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.

Six to eight black men

Today, Sinterklaas arrived in town. Dutch children normally scare me by doing passable impressions of the Midwich Cuckoos, with their white-blond hair and piercing blue eyes. Today they were all cutely racially transformed, with blacked face-paint, red lipstick, and sporting curly-black-hair wigs. Apparently that's considered normal, in Holland.

David Sedaris takes up the story...

"A heartwarming tale of Christmas in a foreign land where, if you've been naughty, Saint Nick and his friends give you an ass-whuppin'.

In France and Germany, gifts are exchanged on Christmas Eve, while
in Holland the children receive presents on December 5, in
celebration of Saint Nicholas Day. It sounded sort of quaint until
I spoke to a man named Oscar, who filled me in on a few of the
details as we walked from my hotel to the Amsterdam train station.

Unlike the jolly, obese American Santa, Saint Nicholas is painfully
thin and dresses not unlike the pope, topping his robes with a tall
hat resembling an embroidered tea cozy. The outfit, I was told, is
a carryover from his former career, when he served as a bishop in
Turkey.

One doesn't want to be too much of a cultural chauvinist, but this
seemed completely wrong to me. For starters, Santa didn't use to
do anything.  He's not retired, and, more important, he has
nothing to do with Turkey. The climate's all wrong, and people
wouldn't appreciate him. When asked how he got from Turkey to the
North Pole, Oscar told me with complete conviction that Saint
Nicholas currently resides in Spain, which again is simply not
true. While he could probably live wherever he wanted, Santa chose
the North Pole specifically because it is harsh and isolated. No
one can spy on him, and he doesn't have to worry about people
coming to the door. Anyone can come to the door in Spain, and in
that outfit, he'd most certainly be recognized. On top of that,
aside from a few pleasantries, Santa doesn't speak Spanish. He
knows enough to get by, but he's not fluent, and he certainly
doesn't eat tapas.

While our Santa flies on a sled, Saint Nicholas arrives by boat
and then transfers to a white horse.  The event is televised, and
great crowds gather at the waterfront to greet him. I'm not sure
if there's a set date, but he generally docks in late November and
spends a few weeks hanging out and asking people what they want.

"Is it just him alone?" I asked. "Or does he come with backup?"

Oscar's English was close to perfect, but he seemed thrown by a
term normally reserved for police reinforcement.

"Helpers," I said. "Does he have any elves?"

Maybe I'm just overly sensitive, but I couldn't help but feel
personally insulted when Oscar denounced the very idea as grotesque
and unrealistic. "Elves," he said. "They're just so silly."

The words silly and unrealistic were redefined when I learned that
Saint Nicholas travels with what was consistently described as "six
to eight black men." I asked several Dutch people to narrow it
down, but none of them could give me an exact number. It was always
"six to eight," which seems strange, seeing as they've had hundreds
of years to get a decent count.

The six to eight black men were characterized as personal slaves
until the mid-fifties, when the political climate changed and it
was decided that instead of being slaves they were just good
friends. I think history has proven that something usually comes
between slavery and friendship, a period of time marked not by
cookies and quiet times beside the fire but by bloodshed and
mutual hostility. They have such violence in Holland, but rather
than duking it out among themselves, Santa and his former slaves
decided to take it out on the public. In the early years, if a
child was naughty, Saint Nicholas and the six to eight black men
would beat him with what Oscar described as "the small branch of
a tree."

"A switch?"

"Yes," he said. "That's it. They'd kick him and beat him with a
switch. Then, if the youngster was really bad, they'd put him in
a sack and take him back to Spain."

"Saint Nicholas would kick you?"

"Well, not anymore," Oscar said. "Now he just pretends to kick
you."

"And the six to eight black men?"

"Them, too."

He considered this to be progressive, but in a way I think it's
almost more perverse than the original punishment. "I'm going to
hurt you, but not really."  How many times have we fallen for that
line? The fake slap invariably makes contact, adding the elements
of shock and betrayal to what had previously been plain, old-
fashioned fear. What kind of Santa spends his time pretending to
kick people before stuffing them into a canvas sack? Then, of
course, you've got the six to eight former slaves who could
potentially go off at any moment. This, I think, is the greatest
difference between us and the Dutch. While a certain segment of
our population might be perfectly happy with the arrangement, if
you told the average white American that six to eight nameless
black men would be sneaking into his house in the middle of the
night, he would barricade the doors and arm himself with whatever
he could get his hands on.

"Six to eight, did you say?"

In the years before central heating, Dutch children would leave
their shoes by the fireplace, the promise being that unless they
planned to beat you, kick you, or stuff you into a sack, Saint
Nicholas and the six to eight black men would fill your clogs
with presents. Aside from the threats of violence and kidnapping,
it's not much different from hanging your stockings from the
mantel. Now that so few people have a working fireplace, Dutch
children are instructed to leave their shoes beside the radiator,
furnace, or space heater. Saint Nicholas and the six to eight black
men arrive on horses, which jump from the yard onto the roof. At
this point, I guess, they either jump back down and use the door,
or they stay put and vaporize through the pipes and electrical
wires. Oscar wasn't too clear about the particulars, but, really,
who can blame him? We have the same problem with our Santa. He's
supposed to use the chimney, but if you don't have one, he still
manages to come through. It's best not to think about it too hard.

While eight flying reindeer are a hard pill to swallow, our
Christmas story remains relatively simple. Santa lives with his
wife in a remote polar village and spends one night a year
traveling around the world. If you're bad, he leaves you coal. If
you're good and live in America, he'll give you just about anything
you want. We tell our children to be good and send them off to bed,
where they lie awake, anticipating their great bounty. A Dutch
parent has a decidedly hairier story to relate, telling his
children, "Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things
together before you go to bed. The former bishop from Turkey will
be coming along with six to eight black men. They might put some
candy in your shoes, they might stuff you in a sack and take you
to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don't know
for sure, but we want you to be prepared."

This is the reward for living in Holland. As a child you get to
hear this story, and as an adult you get to turn around and repeat
it. As an added bonus, the government has thrown in legalized drugs
and prostitution-so what's not to love about being Dutch?"

Alien

So, having alienated those few remaining readers who had made it this far, by posting in a foreign language, I now (with an audience of no-one) feel complete freedom to write whatever I please.

Some time has passed without a blog entry. It's hard to blog homecoming. Hard to capture it at all. It's at once such a strange mix of feelings and yet at the same time so horribly cliched. Sometimes I tried to avoid the cliches ("oh you drive on the wrong side, how funny!"), sometimes I just went with it ("oh you call cellphones mobiles!") Probably I mostly annoyed everyone, as people who have "been away" invariably do.

I write now because I have news, mundane, but blogworthy at least. I am taking a job in Holland. A five week software development contract based in Amsterdam. I (re-)pack my bags and travel there on Tuesday. In keeping with the climate-change worries of the times, I am travelling by overnight coach, not on the more-obvious absurdly-cheap easyjet flight. I do take the worries about climate change fairly seriously, notwithstanding an ongoing transatlantic romantic involvement. I doubt I will ever resolve that particular dilemma.

In other news, it has been nice to see everyone and catch up, and relax somewhat into the culture into which I was born. Although everyone in Brighton is now Polish, apparently. Odd. Racists have to work hard to keep up these days. My brother's new house is very nice, and work has immediately begun on Changing Things, in the garden and inside.

Having no audience isn't as freeing as I'd thought. I'm at a loss to know what to report to whom. And that, I think, is the untidy end to that untidy blog post. I'll keep you all up to date on what working in a Dutch energy company is like. I will naturally bike to work every day and eat pancakes regularly!

¿Hablas espanol?

En la ducha esta manana estaba pensando: que raro que llevo ahora diez meses en latinoamerica, sin escribir una sola entrada en el blog en espanol. Pues la razon es claro, que casi ninguna de mis lectores hablan espanol. Pero igual me parecia una buena idea hacer una pequena esfuerza y tratar de escribir en espanol antes de que salga del continente.

Igual la espanol que he aprendido ha sido usado mas para reservar habitaciones (o bien discutir problemas mecanicos de mi carro) que filosofar sobre mis experiences. Aun peor ahora, por tan perezoso que yo sea, empiezo mas y mas a hablar ingles con mis amigos. Claro que ellos hablan en espanol, y a veces si contesto en espanol, pero para que la conversacion adelante con un velocidad mas o menos normal, me parece mejor usualmente hablar en ingles. En hecho es una fuente de diversion ver como la gente nos mira en la calle con nuestras conversaciones bilingue :).

Entonces, en estos ultimos dias, siento muy como entre dos mundos. Estoy hablando con mis amigos y padres en Inglaterra organizando vernos etc, y por eso siento casi ya alla. Pero igual me queda todavia siete dias aca, que no es poco tiempo, y tengo muchos planes y oportunidades por experiences cheveres todavia. Por ejemplo, el esposo de la hermana de mi novia nos invita a su finca el domingo. Mi ultima oportunidad de ver el sol antes de quien sabe cuando!

Para prepararme por mi vuelo de regreso, compre un libro que se llama "sin tetas no hay paraiso". mira este critica en ingles. es un libro muy popular en todas las librerias de bogota. era un telenovela popularisimo aca, y trata de muchas temas muy colombianas: carteles de drogas, la distancia entre pobres y ricos, la prostitucion, cirugia por ampliar las tetas... Tengo muchas ganas de leerlo.

Y ya! Espero que la proxima vez que escribo estara cuando este de regreso. Entonces... aca termina el viaje de 13 meses, 10 paises, y una sola mochila:

"El mapa no es el territorio."

Pint

Bad poetry aside, I am looking forward to coming home. My plans have changed slightly, too: I plan to stay in the UK for the rest of 2006. I hope to share many pint-drinking opportunities with you all during this time!

One of the worst things about living here is the pollution (although there are many worse cities in the world.) It's impossible to stroll the streets of the city without being belched on by buses. Fresh air is something I'm looking forward to a lot.

And one of the oddest is the lack of seasons. There's a very primal part of me that just keeps expecting the days to get longer, or shorter, or sunnier, or rainier, or something. But no. It's like being in some kind of time-warp. One positive side-effect is that I never feel like I am "wasting" the sunshine by doing something else. It'll probably be sunny tomorrow, too. I'm wondering what it's going to be like returning to the grim British winter. Grim, I expect. Still, I'm looking forward to bright autumn mornings, at least, while they last :). Anyway, I always felt that it was February that was the most unpleasant and unnecessary month, and I hope I'll be back to sunny seasonless Bogota by then!

City of night, city of night

I like cities at night. I've never been able to work out if i like Edward Hopper because his pictures so effectively evoke late-night lonely city places, or if I like late-night lonely city places because they remind me of Hopper.

My girlfriend lives in the northern suburbs, which are very nice. Lots of middle-class apartment blocks, malls, and swanky bars. It is relatively safe, and the number of poor people is kept to a minimum. However, it is not safe enough that she is happy to get a taxi home by herself. That's wierd for me, because practically the only purpose of getting a taxi from my point of view is that it is safe, eg if you're a girl travelling alone, but of course Colombia is a foreign country, and they do things differently here.

So anyway, one day last week we went out for a beer, then I accompanied her home, and then made the 40 minute Transmilenio journey home.

In the north, the shining example of a great mass-transit system that is the Transmi blends in well, seeming rather ordinary and perhaps just a slightly cheapskate way to avoid getting taxis. However, as you head south, particularly at night, you begin to have the impression that you are being ported through a parallel Universe. Whilst you are cocooned in your speedy, comfortable 21st-century transport pod, the world outside begins to look more and more threatening and poor. The well-dressed people inside contrast heavily with the street-people outside, carrying plastic sacks of rubbish they have spent the day collecting, standing around burning piles of rubbish, or just sleeping on the street. The grimy prostitutes which line the shuttered shopfronts, lit by dim orange streetlamps, seem not to even be aware of the existence of the buses whooshing past.

I like cities at night. They seem exotic and interesting. That is, until you need to step out into them. Then they seem downright frightening.

For once I manage to post a recent photo (thanks, Pilar!)

This was me and Panda in Oma last week. Naturally, I have photoshopped out my grey hairs.

Humility

There's nothing quite like sitting in a room full of people who you know only slightly, and whose language you understand only partially, to give you a great life-lesson in humility.

When I am speaking Spanish one-on-one I sometimes appear to speak it quite well. This is because in one-on-one conversation a lot can be inferred from context. Try suddenly changing the subject on me and the chances are I will stare slack-jawed at you until I finally manage a "huh?" It is also because in one-on-one conversation I only have to understand a short burst of Spanish before I get to speak.

However, in a group setting, I quickly become very lost. Staying unlost requires a fair amount of concentration, and even then I usually laugh after everyone else, or look bewilderedly to my girlfriend for an explanation in toddler-speak.

Although I thought I was an introvert, it has been made clear to me that I just don't feel comfortable sitting in a group of people laughing and joking amongst themselves and not being able to make any kind of contribution. Panda astutely said to me, "I think what it is is that you like to be the centre of attention, and when you're not, you sulk." I think she put it more kindly, but in essence that appears to be true!

Whatever the level of my Spanish, it is manifest that I just can't stay au courant with the conversation without a lot of concentration, and mostly not even then. This means that I am always two steps behind. It's not where the ego would like to be. The ego would like to be one step ahead of everyone else, demonstrating its sharp wit and intelligence with a funny line here and an apt comparison there. And unfortunately I can't just cry, or run away. I have to persevere through a whole evening or day of being the slow one. It was hard to begin with, mostly because it never even occurred to me that it would be hard!

But really I think it is amazing for one to be subjected to this kind of ego-beating. Egos are stupid things anyway. And realising that you can go through the beating and come out the other side, that being something other than the centre of attention is really OK, is very valuable.