Thursday, June 15, 2006

Summer in the South

I've been home for not a week yet, and I miss Colombia, but at the same time I love the South so much. For all its blemishes and scars, for all the fact that I feel like a stranger here half of the time, it's still where I belong better than anywhere else.

I can't hardly explain it. Sometimes it's something about the way the air smells just won't let me go, and other times it's pushing me away like hell but I look down and my hands are gripped tight around the door still, refusing to let it get rid of me. It's a bug I can't get out of my system. It's sticky grits and sticky jam and it'll get you just plain stuck.

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In Birmingham with Josh, who had to work a trial here this week. Yesterday I hung out at the research library across the street from the Tutwiler Hotel and came across a book titled Away Down South, a History of Southern Identity by James Cobb. Cobb writes that U.S. identity has traditionally been equated with the ideals, conceits, and myths of the North, against the South and its attendant pathologies as a foil. In recent years, however, what many have termed the Southernization of the States has occured alongside a loss of what has traditionally considered Southern. Instead of the New South, we have the No South, whose chambers of commerce and leading citizens have dedicated their toils towards eradicating the slow southern ways and replacing them with a bland American sameness (Atlanta, anyone?) It's worth a read.

Birmingham feels more like the south than Atlanta does to me. People still greet each other on the street, and ask for directions and you'll be offered a ride. It's racial history is much starker than Atlanta's, though - I wonder what this means for city residents, whether it's been exorcised to a greater degree because it was so public, or whether the scars still burns in the sun.
Linn Park
Sculpture garden
Museum of Modern Art, Oscar Wells Memorial

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Tramites

Today was full of tramites (a special kind of Colombian errands that involve everything in triplicate and running across town to pay for things at banks, then running back), and tonight of goodbyes. But we almost have a new apartment, and we will always have wonderful friends all over the states and here in Colombia. Eli, the two Toms and I are the holdovers -- it's up to us to completely misinform, mislead and otherwise taint the new arrivals who will be here soon.

The whole gang in June's previously spotless living room.

Joy and her visiting friend Michael (we've counted 137 friends total who've visited Joy. The rest of us are hovering around 1).

Ben and Elizabeth, deep in conversation. Ben: "Did I ever tell you about the time a girl punched me in the face at a Mos Def concert, then yelled, 'Why are you white?' By the way, she was also white. Threw me into a real identity crisis."
Elizabeth: "That's nothing. Do you know what it's like to be tear gassed?"

Adriene and Mac tearing it up.

Me, Mac, and June.

Adriene and Joy, the public health expert and the dancer.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Aca y Alla

I almost don't know where to begin. As Eli said tonight, life progresses slowly, slowly, slowly, then wham! All of a sudden everything changes. You're walking along, maybe humming softly, when a piano falls on your head, and like a cartoon character, you pop back up and keep on going, only paying a bit more attention now to the windows of buildings above you. She's been through quite a lot lately, and today was the worst of it. Oddly, I'm grateful to have been here for it all, and we three roommates have grown much closer because of the experiences of the past week.

Between Friday at noon when we got the news and Saturday afternoon when the other Mauricio's mom met us at her door with fresh juice, 24 hours passed in which we packed up our lives into boxes and borrowed suitcases, and left our comfortable and much-loved apartment for the roving lifestyle of apartment hunters. Saturday morning after breakfast we rented a truck, left a note and money for the internet bill, tossed everything in the back, crammed into the cab, and finally took a breath.


The truck's owner was a gnome of a man, 80 if he was a day, who spoke with such a strange tongue even our native Spanish speaker could hardly understand him. His helper was a middle-aged beer bellied type, garrulous and friendly, with dreams of buying the 30-odd year old truck himself one day soon.

Karen, Cielo's little girl (she of the 4-yr-old reggaeton birthday party fame) insisted on helping us. She carried down three of my smaller bags, incredibly. I had to pull out all the stops to convince her to run back upstairs to give a final wave so that we could leave - she is at the age where you hate being left behind, and was adamantly clinging to my legs once the last load was on the truck. I stalled until she made it to the window, and her tiny hand was the last thing I saw as we pulled away.

After we dropped off the lighter items at Tom and Porter's place, where they had generously agreed to let us keep some things, I switched places with Mauro so he and Eli could sit in the front and give directions to our next destination. I was certain the assistant and I were going to fall out of the back of the truck on the highway - somehow when things go awry you get the feeling they could get much worse before they get better - but we all arrived intact. It didn't even rain, not a drop all day, nor the next.

Sunday woke up gorgeous and sunny. We walked for five hours, stopping for delicious croissants and coffees, getting sunburnt and content with our results - four pages of phone numbers. One thing at least - I know the city better than I did before all of this. Today was another long day of walking and considering. Tonight, a long night of talking and listening. I'm so happy with the family I've made here, much as I miss my family and my Home there. We all have a function within the small group, some role to perform or space to fill. It's quite beautiful, really. It's what I was trying to create in Atlanta. Now I wonder if I was just in the wrong place.

Lately, we speak in terms of "aca y alla," or "here and there." There is only one here and only one there, we all know which is which, and the comparisons are endless.

[To clarify what I meant by this, we tend to speak in terms of here and there in making the perhaps inevitable comparisons between life here in Colombia and life in the states. For whatever reason, people feel no need to clarify any further. Maybe it's also a measure of how centered this place feels. For all of its crazy and maddening problems, Bogota is a real place. Willie Colon's "Plastic City" may find some expression in parts of the North, but in general Bogota feels like Bogota and only like Bogota. There's no mistaking it, and I love that.]

Friday, June 02, 2006

Moving Day

Tonight at midnight, we are outta here. Our little meeting today with the landlady didn't go so well. After a 20 minute discourse on fraternal love, the spirit of the place, and how wonderful we all are (me in particular), we were told, in no uncertain terms, to "disoccupy" the apartment as soon as possible.

So today was spent (after the crying ended, I'm not saying who) packing up and looking for a new place.

This last night we're going to eat everything in the fridge, kvetch to our friends, and say goodbye to our lovely but humble first home in Bogota. There are too many chochkies on these walls anyway, too many roses, and too many people concerned with how we choose to live. We're not exactly living alternative lifestyles here, either, so it's hard to understand what happened.

The rug was swept out from under us today, so I decided not to confess the little spill we had on it at our last party. That sums it up for me.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Paipa was lovely. We washed the semester away in hot algae-green waters. We took three buses to get to the neighboring town of Nobsa, never waiting more than a minute. Buses are my life, once again, but this time in a much more organic sense. Rather than talking about them all the time (I know I don't have to tell you that!) I'm depending on them. Nobsa held out its treasures for us to hold; they were soft and we brought lots of them home. I tasted coco panela for the first time...ah, young love.

The Foro de Bogota today was partly excellent, partly just funny. I love that Bogota has its own version of the colorful gadflies that made the transit advocate's life so enjoyable in Atlanta. Today a woman stood up during the Q&A after each session to say, "Well, more than a question, I just want to say..." and then proceeded to expound on how it was all lies, lies, lies; and that pedestrian bridges were just a way to make money and were not worth the extra steps (she counted them) because everyone should just be able to cross the street in a "natural" way.

After the session on mobility, she followed the TransMilenio representative outside the auditorium, haranguing her all the way to the university gates. As the TM rep hailed a cab, she confided, somewhat apologetic, that she had to take a taxi today because she didn't have the car. Some things are the same all over the world...

But the local expert on participatory planning was quite good, crisp and realistic yet slightly sunny in his views, while the director of Ciudad Humana was passionate in his defense of pedestrian and public transportation users' rights to the city. Reminded me strongly of people I knew in Atlanta. (Ciudad Humana organizes night cycling rides through downtown Bogota -- I'm going to sign up!)

It's amazing to me how safe this city feels now. I walk down streets I once was unsure of, and now I feel so at home. For instance, Avenida Caracas in Chapinero: now instead of feeling insecure, I notice the crowd of mariachis, waiting for a Saturday night gig, and whimpering puppies in too small cages.

A final observation from today: at the forum I met someone who works with community education on environmental issues, or so I gathered from the literature I was given. But in our short and surprisingly congenial conversation, he told me in at least five different ways that he despises my government. Literally, in those words. For what it claims to represent but subverts, for its grip on power, for its disdain for human rights for the rest of the world, for its systematic repression of social movements around the globe. This was nothing new to me, nothing I hadn't thought before. What shocked me thinking of it later was how little his views affected me. I mentioned that many of us feel responsible for what has been done in our name, and struggle to stop it, but I didn't feel guilty, or really implicated the way I know some people do when confronted with this kind of anti-American feeling. I was completely unsurprised, utterly nonplussed. He hastened to add that he hadn't meant to offend me, and that he knows there are many wonderful Americans, and just as many awful Colombians, but I wasn't offended.

I was mostly just saddened that I feel so little identification with my country. When people ask where I'm from, it occurs to me first to say "Atlanta," then Georgia. If I get a blank look, I say, "estadounidense." (I heard a historian say someone he interviewed didn't like that term because it made him feel dense.)