My Current Top Ten Things in Bogotá

Word of the day: EL Puente: Literally a bridge, also a long weekend.

1) Transmilenio

2) The museums of El Banco de la Republica

3) Cine-Bar La Hacienda Santa Barbara

4) The Botanical Gardens

5) Colombian Artists

6) Paloquemao

7) La Candelaria

8) Restaurants

9) MAMBO

10) Chapinero

Surprise! He is Colombian

Word of the day: Cachaco.

So trying to find some links to include in this blog and I came across Wikipedia’s list of Colombian-American Actors. A couple of names jump out at me. The first name to catch my eye is John Leguizamo. But I knew he was Colombian before he was willing to admit to it. He tried passing for Puertoriqueño for the longest time, all his press releases highlighting his “roots”. As always I have an advantage. My mother’s gay friend ex-boyfriend is John’s Mother’s hairdresser. Three snaps to hairdressers who always get the scoop! As a result I also know he speaks fluent Spanglish; he is a bit on the short side, funny, and genial.

Adriana Cataño? That is a bit of a surprise I thought she was Cuban. She is a second string Novela actress that Univision has occasionally in their afternoon Novelas. Her latest work is staring in a reggeaton video. If anybody knows the artist let me know.

Further down the list, Mo Rocca. Mr. Daily Show Correspondent, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, and VH1 commentator!? He is that sexy classic nerd, glasses, close cropped hair, and always well attired. That man loves a good bowtie. Since John Stewart has said jokingly that he only hires Jews, I assumed that Mo was maybe Sephardim. Maybe Mo is a Colombian Jew? We do have a rather important Jewish community. Well no. It turns out he has Colombian mother, and Italian father. His real name is Maurice Alberto Rocca.

Then in a flash it all makes sense:

• The outfits
• The form of speech
• The intense but polite manner
• His quiet way of getting to the punch line

Add a ruana (a poncho) on that boy and you have an old-school Cachaco. Translating Cachaco is not so easy. So let me start with the old-school part first since it is easier to explain. It is hard to find today on the streets one of those dignified old men. Their son’s have adapted to the warmer climate (if you don’t believe in climate change come and spend a winter in Bogota, no more frost here), free trade, and cell phones. To make things worse jeans have become Colombia’s new uniform. These changes have made high-class Cachaco men a dying breed. A prime example: ex- president Alfonso Lopez Michelsen. He still is still alive and kicking in his well-tailored suits. He wouldn’t miss tea at four-o’clock in his library, or his whiskey at the club at six-o’clock. Su merced.

So now to translate the Cachaco part, cultural translations always miss a bit. So be patient with me here. To some it is just a word to describe people from the interior of the country mainly those from the Cundiboyancense region. Which includes Bogotá, Tunja and Zipaquira. To others a slightly derogatory word, a regional denominator they would prefer not is used. They dislike this moniker, and Mo Rocca persona is the perfect example of why. It implies a certain type of nerdyness, a bookish lisping man, with a British inflection to his Spanish. One who prefers bow ties, with his custom made tailored worsted wool suit. He is the guy who would prefer classical music with a dash of a Porro to dancing a Vallenato and a Cumbia. He is in one sense a stuffed shirt. To others a Bogotano, with good education, and manners is the archetype of what all men should be.

If you had told me that you could use this archetype/stereotype to your advantage. Create a whole persona around and launch a successful media career. I would have answered no. You got to applaud Mo for using the archetype/stereotype to his advantage while not giving away its’ proper cultural context. He does it in a way that is funny, entertaining as well as informative.His Harvard degree shines in his work the way Lopez Michelsen Georgetown degree shines in his storied career. Considering how often Colombian’s are vilified it is nice to see one our own use his culture to his advantage. To American eyes he is an eccentric nerd, with strange speech patterns to this gringa-Colombiana he is upholding a fine tradition. As a result I have decided to give El Doctor Rocca, my first ever Colombian Spirit award.

“If you offer to bribe a policeman you have to pay him.” My father, my uncle, and my father’s girlfriend.

Word of the day: La Mordida: Literally a bite, or the bribe you paid an official.

A lunar eclipse, a Chinese meal, and a skirmish with the police, all part of a typical Saturday night? After a lovely Chinese dinner with all the family in one of the zona rosa finest restaurant I get invited to go out dancing to celebrate a friends birthday. We go to a cheesy but posh club a couple of blocks away. Cheesy because it plays nothing but the best romantic ballads of yesteryear, and posh because if you don’t look right you can’t get in. I don’t look right but the birthday boy (BB) has pull and they make an exception for this gringa. Nerdy glasses and overgrown curly hair is not the look this club strives for.

On the blank concrete floors Colombia’s beauty queens and their boyfriends dance the night away to the interspersed sounds of Paulina Rubio, Chayanne, Joe Arroyo, Diomedes Diaz, and Techno. Midway through the night one of the owners gets up on the bar that is the center of the whole club. He swears he is in NY, London, or Rome. A couple of songs later the rest of the bar crew joins him. All seven boys strut their stuff to Joe Cocker, an odd choice, but it works for them. I blink and off come the shirts. The men in the club are suddenly tense, the women stunned but elated. The gay boy in front of me tries to muffle his squeals and I laugh. Now if the tallest of them would just turn around enough for me to wink at him. But no cigar he is to busy flirting with the women who have gathered at his feet. Oh and I do not look like the first runner up in one of the country´s many beauty contests. An example in this link.

Time to close, the shirts come back on, the lights are turned on, and we all vacate the building in a haze of cigarette smoke, drunkenness, and confusion. Where to next? After locating the BB stuffing himself with potato chips he bought off a street vendor, we decided to keep on going. The next club is a couple of blocks away, pass the whiskey bottle and get in the car. Five women, one gay man and the BB driving, pass the whiskey bottle! BB drives fast, cranking up the music as I sit up front with another of the girls. We turn a corner and so does the police. The police pickup truck with six officer stops in front of us and demands we stop and get out. “I don’t want to call my father from jail!” I scream internally. American style, I get out ID in hand I step next to the car expecting to be checked out. My friends instead all gather around the cops and proceed to flirt with the police. Cleavage out, sexy kitten voice they try to charm the cops. BB instead gathers his ID, and storms off towards the truck. He just as hurriedly returns and yells at us to get in the fucking car! I jump in first, and end sitting right behind BB as he drives off. Everyone screams and it is hard to tell who is saying what.

“Take a photo of the cops license plate!”

“Don’t let them shake you down!”

“Park the car in a parking lot they can’t do shit if you park it now!”

“Shut up, I am going to pay them off”

“200,000 pesos! ($220) What? You can’t give them that much!”

“I don’t want to call my father from jail!” has become my mantra and I chant it repeatedly inwardly.

BB follows the cops down one block to an ATM. He goes up to the door of the bank and it does not open. He tells the cops, and he gets back in the car. The cops pull an illegal U turn on the street expecting us to do the same. Suddenly without warning BB runs, he says nothing to us, he just starts accelerating towards the freeway. The yelling in the car starts once we realize what he is doing. My mantra becomes louder in my head along with if “I die it has been a good life”. This second thought becomes louder once I realize I don’t have a seat belt on, and he has to make a hard right to get on the freeway. At the speed we are going I don’t think we are going to make it. Neither does anybody else based upon the volume of the screams.

We luckily make the right turn, only to quickly realize that there is a police drunk driving checkpoint ahead near the entrance. The screaming intensifies, and suddenly out of nowhere one voice becomes louder than the others screams.

“Park the car and turn off the lights!”

And BB does just that, stopping right in front of a building’s garage door. We all crouch down as the Police pickup truck whizzes by us and gets on the freeway. We scream elated and slightly scared. BB quick maneuver saved us from having two sets of cops stop us and point their M-16´s at us. The police do not take kindly to bribery shirking.

The Costeña (A woman from the Caribbean coast of Colombia) is sitting up front yells at us to calm down! She is going to ask the night watchman to let us park the car in the garage of the building we are in front of. She rings the doorbell, cleavage out, accent pronounced; she takes out a 10,000-peso bill (five dollars). He agrees to let us park a half an hour. We walk to the nearby park where we are going to wait until the checkpoint is moved. Except half of our party keeps on going past the park. “Hey where are you guys going?”

“The club! It is this way!”

Well to make this long story short, we wait out the checkpoint, and end up at the club until five am. And my new mantra becomes what my father, my uncle, and my father’s girlfriend say repeatedly chastising me.

“If you offer to bribe a policeman you have to pay him.”

“Better to be a drug dealer than a murderer for hire”- Yesica talking about Catalina´s brothers career choice

Word of the day: Sin Tetas No hay Paraiso- Without tits there is no paradise.

Last years Novela (soap opera) mega hit has been Sin Tetas No hay Paraiso. A bit of a surprise since most Novelas in Latin-America are sugar coated romance tales, with impossibly cheesy storylines. Sin Tetas No hay Paraiso is look in to the drug world from the point of view of a poor girl from Periera. Armed with nothing but her good looks and ambition she sets off to improve her breast size and in the process her fortune. Looking to attract a traqueto (a high ranking mafia drug lord) she gets a used breast implants, and proceeds to prostitute herself up the ladder of traqueto importance. Until she is lucky enough to land one who is willing to marry her. Add to the story a rape, an illegal abortion (Well there is no such thing as a legal abortion in Colombia), her brother becoming a murderer for hire, her mother running off with her only true love, and her marriage to a short, bald and unattractive man. And you have a mega hit.

“The only thing school is good for is to make the owners of schools rich.”

Sin Tetas, as it is commonly called, exposes every level of corruption from the government officials to US embassy officials, systematically as the story unfolds. It doesn’t try to be a morality tale in the traditional Novela sense, heavy handed and moralistic, but rather shows consequences for the decisions that all the characters make. It is so well done that I could write about each chapter of how the story unfolds, showing the reality of many Colombians stuck in a underclass that is not allowed to advance to the middle class. It is shot not in the most attractive areas of Colombia but rather the real neighborhoods in which working class people live. With actors that truly represent the racial and ethnic diversity Colombia has, it is the most realistic Novela I have seen. Oh did I mention it has nudity?

“Americans have a lifelong taste (for cocaine), and we have a lifelong business”

Sin Tetas, reveals chapter by chapter how Colombia has suffered due to the worlds nasty coke habit। Yep, the easy money that is shelled out every night by your friend with a taste for blow is destroying Colombia. It might sound a bit heavy handed but I can assure you that while we have always had a difficult and violent civil war, you add hundreds of millions of dollars and you can only make worse. Your drug problem has become a whole countries And it is contributing to the degradation of a whole country. I know it sounds heavy handed and preachy but you experience certain things long enough and you come to that conclusion.

“How do you spell that?” Funeral flowers salesperson.

Word of the day: Arreglo funebre-Funeral flower arrangement.

So the news comes at 10:00am. Don Adriano has died of sudden respiratory failure. He was 65 years old, diabetic man of working stock, with a generous heart. Arrangements are made and by 6:30pm we are in front of his body praying the rosary. I should say his wife, daughter, granddaughters, sisters, nieces, and general woman folk pray. I am not Catholic and though I am wearing a dress, I am slightly butch in these matters so I stand outside the chapel with the men as they smoke. Doris’s and my father’s artist friends arrive and being equally irreligious we go to the coffee shop around the corner.

Earlier I had gone to the funeral flower seller per my father’s request for a floral arrangement. In this area with several chapels, and a church the funeral floral business is booming. In a city known for having whole neighborhoods dedicated to one industry, (the computer neighborhood, the shoes street, the architects corner) it should not be a surprise to me that there is a whole neighborhood dedicated to the death business. The florists are open until 10pm and they have steady customers until closing time. They had new arrangements coming out as quickly as they are taken away to the several chapels within walking distance. These arrangements are large wreaths, or floral “cups”. Though the cups have at least three-dozen flowers. On each of the arrangements your name is draped across in honor of the dead. Deldelp is not a name commonly heard in Colombia either. So I settle for brevity's sake for Mr. Medina and Children. “What no Mrs.?” Asked the owner of the shop, trying to explain my father’s complicated love life would be a bit much, so no Mrs.

From this day on there will be a long series of masses, more than I am willing or wanting to go to. So I am lucky enough to have my plane tickets ready to go to Carnival. So here is a list of the masses I have missed.

1. The nine days of rosary.
2. The funeral mass
3. The mass held at his favorite church
4. The mass held at his second favorite church
5. The mass held in his honor in his hometown
6. The mass held in his honor by his sisters
7. The mass held in his honor by his favorite niece

“We have to be patient”-Emergency room doctor

Word of the day: “Tramitologia”-To have all the paperwork signed and approved by hospital and health insurance officials so that you can get the care your medical condition requires.

So here is the countdown:

One open heart-surgery- my uncle

One emergency hospitalization due to a drug interaction-my uncle

One diabetic coma-My father’s girlfriend’s father (say that fast three times)-Don Adriano

One cytology- my uncle

One tracheotomy- Don Adriano

One prostate surgery- my uncle

One death- Don Adriano

Time lapse: three weeks

This is the reason I did not start the blog as soon as I arrived as planned. I instead got a crash course in emergency medicine Colombian style. Now I have always believed based upon my own experience that medicine in Colombia is good if not better than in the US. Here doctors actually listen to you, spend the time to get to know you and become family confidants. They find ways to treat you the best way possible with the least cost without making you feel like a number. Then again I have always-paid cash, and did not have to deal with insurance payments.

So it should not be a surprise that all over the world over insurance companies are shits. Add to it the Colombian sense of paranoia and you have a system that requires your whole afternoon for a simple appointment. You have so many checks and balances that the ping pong you have to do across the vast hospitals burns all the calories ingested in your arepa binge in the morning. All designed so that no one cheats the system.

First the doctors order, then the insurance verification of the doctors order, next the hospitals verification of the doctors order, a insurance approval of the doctors order, the doctors appointment is confirmed, the insurance confirms the doctors appointment, the hospital confirms both prior insurance and doctors separate confimals (sp?) and then adds its’ own. That is just for the appointment, if you need a bed, a surgery, or special care you must start from zero. All the while you go from office to office keeping a positive attitude, a polite manner, and infinite patience. Hoping that the next step will be resolved right away as you wait in line after line, watching the clock making sure you arrive before lunch or closing time. Knowing that your loved one is waiting ill in a room for the paperwork to get done as to get the treatment they need. It is needless to say stressful, crazy-making and frustrating.

Oh and did I mention that during the tramitologia you are accompanied by every family member who is not waiting with the sick person. You walk up and down stairs with a posee of minimum five per ill person. So every office, hallway and waiting room is filled to the brim with people waiting. The tension, the hushed tones, the cries, all the bloody waiting!

“Don’t Buy anything before you come!”-my mother

Word of the day:

Carrefour- A French conglomerate that has successfully set up shop in Colombia.

Once upon a time you had to bring everything when you came on a trip to Colombia. Shampoo, check, bug spray, check, sunscreen, check! You came knowing that if you forgot certain “necessities” you would have to buy a twice as expensive less refined version if you could find them. Add to that the spices, perfumes, toys and watches that you would bring as gifts. Suitcases would be filled to the brim, with every sales item that you had collected all year round. I packed my bags in this same fashion in January. Instead of being praised my father upon my arrival was upset. “Why did you bring all these things?” he said half mockingly. “Um..excuse me?” I replied confused.

A little trip to Carrefour explained why my Costco buys of tea, sunscreen, and vitamins were unnecessary. In this free-trade world you can now buy all those products, and nationally made products that are just as good if not better than imported ones.

The biggest shocker was the selection of tea. Teas from China, Japan, India, fruit tea from Germany, English style, Asian style, all laid out one next to another. Not in a specialty store in the ritzy part of town. In an ordinary Carrefour in a middle class part of town. This much tea in a coffee nation. Tea in a nation that treats it as if it were medicine, and non-coffee drinkers as freaks. Tea in the same aisle as coffee, and sugar, an everyday item.

Colombian consumption habits have changed. Right along with the quality of its´ home made products. On Colombian jeans alone I could write an ode, the fit, the comfort, the look. Did I mention that my hips and ass actually fit in Colombian jeans without problem? Americanino I love you! With your sexy Italian design and your made in Colombia label. You make Gap “Curvy” jeans look like they are made for fourteen year old girl who just started menstruating. Not for this real woman with curves. Add to it great shoes, shirts, underwear, and I could have had a wardrobe at half the price of Ross or Marshall without the defects. I rarely say this but I should have listened to my mother.

Gringa in Colombia

Colombia is a complex country. I will try to write about this lovely and challenging country knowing that my experience cannot capture all the juxtapositions this country has. Colombia has very different and yet geographically close regions. It has the Caribbean, the Pacific Ocean, the Andes, the Plains, the Amazon, and the peaks and valleys in between. With more regionalisms and accents than The UK, it is a miracle we can understand each other. Add to it the nasty business of the 40 year old civil war, the drug war, and you have a country that manages to year after year to not loose its’ hope. In the worst of times this is a country with a general fear that blankets all of your movements. What taxi you get in, what bank you got to, who overheard your political commentary, all of it leads to a paranoia that is endemic. In the best of times, you find the best mockery of the “situation”, a sense of irony without sarcasm, and a desire to enjoy the best of what you have.

Colombia is a country that has as part of its’ elementary school curriculum the doctrine that we are, the perfect combination of the Spanish, African, and Native-Americans. Yet consistently ignores Afro-Colombian and the Indigenous tribes realities. A country that has made whiskey, el whiskisito, the national drink. Yep this is the contradictory and lovely place that I will try to write about.