Saturday 6 March 2010

Routine v Chaos

The most popular topic of conversation this week has been 'el paro'. Everyone has been talking about how it has affected them, how terrible it has been and how nearly all of them have not been able to get to work/school. I suspect in about half the cases it is a convenient excuse to be lazy, but upon getting off at Ricaurte (one of the largest Transmilenio stations) and finding that I could not move for the mile-long people-jam, I realised it wasn't a joke. To explain: in reality el paro was nothing more than an average transport strike, but for Bogota this meant disaster. The bus system here is a crazy network of privately run vehicles driven by conductors who subscribe to a near-suicidal braking philosophy and demonstrate the machinery mismanagement that has firmly rendered suspension a thing of the past. Personally, I love them. You sort of wave frantically or jump in front of one if you want a ride and then sit back and enjoy the sickeningly irregular journey that may or may not take you to your destination. This is partly because the signs that explain the buses destination (tacked on to the front windscreen) are loud and lurid Word Art creations that take a feat of eyesight to decipher. But whatever, character and all that.

Anyway, so the mayor’s office took too higher cut of the money made, so all the buses went on strike for three days. This basically meant everyone started using the more general state-run form of transport, the Transmilenio. This is a coach with its own lane, and station-type stops. It is functional but isn't brilliant or very specific in terms of destination. And then that sort of stopped working a bit as well.
The result of this was a lot of walking and expense, because taxis became the most efficient way to get around. Bogota is disorganised enough as it is without people not knowing where they are going. I don't really have a point to all this information except that it has been on everyone's minds, and it is also an indication of a very thin shawl of order loosely disguising the city's default chaos.

Despite all this, the week has still been constructive and interesting for me, I continued consolidating the more regular elements of work here and trying out some new ones.
As usual, I went to El Refugio on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. I think it is safe to say that the kids have well and truly got over the romance of learning English and have realised that a few lessons won't give them the extensive grasp they hoped for, nor will it turn them into Britney Spears just because they can pronounce 'womanizer'. The idea of actually putting effort into learning the verbs and word lists just isn't that appealing and I was met with whinging and apathy on Monday morning. However, ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes´ was (surprisingly) a success.
I expected this, and Timothy says just to go with resistance and work with it, which is a pretty valuable lesson to learn. By Thursday, the attitude had not improved much so I decided to join in with what they wanted to do, which was crafts in the form of making friendships bracelets. I was really interested to see that if I let them concentrate on something mundane and quiet, but enjoyable all the same, it focused their attention on something so that what I was saying became the thing that distracted them into paying attention to me, and on the whole they learnt more.

So that was teaching this week. On Tuesday afternoon, I went into the heart of the Santa Fe brothels (again) with some Refugio staff, Hannah and Timothy to watch Timothy do his 'condom and lubricant' spiel. This meant talking to a bunch of prostitutes in three separate brothels, teaching them to use the condom correctly, the importance of lubricant in their line of work, showing them pictures of the effects of diseases like syphilis and gonorrhea and finally, effectively teaching them how to masturbate their clients so the whole process takes less time and causes less physical danger and discomfort. It's a little weird seeing a contemporary of my father's being quite so explicit with a rubber penis, but you get used to it really quickly, and Timothy is not only very funny and sensitive, but brilliant at getting the information across quickly and clearly. Hannah says she's never seen anyone who is better at this type of workshop and the girls laugh and seem to trust him completely.

It was the second time I had been into these brothels, and I was surprised to feel more negative towards them as opposed to accustomed. The first one we went into had a catwalk upon which a woman was dancing. She looked bored, tired and bopped away with absolutely no sense of rhythm. She was incredibly unsexy; she felt it and it emanated from her. It was frustrating watching her, not just because I felt sorry for her, but just because money is so relentlessly generated from such bathos.
The second group of prostitutes seemed pretty high on the whole. They barely listened to Timothy, one was almost certainly about 15 and another walked into the room in a shift dress, little underwear and scratching herself. The following handshake was unappealing at best.
Inflamed mouths and raw noses; STD's, coke, glue and grappling for the higher price offered by a bareback trick.

The third lot seemed like really lovely girls. They were friendly alert and interested and it was great to see Timothy really get some information across, especially as they are the sort who could become community leaders themselves and teach others how to look after themselves, which is an important goal for Fenix.
¿Y que mas? Well, I had Aleja and Ani over on Thursday night and taught them how to make a Spanish Tortilla. This is fairly easy, very cheap and filling so I thought it would be good for them to learn. They are good fun but exhausting. They fire questions at me and interrupt each other. My role with these two is to be a sort of mentor/big sister type and both are saying that they would like their independence and to live alone. I'm a big advocate of this and so will be trying to work out an exact budget for Aleja in particular so that she can start to save the money from her job to pay her own rent instead of spending it all at once. They are sweet girls, but very different and the presence of a family upbringing is obviously lacking in the behaviour and attitude of one of them.

At the other end of the scale, I spent Friday in the Northern part of the city. One of my friends works in an accountancy firm as communications director and I shall be spending every Friday there from now on doing some translations, speaking to foreign clients and generally being useful wherever I can. It is just CV building really but the people at the office seem like good fun and I thought I would take the opportunity as internships are such a hassle to get hold of in the UK. It also gives me a chance to concentrate more on my written Spanish, which I will need to improve for my fourth year at Edinburgh. With regards to Fenix, making contacts within the bigger businesses may lead to valuable sponsorship so I will be keeping an eye on that.

Finally, I had an interesting social experience last night. I was in a club with some friends when a beautiful girl approached me and started chatting to me. She was charming, very complimentary and suggested in meet her in the bathroom in 10 minutes... I politely indicated that I was not inclined in that sense and that I was actually there with someone at the time, so it probably wouldn't go down too well. It just so happens that I did need the bathroom about half an hour later and she was standing in the queue when I got there. We chatted some more and I thought nothing of it, why would I? However, it did surprise me how much it bothered my friend. It must be a point of culture, but I regarded the whole thing as kind of amusing, whereas it seems Colombian women are regarded with the same level of competition as other Colombian men. Odd.
So that's this week’s news from Bog. I'll remember to write in shorter entries next time.

2 comments:

  1. Don't make it shorter. It's so interesting!

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  2. Keep these bogblogs rolling. They are immensely enjoyable and readable. Funny you should have thought immediately of your father when you were shadowing Timothy in the brothel! Suffice to say that you have entered territory that I would never have dreamed of as a young diplomat! Venturing on the buses is also something that was off-limits. I wonder the kids still nick manhole covers to sell and leave axle-breaking holes in the roads. Just carry on enjoying yourself and keep the folks back home entertained! Meanwhile enjoy your visit to the Amazon with Sarita. Dy x.

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