3 month's silence

Can it really be three months since I last posted? And three months since I finished the CELTA? Time flies like an arrow, and fruit flies like a banana.

I have a pending post about how collectivised Colombian society is. It seems it is not going to get posted, so to summarise: family is very important to Colombians, with cousins and aunts being as much a part of the family as brothers and sisters are to us. Friends also, with lifelong childhood friends being very common. We tend to obsess about our fragmented UK or US societies, seeing it as a bad thing and an unfortunate side-effect of our drive toward individualism. Close friend and family support networks do have some clear benefits in keeping society meshed together, but living here you realise the heavy price everyone pays in freedom of self-expression, action and thought. As DH said to me the other day: the UK may have lots of screwed up people, but we make some great music.

So that aside, what is new donde Pablo? Well, since I finished the CELTA I have had the idea that I would like to teach in a public (state-run) school, for ethical reasons. Despite strong opposition from all my Colombians friends who all went to 'nice' private colegios, and from the public school system itself, among whose chief characteristics do not rank flexibility and openness, I finally started teaching in my local public school this week. I do them two hours every morning, teaching 13- to 15-year-olds half a class at a time, ie in groups of 17. They aren't paying me (getting a work visa would have been more trouble than it would be worth) but this is freeing me from all responsibility to "be good" and allowing me to go into class with more confidence. I'm only at day two but so far I have enjoyed it hugely.

The week before last I worked in an orphanage for two days, with younger children, from 5 to 11, supposedly as an assistant to the English teacher there. But the children have lots of behavioural problems (to be expected given their likely backgrounds) and have a very low level of English. Although working with the kids was in some ways rewarding, I didn't feel I could offer them much having no child psychology training and not really being able to teach much English beyond colours and numbers. One girl was playing with plasticine and I asked her, "What are you making?" "A house," she replied. "A house for me because I am an abandoned girl and I don't have a house." Mainly those kids need hugs I think, not English lessons.

I have bought a plane-ticket for Europe, and return to Madrid on December 18. I really look forward to being home again. Originally my plan was to teach here in a school for a while to practise, improve my teaching skills, and find out if maybe teaching might be what I wanted to do "when I came home." I was thinking of doing a PGCE. But I have to say I'm almost wondering why teach in a UK school full of gits when there are lovely kids all around the world who need and deserve an education a lot more. But perhaps my kids are just being nice to me so far because I'm a novelty. Let's see how 'inspired' I am by December.

In other news, I have been writing the odd bit of software, going out partying with my housemates, meeting girls, going on dates. Facebook is a recent internet addiction, and a superb way to not forget birthdays. Photos go there now too: friend-request me if you are interested. A few trips out of the city, and a few party nights within the city.

Oh, and I accompanied my housemate on a trip to the border to change her visa. We ended up spending a day in Venezuela: much like Colombia, only with less comprehensible Spanish, and huge 70's American gas-guzzlers instead of cute little Korean imported cars -- petrol there is extremely cheap.

Oh, and, finally Apple brought out the iPod I always wanted: whole-face screen, wi-fi net browsing, and video. So, to make up for my more or less complete lack of geek- and/or consumerist- purchases in the last two years, I have charged a friend going to Miami with obtaining me one. Bets on how long before getting relieved of it by a knife-wielding street-gentleman.

More Chiva

A Chiva is a kind of wide, low-slung bus with no windows or doors. Here is one in Cartagena:


I'm not sure if they were ever used as actual transport. Presumably, given that the number of speakers heavily outweighs the number of doors, they have always and only ever been used as party buses.

The plan is you get a bunch of people together, get in the bus, and it drives around while you demonstrate publically that you are Having a Good Time. Very exhibitionist: very latino. And, it has to be said, quite a laugh. Especially with the liberal application of aguardiente.

On Saturday, to celebrate end-of-CELTA, the teachers and students clubbed together and got one. I was quite pleased, having been here for over a year and never been on the inside of one. Amusingly, the bus is high enough to allow Colombians and/or girls to dance, but to ensure that foreigners/men remain seated. This provided me with a perfect excuse to do what I would have done anyway -- namely, drink, while watching incredibly sober girls shake their booties, scream, sing along with Vallenato hits of 1950, and generally act in a way that it would take me a lot of aguardiente to get to. We drove around Bogota city centre generally pissing other people off and making sure we had been seen, then we drove up into the mountains above the city for dinner, and then to a club. The club was practically empty, but since we were a group of 40 we basically made our own club. The DJ who must have been pushing 50 even took requests, and played a bit of 'electronica' for the sake of those of us unused or unable to dance to his standard latin rhythms.

I thought I should record for Posterity that I had done a Chiva trip, because it's such a Colombian thing to do, and it took me such a long time to getting round to doing it. But really there's not much to say about it, except that I got quite drunk and had a nice time flirting with a bunch of lively teenagers (our ex-students). Plus ça change. Good post-breakup therapy, anyway.

On my own two feet

So here I am, emerging blinking into the sunlight after the long crawl through the tunnel of CELTA: yesterday was the Last Day! Unfortunately, we don't get even a provisional grade until two weeks hence, so I wasn't sure if I was celebrating or drowning my sorrows last night. But indications are that we've all done pretty well.

So the week before last, Panda decided that she wouldn't like me as a boyfriend any more. It was a little hard to take, as I suppose I thought it'd be forever, but she took her time to think about everything and was completely honest with me throughout the process, which although it can be a little painful, is ultimately the fairest way to be treated. We said our goodbyes last Saturday, tears were shed, and then the next day she was back to Duitama and a whole different life there. When people say, "why did you split up?", I tend to look at it as a combination of ingredients and catalyst. The raw ingredients for our break-up have been present from the start, in the form of cultural differences. Not simply between "Colombian" and "British", but between our specific brand of each. The catalyst was her going off to Duitama and having the time of her life with her five housemates and 25 other medical students from around the country, working hard, playing hard, meeting new people, and, I think, realising that she just basically couldn't be bothered with the struggle that our relationship was at times.

Of course despite my best intentions, I lost all my cool and begged her not to leave me, and after she'd gone I felt pretty devastated for the weekend. But the moral of this story is not really that. The thing that has impacted me most about this episode is how quickly I recovered. Saturday and Sunday night I couldn't face being alone in my flat so forced myself upon a CELTA colleague and his girlfriend, who are lovely, and had good evenings. Monday afternoon I decided to just go for a walk in the sun after working on my assignment all afternoon. Then I got in a bus and went downtown and ate chicken in a chicken place with plastic seats, surly waitresses, and football on the TV, and suddenly realised: it's actually ok! I had arrived in Colombia alone; I was now in Colombia alone. I had had a really interesting and challenging year in between, with an amazing girl, and that would always now be part of who I am.

Reflecting on this this week, I have concluded that my "year off" solo travel experience has indeed had the desired effect: to make me more happy and certain of who I am, so that I am not dependent on external things to define my happiness or my life.

I should say of course that during the course of that not very happy or pleasant weekend, I had the very good fortune to have many chats, online or via skype, with lots of good friends back in the UK and Europe who supported me enormously, and I am very grateful for that. Being dumped always sucks; being dumped miles from home had the potential to be extremely sucky indeed. And I'm sure that all that support and chats pointed me on the right path, to my speedy recovery. I am not undervaluing my friends, and the support they gave, by any means.

So now the question really is: what next? I have loved the CELTA. I have enjoyed teaching, and I have enjoyed teaching language, because I find it so fascinating anyway. And Colombians are widely seen as being generally one of the most rewarding nationalities to teach anywhere in the world. And oddly, despite my gripes about Bogota, since I started the CELTA and began to feel a part of the city, in having a daily routine, colleagues/friends/students etc, I feel a lot happier here. And it is certainly preferable to be in a city because you want to, rather than because you are waiting for someone, even if you love that someone very much (or perhaps particularly then.)

A friend of Panda's showed my CV to his school, a private bi-lingual girls school, and they coincidentally needed an IT teacher. They seemed quite interested. But after a first interview I decided not to continue with the applications procedure, for three reasons: one, IT is quite boring, especially at high-school level, and it's English that I've trained to and would like to teach. Two, I wasn't that happy philosophically with teaching a bunch of privileged rich girls to become privileged rich adults: how rewarding would that be? And three, they wanted to pay me only 2 million pesos (about 500 quid) a month, for a 35h working week in the school, plus preparation work at home. Oh, and the final kicker: I would have to sign a one-year contract. In the end, the game just wasn't worth the candle.

However, it seems that I'm not likely to get much more than that, salary-wise, in any teaching job. That's OK I suppose -- I'm here more for the craic than the cash, of course. But I think because of that I'm quite picky about the exact kind of job I want. Unfortunately, without any experience, finding that exact job might be difficult. Additionally, I have to find another apartment in the next 10 days. So there's plenty going on right now. But, importantly, I feel very positive about all the possibilities, and ready to start another chapter of my life!

Bogota in the Grauniad

From today's Guardian:

Bright lights of Bogota
http://www.guardianabroad.co.uk/tefl/article/298

Bus drivers

In London, the Routemasters have been phased out, because they are not cost-effective, requiring two men to operate them -- a driver to drive, and a conductor to collect the fare.

In Bogota, the busetas have just one driver. Sometimes his girlfriend, children, or friends ride in the cab with him, and help him by collecting the fair. But most often it is just the one man (and it always is a man), who, as well as navigating the vicious Bogota traffic, a considerable feat in itself, must look out for passengers standing on the sidewalk (bus stops aren't common: people just wait at the roadside and wave at the bus they want), operate the doors which are opened and closed with a jerry-rigged panel built from the electrical spare parts bin, collect the fare from passengers entering the bus, give change, and make as good time as he can, driving in whatever crazy way he can to shave minutes off his route time. At certain set checkpoints, men with clipboards in the street record the time the bus passes: presumably this information is used to decide whether the driver should keep his job or not.

Routemaster, London	Buseta, Bogota

As soon as you step into the bus, the driver accelerates away, throwing you against the seats as you click through the turnstile. Desperately clinging on to the handrails you scramble for some money for the driver. You poke it through a little hole in the plastic divider separating passengers from driver. When the driver has reached third gear, he takes his hand off the gearshift long enough to take your money. He glances at it then counts out the change with his right hand, all the while continuing desperate lane-changes and hard acceleration/braking so as to move ahead as quickly as possible.

So the upshot of all this is that although it is hardly a comfortable and stress-free experience, you can get on (and off) a bus wherever you want, which is extremely convenient, and you are sure to get to your destination as fast as humanly possible given the traffic conditions. I suppose the downside is you might have a crash. Most people don't like to sit in the rear row of seats, or even those by the window, presumably on the basis that that's where you're most likely to be crushed if another bus drives into your one. I don't know how common that is, although on Thursday I did see a bus that had driven into a tree outside my house.

Is that a Concept Checking Question you're asking?

Something the CELTA folks are very big on is asking questions to confirm instructions are understood, and to check concepts. So are they big on asking questions? What two things do they like to ask questions about?

The problem with this is that I have started doing it in real life :0. The classic correction by saying "Do we say, I do a mistake?" Great in the classroom: patronising as hell at the dinner table. Must stop doing it.

CELTA is Fun

Over breakfast with Panda yesterday, talking about my first week on the CELTA course, I realised how much happier I am than I was before I started. I think it's due to quite a number of different factors.

Firstly, just a simple thing: I have a somewhat fixed daily routine. It's amazing the calming effect that has, psychologically. Also, bcause I catch the bus every day to 'work' and back, I suddenly feel apart of the city in a way I hadn't done up until now.

A second thing is the course itself. It has been really interesting, and has stimulated me to think about all sorts of issues to do with teaching English, and teaching generally. I am interested in language structure anyway, and teaching is a fun way to study it. Also, like any managed learning environment, it has a calming effect, because you know that someone somewhere has a Plan for you, and though you might not see it all right now, you know that if you complete each small challenge as it is provided to you, you are on the path to success. In the horrible unmanaged mess that is Real Life I am plagued by doubts that anything is in fact the right thing to be doing at any moment. Perhaps religious people feel like they're on a kind of study course their whole life long, with God at the helm.

A third thing is that I am spending my days with people from my own culture (more or less). Quite a number of Brits, some Americans, a Kiwi, and a Swede. I can talk and not feel like an illiterate moron; I can make cultural references and have them be understood; things just flow naturally. Someone suggested going to the pub after school Friday before I even did.

A fourth thing is that our students have been great, and that has really given me a much more positive attitude to Bogotanos/Colombians. They love to learn, they love to join in, they love to contribute, they are eager to please, they don't "take advantage" because they have a trainee teacher. I want to give them all a hug! I remember feeling the same thing when I taught that one time in Cartagena (on the coast). I am definitely looking forward to teaching Colombians for real, wherever that might end up being.

And finally I think it is great to have a 'job' which is involving in many different ways: intellectually, emotionally, physically too (moving around a classroom instead of sitting at a computer.) Certainly getting up in front of students and teaching has given me a huge buzz. Beforehand, on both occasions, I have been really nervous, and have even thought, "why am I doing this? It's just not me! I'm a hiding-behind-a-computer sort of person, not a getting-up-in-front-of-people person!" But precisely because it is quite challenging for me it has given me a huge confidence boost. Teaching is a social activity, and success (at least on the social level) in the classroom has made me feel much more of a social person all round.

I realise that a lot of these things are the "beginners buzz" -- the highly rewarding quick-learning phase at the beginning of any new activity, combined with the kick of doing something that's all new. I'm sure that long-term teachers will tell me, "don't worry, you get pretty bored of it pretty fast." But for the time being I'm the happiest I've been since I came back to Colombia in January. And that's good enough for me :).

QotD

From George Monbiot, at monbiot.com yesterday:

"What the rich nations give with one finger they take back with both hands."

No ASBOs in Colombia

ASBOs -- Anti-social Behaviour Orders. As quintessentially British as tea, cricket, the village green, and, well... anti-social behaviour.

Despite the fact that statistics indicate that crime, especially armed crime, is more of a problem in Bogota than in Brighton, I have to say the experience on the ground is rather different.

Consider this common scenario in any town-centre in Britain: you are walking down the street minding your own business when you spot a group of young males coming the other way. You avoid their eyes, or cross the road because you don't want any trouble. Are they drunken yobs on their way home from a night on the lager looking for a fight? Are they a group of teenagers in tracksuits with nothing to do and a bad attitude? Or school-kids waiting for the bus, who will probably shout abuse, and might pull a knife on you to prove their machismo? Best, in any case, just to keep out the way.

I had just learned to live with and accept this as normal. But living now in a country and city with far bigger social problems, scandalously unequal wealth distribution, and a generally poorer populace, where I just do not see this happen, has made me realise that it is not inevitable, and that something must be seriously wrong with British culture for this to be the norm.

I get buses quite often here. They are always full of hard-working, normal people -- young and old, males and females, usually alone or in couples, going quietly about the business of their day (or night). They are not dominated and terrorised by groups of odious teens.

Often, someone will get into your bus and try to sell trinkets, sweets, prayers printed on paper as bookmarks -- anything, just to make an honest few pesos. Or they will get in and sing, do anything. They are very poor, often probably through no fault of their own, and may have been through horrific things (1.5 million Bogotanos are living in shanty towns, displaced by the violence -- that means they have probably lived first-hand through the kind of terrible violent acts that Britain's bored teens have only seen in their tasteless video games). What makes the biggest impression is that they are without exception respectful to all. They ask the bus driver if they can get in and make their pitch, and accept it if he refuses. They are unfailingly polite to the passengers, and simply provide the opportunity for one to help, without pressuring or being in any way anti-social.

Or people (often women) will turn to making and selling arepas on street corners, charging just a few hundred pesos (10p) for each one. Even though they know that business people or tourists have much more buying power, they are honest and charge the same price to everyone. Squeedgy kids clean windscreens at stop-lights. Old crippled men beg for change at street corners. But they never threaten, and they don't get anti-social if you say no -- despite the fact that they probably need that money to eat.

Of course, crime does happen. A couple of straggly-looking kids tried to rob us a while back, Henry got his cellphone taken off him in a bus by a man with a knife, and the British Embassy reports that people have been stabbed when refusing to cooperate with robbers. But when it does happen, you can't help but feel that at least it was in some way justified. With such a vast discrepancy in wealth, and very few safety-nets for the poor, it is not surprising that some out of desperation turn to crime. It is more remarkable that so many do not, and have a genuine work ethic and respect for their communities and fellow Colombians.

In Bogota, walking down a quiet street at night, you might want to be wary of people who look very poor. They almost certainly won't, but it is possible that they might rob you. You might get stabbed in the process. But at least they have a reason to be attacking you! They need the money more than you do. So much more, that its almost criminal for you to have it in the first place. In Bogota the sight of groups of young males is rarer, because the culture encourages people to go out in mixed groups anyway. But when it does happen, they are not yobs out for a fight, a stabbing, a proving of their masculinity.

In Britain, no-one is really genuinely poor to the same degree, and even those without money have access to a good infrastructure. What gives those yobs the right to go around terrorising people with their anti-social behaviour?

Whenever someone mentions Colombia's "culture of violence" I am reminded of Britain's "culture of yobbishness".

I'm comin home in a f**kin ambulance!

Panda has been offered an elective in Guy's Hospital by King's College London in March and April of next year. Means we'll be in the UK for my 30th birthday, which I'm quite chuffed about.

Translation

A friend has sent me her thesis, written in English, and asked if I wouldn't mind taking a look and pointing out any grammar problems. Here's a representative sentence:

Other studies have shown that histrionicotoxins block the ionic conductance, accelerate the inactivation of the nicotinic cholinoceptor (see Daly et al., 1993), diminish the ionic conductance on the voltage-gated sodium channels (see Daly et al., 1993) and inhibit the voltage-gated potassium channel (see Daly et al., 1993).

Unfortunately, I am having trouble translating this into any English, let alone good English. It's a bit of a blow to the ego to have to go to her and tell her I'm too stupid to help her out.

Move to Britain? They're all drunks and psychos

"Move to Britain? They're all drunks and psychos."

Sangre! Sangre! (La becerrada de Cami)

On Saturday I went to a bullfight. I have been to Spain on several occasions, and the idea of going to a bullfight has always arisen, but I've never actually gone through with it. I mean, watching an animal being tortured and then killed as entertainment... I've never quite seen the attraction.

But Saturday was not a strict bullfight as such, but a "becerrada". A becerro is a young bull, much smaller than the fully-grown model, I was told. And it is not actually killed, the sword is plastic, it is just a bit of fun. OK, I thought. Doesn't sound too bad. Also, Cami (Panda's brother) was to partake: it was one of the highlights of his year, apparently. It seemed like good form to go and support him.

It is organised by Cami's school. Each year, they rent a few bulls and a mini bullring at the polo club (you can see what kind of school it is), and the boys in the upper few years (15-18) get to partake. When we arrived, there were quite a lot of scruffy-posh boys in white shirts and jeans, with coloured cummerbunds, preparing for the fight by drinking plenty of aguardiente. I didn't blame them. I asked someone how many times they had practised before the event. "Oh, a few times during the year." Not many, I thought. "Yes, they charge a wheelbarrow with plastic horns on it towards each other." Hang on: so this is the first time in front of an actual bull? "Oh yes, for lots of them, hahaha!" Gulp.

We had some food and then made our way to a ring-side spot where we basked in the sun for a bit. The atmosphere built, a band played, and finally the boys swarmed into the ring and sung the national anthem in a deep-voiced show of testosterone. They cleared the ring, and the first team (blue cummerbunds) came into the ring and hid behind sort of wooden fences around the ring. The bull was released, and came running in, and then stood wagging its tail and looking around enthusiastically. Eventually a boy broke cover, and, curtain aloft, ran into the ring. He waved it a bit, and the bull charged, running right through the curtain. Applause! The bull's horns were rounded-off at the ends, but given the force of the head-butt I imagine it would be comparable to having a fence-post stabbed into your throat or thorax, rather than a knife. Some comfort.

The boy fell in the sand. The crowd roared. The sun beat down. The boy made a hasty exit back to his wooden fence, and another boy, in a daze of aguardiente, teenage male pride, and some vestige of the hunter's instinct, came forward. "Sangre! Sangre!" the crowd began to chant in glee. "Blood! Blood!" It was hard to know if the boys were scared. Their fear blurred right into aggressiveness. The bull charged back and forth. The boy didn't really look like he knew what he was doing, but held out bravely for a few charges.

By this time my own adrenaline level was running wild. I thought the spectacle pretty disgusting, a barbaric celebration of the basest of human instincts, that kind of maleness which leads our species into wars and plenty of other atrocities. The game seemed a sort of male right of passage comparable to teenagers playing chicken by driving their cars at each other until one of them steers away, losing face. I have to admit, Colombia's bloody and violent history came to mind too: that made me feel even less comfortable in a crowd happily celebrating fear-induced male aggression. When the crowd cheered and clapped, I found myself shouting "Barbarians!" The parents in front of me half-turned in distaste. Who was this upstart, with anything other than pure admiration for their brave young hooligans? How dare he!

Now another boy was in the ring. He was holding some kind of tinsel-covered sticks, in the colours of the flag of Colombia. "Is he going to stick those in the bull??" I asked Panda. "Yes, but they don't really hurt, don't worry!" she said. The boy ran toward the animal, and leapt over its back, stabbing down with all his might into the bullock's neck and back, ramming the spikes home. The animal started, and became more agitated. One fell loose, but the other stayed in place, with the bull twisting around trying to work out what was ailing it. In any case, it had had the desired effect. The bull was now angry.

Another boy came out with similar sticks, longer this time. Another cheer, another roar of approval, more shouts of "sangre! sangre!", and another pair of sticks stabbed into the animal. The boy looked very proud of his vicious achievement, and the crowd supported him 100%. As they applauded and cheered his bravery, I couldn't stop myself, and found myself shouting, "Yeah, well done, you tortured a defenseless animal!" The parents in front really didn't like that. Panda turned to me angrily: "Do you want to ruin the whole thing?!", she asked. "No," I said. "I want to leave". And I did. I couldn't bear to watch any more.

I felt sickened by the whole spectacle. More by the celebration of violence and machismo than by the actual damage to the animal, I think, but a bit of that too. I don't really think animals have souls, I don't mind if animals get hurt, but I think to celebrate that hurt is the height of barbarity. And watching it live struck me deeply. I sat in the club-house and drank a beer, waiting for my heart rate to return to normal. I thought that I probably should have tanked up before the thing: many unpleasant things are easier to bear with a bit of alcohol in the blood stream.

I felt bad that I had made such a scene. But I felt worse that the cream of Colombia's elite feel it appropriate to celebrate the most aggressive instincts of their young men. I didn't talk much in the car on the way home.

Cumpleando anos

http://picasaweb.google.com/pmg102/29thBirthday

Beautiful poverty

If you're like me, you will have at some point seen pictures of rural pre-Industrial Revolution Britain, the canonical shepherd or goatherd with flock, with perhaps rambling simple dwelling in the background, and yearned for a simpler yesteryear consisting of sun, grass, and hearth, and notably not containing rush-hour traffic, overflowing email inboxes, and shopping centres on a Saturday.

Last weekend, we took a trip into the Colombian countryside. Soon after leaving the city limits of Bogota, the road took us through "campesino country". Campesinos are the peasants of Colombia, eking out a marginal living from the land by cultivating basic crops on a scrap of land, and perhaps rearing a cow for milk. Their life is no doubt picturesque. I tried and failed many times to capture on camera their picturesque poverty -- the clothes laid out neatly on the grass to dry, the self-built tumbledown dwellings, the donkey with a load of sticks weighing heavy across its back.

Unlike Colombia's urban poor, living in shanty towns hastily assembled wherever the displaced population arrive (1.5 million in Bogota's southern suburbs alone), the rural poor are lucky enough to be photogenic. Not displaced by violence, they live in steady communities, and can count on neighbours and family for support. Their lives are a small distance above gruelling grinding horror and poverty. They have a family, a place to call home, possessions, a tradition. Children learn at grandpa's knee the ways of the land.

But in our eagerness to appreciate the beauty of the simple country-dweller, we are at great risk of seeing the positive in an essentially negative situation. What hope does an intelligent, diligent, bright young woman born into such a situation have of becoming the next president of Colombia? Or a lawyer, doctor or member of Congress? Essentially none. When we look at developed countries, we find that the number of people who choose, when given a range of opportunities, to live such a nominally bucolic idyll of a life, is effectively zero. We feel that it is right that some people should be living such a simple life, so close to the land and part of a close-knit community -- whilst we ourselves nonetheless choose to work in the City, earn a six-figure sum, and live comfortably in the Home Counties with two pedigree dogs and a plasma TV.

The peasant has disappeared from British society, thanks to the Industrial Revolution. After the fact, we often bemoan the Industrial Revolution, the ensuing urbanisation, and loss of innocence and closeness to Nature. Yet the raw truth is that given the choice, nearly everyone would choose, and did indeed choose, to live in smouldering cities with some hope of wealth and betterment for their family, than a so-called happy life tending livestock.

Whilst it is only right that we should not see the development model followed by our own country as the only valid such model, we are also in danger of over-romanticising certain social states, such that we allow -- or cause -- people in other countries to stay in this model despite their own inclination to leave it.

Until every single citizen of Colombian has an equal opportunity to obtain a quality education and a career, I will continue to consider the material wealth of those who few who have had this opportunty an unfair bounty, unfairly gained, and thus not to be respected. One's right to happily enjoy the fruits of one's labour is proportional to how much others in one's society have had an equal opportunity to obtain such fruits.

A Trifle

I was sitting next to a man with jelly in one ear and custard in the other, so I turned to him and said, "Are you a trifle deaf?" and he said, "No, I'm mentally ill as it happens."

Long hot showers of the soul

I thought that the global warming debate had reached a point where the fact of its happening was no longer in question, and the discussion from now on would be on how best to combat and cope with the threat.

Then Channel 4 broadcast a programme saying it was all a liberal conspiracy, and for a while the debate seemed to move backward again. Thankfully it seems that the programme has been widely recognised as a PR exercise in selective editing of selected evidence.

But an interesting idea that emerged in the debate surrounding the program was that liberals or environmentalists might invent a global climate threat. Or that they would have some agenda which would cause them to tend to distort the data towards an overly-alarmist viewpoint. When those with a vested interest in humanity's ongoing and increasing consumption of goods hold the view that global warming is not happening, or is not the result of human activity, it is only sensible to question their neutrality, whichever viewpoint one holds oneself. But, as Marcus Brigstocke said on Radio 4's The Now Show, liberals would invent a climate change fantasy in order to benefit themselves... how?!?!

I grew up with hose-pipe bans being the norm. Washing your car with a hose on your front drive in summer in British suburbia is morally akin to beating your children there. Your bright green front lawn shouts "I am evil!" Showering three times a day doesn't make you a Nice Clean Person: on the contrary, it makes you a Naughty Wasteful Person. The logic is as follows: The UK is experiencing drier and drier summers, and water is scarce. We ought to share what little we have around fairly. Basic ethics.

Or so I thought. Until I came here. Colombia has abundant natural resources -- whether it's flowers, fruit, coffee or coke that you want, Colombia's absurd fertility makes this country a leading producer of all four. There is no lack of water here. So therefore... there's no moral case against overusing water, right? I couldn't quite accept it. People using hosepipes to clean their front steps every day still seemed wrong. It still felt wrong to wash up under a running tap.

Now it is possible that I'm mistaken and there is a valid argument for not using too much water here either. But that isn't really what interested me. What I found interesting was that my feeling of doing wrong wasn't in fact as straightforwardly logical as I thought. It seemed to be based more on a sort of over-arching philosophy of life: that one should use only as little resources as one can, that one should leave the planet as much in the state that one found it as possible. Perhaps, even, that lots of long hot showers should be avoided simply because they are enjoyable! :o In short, that despite my logical arguments, in fact a kind of Puritan ethics drove my behaviour, not just a straighforward consideration for others.

And I realised that perhaps this is what those who claim that global warming is not in fact a result of human action, that cutting back on our consumptive activities will not help anything, were talking about. Facts are something that can be debated, and, hopefully, a consensus reached, based on evidence. Moral arguments, although subjective, are also universal. They can be presented in the global debate in clear terms: is it right, for instance, that the few who live in luxury should deny the millions living in gruelling poverty the means to build their way out of that poverty? I don't think there are many who would claim that it is. But once we get down into philosophy, the debate loses all universality. Is the path to true happiness through self-denial, frugality, and self-discipline? Or is it through comfort, pleasure and leisure? There are no answers to these questions. Philosophers have debated them for millenia. Religions have their opinions: modern consumer culture has another.

I think we might do well to be very careful in excluding ideology from the climate change debate, and concentrate solely on facts and morality. If it could be demonstrated that the flights of gap-year students going to build bridges in Ouagadougo do more environmental damage than the cars of those who drive to Bluewater every Sunday on shopping sprees, then we should agree to regulating the former rather than the latter. Even if I would personally prefer people to be building bridges than going shopping :).

Ideals

I've been reading a few books on the history and current affairs of Colombia. Many of you probably already know the key words and phrases: narco-guerrilla kidnapping, state-backed paramilitary terror, mass displacement, human rights violations, etc. These are both the public image of Colombia, and, unfortunately, a part of its reality. The US has provided substantial fuel to this fire, substantial enough that it seems likely the fire would have burned out on any number of occasions in the last 60 years were it not for their contribution.

However, the fact which has impacted me most is the extreme discrepancy in wealth. It seems hard to argue against the case that the vast majority of the population are being kept in abject poverty by a super-rich elite when considering that:

• 14% of the population, 6 million people, are living on less than $1 a day
• the poorest 20% earn an average of $450 a year
• the richest 10% earn an average of $8,450 a year
• last week, I saw a chap driving along in a brand new Jaguar XJ, price with import duty perhaps $100,000
  

With such a vast spread of incomes, it is hard to work out who is the "ordinary" Colombian. Once you've excluded the super-rich (the top 3%, let's say, since 3% of the population own 70% of the land), you are still left with a vast range, from the abjectly poor right up to what might be considered "middle-class" households -- two cars, a large modern apartment in a gated compound, yearly holidays abroad.

The nominal minimum wage is $1920 a year. When I first found that out, I was appalled, wondering how on earth those people -- waitresses, cooks, cleaners etc -- could afford things like mp3-players, jeans, cellphones, burgers, etc, which all cost as much as or more than their US prices, and are apparently on sale everywhere. But it looks like those people are in something like the 70th percentile across national earnings -- in other words, reltively rich!

I have never really thought of the UK as much of an egalitarian society, but I realise now that it has always been one of my most basic assumptions that things should cost roughly the same everywhere. A beer is 3 quid. Minimum 2, and any more than 4 or 5 is an outrageous extortion, to be expected only in exclusive establishments full of people with more money than sense. The same goes for most basic commodities. Kwik-Save may be somewhat cheaper than Waitrose, but only by maybe 10% -- and in reality, all sectors of society shop in Tesco.

So I just really have trouble getting my head round the fact that in one neighbourhood food or drink or rent will cost 10 or 20 times what it might cost somewhere else. And that is only my limited experience, I'm sure the total range is much broader. It starts to make consumption look a bit odd. You could pay $2 for your lunch -- or go somewhere only marginally less shiny, pay $1, and give the difference to one of those "under a dollar a day" people, thus doubling their daily income!

The only egalitarian thing is transport which by its motionary nature doesn't have a per-neighbourhood cost. 50c for any bus-ride, 20c a kilometre for cab rides.

However of course the place one eats, drinks, rents, or whatever, or even whether one walks, catches a bus or taxi, or drives, is strictly dictated by one's position in the class heirarchy. As a foreigner I am basically excluded from its choking hold, which gives me some welcome freedom. Still, people realise that as a foreigner I must have at least enough money to afford a plane-ticket here, thus making me basically mega-rich compared to 80% of the population. That excludes me from going drinking in the poorest parts of town. It would probably be an irresistible invitation to robbery*. On the flip-side, the fact that I can't list my "family roots" on demand does exclude me from a certain top-level section of society: certain clubs, as well as having astronomical membership costs, are by invitation and reference only.

Becoming more aware of the extreme inequality in this country has made me more than a little uncomfortable going out in the middle-class establishments, and with the middle-class preoccupations of most of my social circle. It's disgusting, right, spending more than what 80% of the population earn in a day on dinner?

Well, that is what my European socialist heart tells me. But there are counter-arguments: if there is an elite who by protecting their own land and financial interests are ensuring that this situation continues, they are not the same people as this middle-class. Secondly, I can't (and nor can anyone) redress the extreme inequality by not spending that money, even if it was simply given to the poor. The roots of the problem are obviously far deeper. And thirdly, by spending that money, I/we are at least providing employment for some waiters, cleaners, etc, who otherwise might be begging or living in the street.

Those arguments, particularly the last, have always appeared to me as canards used by the nominally socially-responsible middle-class to justify their consumption. Surely the thing to aim for is a more equal society, where each of those cleaner has the opportunity to train as a lawyer or doctor, not just a few extra dollars for hours of backbreaking work with no exit in sight? But in a country with few spaces for movements for social change, and considerable risk for those attempting to do so, is it any surprise that the comfortably-off simply get on with living their lives?

The basic truth is that spending $15 on a steak in a posh North Bogota restaurant, while many people are starving or undernourished, is no worse than spending $15 on it in Norway (the most equal country by some measures) while children die of starvation in Africa. Somehow though, when the problem is outside the national border it becomes unnecessary to think about it too much. Can we blame middle-class Bogotanos for drawing their "national border" around the richer northern suburbs of Bogota, leaving them free to enjoy their steak, when in northern Europe many progressive and socially-conscious people are also enjoying their steaks, while humanitarian disasters all over the world continue to happen?

Source for income figures: UNDP

* Or am I myself becoming prey to class-based stereotyping and fear: "Anyone poorer than us must be out to steal from us! Lock the gates! Keep the peasants at bay!"

Eclipsed

Picture the scene. It is the last Friday of the month: payday. The night when men go out and drink their paychecks before their wives can get a hold of it. Also the night when thieves are at large: what better time to rob than when a man is drunk, and carrying near on a month's earnings in his back pocket?

At 11pm a man is rushed into the hospital emergency room: he has bullet wounds to his shoulder and is covered in blood. Accompanying him, his son, also wounded, bleeding from the hand and arm. From the garbled reports of the two men, it appears that they had been drinking in a cigarreria on Trece and 45, not a notably pleasant barrio, when thieves burst in, firing several shots, demanding money from the men and the cashier. It appeared that giving up their wallets was not enough, as the man and his son were shot anyway.

The doctors quickly assess the situation. Although it appears at first that the man has head injuries, they quickly establish that his situation is not critical. The son's hand is in bad shape, but his injuries aren't life-threatening either.

Then, another man rushes into the room, carrying his son over his shoulder. This man, 25, is in very bad shape. Doctor's decide that his case must take priority and immediately begin to attend to him. However, the other young man is now becoming very agitated, pointing at the new entrants and shouting, "Ladrones! They tried to kill my father!". Police are called. It appears that during the shooting and robbery attempt, one of the thieves mistakenly shot one of their own: the young man currently bleeding to death in the emergency room. The moral dilemma is clear, but his case is more critical so the doctors naturally prioritise him. His brother arrives. The brother is shouting at them, "Help him! Please help him!". The other young man is shouting, "Let him die, why should you help him, he is a murderer!" Despite all that the doctors can do, his injuries are too serious. After half an hour of emergency surgery, there is nothing more to be done. He is dead. His brother rushes to his side, tears flooding from his eyes. "Please don't die hermano," he keeps repeating. The other young man has fallen silent. The police wait outside.

This scene was not broadcast on an overdramatic telenovela on Friday night. No, in fact it happened on Friday night during Panda's turno (24-hour shifts) at University. She watched that young man die.

Studying Medicine isn't much like studying Computer Science. I think the most dramatic event in my undergraduate studies was probably discovering the power of currying in functional programming. Not entirely comparable. I think medical students get more Reality in one week than the average programmer gets in their whole life. I hope I don't seem ghoulish by reporting this particular event. Naturaly, every week has similar events. Some of the stories I hear make my hair stand on end. I just thought I'd share one with you.

Worth 12,000 words

Dia sin Carro

Yesterday, February 1st, was "car-free day" in Bogota. I first saw it advertised on the front of a Transmilenio bus last week, and asked Panda what it was all about. Apparently, once every 6 to 12 months, the city has a car-free day to reduce air pollution levels. Amusingly enough, buses, the main pollutant producers, are exempt, as are taxis. However, by keeping private cars off the roads, the levels are apparently reduced significantly. I was somewhat taken by the idea: like Ciclovia (where they close a number of major roads to motor traffic on Sunday mornings leaving them free for cycling, roller-blading, and simply strolling) it seemed a rather progressive idea. I resolved to take a walk through the city on that day and see for myself what effect it would have.

The city was transformed. It turned the smoky, noisy, clogged arteries of bogota into relaxed de facto pedestrian byways. Crossing the road was no longer a life-threatening battle of wills with three lanes of speed-limit-defying, fume-belching traffic. Walking along any road, one could hear the birds rather than the constant roar of passing cars. I started from my home, and walked almost 50 blocks towards Panda's university, further than I had originally planned, just savouring the new Bogota which would be available for one day only. On arriving at Panda's university, I joined her and a friend for lunch. Amongst other things, the topic of the dia sin carro came up. Her friend was adamant: the ban had no effect on pollution, yet reduced the economy of Bogota by 40% for that one day. I refrained from asking the source of her statistics -- nor from putting it to her that even if true, was not an attractive ambience to one's city worth the price of a dip in economic productivity? I feared we might come to blows.

And this, I have to say, has been a theme of my interactions with the moneyed classes here. (My interactions with the other classes has, I regret to admit, been limited to thanking them for serving me lunch, or directing me towards the washing powder in Exito.) It seems to be generally accepted that solutions should be personal, not general. Bogota has a pollution problem? Fine: buy a comfortable car, and travel inside of it. Bogota has a crime problem? Fine: live inside of a closed apartment complex, guarded by men in uniforms.

But as ever, being exposed to other ways of thinking is most usefully used to expose the lens through which one views the world oneself, which otherwise remains invisible. I remembered an occasion when I had seen Noam Chomsky lecture in London. His key message was the Zeroth Rule of moral argument (in that case, as applied to the (by his argument, hypocritical) foreign policy of the United States): "Those things which are bad for me, are bad for everyone." Ie, that morals are ubiquitous. It is wrong, at the most basic level, to criticise (or bomb) other countries for engaging in "terrorist activities", whilst committing identical activities oneself. This seemed to me, as it apparently does to Chomsky, fundamental. If the traffic noise in your street bothers you, then the only ethical solution is to band together with your neighbours and campaign for traffic calming methods. It is not simply to buy double glazing.

There is another angle on this too. It is embodied in this phrase from Martin Fowler: "You can change your organization, or change your organization." Ie, either change the way things are done where you are -- or move. Perhaps a traveller, or at least a foreigner living abroad, is more likely to take this attitude. I see that there are states run in different ways. In some states, this universalization of morals is encoded in law. Explicitly, in laws of workplace equality etc, and implicitly, in the nationalisation of public resources and infrastructure. In others, the solution of such problems appears to be left to the individual (with their capacity to solve such problems being directly proportional to their income.)

I notice that this latter approach seems to be favoured in Colombia, and in the U.S. Once, the U.S. had to fight a genuine national threat whose primary ideology happened to be Communist: perhaps this has poisoned it thenceforth from openly accepting Socialist ideologies (at whose core may be the idea of the generalisability of morals.) Colombia's leftwing guerrillas don't even participate in the political process: they hide in the hills, kidnap people, and grow and distribute drugs to fund their war. Perhaps this situation has similarly poisoned ordinary Colombians against such ideas.

New home!

It's been fun living with Panda's folks. They've treated me really well, and by a lucky coincidence her brother's being at camp meant that I got my own room. But after a week of apartment hunting, I finally found this lovely place, and last night moved in. It's impractical but cool: one huge room with windows all the way along one side, and a small bathroom and kitchen along the other side.

Neither married nor engaged

I seem to have confused a number of people with my use of the word "in-laws". I thought it could refer to the parents or family of one's partner. Apparently that is only if one is married to that partner. My apologies. Don't worry, I'll mention it if I get married (or engaged).

Back in the Col Omb I A

On Tuesday, I had no idea which continent I would be in on Thursday. I had neither plane ticket (thanks to Air Madrid's untimely demise) nor visa (thanks to Colombia's finely honed system of bureaucratic unhelpfulness.)

Yet by Wednesday afternoon I had, with the help of an army of in-laws in Colombia, managed to get that innocent-looking sticker in my passport which meant Freedom. And Thursday morning, at 4:30am at Heathrow airport, I took a deep breath and handed over 500 quid in return for a one-way ticket to Colombia: Panda's flight still had space for me.

This time round, I felt the culture shock a hundred times more than before. It was obvious that I would, going straight from the bosom of my family to the other side of the world. The altitude also affected me much more (last time the ascent from sea level took two days.) The odd thing about culture shock is its insidiousness. It's somehow easier to spend a couple of days in a mud hut in the jungle in Guatemala eating toads and drinking saliva-based beverages* than it is to live with a middle-class Colombian family. Bogota may be one of Robert Young Pelton's "Dangerous Places", but if you squint your eyes it can seem a lot like, well, "any normal city", as Simon memorably described it on seeing my Bogota In Pictures book.

But then again its not, quite.

Some cars are normal middle-class Renault Clios and Audis. But they share the road with an odd assortment of junky old pickups, cars without windows full of dirty children, and cobbled-together horse-drawn carts. We laughed about how in England people would ask Panda things like, "so, in Colombia, do you have cheese?" (or whatever other perfectly normal item). But then on my second night here I was awoken at 1am to the sound of smashing glass, shouting in the street, and the groans of a man apparently being bottled to death. Ok, perhaps the result of an over-active imagination fuelled by sleep-deprivation, jetlag, altitude-adjustment, and culture shock. But you know, the pavements aren't even normal. Each block has its own pavement, and poor blocks don't have a pavement at all. Huge smoke-belching buses attack you from all angles. People are either very rich and live in ugly apartment blocks surrounded by high fences and watchmen, or very poor and sleep in the central reservation. It is generally wise, when hailing a cab in the street, to first consider the apparent likelihood of being robbed by the driver. And people look at you all the time. And the girls are beautiful :).

Right now, I'm looking for an apartment. My in-laws have been very welcoming and have made me feel as at home as they can, but living in someone else's house has never been something I'm particularly good at. It's amazing the range of places available. Anything from £50 a month up to £2,000 a month. I suppose after Holland where the wealth gap is narrower even than England, the size of the wealth gap here is bound to come as a shock. The existence of a healthy middle-class comes as a surprise against a backdrop of so much poverty and suffering. The second-highest number of displaced people in the world, remember. After Sudan. And yet there I'll be, sipping lattes in the sun at the Parque 93, as if all were right with the world.

Come the revolution, I'll be the first against the wall, I'm sure. "But I was a sort of hippish liberal for a bit, between being a Tory twat teenager and integrating so well into the Colombian bourgeoisie! I bought organic pesto and knitted lentils! Spare me!", I'll blubber. But there'll be no remorse.


* No, you didn't miss an episode. I never did that. I'm just guessing.