Is this it? Inside is total chaos. Picture a Centrelink office at peak hour. Now, imagine it to be grubbier, make everyone a screeching Colombian and remove any and all sense of order. There are ten to fifteen people clustered around every desk, all bellowing. In fact, it's hard to know what's louder, their voices or their outfits. The girls working behind the desk all have huge hair, fake nails, diamante earrings and clashing spandex ensembles, all of which more than adequately fill in any gaps your imagination might leave regarding their expansive cleavage and fat rolls.
A sweet old man directs me to what is passing for the queue and I claim my position, elbowing in between two pushy older women who think that they can edge me out. Uh-uh. I know how to play this game.
11.20am: The notarizing process commences. My simple letter is stamped with three huge stamps, handwritten on by the notary with my ID details, and I am required to sign it twice. Then I have to fingerprint it. The office might be old-school but the technology certainly isn't - I have my index fingerprints scanned twice by a high-tech little gadget, I have to sign a plastic computerized square with a pretend pen no less than FIVE times, and am then photographed with their webcam. All just to get one measly piece of paper authenticated. The whole process is complete bullshit, of course.
An older señora next to me stares openly and suspiciously at my Australian passport. She is wearing more gold jewellery than I have seen all year. I smile brightly at her and she frowns at me, her powdery foundation caking into her wrinkles. Whatever... I'm done!
The hour and a half I set aside to complete paperwork that everyone assured me would be done in "two minutes" seems woefully inadequate. It took me three hours. Three hours, and all to avoid actually applying for my student visa myself at DAS, immigration office and bane of every traveller's existence. It took me three hours, and I cheated: I didn't even go to the immigration office myself. All this trouble was to enable an agent to apply for my visa on my behalf. I have been told that going to the immigration office is hell on earth and to just pay the agent and be done with it, I would be saving a lot of time, money, and my blood pressure.
Frankly, picturing it takes me to such a hideous black hole of bureaucratic horror that I'm scared if I think about it too much I might go completely isane.
Forget the guerrilla, narcotraficantes and paramilitarios - what's really going to kill me is Colombia's insiduous bureaucratic nightmare.
Even though I know that rants about foreign bureaucracy are only really interesting to oneself and other people who have experienced something similar (and usually, not even them - who wants to relive the horror?), I am going to inflict my tale of woe upon anyone foolish enough to read on.
8.20am: Arrive at university campus. My university is private, huge, shiny, and new. It shits all over UTS. It also has some tight security: there are checkpoints at every entrance and you need a swipe card to get in. I do not have a swipe card. Instead, I have to hand the security guard my passport so that he can verify my identity. I watch him rifle through the pages. He stops at my Russian visa. Which, as well as being a visa, has no photograph. He points at the visa number. "Is this your número de identificación?" I snatch the passport back and open it to the information page. In the front. I have to go through this all the time. No one seems to know that personal details are on the first page of a passport. Once a security official tried to write down the number of my French entry stamp as my ID number.
8.25am: The security guard uses two fingers to laboriously type out my name. He then takes five photographs of me with his webcam. The sun is directly behind my head for all of them. I am the faceless woman. On second thoughts, if I decide to hold up the uni, they won't know what I look like...
8.45am: Manage to extricate myself from security and arrive with some relief at the Language Centre. Am here to pick up some simple forms. Very simple - the coordinator, Fucking Juan Fernando as I call him (though sadly not to his face), told me they would take two minutes to prepare. Fucking Juan Fernando is a liar. Last week I came to the office only to be told that some other mysterious person who was conveniently not on campus would have to sign my forms. They would be ready tomorrow.
"Fucking Juan Fernando," I said to him, "I'm leaving town today. My full time job starts on Monday. This is my only chance to sort this out and you promised me it would only take a minute." He says it will be ready by 5pm. Seeing as the office I need to lodge the forms at closes at 5pm, I find this to be a very cruel compromise indeed.
I do what any sane person would do in the face of this crap - I take off to spend 4 days at a coffee plantation and leave the forms to Fucking Juan Fernando. I refuse to miss out on my country weekend getaway just because he is incompetent.
8.45am: FJF's secretary tells me he is not in until 9am. "He told me he starts at eight," I tell her. She shrugs and examines her nails.
8.46pm: Sit down outside to wait. As I sit a huge hole rips in the knee of my old faithful jeans. These jeans have been good companions on this trip. They've ridden horses, has salsa spilled on them, been shat on by monkeys, and soiled in all manner of sordid ways. Their untimely demise is a little sad.
9.15am: STILL no sign of FJF.
9.20am: Wonder if the hole in my jeans is god's way of commanding me to make a pilgrimage to Zara.
9.21am: Decide that it is. Hey, this selective religion thing is great!
9.25am: A bumbling English girl who is clearly in her first week of Spanish shyly approaches and asks if she can interview me for her homework. I am delighted to help. She asks questions such as, 'what is your name', 'where are you from', and my personal favourite, 'how are you... physically?'
9.35am: Fucking Juan Fernando finally shows up at work. He has the nerve to smile and make small talk. I oblige so that I can get my forms and get out of here. Did I mention that I have to start work in half an hour?
9.40am: FJF does not have my forms ready. Despite promising me that they would be ready by Friday (Today is the following Thursday). Despite my emailing to ask him to let me know if they won't be ready. My blood begins to boil.
9.45am: Fucking Juan Fernando spends far too long typing my name. He asks my address despite the fact that I emailed it to him as per his request last week. Then he tells me that the same mystery person needs to sign my forms and is nowhere to be found - will I be around this afternoon?
"NO!!" I explode. "I HAVE A JOB TO GO TO! THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE LAST WEEK! WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH YOU? DO YOU JUST LIKE WASTING MY TIME, IS THAT IT, HUH? HUH, FUCKING JUAN FERNANDO??"
What I actually say is, "I would really appreciate it if you could work this out this morning. I have a job."
Pussy.
9.55am: FJF asks me to wait "five little minutes" while the gets the signature. He is clearly expecting a pat on the back.
10.30am: In Colombia, "five little minutes" means, "however long it takes but we won't tell you the real estimate because we don't want you to go off somewhere to enjoy yourself."
FJF comes out beaming and hands me my forms. I snatch them out of his hands and thank him with a huge fake smile. At this point, I am thanking him for not making me wait any longer.
10.35am: Scurry off to the agency. Arrive. Adorable Veronica is there, ready to process my documents. Adorable Veronica looks like a Latina doll. Her Colombian accent is totally charming as well - here they speak in a musical lilt, occasionally dropping their s's. I like it but sometimes I find it hard to follow. In such cases I use my fallback policy: agree, smile, nod, hope they don't ask my opinion.
10.50am: Things get ugly. Veronica tells me I need to fill in forms, then go to a notary to notarize my letter authorizing her to broker my visa. Oh yeah, and I have to pay an astronomical amount of money for this process - 383,000 pesos. That's fine, I say smoothly, I have my credit card. "Oh no," says Adorable Veronica, "you have to pay in cash."
"Veronica," I say, as her adorable factor rapidly diminishes, "You told me that I could pay with credit. If I withdraw cash it will cost me $20. That's 40,000 pesos, Veronica."
"I know," she says, with a shrug.
I know what's happening here. This trap keeps getting laid for me, and I keep walking into it. Colombians are all very nice and friendly until you actually require them to do something, at which point they tear their smiley masks right off their own faces, M:i-2 style, and show you the true gaping horror that lies beneath.
11am: I'm sent off to get my letter notarized. I have never been to a notary before. Despite writing a series of articles about Colombian politicians being given notaries in exchange for their votes to reelect the president, I am still not entirely certain that I know what a notary is. Or what a notary's office even looks like; Veronica's instructions were a little vague (or maybe it was just the accent).
11.15am: I come across a building with NOTARIA written across it. Is this it? Inside is total chaos. Picture a Centrelink office at peak hour. Now, imagine it to be grubbier, make everyone a screeching Colombian and remove any and all sense of order. There are ten to fifteen people clustered around every desk, all bellowing. In fact, it's hard to know what's louder, their voices or their outfits. The girls working behind the desk all have huge hair, fake nails, diamante earrings and clashing spandex ensembles, all of which more than adequately fill in any gaps your imagination might leave regarding their expansive cleavage and fat rolls.
A sweet old man directs me to what is passing for the queue and I claim my position, elbowing in between two pushy older women who think that they can edge me out. Uh-uh. I know how to play this game.
11.20am: The notarizing process commences. My simple letter is stamped with three huge stamps, handwritten on by the notary with my ID details, and I am required to sign it twice. Then I have to fingerprint it. The office might be old-school but the technology certainly isn't - I have my index fingerprints scanned twice by a high-tech little gadget, I have to sign a plastic computerized square with a pretend pen no less than FIVE times, and am then photographed with their webcam. All just to get one measly piece of paper authenticated. The whole process is complete bullshit, of course.
An older señora next to me stares openly and suspiciously at my Australian passport. She is wearing more gold jewellery than I have seen all year. I smile brightly at her and she frowns at me, her powdery foundation caking into her wrinkles. Whatever... I'm done!
The hour and a half I set aside to complete paperwork that everyone assured me would be done in "two minutes" seems woefully inadequate. It took me three hours. Three hours, and all to avoid actually applying for my student visa myself at DAS, immigration office and bane of every traveller's existence. It took me three hours, and I cheated: I didn't even go to the immigration office myself. All this trouble was to enable an agent to apply for my visa on my behalf. I have been told that going to the immigration office is hell on earth and to just pay the agent and be done with it, I would be saving a lot of time, money, and my blood pressure.
Frankly, picturing it takes me to such a hideous black hole of bureaucratic horror that I'm scared if I think about it too much I might go completely isane.
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