The Magic of December

Carnaval Arts

One unusually beautiful day in November, it might have been the 5th or 13th, Mr. Smit told me it was finally December. “The air. This is December air. It won’t rain anymore.” That same afternoon, I walked into my class at Aliarse and Leonardo, a talkative, engaging student, elaborated on the December theory. “All of the people are happy in December. The light is different. The wind is strong and the sky is always deep, deep blue. Today, it feels like December.”

But it rained for most of the rest of November. The arroyos were “impressionable”, as Cecelia says, invading houses and carrying away people and belongings. Looking at any horizon at 11 am, grey clouds churned and expanded. If I wanted to go somewhere during the day (like work), I’d have to get across Calle 76 and 75 before the rain began. La Felicidad, La María...arroyos with pleasant names but fierce personalities. November was a special month, marked by weather. But it was nothing like the magical diciembre that everyone was getting so excited about.

People here have been talking about December since the soggy, humid depths of September. With every debilitating arroyo, December dreams are recounted: the quality of light changes, the wind eliminates stagnant air and mosquitos, the rain blows off to elsewhere, and, most importantly, everyone becomes happy. It’s funny how I hear these stories; the first person to say something so grand and sweeping sounded cute and idealistic. When the second person coincidentally made a similar observation I thought, “Oh, ok, another Barranquilla urban legend.” When I realized that everyone was talking about the magic of December, I couldn’t help but suspect some kind of commercial propaganda that has brainwashed the city into a favorable Christmas buying mood, something like what I saw on Friends’ and Lovers’ Day

December arrived on December 1st (haha). It rained that morning, a rain as strong and manic as usual, but with the additional quality of endurance: it down-poured for 3-hours. The city shut down. I realized how the media can manipulate a population when I rode a taxi back home from Transelca. On the radio, we listened to the local news:

“I’m reporting live from Barranquilla and it’s raining really hard here! Sandra, how is Soledad looking?”

“Well, Jorge, its raining in Soledad. There are some strong arroyos and it doesn’t look like it will stop soon.”

“Thanks, Sandra. Now, we have a taxi driver on the line. Driver, is it raining where you are?”

“Jorge, it certainly is raining cats and dogs over here in the north. The traffic is terrible!”

Etc. I started panicking, until I remembered that it rains every day and it only takes about 10 minutes for the surging currents to diminish into a trickle after the rain stops. I did worry, though, that my Aliarse students in Soledad wouldn’t show up, which would have been frustrating, since their final exam was that day. I thought my lunch date wouldn’t show up, since he was locked up in the University way to the north of my Calle 79. When it rains in Barranquilla, nothing is certain. But, around 11, the rain started to taper. The grey light started to clarify. Soon, scattered rain drops were falling through sunshine, and finally the little poofs of wind collaborated to gust away the remaining clouds. My lunch date arrived under a blue sky. The wind blew the door open for him, and we ate on the floor in a splotch of yellow light; warm light, not painful. He said, “This is December.”

Pradomar

It has been December ever since. Even though I made fun of it, I love Barranquilla’s December. The sky is blue, it never rains, and there is a strong, healthy breeze that keeps everything cool and dry. I am leaving the city in the middle of this glorious season, and I am sure I will leave with happy memories. On December 2nd, to celebrate the end of a year of teaching in Colombia, my roommates and I drank cheap champagne on the beach at Pradomar. Because of the rain, the ocean was clean(er). A bar nearby played reggae music. University students on break flirted with each other, and surfers tore up the measly little ripple waves. The sun was in full force, but the light didn’t hurt like it usually does. We ended the night in a posh bar: a lame meat market scene, but at least now I can justify preferring La Troja’s griminess.

The next day, Sandro brought me to his cumbia comparca in Barrio Bajo. The members discussed the responsibility of the Carnaval dancers, and everyone was included in the discussion: little girl dancers, called semillitas, matriarchs who have danced with the comparca their entire lives, young men who feel invigorated contributing to the maintenance of this beautiful aspect of Colombia’s cultural heritage...even me! I felt like I could have been sitting in a steel-band meeting. There are the elements of community that I crave in my life, and that I always find in Carnaval groups. People, when they weren’t talking, listened with smiles on their faces. Obviously, this isn’t something I’ve seen everywhere here, but it was notable to me, that a smile was where these people’s faces rested. I really felt so happy to be sitting there with these strangers. We spent the night with one of the leaders, first on the street and then at La Troja. I danced with everyone on my little corner in the street. Somebody bought me a red rose. I was also given potato chips and aguardiente (haha, I forget to mention the presents my students gave me! An Agatha Christy Novel in Spanish, a well loved plastic carnaval bracelet, a bocadillo with a bite taken out of it...) I think that, because it’s December, I’m starting to understand this city better. That sounds really quaint and ridiculous, but you have to believe me: December is the secret to Barranquila’s puzzle!

Cumbia

I'm Starting to Talk like Your Students

"Jack Nicholson" and the girl who always brings her drums everywhere. I actually hamg out with him a lot more that I like to admit!

My final semester at Aliarse is turning out to be pretty easy. I am teaching my fancy gerentes at Transelca, and a group at ITSA, a continuation of one of my last semesters’ classes. These are the more advanced students, and I suppose accordingly the curriculum has a sort of deconstructed quality to it. This is what I have to work with:

Module 6

Indirect questions

Question tag

Get used to/

accustomed to

be used to

Get + adjectives, get + prepositions get + past participle.

SECOND TERM

Phrasal verbs ( COME / GET / GO / PUT / TURN)

Linking words expressing:

Condition ( despite of / in spite of although / Thought )

Purpose: ( so that / in order that /

Cause and result: ( Because / because of / due to; for this reason, as a result, that’s why )

Adding, Emphasizing, Listing points: (also / Besides / finally / in addition / fist of all / what’s more / last but not least.)

Contrast : ( but / however, although / on the hand )

No books, no course packets, just this meager list. And the brilliant minds of my students and myself. My brilliant mind is bored by the prospect of a whole term of “get used to” and “....isn’t it?”, so I’m back to my old ways of inventing what I think we should learn. The problem is that I don’t usually know much about what I’m teaching until I start teaching it. Yesterday, I thought it might be useful for the students to learn phrases like “although”, “in case” and “as long as”. What a can of worms! I was calling them conjunctions, but I really don’t even know...and I forgot that in Spanish, you have to use the subjunctive with adverbial conjunctions. I think I just made a random vocabulary list, and tried to teach them as a grammar point. There was a little confusion. So much for ignoring the syllabus.

There are certain mistakes that all of the students, from my fanciest energy company gerente to my most timid electro-mechanics adolescent, make. Would, could, should and must get mixed up a lot, and my students always say things like, “It must be nice to go to the party tonight.” or “It should be scary to travel by yourself.” Then there are possessive determiners. It doesn’t matter is it’s my, her, their, our; to my student, everything is your. “Last night, I watched TV with my boyfriend at your house.” Or, “My mother is pregnant, and your stomach is getting really big!” I’m happy to be so involved in my student’s lives, but unfortunately, I hear this mistake so often that I’m starting to use it myself! Another one, which is kind of awkward in this unquestionably homophobic culture, is that the boys always say boyfriend instead of girlfriend. I don’t want to assume that the boy with perfectly painted eyebrows, a tight pink shirt and shining fingernails means girlfriend when he says, “Next year, I will marry my boyfriend.” I usually don’t correct them (the other boys will do that for me, between peals of hysteric laughter: “Yes, your boyfriend, marica, hahaha!!!!)...I’m trying to get them to consider the word “partner”, a word I myself have never really gotten comfortable with in my own life. But in this situation it could/should/must/would be useful.

A mysterious fire always elivens the bus ride home.

All in a Days Work

It’s 7:06 am. I’ve just finished watching the sun rise: at 5:45, the different blues and greys of the night sky (the madrugada sky, actually) define into clouds, and the Sierra Nevada mountains, 200 km to the east, are silhouetted by the sun rising beyond. My schedule here demands that I wake up at 5 am four days a week, and I feel well acquainted with the Barranquilla sunrise.

Today, as I was walking out of my building at 6:30, my phone rang. The caller ID informed me that Cecilia, my 7:00 student, was calling, but the voice that greeted me was definitely masculine. Does Cecilia have a manly morning voice? “Hola?” “Good morning, Eliza” “Good morning...” What language do I speak to this unknown voice, at this unfavorable hour? We shared a moment of silence and I started worrying that I was very late- sometimes I unaccountably lose 15 minutes somewhere in the morning. “Estoy en camino, Ceci! I’m running out of the door...” “Eliza, Ceci is still sleeping. She is very tired.” Aha. Ok. This must be the mysterious, bohemian hospital executive husband who turns up in so many of my student’s colorful anecdotes. Class canceled. I turned around to return to my apartment, and before my phone was in my bag, it rang again. “Eliza, I’m going to my farm at 10:00 this morning. Would you like to go with me?” Cecilia and her husband have a little coffee farm up in the cool Sierra Nevadas, a completely different world from this city, with rivers and waterfalls and fresh fresh air. Of course I would like to go, but not alone with Cecilia’s husband...I guess the sun rise today was just for the sake of it.

Anyway, my students in Soledad are waiting for me. Today we’re going to discuss gender roles in Brazil, and think of reasons why the percentage of woman heads-of-household is so much higher in the Northeast of that country. This half-quarter-trimester the gringas are running the show at ITSA, and I’ve decided to raise my standards. I made up my own test for the mid-term, and the students did very well! At least the ones who studied/cheated did. I’d like to give you an example of the test I was supposed to give these guys...the listening part is the most ridiculous. I didn’t listen to the recording, but judging from the questions, it’s impossible.

Choose True or False for the following statements:

a) Fay has a hundred glass horses.

b) Ron thinks elephants bring good luck.

c) Ron got tired after the dragon dancing rehearsals.

Keep in mind, this unit has nothing to do with Chinese culture or festivals from around the world. Barranquilla doesn’t have a Chinatown, and dragon dancing is not something people do here. Imagine if you were learning a language, and you listen to something of which you only understand 20% of the words. Would this topic make any sense? No! Poor students. On my test, there was no true or false, no multiple choice. They had to write and they couldn’t guess. It took the class 2 hours, but I gave them cookies afterwards. And they did well! I am really happy that I raised the stakes for them. They say that the class flies by...I am by no means a very good teacher: the class “flies by” because I have this impulse to entertain them, and so I act a little kooky. Still, I think that they’re learning something.

On another note, the bus ride to work has been depressing recently. The posture of the street people, the look in the addicts’ eyes, it’s so sad. I see so many spines, covered in dull, greyish skin, exposed as the body bends over a bag of trash. The other day, on a corner where the saddest prostitutes usually sit, I saw a teenage girl. She wasn’t sitting, maybe she was just there coincidentally, maybe the other women aren’t even prostitutes. But a man on the bus looked at her and said something to another man sitting ahead of him, punctuated by a salacious laugh. A tiny old woman with dried-apple skin got on, and no one but me got up to offer her a seat. I think that life is really hard here, so hard that small hardships go unnoticed sometimes. The impact of this on me, nothing more than a witness, is cumulative, and these lives I see from a bus are only now reaching me. I have no idea what can be done, though.

Am I turning into a bitter old ex-pat?

Still riding Motocarros

Blogging on long-term life just isn’t the same. The bus rides, the encounters, the animal in the street, the music and the heat just don’t llaman mi atención anymore. This is not to say that I am used to living here, or that I don’t experience things every day that shock or delight me. It’s just that shock, delight (along with bewilderment, frustration and occasionally joy) are just the emotions that I find myself grappling with on a regular basis. I usually can’t even remember the sources of my numerous emotional highs and lows. Thank goodness I’ve figured out how to do yoga at home. Without this, my heart might have hardened a little bit here with the many sudden attacks of anger that I go through when something doesn’t go my way.

This weekend is election weekend in Colombia. People are voting for their governors, their mayors, and all of the comities and assemblies that get behind them. Although the streets of Barranquilla don’t resemble the crime-nest that some stories of Colombia might conjure up in your mind, politics are still a sort of dicy game. For example, Soledad has way more voters than residents. Dead people vote in Soledad! I think some ridiculous percentage of the senators of the past couple of decades are serving time. And, people are still killed, kidnapped, and threatened during their run for office. The numbers of homicides, kidnappings, and attempts that I read for this year on the Caribbean coast alone alarmed me.

It still floods everytime it sprinkles

Perhaps for this reason, this weekend is a dry weekend. “Ley Seca” went into affect around the country at 6 pm this afternoon (and the grocery store was swamped with people purchasing their emergency alcohol rations). Last night, my roommates and I went out for a drink to get ready for the crackdown, and I had a frustrating experience where, after 10 months of living here, I ordered a vodka tonic and could not be understood. The words for vodka tonic in Spanish are “vodka” and “tonica”, so I really don’t know how I kept on ending up with Old Parr mixed in ginger ale and who knows what. It took three tries! And the worst thing is that the waiters here have to pay for their mistakes, so once I realized that I decided to forfit my free “happy hour drink” to pay for the misunderstanding. But I swear, people look at me and decide they won’t understand before I even open my mouth. Vodka. Tonica. Vodka con tonica. Vodka y tonica. Dos ingredientes. I don’t have a great accent, but how does that sound like “Old Parr”? It’s embarrassing for me sometimes!

Now I’m waiting for my friend who is a boy. He’s only about 2 hours later than he said he would be (which is actually very unusual for him). I hope that my readers can sense my “This is totally normal and I wouldn’t expect anything else” air...I am not writing these frustrations out of weariness. I still like living here, and learning how to deal with vexation is great. I’m writing this for you because it’s funny! Next time I’ll write something nice...but I guess I’ll have to admit to you that I might be acquiring some of that irritating ex-pat sardonicism. If that is the case, it’s a very good thing that I’m leaving in 2 months.

Cumbia in Palenque

My internet doesn’t work EVER!!!! It wouldn’t be so frustrating if we didn’t supposedly have internet, if we weren’t paying for it. But I’ve got this little “Movistar” stick that occasionally has the incredible ability to connect me to the grand great world and it doesn’t work anymore! So I am reduced to lugging my computer around town, to use it in the food court of the mall or perhaps the beautiful pool of Hotel del Prado.

Recently, this 5-star hotel was left electricty-less. They hadn't paid their bill in a year!

Or even all the way down to Soledad, surely an inadvisable idea given I pass through more than one of the poorer neighborhoods in the city and even a few Zonas de Tolerencia, where anything goes.

It’s really been a while since I’ve written anything here, hasn’t it? Well, we moved up into the privileged enclaves of northern Barranquilla. This city is nooked between the Western bank of the Magdalena river and the Carribbean Sea (but it doesn’t quite reach all the way to the ocean, and so to me it feels more like a river city than an ocean city, if it can be defined by any body of water at all). Soledad is the southern expansion of Barranquilla along the river. The combined cities are more or less laid out in a grid, with Calles going East/West and Carreras going North/South. We used to live on Calle 17, which hugs the river from a distance of about a kilometer, and is avoided by all of the “pupi” people I know here for its dangerous reputation. Now we live on Calle 79. There is nothing especially romantic about this street...it mimics the curvature of Calle 76, which is más o menos a river during any sort of rain activity.

Street in the sun, river in the rain.

From my house, I can walk to cupcake bakeries and patio furniture stores, as well as a pole dancing school. In short, much has changed (ah, “much” and “many”, one of the banes of my students’ existence!).

I’m so fascinated by this change! I can’t stop mulling over it. It’s not that I just discovered that disparities in money and opportunity exist, but maybe I feel like I experienced this disparity a teeny tiny bit more than I ever have and I want to get whatever I can out of that before time and my own astounding good fortune smooth out the memory. Living in a poor (but not nearly the poorest) neighborhood in Colombia was...I don’t want to say “a really interesting” or “eye-opening” or “hard” or “wonderful” experience. I was living as a rich person in a working-class neighborhood. I was living there for no reason other than chance, with the knowledge that I could leave whenever I wanted. I wasn’t miserable, but it was hard for me to be happy. Why? Did it have anything to do with the income of my neighbors, or was it the “shock” of the first six months living in a very foreign country? Was it that we were far away from the cultural activities going on in Barranquilla? Was it the aesthetics of a planned community in an industrial zone? Was it because we were three single ladies living in a neighborhood of huge families? The nosy neighbor? The language barrier? I tried to write about this in the Vida Idealista blog, but I couldn’t articulate what I wanted to say. I am happier here in this uptown neighborhood. Who wouldn’t be? There are trees, I can walk from place to place, we are nearer to our friends (why didn’t we make friends in our old neighborhood?). We also moved here with six months of life in the city behind us. We’re not bewildered or delighted by every little encounter anymore.

My on one of GGM's old type-writers!

The apartment in Soledad cost about US$200.00 a month. This new one is a little more than US$400. Because of Colombia’s strata system, our utilities have increased exponentially. But really, by USA standards, the price difference is negligible, around $300 a month to go from lower-working class to fancy art-dealers and restaurant owners. From an apartment complex built over a former slaughter-house and overlooking smoke-spewing factories, to a small building on a green block with an wonderful portero. I just think it’s interesting.

Watching FIFA football in Washington park

And now for the funny little anecdote! Hm, I don’t have one. I live here now, all the crazy things seem normal to me! But, for the next time, I want to tell you all about my new students, the managers of our sponser, Transelca! Yup, I am now giving private lessons to two fancy-shmancy bosses at one of Colombia’s big energy companies (on behalf of Fundación Alliarse, of course). Yesterday Cecilia tried to explain her tactics to becoming mayor of Barranquilla between Blackberry beeps and whistles. Her secretary brought me one water, one coffee and one zapote juice in milk. She would like to play tennis with me at the country club on Saturday. But don’t worry, I’m still with my beloved young-uns down in Soledad: I just finished a 2 week “vacacionál”: 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. It was actually fun!

Pretty graveyard in Minca

Next time, I’ll talk about teaching. Besos!

Tiny little update

Hello people!

It's been a while- a fun, hectic while. We've moved to Barranquilla, I haven't been sick and there is room for me to do yoga with more than one friend OR my new Samba Reggae workout video. Last night a cockroach stood sentry on a closet door, waving his antenai over my badly lit room. I had to try to kill it three times before Elena attacked it with the Raid, and still it's little legs were waving in the air.

Sonja and Josh were here to visit and I had a really great time with them. It's so nice for me that people I love get to see these little segments of my life. Josh and I went to a little mountain town in the Sierra Nevadas called Minca. Our hostel was up a slippery mud path, but the view was worth dirty shoes.

And, I've started writing posts for a website called La Vida Idealista: http://lavidaidealist.org/ That is why I haven't been around here for a while!

Sometimes, when I´m sitting on the Cooter, amazing thoughts and observations pop through my head!

I write them down in my little book.

¨The things people do in front of their houses:

• sweep
• paint each others nails
• chat
• watch other people
• talk through the gate
  
• chase each other with big sticks

Opportunistic dalmation at the sidewalk meat stand.

Pico in the making! C27B Kr 21B

Red eyes, blue eye shandow.
Wrong-way foot walks, but flaps about when the other leg drags it forward.
Yellow flower tree, no leaves.
Why do football jearseys all say UNICEF?
The Happy Birthday of B´quilla!
Old woman, red dress, toothpaste green house- She is holding onto her beauty.

Write email to Neuza about the thing I read.
Write to Sonja about nasal voices.

Mr. Titty.

The Cooter is fast. The Cooter is slow.

Meat, bakery, fumes.
Music with tac tac of clave.

She was missing out on things, in her solitude, and she knew it. Three years of solitary wandering, and she felt the missing in her life. And here she was living in Soledad, somewhere she didn´t want to stay, thus ensuring at least another year of detachment.

Ah, the green of Calle 57.

A group of 6 men apeaking sign language animatedly in front of tghe 72 market.

Traveling misinformed: interesting or dumb?

2 rocking chairs are still rocking, and the credits of a movie running on a TV. Seen through the front door in Soledad.

A line of blind people walking with hands on each others shoulders, sticks in the other hands...towards the nearby library?

Are poor people more interesting to look at through the window than rich? Why?

Mom!

The man who just sat down behind me smells like laurel leaves. He sings the Colombian salsa songs playing on the radio. The man sitting before was very very dark skinned and sang the champeta.

5 or 6 mangos thrown or dropped in the notch of a dark wet tree- so green they look blue.

They listen to the weirdset music here: ¨there´s a brown girl in the ring, la, lala, lala!¨ How do they chose it? I am constantly surprised. Last night from the football field bar, I heard what sounded like Israeli music.

Mom, Ti Chi, B´quilla, new feeling about here.

A clown got on the bus-a crazy champeta arcy darting bus. And the police came on to check cedulas but they didn´t check mine.

I always want to write about the ridiculous-inconvenient-strange things that come my way throughout the day. When life becomes ordinary (when ¨the ridiculous¨becomes ordinary), I write less. But life hasn´t become any less ridiculous. Really, I have just started enjoying the ridicuous things less, or am becoming them myself.¨

Facinating stuff.

Adios a Seis Meses de Soledad

I'll miss them!

A while ago I asked myself if I'd be able to sustain my traveler's fascination with a place over a longer period of time. My six months on the coast of Colombia has been the test, and I believe that "fascination" has won, although that is not clear from this blog, which I am ignoring inadvertently. I will tell you that, in the past two months, I have experienced long moments of frustration (mostly directed towards myself or my body), but I am feeling very happy and optimistic right now, as I sit on a matress in my new room overlooking a rustling mango tree and the mango-filled lot below.

Yes, we moved from Soledad. It feels a bit like a defeat, but it's a defeat I'll admit to: the pollution, the noise, the rocks being thrown into my room, my body's exhausted defense system are things that I, for one, had grown used to but am happy to be away from. We could have stayed there another 6 months. It would have been fine. But I'm glad we're not. The one thing I'll miss is the bar playing all of my now-favorite tunes. Where will I hear champeta and terapia music now? I guess now we might actually have to go to the bar, instead of passively enjoying it from afar. Or maybe we just need to get a radio.

On our last night sleeping in Soledad, we had to take a $15,000 peso taxi-ride through El Centro from La Troja (yup, still going there). It was 4:30 a.m., and El Centro was waking up from it's seedy night: the Saturday-morning market was materializing as wheel-barrows full of bloody, behooved meat and cilantro were rolled through difficult pot-holes in the dark. I don't think we'll ever have a reason to drive through Centro at 4:30 am again, so I guess I'll say "good-bye" to that image.

The next day I went to Centro to buy glass for my window. It's funny how things are organized here: there is a block of only toilet bowl shops, then a block of wooden furniture, on of porcelain tiles, and one for glass. How does a person chose which negocio to frequent? I just asked a guy selling candy on the sidewalk, and he of course told me I should go to the shop that we stood in front of. They were quite competent and economical, but I had to negotiate my own taxi fare home, because the glass-man couldn't get me a good price. The move itself was a sort of strange experience, in its simplicity. We haven't accumulated much, but we did need help disassembling our beds and that's how we announced our move to the neighbors: tactless and rude, I know. We haven't become close to, and sort of even tried to avoid a few of the neighbors (the one's who we ended up asking for help). Pero, aja. ¿Que puedes hacer? Then we called the taxi company and asked instead for a camioneta with some strong men. I rode in the open-bed truck with our stuff the 60 blocks to our new apartment, as the mattresses bent and threatened to knock motorciclistas off of their bikes. Exhilarating.

Moving Company

And now we are simply here, somewhere different. We walked to a supermarket yesterday, and just bought the few things we needed for breakfast. I never thought about what a luxury that is, but it really is wonderful to shop for food casually, without a meter-long list and enlisting the help of all of the young men to help us carry sloshy bag of water and spiny pineapples. We did buy 4-dozen eggs, though. There's no point in unlearning everything we've found out about life in Soledad. And tomorrow, back to school, where my adorable class of 25 boys will be sitting in the hallway waiting for me at 7:00 am.

The fate of English homework

More about them later :)

Welcome to Cooterville!

A week with my mother in Colombia: what a treat! We stuck to the coast, because I don’t know much about the rest of the country and I wanted to appear in control. Besides the 5-star hotels, jungle retreats and UNESCO world heritage sites that I dazzled my beloved mum with, I was most excited to introduce her to the Cooter.

Have I really omitted the Cooter from this blog all these months? That’s crazy, because the it's one of the defining features of my life here. Really, it’s just a bus. A little red bus that says “Cootransco” on its windshield. That’s why we named it the “Red Cooter”, which we affectionately shortened to “the Cooter” once we got to know the bus better. And I love riding this bus! I’m familiar enough now with the Cooter’s route that I can look out of the window and accurately calculate the time remaining in my trip by the graffiti, the level of road paved-ness or the ratio of bicitaxis to cars. In my neighborhood, the roads are less often paved and there are lots of bicitaxis and motocarros. These tell-tail traits are replaced by things like trees and street signs as the Cooter makes it’s way up North.

Sometimes the Cooter's in bad shape

On the Cooter ride my mother and I took last week we started in the North and headed downtown, since I was unable to imagine my mother sleeping here in Soledad, what with all of the Vallanato and the fact the boys outside keep on breaking my window with rocks. Instead, we slept at El Prado, a grand old hotel with black and white tiled floors and a huge courtyard shaded by palm trees around a pristine blue swimming pool with a deep end. In the morning, we waited on the corner of Calle 72 and Kra. 56 with the enormous suitcase I had forced my mother to bring (stuffed with luxurious cosmetics from the USA). Thank goodness it was Sunday morning (weekdays are bad: today I was hanging out of the door on my Cooter ride). The bus was practically empty, and all we had to do after clumsily hoisting the bag over the tiny little turnstile that five-year-olds can hardly fit through was relax for the hour-long, zig-zaggy ride that connects the North with my humble barrio at Costa Hermosa and Calle 18.

So, I’m really happy my mother got to see this part of my life, along with the other sights and sounds of mi vida costeña.

Almost as soon as my mom flew away from Cartagena, the rainy season started. Well, I suppose it might have begun here and there, but I didn’t notice until mom left. Actually, I did notice on a little side trip Marcela and I took to Mompox. Oh, there’s plenty to say about that little excursion, but here’s the shortish version: Mompox is a city on an island in the middle of two rivers: the Magdalena and the Cuaca. I don’t know the specific details of this little city’s fascinating history, but if the jeweler I bought some filigree earrings from was correct (and if I understood him), Mompox was founded as an important trade point by some Cartagenigans who wanted to get away from the heavy hand of the Spanish crown.

It’s possible that Mompox claims to be the first city in Colombia to declare independence from Spain...I might have misunderstood that part. Supposedly, Bolivar owes Mompox his glory. Anyway, way back when before the Spanish established themselves there, the Indians used an impressive system of canals to prevent flooding in the area. Since then, mining in the interior and the deterioration of this system have led to the inevitable: the areas around Mompox have been flooding, and last rainy season the waters actually started to threaten the UNESCO city itself. Now the new season is beginning and the area is still flooded from the last rains...uh-oh.

Marcela and I didn’t know any of this, and our ignorance was corrected on the day we left to go home: we learned that two of the two bridges out of town were out. One “bridge” had been out for a while and was actually just a lot of dirt piled in the river. Our bus had traversed it on the way in, and other than the tractor submerged in the surging river, everything seemed ok. But on the day we were leaving a truck had gotten stuck in the mud that should have been sinking into the water anyway, so we had to walk across. (Taxi #1 to Taxi #2). The other bridge is a real suspension bridge and part of it had just caved in, making it passable only by foot. (Taxi #2 to Taxi #3). We finally arrived at the dock where we caught a skinny little taxi boat to Magangué, and finally stepped onto our bus to Barranquilla.

Oh, but it wasn’t that easy: one hour from Barranquilla, the bus stopped. And stayed stopped. We were in good company: every car on the road had stopped, and just seemed to be sitting there. Why were we stopped? No one told us until we asked, and we had to ask quite a few people until we got the right answer. First we heard that the people in the community up ahead were stopping cars and demanding money. Then that they were protesting. And demanding money. Well, it turns out they were protesting- protesting the fact that they are still waiting for solutions from the government from last season’s floods as they watch next season’s clouds approach. And they weren’t asking for money, from us anyway. So, with the help of the serendipitous appearance of a friend’s father, we hopped on some motorcycle taxis, rode to the other side of the burning road blocks to the waiting rainbow-colored colectivos, and finally made it to Soledad.

And Soledad is not immune to flooding. It turns out Barranquilla has it’s arroyos: some streets are famous for being part-time rivers. For example, here’s what happened after a short but strong rain a few days ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4eDYNt9Nyw. Meanwhile, I was down in Soledad bracing our own little arroyo in Costa Hermosa. Once again, I find myself wading through knee-deep sewer water...I guess it’s time to start enjoying it!

Semana Santa

Re-adjusting to the smells, the sights and most of all the SOUNDS of being back in civilization, I think I'll try to jot down a little scetch of this past week before inertia and vallenato take over.

I just spent 4 nights and 5 days at Parque Tayrona. This little park, one of the highlights of the coast, is only a few hours east of Barranquilla, and you can catch a bus right by my house on the heaving, smoky, bus infested Simone Bolivar. It's practically door to door service. And such an incredible difference. Just two nights before we left Barranquilla, I was stuck on Simone Bolivar in the furthest corner of a Sobusa, the exhaust pipe expeling its deisel smoke back into the bus as the driver tried to inch around full-stop traffic by putting on the 4x4 (yeah right) and scaling mounds of road construction sand and gravel. It was slow scaling, and as my knees banged against the metal seat ahead of me, I watched a group of kids appear from behind another mound to take advantage of the sitting ducks in traffic, relieving some some guy in his car of his valuables.

So imagine, from this street, being dropped two hours later at the bottom of a trail leading straight into the jungle. I should be honest: it is a trail straight into the jungle, but this week was Semana Santa, one of Colombia's longest national holidays, and whoever can afford it heads to the coast. Tayrona wasn't exactly deserted, but we had the hour-long hike in pretty much to ourselves. The park has various campgrounds, and my friends and I stayed in a hut where 50 white hammoks swung side by side, each encased within its own mosquio net. It's a very romantic looking accomodation, and I've been told that hammoks are even designed to be used for...romance...but for me they are just a little uncomfortable. And cold. I survived, though, and so did my 49 roomates. The only noises I heard in the dead of night were from the people singing in the campground and the little boy next to me who woke up scared by a bug.

Surrounding us, tents and more tents. Full of families and couples and groups of couples. And these were Colombian campers, meaning that most tents, big and small, were stuffed with one or more inflatable mattress, the exact same mattress that we just bought at Éxito for all of you wonderful friends who will come to visit!

Outside of this beachside campground, past the juice bar and down a hill of green dune vines, even more marvellous scenery: first the trecherous Arreciefes beach, where 200 people have drowned and where we saw an alligator, bracing the waves with his mouth wide open. Then, through a pass full of fresh orange juice sellers and the most delicious arepas con pollo, another tiny golden beach, a bay with torquise water and course sand and peaceful lapping waves. Beyond that is La Picina, a bigger and equally tranquil place to swim and snorkle. And on and on. The beaches continue to get longer and more deserted the further you walk, as you might imagine. Supposedly, there's even a nude beach más alla.

As my friends were accosted by this one guy Jorge who is incredibly slick and fickle, I met more unsuitable men: well, there was the Tayrona cafetero, who showed up outside of my hammok every morning at 6:00 with a little radio playing...guess what...vallanato!....and whispering sweet words about organic coffee in my ear. He must have been charmed by my rolling out of my hamock with sleep in my eyes to ask for a cup, because by the fourth day he wanted to visit me in Barranquilla. After all, his son is 20 years old, all grown up, and he lost his mujer, so why not have a fling? I prefered the little guy I met in the shower line one day (4 showers for everyone to share), seven-year-old Alejandro. He was mesmerized by Elena and my conversation in English, and he had that adorable attitude that some kids get: whenever he thought of a question to ask me, he'd get really close, put his hands on his hips and one foot to the side and ask me very seriously. "What's you're name? Do you swim in the ocean or the swimming pool?" (the "swimming pool" being the bay). "You are very tall!" (and now he started jumping) "I can't even reach your head! Where's your mother? Where is your tent? You don't have a tent? Why not? Well, I know a store where you can buy one, just go to my house, take a little right, and there it is. You know, German is the easiest language to learn. I have a friend at school who speaks German, and his parents can't even speak Spanish, because Spanish is very difficult!" The whole line of women was listening to our very serious conversation, nodding and giggling. And I continued to bump into Alejandro throughout the weekend, once right outide of my hammock as I sipped my coffee. He ordered a few cocoa teas for his parents, then a hot chocolate for himself, and sat down on the ledge next to me. "How did you sleep, Eliza? Goodness, we seem to run into each other often!" What a cutie-pie!

Every day was at the beach, every night sitting around on the ground somewhere, laughing and joking with some new friends. Jorge was pesado for the others, but for me just ridiculous. They called him "Jorge de la selva", because he ate everything off of the trees: mangos and coconuts (one of which left him lying on a dirty mattress with an IV stuck in his arm in the little park clinic one morning). I brought carrots with me to eat, and one day shared them with the group for lunch. He didn't know where they came from, and we told him that they were beach carrots. There was a little weed sticking out of the sand where the waves reached, and when we told him it was the carrot stalk, he started digging, and practically dug to China before we couldn't hold in the laughter any more. Funny!

Junior es tu papá! Yoooo soy de Junior...!

I don't know if Junior, Barranquilla's football team, just won a game or what, but the bar is playing non-stop Junior fan songs at top volume, again and again. I'm missing the vallanato. Despite my current exasperation, I do want to be a Junior fan, but I haven't had time yet to really dedicate myself to the task. At I know all of the songs now!

Here's what else I know about the team: their colors are red and white, and maybe blue, too. My students always wear Junior gear, and sometimes one of my Friday guys, Freddy, comes in wearing a red and white top hat with Pippy Longstocking-red braids sticking out the bottom. Junior is such an institution that I'm often told by the other teachers that I have to end class early so the students can go watch the game at the fruit stand across the street.

Junior's mascot is a shark. Willy the shark. Like Willy the whale, but a shark.

They also have some unofficial mascots, owls who live in the stadium, and they bring good luck. However, a few months ago one of the owls flew onto the field during the game, and a player for the Panamanian team Junior was playing against kicked the owl and killed it. That was a pretty big deal! Poor little owl.

I don't know anything else about Junior, but I did read the other day about this football fan in another city who was brought in his coffin to a game a week after his death. Big fans here!

Parque de Músicos

Last night, in the taxi at 2:00 am, I saw something romantic in Barranquilla, something right out of a García Márquez digression. In fact, I noticed the “phenomenom” hours beforehand, but I didn’t recognize it as romantic until 2:00 am, when I asked the driver what was going on.

My roommate Elena and I were hoofing it to (where else) La Troja, where we were impatiently being waited for by some friends. Our lateness was on account of having stopped by a little wooden bar crammed in-between some cement on Calle 72. Just the fact that the bar is constructed from wood makes it notable, but this establishment is irresistable because it is painted yellow, blue and red. Flag colors, Caribbean colors. We ended up being courted there by a trio of gentlemen: a refined paisa from Medellín here on business, the old German speaking sailor-type who owns the bar, and a mess of a Barrinqillero whose eyes pointed different ways and who was uninteligable in any language.

When we finally removed ourselves from the company of these characters, we had to walk several blocks through prostitutes to reach La Troja. The prostitutes thinned out as the street lighting became more reliable, and they were replaced on Carrera 46 with old and young men wearing white and sombreros, sitting in plastic chairs lined up along the curb, as though they were waiting for a parade. Dozens, maybe hundreds of men, watching the street. Some of them were playing instruments, most were just watching, and they applauded our passing. Were we the parade they were waiting for?

No. Because four hours later, most of them were still there. I asked the driver why, and learned that here, in the Parque de Músicos, musicians come and wait for work on weekend nights. At the end of the night, it’s a cement plaza surrounded by prostitutes and full of musicians. Que romantico!

I am too musical for my own good

Phone booth, Barranquilla style

It’s so hard to write about interesting things like carnival! I’d rather describe for you the music that comes through my window all hours of the day, which is so exciting for me that I sometimes can’t sleep at night, even with my little green ear-plugs in. What happens is that the ear plugs block out the singer’s voice, and the horns, and the accordion, and the various percussion, and even the boys exclaiming over their mid-night football game outside my window. But they just don’t do the trick for the bass line. And a Vallenato bass line can really drive you crazy. As a complete package, the music is slow and romantic. But if you take all away but the bass, ooof...it’s a dotted quarter note and then 5 sixteenth notes, exploring a fifth. And then it jumps down or up, around the circle, and it drives me mad trying to figure out where it will go next (which, as you can see, is actually pretty predictable). I get used to it and start to fall asleep, and then suddenly may heart starts racing when the song changes. It’s very strange.

The music is coming from somewhere over there.

I am sleeping enough, though. Don’t worry.

Foam attack. Has it happened to me? Yes.

Carnival was really fun, I got caught up in it and it was everything I hoped it would be. Now it’s over, though, and I can’t rummage up that enthusiasm, so I don’t think that there’s any point in writing about carnival right now if I can’t remember how it felt. A little moment that I can bring myself to remember for you is one of the last nights, when we went to an event called Carnavalada to see a wonderful singer called Totó la Momposina. She is really worth hearing...it’s “River Music”, folkloric music from the coast and around the Magdalena River. After we listened to her, we headed down the block to where the Super Banda de Colomboy were playing up on a raised stage in the middle of the street. And I was delighted to see that instead of just standing in the street dancing, the crowd was marching around the stage! Around and around, like the Gazebo on fireworks night in OB. But with a lot more style, I must admit. Marimonda masks and the black and tan costeño hats. I didn’t know it, but if there’s one thing I like to do to accompany a night of music and Aguardiente, it’s dance/walk around and around a marching band. There was foam, there were new friends, and every once in a while the crowd would roar and we’d all switch directions.

Cake Walk!

Another musical discovery for me, perhaps not for you, my hip cool friends, was Bomba Estereo. The singer is from Santa Marta, the dude is from Bogotá, and they mix local music, Champeta and Cumbia, with electronic. They sounded reaaaly good at a free concert one night, for which we stood in a line in front of some underground hip-hop Barranquilleros and in back of a group of people from Detroit. Suddenly (I might have had something to do with it), we were all rapping “It was all a dream, I used to read Word Up magazine...!” I know all of the words (thanks to dorm-room dance parties with Merealere), and so did one of the Barranquilleros, who was slowly learning English through a careful study of Biggie lyrics. I like things like that. Phonetic rapping, there’s nothing like it. It reminds me of a group of boys in Cuba who knew the...sounds...of every Eminem song. Not the words, though, just the ways that vowels and consonants mix with the rhythm. After hearing them, my friend Sarah and I briefly thought about putting together a compilation of phonetic rap covers from around the world. It might not be so cool out of context, though...

Ahhh, the music just started up again. Whatever happens to me here, you can blame it on the Vallenato!

La Guacherrna, La Guacherrna, La Guacherrna Carnival!

On the way to the parade: In my student's taxi, haha.

The walls and light of this apartment are so white! I look in the tiny mirror above our hallway sink and all I can see are the wrinkles that I’m getting from smiling and laughing in the sunshine. Why are we punished for doing the best things in the life? (I know, I know. Wrinkles are beautiful.)

In general, though, I am aware that I am older than I’ve ever been before. Mostly in good ways. For example, suddenly, miraculously, without my even noticing, I seem to have dumped a big (annoying) part of my personality (being insecure about expressing who I am). And I can only attribute that to age. So, thanks age!

I’m also older in less exciting ways. For example, on Sunday morning my roomates and I found ourselves on some curb up in north Barranquilla, watching the sky casually brighten at 6...7...8 o’clock in the morning. We had spent the previous hours at a gay parade, then terrorizing and charming a man who wanted to rob us, then in the street outside of La Troja, where we met this group of “bohemian” Barranquillan university friends. I love this bar, La Troja. Every time we go there, the crowd and the mood shifts. It’s a matter of situational perspective: if you stand 4 feet to the right, you’ll meet the group of doctors. 4 feet to the left, and you’re stuck with the drunk old childhood buddies wearing map shirts. And if you stand where we stood the other night, you meet graphic designers and musicians who stepped out of the pages of an Urban Outfitter’s catalogue. In a city where every other torso is encased in neon purple spandex (and I’m talking about the men who aren't wearing map shirts), this is a refreshing change.

Dancing and chatting, we American/”Brazilian” girls finally relaxed and made some friends. The robber had us on our guard, so we introduced ourselves with all sorts of stories that fell away slowly throughout the night. All the same, I was stuck speaking “Portuguese” because everyone in the world loves Brazil! It’s a wonderful thing to share with strangers. Imagine, being madly, un-covetously in love with a person and meeting people all around the world who also madly love that person! This is how loving Brazil feels. Later into the night, I sat in a taxi with a glamourous little ballerina man, eating piña (abacaxi ;) ) and singing homages to Rio in Portugues. And I felt the wholeness of the universe...haha. Don’t take that too seriously.

Trees are just another place to hang out

But the point is, after that night turned into the next morning, I was the one to decline our new friends’ invitation to go to the beach. I wanted to sleep! I never would have done that when I was 23....

The marimonda!

Also, it’s more Carnival then ever here. We were in the Guacherrna parade and I dressed as La Negrita Puloy. Now, I know that sounds weird to all of you who are not here in Barranquilla. But La Negrita (La Gringita?) is a beloved traditional character here, and it’s totally normal for everyone to dress up as whomever they want. What is interesting to me are the origins of these characters. In Trinidad, I spent a lot of time learning about the stories behind everything, the Moko Jumbies who use their stilts to walk back to Africa, the Dame Lorraine mocking the master’s wife. And the craft that goes into it all...the Pierrot Grenade “speechifies” and the Midnight Robber “robber talks”, and jab jab climbs up poles. Everyone has their dances, their art, and it’s necessary to dedicate yourself to learning that character and then to give yourself into playing it. It’s all very, very involved. I don’t know much about the characters here, but from what I’ve gathered, the Negrita Puloy is based on a brand of Venezuelan detergent from the ‘70s. And that’s about all the story I can find. Woah! I think it’s safe to say that Carnival comparisons are interesting, but, at least in this case, I shouldn't rely on them for historical perspective. Barranquilla’s carnival is young (maybe a century younger than Trinidad’s?), and I think it evolves constantly. It also seems to be more of a willy-nilly carnival...do what you want, be-costume yourself as you wish...I am intrigued.

Moko-jumbies?

In the meantime, I will uncritically dress up in this way and dance through the streets. Please forgive me. I did not chose the costume.

And the negrita/gringita/albina puloy