A chance meeting

I got tired of waiting for my classmates at the gate and had just decided to go find some food, when...the orange triangle lunged towards me, but in a dignified way. It was Antanus Mockus, former mayor of Bogota, current presidential hopeful (but not so very hopeful...), philosopher, teacher and clown-lover. Maybe it was the enormous orange triangle hat on his head, but for whatever reason, instead of being petrified the way I was when I met Enrique Penalosa (the other former mayor I'm here to study), I was strangely calm. I introduced myself...oh wait! I forgot to introduce myself! Shoot, there were so many people rushing him away and another woman asking me to take a photo, etc etc etc...I forgot to introduce myself. But I did tell him about my project, say I was looking into civic culture and participation, and tell him I´d been at the Plaza de Bolivar a few weeks back (see orange triangle post). Then his bodyguard took our photo, he asked me to email him with any requests, and he was off. Meeting politicians can be a schizophrenic experience. Generally speaking, if you are a) not a VIP, b) they don`t need anything from you, and c) their time is limited, as it usually is, they tend to not talk to people in airports. This was not the case with Mockus, whatever else people might say about him. He had a warm and calming presence, and I could tell everyone else who interacted with him in that brief segment of time felt it. He won't most likely be the next president of Colombia, so I can't say I've met that figure. But he will continue to contribute to the dialogue on how we live, in cities and countries facing enormous, seemingly insurmountable dilemnas like poverty, sprawl, and environmental degradation, well into the future. Now that is hopeful.

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to read more about Mockus when he was mayor: Harvard Gazette