A Tale of Two Suburbs

As this visit to Colombia draws to a close, I can’t help but reflect on how my impressions of the country have changed. Whether the country itself has changed as much as my views and opinions is a hard question to answer, but I believe there’s definitely a bit of both. Over the past month or so the experiences that have made the strongest impression on me have been small day trips to the towns around Bogotá.  

The Bogotá sabana is a landscape of marked contrasts. Perched on top of the rugged and unforgiving Andes, comfortably above the heat and humidity of the tropical plains and forests, you’re met with a vast and fertile plateau that extends as far as the eye can see.  The flatter middle of the plateau is covered in all sorts of fields and greenhouses, as the land is excellent for growing crops and flowers, while the cold and dark green forests of the Andes mountain’s guard the Eastern edge. On the west, in contrast, you can find the canyons, valleys and rivers that dare descend the 2600 metres of altitude down into the warmth of the tropics (and where we bogotanos like to vacation when we get tired of our cold, 18 ºC days).

The cultural landscape offers just as stark a contrast, the urban sprawl of a highly energetic city of 8 million (which has been growing for 475 years) transitions quite quickly into the peacefulness of country life.  Not 40 km away from the city I could already see the change, as towns would come to a halt at sunset, from a moderately active day to a quiet and uneventful night. As I was driving through the town I was surprised at the realization that, technically, I could have been eating a hotdog Times Square in ten hours’ time, or drinking wine under the Eiffel Tower in little less than a day.  

Nevertheless, this reality is changing rapidly. There are in fact a couple of towns right next to the city that are becoming heavily populated, bringing both money and people to these areas.  Features of North American suburbia are starting to appear: what used to be a quaint restaurant with huge gardens is now a mall with a paved parking lot, bright lights and an enormous burger restaurant (yes, the one I said was awesome on my first ever post). Car dealerships popped out of formerly empty fields, a farming supply warehouse turned into a French patisserie (unless it’s now cool to feed horses chocolate éclairs), and what used to be a small rural bakery is now part of a chain of sterile looking 24 hour pharmacies-slash-convenience stores.  Naturally, burgers, baguettes and drive-thru drugstores all mean that people are getting more disposable income and better working conditions, but it is still shocking to see how quickly the overall feel has changed.

One of my most memorable experiences was on my first weekend back, as my parents decided to take me to a Spanish restaurant right outside the city as a double treat. I say double, firstly, because the beauty of the region is always worth the traffic to get out of the city, and secondly, because I have struggled to find good Spanish food in Montreal (I’d be happy if anyone were to correct me!). The restaurant was not far away from the city, but you could already feel the freshness of the air and see the towering mountains covered by nothing but trees. It was a mixture between a plant nursery and a Spanish restaurant, which also sold cupcakes. Yes, that sounds very hipster but in Colombia we just call it magical realism and that makes it fine. Really! I promise. In any case, the tapas were excellent and the fideuà I had was pretty damn good. Almost as good as the one I make.  Nevertheless, the food was not what caught my attention, but rather the scene that was unfolding next to me.

Right next to our table there was a group of two families, they were happily chatting and discussing their last trips to Spain and how they had eaten such and such in the different cities. One of the families had a boy, around eight or nine, who was playing outside in the garden with a girl. The boy had light skin, blond hair and was impeccably dressed; he could’ve very well been in an Ikea catalogue, perhaps with a desk or bed with an unpronounceable Swedish name. The girl looked a bit older than him, around ten, and had darker skin and curly hair, she was fairly well dressed, but definitely no brand names in her case. I saw that she lived in a small house uphill. Her family worked for the restaurant, perhaps her mom worked in the kitchen and in cleaning. The two kids were happily playing with a football, it was a really nice day and you could tell that they were both enjoying being outside and were genuinely happy to be playing with each other.  

Then, the boy’s lunch arrived and he went back into the restaurant.

The girl stayed outside, looking in through the window.

I was then reminded that this (as the rest of the country) was a landscape of social contrast.

What’s interesting is that this is not your clichéd UN-diplomat-feasting-in-a-refugee-camp kind of scene; it was not a story of gluttony and extreme poverty. The girl was not malnourished, or even hungry; heck, it’s even possible that she’d get to eat from the restaurant’s kitchen that night. This is neither a story of bare survival, this girl and her family live in a place that is calm and safe and yet is close enough to the city to benefit from its social programmes. Her mother has a formal job, which means her family gets health insurance and other benefits. She can also benefit from public school right until she graduates, as it was made completely free just a few years ago. I even learned on this visit that the city has a whole team dedicated to maintaining a database with the vaccination status of all kids, if she’s missing shots, a team will go to her house to make sure she’s up to date in vaccines.

The thing is, that while she will probably have the bare basics covered, she will almost certainly never see that boy again. They’ll go to different schools, the boy to a private bilingual school, the girl to the local public school in her neighbourhood. Sure, she’ll also be taught basic English, but the boy will have native teachers and the ability to travel to Miami and Toronto, while she’ll struggle to learn with a textbook. They will not go to the same hospitals, they will not meet in the same supermarket, they will not party in the same areas of the city, and they will never do any kind of shopping in the same place. As long as they’re kids, they won’t meet on public transportation, and if they do when they’re older and the boy is in university, you can bet they won’t be travelling the same route.  

The girl is much more fortunate than children in other places of the country, with access to the social welfare I mentioned (and let’s not forget the whole not-being-part-of-an-armed-conflict thing). But as I said before, by virtue of their socioeconomic status, boy and girl will never ever meet again. If you’ll forgive me for getting political, that is why I firmly believe in investing time, money and effort in high quality public services (from education, to cultural and sporting events, to public transportation) so that both this boy and this girl can have spaces where they will be happy to be and happy to meet each other again.

That, in my opinion, is the challenge of contemporary, urban and suburban Colombia

Glory to My Brave Neighbours

This atypical post comes with good reason: an atypical election. In less than 24 hours the people of Venezuela will have elected a new president, who, for the first time in 14 years, will not be Hugo Chávez. In my life I have never been aware of someone else other than Chávez being president of my dear neighbours, definitely making a historic event for me and my perception of the world. Phew, I think I stood on the safe side of cliché in that last sentence.

A few years ago I was idly changing channels late on a weekend night and came across a special broadcast from my favourite channel, where I used to watch American sitcoms. They were showing a large gathering of people on a TV set, pushing cameras, microphones and boxes in what seemed to be a moving-day frenzy. I then heard the narrator explain they were getting a live signal from a TV station in Caracas, RCTV, and that these were their last 5 minutes of broadcast because the government had closed down the channel because of political motivations. Just as the voiceover ended that sentence everybody on screen stood to attention and the music began, with a little screen on the bottom carrying a sign-language interpreter. It was the first time I remember hearing the words “Gloria al bravo pueblo”, the first verse of the Venezuelan anthem. I found it very peculiar that I had absolutely no idea, until then, what the Venezuelan anthem was like; even though I knew by heart the lyrics to God Save the Queen, had learned La Marseillaise in French class, and had heard many others in sporting events. Why on Earth had I never even heard the anthem of Venezuela, supposedly our sister nation?  My wonderings were quickly left orphaned as the channel went back to its usual shows and I got busy watching a rerun of Seinfeld.

Venezuela, then, remained a bit of an uncharted territory for some years. All I’d hear were the political news, especially when the presidents of Colombia and Venezuela got into some sort of argument. Long story short, all I heard was politics. Venezuela was important because of its controversial politics and how they were in opposition to ours. Period.  The one exception to this was a close friend who was from Venezuela, giving me the one bit of human perspective I needed on that country I had always taken for granted. Fast forward a couple of years and move 40 degrees of latitude, to the Great White North. Trying to make a new life in a new country I was finally fortunate enough to enjoy a new perspective, meeting other friends from Latin America I realized that what brought us together was substantially greater than what told us apart. Nevertheless, this was particularly true when I met my friends from Venezuela. 

There is nothing funnier than the look of sudden realization and the feeling of familiar warmth that overcomes a Colombian and a Venezuelan when one of them uses the word “Chévere” and the other one understands! “Chévere” can be roughly translated as cool, awesome, a general expression of good quality, though this does not do justice to the power and cultural baggage of the word. And it’s a little secret that Colombians and Venezuelans share, mostly without knowing it. As are many other things about ourselves, there are little details that we have so closely related to our identities that it’s always a surprise that we share it with others, a pleasant surprise, even if it comes after some friendly bickering.  Moving all the way across a continent has taught me a lot of things about my new country, about my own, and to my great surprise, about my neighbours. An unexpectedly pleasurable surprise!

In any case, this post was definitely inspired by a political event, so let’s not beat around the bush. Let’s get one fact out in the open right now, Colombians and Colombian media are slightly obsessed about Venezuelan politics; both this and the last campaign were easily the most talked topic in the country for a while. Why? Many reasons. Firstly, it’s natural to worry about your neighbour’s political situation, secondly, the Venezuelan case is inherently interesting and we had the cultural, linguistic and geographical privilege of seeing it from very close by. Also, it’s a search for our own identity; if you ask yourself the question “Who am I?” one way to go about it is asking yourself “Why am I different from my neighbours?” or rather “What sets me apart from those who are most like me?”

Which brings me neatly to my main purpose, sending a message to my Venezuelan friends and hopefully to many others. Having learned lots and lots about your country there is one thing that fascinates me, how the voices of change in Venezuela, led by the charmingly fierce Henrique Capriles, call for unity. Despite being subjected to fourteen years of an unfair and authoritarian regime (yup, I’m not going to be vanilla about the politics) the call for change is one of recognizing your identity as a nation. That, I think is most admirable. You guys have a truly strong sense of national identity based around your feeling and love for the country, with other aspects such as ethnic origin, immigration, or even political identity being completely secondary. 

No matter the circumstances, the difficulties, the problems or the conflicts, your identity as a nation stands strong. Those who were forced to flee, those who thought it might be better to leave, those who stayed facing adversity, everyone I meet shares the same desire of bringing their country together, despite the years of divisive politics for the gains of a few. That is what I admire and what I think should give you hope.  For example, the great efforts that Venezuelans all around the globe have to make to vote! To all of my other readers, I hope you’ll follow my lead and learn more about other nations, be it those far away or those close to your home, maybe there’s a good lesson waiting for you. That being said, I hope my Venezuelan friends feel a word of encouragement and that, if they can, go out in the morning and vote and give Venezuela, Latin America and the World the surprise of the year. Let the love for your country be greater than partisanship and demonstrate the importance of a free and democratic society. If there’s a nation I can trust to put and end to such an appallingly authoritarian and downright bully regime, it’s you.

 ¡Porque Venezuela somos todos!

Incluso sus hermanos de afuera.

All Dressed in White

The moment I saw my phone fly out of my hands I knew something had gone wrong. Next thing I knew, I started to feel my thighs becoming colder and colder.  “Fuck! I slipped on the ice. And we’re almost halfway through February” I said to myself. I had hoped to make it through the winter intact. No chance. Everybody had warned me though, it was bound to happen; there was no way of avoiding it. Of course I was wearing my boots! We’re in Montreal for crying out loud, it’s both steep and icy, that’s the challenge! I started to look around, trying to figure out whether my butt or my pride hurt more. My pride, definitely my pride, and that’s not just because the many layers I was wearing cushioned the fall.  Oh, right, I was texting that joke to my friend. “Shit. Where did my phone land?” I thought. I scrambled around the sidewalk looking for it. Sim-card, battery, cover, and snap, the age-old ritual. Funny how my reflexes led me to protect my phone instead of breaking the fall.

I looked up to the surprisingly blue sky, as if looking for an answer. Instinctively my brain raced back to my school years, looking for advice. All I could hear was my history teacher saying, “Rodrigo, we can always blame the French”. Yeah, that’s what a British education does to you. But maybe it applied here. I’m pretty sure Monsieur de Maisonneuve decided to found this city in the middle of summer. Though, actually, the Mont-Royal does look beautiful covered in snow. Or maybe he liked falling. Maybe nobody ever fell down in France and he came across the ocean to a land where people could fall flat on their butts in all liberty. If only history had that kind of sense of humour. I then thought about the sheet of ice that made me slip, “why is it that we don’t like global warming? Oh right, the polar bears, they need the ice.” I reasoned quietly. Or something like that, I guess. It’s a shame I don’t remember the details, but if anybody ever asks I guess I’ll have to blame France.  At least my school teachers would be proud.

The cold was urging me to stand up, but sitting on the frozen sidewalk made me feel oddly peaceful. A forced pause. Mother nature reminding me that, in the end, I’m actually her bitch. For the first time in ages my mind was blank, trying to capture everything around me. There were no midterms, no homework, no unwashed laundry, no unanswered texts, no projects, no things I needed to tell someone, no nothing. I could think about what was around me. Even though I had walked through that very same block every day for the past six months it was the first time I realized that the building opposite me had something strange. Once I had noticed that it had a beautiful polished stone façade, each window framed in the delicate strength of sculpted rock, but only this time I saw how Victorian sobriety and French elegance were playing with each other like young lovers. Even though the forms and styles were kept ruthlessly equal within one storey, subtle details grew more and more elaborate as the building went up. The two styles flirted and approached each other stealthily, but then retreated to themselves. Kind of what happens in the library when someone catches your eye so you spend the rest of your time trying to catch them looking at you, and when it happens, suddenly both have to look away, as if those equations had suddenly become interesting.  Neither had I noticed how the dépanneur* on the ground floor was using the half-moon windows to display its selections of beer and wine, creating streaks of light that gave the illusion of colourful stained glass. I wonder how many people had noticed this, or if it just served its purpose as a clever way of showing students that abundant alcohol was sold inside.

I saw the bus coming one block away so I got on my knees and then stood up, brushing the snow off my jeans. I started to run. I couldn’t afford to miss it. There was so much I needed to get done!

*In Québec: Convenience store, corner shop, tienda de barrio

Edge

This is a poem I wrote about two years ago in a moment of great grief, one of those moments where impotence and frustration just seem to be overwhelming, where panic and shock are paralysing to the bone.
The day I dropped my iPod in the toilet bowl.

At that time we were studying Sylvia Plath in English class so I made it in the style of her last poem, Edge. You can read it here http://www.sylviaplathforum.com/edge.html, even if you don't read mine. But actually, read the original first and then mine. You'll see.

Edge (of the Toilet Bowl)
By Rodrigo Palau

The iPod is perfected
Its dead
Carcass wears the smile of accomplishment
The illusion of a Californian necessity
Flows in the crystals of its screen,
Its bare
Buttons seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.
Each headphone coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little
Pitcher of lithium, now empty.
It has folded
Them back into its body as petals
Of a rose close when it falls into the bowl
Stiffens and water bleeds
Into the delicate, deep circuitboards of the blank slate.
Tech support has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of silicon.
It is used to this sort of thing.
Its chips crackle and drag.

Spelling Tricks

My first post reminded me that I had this lying around since high school (don't ask me why) so I decided to edit it and upload it for anyone's reference.  

COLOMBIA/COLUMBIA

BILINGUAL CHEAT SHEET- HOJA DE REFERENCIA BILINGÜE

Context	In English	En Español	Contexto
The country in South America	COLOMBIA “Bogotá is the capital city of Colombia”	COLOMBIA “Bogotá es la capital de Colombia”	El país suramericano
The westernmost Canadian Province	BRITISH COLUMBIA “Vancouver is a city in British Columbia”	COLUMBIA BRITÁNICA “Vancouver es una ciudad en la Columbia Británica/ en British Columbia”	La provincia canadiense más occidental
The district where the US capital is located	DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA “Washigton, District of Columbia”	DISTRITO DE COLUMBIA “Washington, Distrito de Columbia”	El distrito que contiene la capital de EE.UU.
The guy who in 1492 sailed the ocean blue	CRISTOPHER COLUMBUS	CRISTÓBAL COLÓN	El hombre de la Niña, la Pinta y la Santa María
Things that happened before 1492 (roughly)	PRE-COLUMBIAN “The Aztecs were a Pre-Columbian society”	PRECOLOMBINO “Los Aztecas fueron una sociedad precolombina”	Cosas que pasaron antes de 1492 (aprox.)
The poetic name for the personification of the United States (Rarely used nowadays)	COLUMBIA “The Statue of Liberty replaced Columbia as the female personification of the US”	COLUMBIA “La estatua libertad reemplazó a Columbia como la personificación femenina de EE.UU.”	El nombre poético femenino para EE.UU (Poco usado hoy en día)

What's this all about?

Come to think of it, this should've been my first post, but oh well. So yeah, I decided to give this blogging thing a go. Why? I'm not too sure... I know I enjoy writing, about many things, and that sometimes interesting things go through my head, but not much more. I'd love to tell you what to expect but I'm not too sure myself, probably just my thoughts on different things that come up, but who knows what I might be tempted to write, or in what form. I'll probably try out a few different things. I mean, I once wrote my history homework in rhyming couplets, so anything's fair game. Sorry about the vagueness but I think it's better than subjecting you (and me) to things like saying it's "a journey of self-discovery," I'm pretty sure we all want to keep our dinners down.

Y sí, de vez en cuando voy a escribir cosas en español.

What's Colombia like?

- "Where are you from?"
- "I'm from Colombia"
- "Oh, cool! What's it like over there?"

In the past year I've probably had that conversation more times that I can count, I mean, it is the McGillian conversation by excellence, not just out of convention, but rather because you never quite know what the other person might reply. Despite the frequency with which this happens, it's more than likely that I've never given the same answer twice, so here's my go at trying to answer "What's Colombia like?". I'll begin by saying that it is a very difficult question to answer, and that's why I never quite know what to say, but here's my best shot.


Sometimes my first instinct is to reply as if I were a travel agent: "Beautiful!" I would say at first, "we've got such diverse natural beauty, many different climates in the same country. In fact, we have  the world's greatest biodiversity per unit area!" In the middle of the Canadian winter I would  emphasize that "If you're ever cold in Bogotá, a two-hour car ride will take you to tropically hot weather!" I would then go on to describe Bogotá as a cosmopolitan and modern city. "Three times the population of Montreal!!" I'd yell over the party's loud music, trying to gauge the person's perception of my country and home city.  I could go on with things like "it's the only country in South America with two oceans!" or "We have this really cool thing in Bogotá that every Sunday we close some of the main streets for people to go out cycling, jogging, skating... since it's never too cold or too hot we can do it all year round." I might try to yell in one breath between two songs. While this would be honest, it does have an artificial aftertaste to it, it's my desire to pitch the good things about my country, rather than my personal thoughts, what's driving me to say it.

Another choice would be to try and address all of the negative aspects about Colombia, and let's not kid ourselves I'd have a plateful to choose from! Quite a risky move I usually think to myself, probably not the best party conversation. Giving a full and accurate picture of contemporary Colombia in terms of politics, economics and society is quite hard. Colombia is apparently full of contradictions: "yes, it is one of the largest drug producing countries, but no, it is not socially acceptable to consume drugs everywhere, actually I was shocked at how open people are here in Montreal about doing drugs". Armed conflict, forced displacement, inequality, lack of opportunities, the list goes on... it would be foolish to deny that my country has its share of problems, but I don't think I could do justice to any of them in casual conversation. I think I've made my point on why it is so hard to paint an objective, accurate picture on "What's Colombia like?" The thing is that when I hear the question "What's Colombia like?" I naturally think about my personal, subjective view:  What's Colombia like, for me?

Colombia, for me, is naturally filled with memories. When I think of Colombia I think about my family, my friends, my experiences in school. The images that come to my head are not of the great biodiversity or of the political troubles, they are rather images of my room and all the books I have left behind, of my friends and the all the fun we had in school, of the amazing teachers I had, of all the parties and dancing (yes, in Colombia any party is a dancing party), of my favourite restaurants. When I go back to Colombia my greatest expectations are not to drink "the world's best coffee!" or understand the problems with our politicians, but rather to have a homemade dinner, to share an amazing (and amazingly cheap) beer with my friends, to be able to tell jokes without thinking if they'll translate well, to eat all of the food I cannot find in Montreal (you cannot imagine the craving I have for a hamburger from El Corral, a Colombian food chain), to dance salsa, merengue, reggaetón (you name it!) with my friends.  Maybe the reason why I find it so hard to answer the question "What's Colombia like?" is because my subjective answer is very different from the objective answer, which is in itself complicated enough.

Long story short, it's kinda really complicated. I think the best thing is for you to come visit and I'll be able to show you what I mean!