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.