Fiona's Blog

A New Website

2011-03-09T08:40:00.000-08:00

I was away from Medellín, Colombia for quite some time, but returned in May, 2011.

I have decided to communicate with the world in a different way - still blogging, but with some information about Colombia thrown in for free, as well as some pretty pictures.

I now have a website called www.astrangeunmaking.co.uk. Don't worry - there is an attempt at an explanation of the obscure title on the site. Thanks for sticking with me until now and see you over here.

Five top moments in Colombia - 5

2010-03-04T13:44:00.000-08:00

Not only my top moment in Colombia but one of the most remarkable experiences of my life: Again, the setting was downtown Medellín. I met a young man there in March 2009, at a particularly bad time for murders of street people. He told me he had come from Bogotá, that he was a drug addict and that he had studied theology in the past. All we did was chat to him and give him bread and jam, and hot chocolate. Months later, I was at a concert held in a church in the centre. A smartly-dressed young man came up to me and said in English, do you remember me? It was the young man I had met in March. We spoke briefly and made an arrangement to meet up the next day. He was living with his mother about 20 minutes from the seminary. Over three or four hours I heard their story, with mother and son taking turns to tell their side. He said that that meeting had been a turning point for him – it was as if you had given me the Holy Spirit with the bread and jam, he said. He was able to get back into contact with his family, find a church, go to a rehab centre, in short, to start again. That Sunday, the day I heard his story, was my best day in Colombia.

Five top moments in Colombia - 4

2010-02-01T01:38:00.000-08:00

I helped to distribute bread and hot chocolate in downtown Medellin. We had a lot of contact with a group of young adult men who live on the streets and are addicted to sniffing glue. For months they nagged us to bring along a football so they could play a match with the lads who came along to help give out the bread and chocolate. Finally, a ball was found and we picked a street for the match to take place in. Frankly, I didn't have high expectations for the game. The streets boys have an incredibly unhealthy lifestyle, and live in a context of extreme violence, so I felt the chances of a good, clean game of football were pretty low. Well, I couldn't have been more wrong. The game flowed from end to end, there was maybe one bad tackle in a couple of hours of play and you couldn't tell the street boys from the volunteers, either in terms of their fitness levels or their skills. The final score was something like 9-8 and it all ended in handshakes and hugs at about midnight. 'This is the kingdom of God,' I thought.

Five top moments in Colombia - 3

2010-01-11T09:51:00.000-08:00

The first time I was invited to the home of a displaced family was during the misison in 2008 and I went with Gabo, since the women weren’t allowed to go out on their own. In the dark, I hit my face on the barbed wire that marked the boundary of their plot but thankfully without much force. Yeffer, the 10-year-old son of the house, had invited us. His mum, Oralis, made us avena, a drink made from oats, and we sipped it down, trying not to think about how polluted the water was. From that simple act of hospitality and generosity out of extreme necessity grew a friendship that endured till I left Colombia.

Five top moments in Colombia - 2

2009-12-31T15:37:00.000-08:00

Next, the thanksgiving service in Santa Rosa.
Five days later, Gabo, sufficiently recovered from his accident, preached at a little service we held to celebrate the end of our work in the community. The children (and adults) sat entranced as he preached on a passage in Luke 4: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour."It was a fitting ending to a wonderful week.

Five top moments in Colombia - 1

2009-12-18T16:06:00.002-08:00

You might have worked out that I like these kinds of lists. So, to finish off my reflections on life in Colombia, five key moments.

Number 1, arriving in Santa Rosa.

Santa Rosa is the community on the coast where we built latrines last year. We were meant to have gone as a team to meet the people but things had gone horribly wrong earlier in the day. Two of the lads, including my co-leader Gabo, had hurt themselves falling off a motorbike, so in the end, I was despatched to make the first contact, along with Xiomara, the engineer from the NGO we were going to work with. The people were waiting to meet us and as we sat in the gloaming they told us about their lives, when they had been displaced and from where, how long it took to grow yucca and rice, where their children to get to school, how dirty the water was… I can’t quite put my finger on why it was so lovely but maybe it was the location, nestling at the foot of wooded slopes, or the graciousness of the people, or my sense of God starting to put things together at the end of a traumatic day.

My Top Five Places in Medellín (5): La Terminal del Norte

2009-12-04T12:41:00.000-08:00

Finally, we have a winner. For a long time I hesitated between two candidates for my favourite place in Medellín, but a couple of weekends ago I realised that there was another place, not very special in its own right, but the first step in many memorable outings, that was my favourite spot in Medellín.

But first of all the two runners up are, 1) the Botanic Gardens, a safe place to enjoy beautiful flowers, trees and butterflies:

and (2) the Museo de Antioquia, more for the space itself, and the lovely café, than the excellent art:But the winner is the bus terminal in the north of the city. I beganlots of adventures here, late at night, ready for a 6 to 12-hour journey to somewhere new and exciting, or a return vist to old friends. Add the fun of seeing how they spelled my name on the ticket this time, the end-of-term feel of travelling with students and the chat from the ever-cheerful Colombian travellers and you have the ultimate gateway to adventure.

Nice?

2009-11-18T12:03:00.001-08:00

I recently happened to meet someone from northern Europe, let's say, who has been in Colombia for a month. We were just making small talk and I asked her what she thought about Colombia, and she said, 'It's nice.' Granted she wasn't speaking her native language but even so, the word nice has been jangling in my head ever since. Nice? Colombia is many things - beautiful, heartbreaking, green, rich, varied, violent, vibrant, tragic, dazzling, infuriating, beguiling, maddening, fertile, welcoming, cruel, blessed, cursed, gorgeous, scarred... but nice? No, not nice.

The Story of My Life

2009-10-29T12:12:00.000-07:00

Three street signs in Bogotá sum up the story of my time in Colombia:

The Street of Loneliness

The Street of Teaching

The Street of Hope

Road out of town

2009-10-21T10:26:00.000-07:00

Just to keep the suspense building about my favourite place in Medellín (!), I'll show you some pictures I took a couple of weeks ago on the road to the airport. Nothing particularly profound, just what I could see from the window of an extremely slow-moving bus.

My Top Five Places in Medellín (4): San Diego Mall

2009-10-08T12:53:00.000-07:00

People who know me well might be surprised to find another shopping mall on my top five places - with me not being a great shopper and all. But of course, I hardly ever actually buy anything there, except the occasional magazine. It's all about passing an hour or two somewhere different from home, feeling safe and enjoying the ambience. I have coffee and a pastry, do my suduko and read about a massacre or corruption scandal in the complimentary magazines:Oh, and I like the shape of the chairs in the McDonald's café:

My Top Five Places in Medellín (3): Suramericana

2009-09-28T09:45:00.000-07:00

I stumbled on this quiet, green space by accident when my parents were here and I took them to the Gallery of Modern Art, which turned out to be closed.

Taking a different route back to the Metro Station, we came across this tranquil corridor between two very busy streets.

At its heart are the headquarters of a bank, which means it's well-guarded and safe.

A couple of weeks ago I went back and enjoyed a pleasant hour sitting on a bench, reading a book and doing my sudoku...

...watched over by the bank's security guards and this sculpture.

My Top Five Places in Medellín (2): My Classroom

2009-09-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

OK, you won't find this in any guidebook, but my classroom has been where I have spent many of my happiest hours here. My students are a joy to teach. They say thank you. They bring me birthday cake.

They are warm, loving, cheerful, willing, creative and resourceful. If I asked them to put on a rock opera about the present perfect in 20 minutes, they would, and I'm sure it would be fabulous.

My Top Five Places in Medellín (1): El Tesoro

2009-09-02T12:36:00.000-07:00

El Tesoro is the glitziest of Medellín's many shopping malls. It is also a long way from where I live, which adds to the sense that it is a special, golden place. I sometimes go on a Saturday afternoon, enjoy the ride to the other side of town, have a little wander around and have coffee and cake, sometimes in my 'own' café.I look out at the sky and the view over the city...

...listen to the sample CDs at Tower Records, and get the metro home. I always lower the tone terribly, in my scruffy jeans and trainers, but being unfailingly polite, no Colombian would ever mention it.

The Language of the Conflict

2009-08-11T06:34:00.000-07:00

The many decades of conflict in Colombia have produced a whole set of vocabulary to describe the many strange and terrifying things that go on here.
Protection money is called la vacuna (the vaccination). The people collecting it might be the guerrilla, or the paramilitares, who have now morphed into the paracos, a contraction of paramilitares and narcotraficantes. When they are captured they might become canjeable, which means they could be exchanged for the many hostages held by the FARC, unless they decide to take up the offer of a place back in society by renouncing violence and coming clean about their crimes, in which case they become reinsertados, (the reinserted). Their victims are the desplazados (the internally displaced), or street people, drug dealers and prostitutes who die in the chillingly euphemistic limpieza social (social cleansing). If crimes are committed by people who are ‘just’ criminals without any political motivation, that’s called delincuencia común, and if the conflict impinges on your daily life, you talk about being affected by orden público (public order), a phrase which means exactly the opposite of what the words mean. To talk about a particularly difficult time in Colombian history (the 1950s), people say La Violencia, which is neither euphemistic nor ironic.
First I misunderstood what this language meant, and then I deciphered it. Then I used it in a straightforward way and now I’ve started to use it to make jokes, so it’s probably time to go home.

(The poster in the picture says In my family there are 3 million displaced people and was part of a newspaper campaign in solidarity with the displaced).

Tales from the ... shore

2009-08-03T10:11:00.001-07:00

I'm sorry if you have been checking back for some tales from the Coast. We weren't allowed to go to the Coast because of security concerns, so instead we went to a place called La Dorada, about half way between Medellín and Bogotá on the shores of the mighty River Magdalena. We had fun painting houses:

before

after

running children's clubs:

facilitating a health brigade, and helping in a new church there. But maybe the highlight was a close encounter with the FAC, that's the Colombian Airforce, (not the FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia!). One of the church members is a member of the airforce, based near La Dorada, and it was interesting to see a different (heavily-guarded) facet of Colombian life.
And as usual, there were lots of pretty flowers to see:

Stop Press: Nueva Esperanza gets its sound system

2009-07-01T15:50:00.000-07:00

If you have been reading this blog since last year, you may remember the discussion about whether the pastor of a church in a displaced community was right to ask for a sound system. Well, someone reading the blog decided they wanted to help, which was my cunning plan all along, and on 12th June, the community of Nueva Esperanza got their sound system. They are thrilled. If you would like to buy them land, get in touch!

Visit to Bucaramanga

2009-06-03T08:58:00.000-07:00

Last week I took advantage of another Monday holiday to visit friends in Bucaramanga - the self-proclaimed city of joy, about 400km away from Medellin.

As usual, there were lots of things to like:

orchids
the ceiling of a Catholic Churchnice soup, called mutéa trip in a cable car across the Chicomocha valley
and pretty umbrellas.

But the conflict remained unavoidable.

Graffiti (the first I've seen) supporting the 'National Liberation Army', a small left-wing rebel group, with the words: poverty is ignorance.

I am going to be away from cyberspace for about a month, but I have been so poor at updating this blog that you probably won't notice much difference. Check back for Tales from the Coast at the end of July.

Agapanthus

2009-05-11T10:08:00.000-07:00

Trip to Ibagué

2009-04-15T09:36:00.000-07:00

Last week I got the chance to visit Ibagué, a city 8 hours to the south of Medellín. Here are some pretty pictures, some provocative grafitti, an inflatable policeman and a historically-loaded chess set.

'The poor have no homeland.'

Conquistadores v. 'Indians'. Maybe they'll have a better chance this time.

Verde

2009-03-30T08:32:00.001-07:00

Green was the theme on my outing to the Botanic Gardens last Monday, a public holiday.

These senior police officers travelling on the Metro were in town to provide security for the Annual Meeting of the Inter-American International Development Bank.

Hosting this event is a source of great pride for a city which had such a terrible reputation for violence in the 1990s.

The poster, one of countless around the city at the moment, says, Great international events are held in the great cities of the world.

The writing on the wall

2009-03-16T10:07:00.000-07:00

The chalked graffiti round the corner says 'Medellin, you are the envy of the world'. A spontaneous outburst of local pride or the work of the local tourist board? I can't decide.

Misunderstanding of the week

2009-03-09T07:07:00.001-07:00

Girl in church: Where are you from?

Me: Scotland

Girl: Oh, Scotland has the biggest number of bats [in Spanish: murciélagos, the flying kind, like the baby one in the picture] in the world, doesn't it?

Me [mishearing]: Divorces? [in Spanish: divorcios]

Can anyone confirm or deny the truth of this bizarre piece of trivia?

Colombian Cameos (3)

2009-03-04T08:11:00.000-08:00

In a conversation with students about racism in Colombia, Astédien (above), says, 'I don't feel inferior to any white person nor superior to any indigenous person,' a statement that says as much about race relations in Colombia as it does about his confident sense of himself.

Colombian Cameos (2)

2009-02-23T08:09:00.000-08:00

Once a week I help on a project to take bread and hot chocolate to some poor people who live in the centre of Medellín. Because it is startlingly different from the normal tourist experience, a lot of foreigners get taken to visit the project, something I dubbed poverty tourism, thinking I was coining a phrase. In fact, this concept already exists. I was taken along to visit this project when I was here on holiday in 2006 and it made such an impact on me, that I came back. So although I have some doubts about the whole idea of poverty tourism, I keep taking people along. We start in a run-down hotel, and then spend a couple of hours on the streets, among the drug adicts, prostitutes, glue-sniffing street kids, and people who make their living recycling rubbish. A few weeks ago, a Dutch guy came along. He got chatting to one of the street people and when his Spanish ran out, I was called in to translate. The conversation went something like this:
Street Guy: Ask him if he is a Christian.
Dutch Guy: No, I'm not, but I have a lot of respect for Christian values.
Street Guy: Ask him if he wants to get to know Jesus.
Dutch Guy: Not right now. I am not saying that Christianity is not a true religion but it is not for me right now.
European post-modernism meets Colombian faith - the result: mutual incomprehension.

Colombian Cameos (1)

2009-02-16T13:11:00.000-08:00

I am on a bus. A well-dressed man flags it down and says to the driver, ‘Colabórame.’ I learned this extremely useful word on my third day here, and means ‘help me, if necessary by bending the rules’. In this case, the man means, ‘let me ride for free’. The driver agrees and the man makes the trip to the bottom of the hill standing in the open doorway of the bus. When we reach the supermarket at the bottom of the hill, the bus stops to let the man off. But the man wants to extend his free ride a little. It seems he wants to be dropped off at the end of the bus stop, not the beginning, so he doesn’t have to walk so far to the next bus. The bus driver waves him off angrily, and then looks round at us passengers, as if to say, ‘what a cheek’. This cheek is a very Colombian trait and is called being conchudo. I don’t think it’s rubbing off on me yet.

What people call me here

2009-02-02T06:14:00.000-08:00

Here are some of the names, titles and endearments that people use for me here:

My name
Fiona, but with a short o sound - as in log

Variations on my name
Fion, Fi, Fionita, Fionis

By my students
Profe (short for profesora = teacher), teacher, hermana (=sister)

By younger colleagues and officials
Doña Fiona

Mostly by men and boys (use www.wordreference.com if you want to know what they mean)
Princesa, Mi Reina, Mi Amor, Niña, Señorita, Señora, Madre, Madrecita, Tía, Mamita, Mami, Nena

By people in the street wanting to attract my attention and do so by drawing attention to my lighter skin

Mona (if I were black they would call me Negra)

Political correctness has not reached Colombia - one day I'll blog about the names used here for overweight, disabled, partially sighted, and indigenous people.

(The picture was taken about six months ago - since then the tan has faded slightly.)

Back in Colombia

2009-01-19T06:21:00.001-08:00

There were plenty reasons for me to be glad I was back in Colombia.

The hibiscus in bloom and the jacaranda trees...

...the roses...

...my favourite house (in the next street)...

...the crazy mosaic (round the corner).

Best of all, I felt at home as soon as I landed. On the taxi-journey from the airport I was able to tell the driver where to turn right up to our part of town (at the Lada workshop, in case you ever need to know) and the seminary community enfolded me in its warm embrace the moment I arrived.

Seeing things both ways

2009-01-19T05:47:00.000-08:00

I was in Scotland for Christmas and New Year. Everything there still felt familiar but I realised I was seeing everything through different eyes. For example, I noticed that everyone drives terribly politely and stays tidily in their lane, and that there are no motorbikes and scooters nipping in and out of the traffic.
I watched the Christmas cookery programmes and the one that caught my attention was with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (and yes, I did have to check how to spell his name). He went to a farm in the countryside to shoot a deer for Christmas dinner. As I watched, I reflected that in Colombia, watching the same scene, I would be wondering if that was a part of the country affected by the conflict, whether there were guerilla or paramilitaries or the army over the next hill, whether the land was being used to grow coca or had been fumigated and whether there was a risk of landmines.
But those initial vivid impressions faded and as the three weeks passed, everything felt as familiar and normal as it had always done.

Walk to Work

2008-11-19T07:53:00.000-08:00

It takes me about three minutes to walk to my office.

Here are some things and people I see on the way:

flowers the city of the Medellin on a misty day the children's play area raindrops on leaves liliesbusy lizzies

my colleagues in the Seminary's Insitute, Johan...

...Eliana...

...and Patricia.

along the corridor to my office: the official sign on the door...

and the alternative sign which says welcome to Narnia because of...

... the wardrobe in my office I inherited from my predecessor.

the view from my office window Then it's time to get down to work.

If I hear another story about a dismembered body, I'll scream!

2008-11-07T12:12:00.001-08:00

Forming close friendships in Colombia is harder than you might think, given that Colombians are such a friendly people. When people start to share their lives with me, instead of helping us find shared interests or points of contact, their stories of utter horror and anguish often leave me reeling.

Don't mention the war!

2008-10-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

I've been told that President Uribe's policy of democratic security has made the cities here safer and the countryside more dangerous. The result is that you can live most of the time in Medellin without the reality of Colombia's conflict impinging on you at all, if you ignore the ragged, displaced people at the traffic lights begging for help in their mispelled signs. But every so often something happens to make you aware that this is a country still suffering an extremely damaging civil conflict. Here are three examples. On television, between adverts for shampoo and breakfast cereals, there are adverts calling members of the armed groups to demobilize, with the slogan demobilization is the way out. Rummaging among the toys in a shop on the coast, I found a little model plastic soldier with what I took to be a mine-detector in his hand, part of the landscape in a country with the third greatest number of land-mines in the world. And finally, the anti-explosive dog in the picture playing his part in keeping the crowds safe during Medellin's spectacular flower festival in August. And how do Colombians cope with the war as an ever-present backdrop to their lives? By laughing. They are the most cheerful people I have ever met and they can laugh at anything. Is this evidence of the triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity or a dysfunctional response, storing up psychological problems for generations to come? I can't quite decide.

A word for the defence

2008-09-29T09:38:00.000-07:00

Thank you to those who commented on the last post. I feel I want to say a little something in defence of the pastor in the displaced community we visited, who asked if we could help him buy a sound system for his church. The community's great need is for land, about 5 hectares for every family, so that they can be self-sufficient in food. There are 60 families in that community and land costs about £2,500 a hectare at today's exchange rate. Even with my shaky arithmetic, I can work out that that comes to a whopping three quarters of a million pounds. Until someone comes along with that kind of cash, maybe a sound system is a modest and realistic request, which is not to say that it needs to be a priority for me.

Back to the Coast

2008-08-27T14:56:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I got the opportunity to return to Cordoba, where I spent a month this summer. It was great to go back to the community of Santa Rosa, where the toilet block we worked on is now nearly finished. The people there seem quite positive; their crops are growing and they have just about enough land to support themselves. It was a different story in another, longer-established community of displaced people I visited for the first time. They live in well-built concrete houses but have little land and no work. They are hungry. So imagine our reaction when the pastor of the little church asked if we could help them buy a sound system for the church. How would you have responded?

a) How absurd! Your people need food, clothes and work. Surely a sound system is an expensive luxury and should be way down your list of priorities.

b) Mmmmm. Interesting. Why is a sound system of such importance to you, given the other needs you face?

c) Of course. If that is what you perceive as a need, who are we to question that? Let's see what we can do to find you the resources for a sound system.

d) Why can't you see us as people, and not just as potential sources of money?

I still haven't worked out what the right answer is.

Things I now know

2008-08-04T15:14:00.000-07:00

Here are some things I learned during my month away:

1. Mixing cement is like making a cake.

2. Laying bricks is like icing a cake.

3. Some things get so dirty they will never be clean again.

4. I can survive on five and a half hours sleep.

5. In the case of a flood, it's important to locate your toilet paper.

6. If you decide to share, you will always have more than enough.

7. The Spanish words for lice, dandruff, stitch, bat, and bobble.

8. A well has to be dug more than 100 metres away from a septic tank.

9. A flushing toilet is a wonderful thing.

10. You have to lie at an angle to sleep comfortably in a hammock.

Now I know their names

2008-07-18T11:30:00.000-07:00

It’s impossible to engage with the current Colombian reality without confronting the issue of internal displacement. Up to 4 million people have been violently forced from their homes over the last 20 years. I had read a little about the issue before going to Cordoba and tried to make sense of it in terms of the Scottish Highland Clearances and the migrations to the big cities that I have seen in South Africa. But of course, nothing prepares you for the reality: a community of thousands of people living in roughly-made huts, many with only plastic-sheeting for walls; children running to the roadside with bowls in their hands, begging for food; a mother cooking a meal of a few eggs for her three children by the light of a single candle. What made the biggest impression on me was spending time with displaced people, listening to their stories, trying to grasp their profound sense of loss and the intense struggle to survive they face every day. Now I can’t think about displacement in terms of statistics, or of a perplexing social phenomenon. When I think about displacement, I see faces, faces of people whose names I know: Orora, Yefer Andres, Cesar, Camila Andrea, Enith, Ricardo, Tito, Aron, Jorge, Jenys, Luis Felipe, John, Ruth. It has become much more personal and much more troubling.

In praise of denim

2008-07-17T10:02:00.001-07:00

While I am working out what to say about the experience of being with some of Colombia’s displaced communities, permit me a word or two in praise of denim. The final week of our month in Cordoba, I wore my jeans for 7 days in a row, 4 of them on a construction site. In that time I helped to dig a 1.5-metre-deep hole, sieved sand to make cement, mixed cement and laid bricks, some of the time on rickety scaffolding. To get to where we were working (building toilets in a displaced community) we had to travel about 20 minutes by motorbike, a journey that included having to splash our way through two huge puddles. And my jeans didn’t get dirty! They just changed colour. So hail, denim, king of hard-wearing, dirt-resistant fabrics. I salute you.

Back from the Coast

2008-07-14T16:11:00.000-07:00

I have been away in Cordoba, the region north of Antioquia, for a month. I made a last-minute decision not to take my camera, a decision I didn't regret, as I was able to engage with everything I saw directly, without wondering if it would make a good photo. I experienced enough 'bloggable' material to last me a year, so watch this space. For now, it's enough to say that I am safely home in Medellin, brown, exhausted and thankful. As we drove into Medellin, I thought, oh, this feels like home, until I was accused of looking like an Anglo-Saxon by a taxi-driver, who subsequently ripped me off!

Tartan Shoes

2008-06-07T12:44:00.000-07:00

Aren't these the most amazing shoes you ever did see?

Give us this day our daily bread

2008-05-24T11:15:00.000-07:00

One thing I have noticed here is a subtly different attitude to food. This is because, in a land of plenty, where the supermarkets are as well-stocked as any in Europe, people around me are going hungry. One consequence is that food is never wasted: a colleague of mine froze the leftovers from an event she was at in the United States, knowing they would be thrown out, and brought them back in her hand luggage to share with friends here.
Some students in the seminary pay for a breakfast and lunch six days a week, but often can't afford anything to eat in the evening, and some families are subsisting on bread and milk. But, Colombians are generally so positive and upbeat, that I am only realising very slowly how much need there is right on my doorstep. Sharing with those in need takes on a different dimension when it is people you see every day and not the faceless poor at the other end of a charity donation.
I eat lunch with the students from Monday to Friday and this was my main meal on Friday: rice, stew and yucca (the yellow stuff).

Trip to Cali

2008-05-05T16:32:00.001-07:00

I have just spent the weekend with friends in Cali. It was fun to spend time in another Colombian city with a different feel from Medellin. Here is a random collection of things that caught my eye:
I don't know what Hernando Botero Obyrne did, but it was significant enough for him to get this swimming pool named after him. I wonder who the Obyrne (O'Byrne, surely?) in his family tree was.
Here is evidence that President Uribe is not universally popular - according to this graffitti 40 thousand (thanks, Manuel) indigenous people are against his reelection.

This sign says: Clothes Clinic - Curtains Made. I feel there is a joke in there somewhere.

Finally, cholado: fresh exotic fruit, grated ice, condensed milk, fruit sauce....mmmm!

In the street where I live

2008-04-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

I live on Street 76, where these men play chess most days... ...watched by this supercilious cat...

...while this dog watches over our comings and goings benignly, only barking when he is particularly irritated.

The things people say

2008-04-18T07:15:00.001-07:00

Here are five things people have said to me since my arrival in Colombia - my translations from the original Spanish.

Are we really going to New York? A little girl at an English workshop entitled A Trip to New York

I understand most of what you say in class but I wouldn't if you weren't using your hands. A student, talking about me using English most of the time in class. Thank you, all my Sign Language Teachers.

With you time goes backwards - you look younger as time passes. A student, commenting on my new haircut.

That's very first-world-ist. A Colombian colleague, on my comment that British people weren't very good at learning languages, as we expected everybody else to learn English.

People are very reserved in Europe, aren't they? Another Colombian colleague.

And finally, while I was taking the photo of the pretty red leaf, the head maintenance man asked me what I was doing. I showed him the picture and he said,"That's come out well, and it's got its message, too."

I am still trying to work out what he meant.

Tranquila

2008-04-08T06:06:00.000-07:00

I have had two similar experiences recently which made me reflect on the place of rules here in Colombia, on being foreign, and on the importance of relationships. One was in a bank. I needed to pay some cash into an account, but was told that this service was only available to people who have accounts with the bank, which I don't. I asked the teller what I should do, and she said, "Tranquila, te colaboro." (Don't worry, I'll help you.) She helped me with the form, took my cash, and said that next time I would have to find a bigger branch, where I would be allowed out the transaction. Another time, I needed to return some clothes to a supermarket. I cheerfully presented the items and the receipt at the appropriate desk. The two women got very agitated that the clothes WEREN'T IN A BAG. Apparently, you have to bring unwanted goods in a carrier bag that you have to get sealed by the security guard on your way in. What to do? I had a brainwave. I would go and buy something, get a plastic bag, put my unwanted items in it, go out of the shop and get the security guard to seal it. When I said this to the women, they laughed and said, "Tranquila." Next time, I would have to do things the proper way, but this time, as I was clearly foreign and didn't know the rules, they would exchange my goods for me. Here, it seems, personal connection is everything and rules don't matter very much. This is very nice for me - all I have to do when I confront bureaucracy is look stricken and speak stumbling Spanish - but I don't know if it is good for a nation, in the long run.

Where is Fiona?

2008-03-31T12:23:00.000-07:00

There was a special children's party at the Seminary this week and I happened to be around when the cake was being decorated. It was decided that the cake should have a Shrek theme and all went well until it was discovered that Princess Fiona was nowhere to be found. It was a bit surreal to hear the following conversation: Child: "I can't find Fiona!" Mum: "Well, look for her again!" Child: "We've lost Fiona"... and so on. My offer to paint myself green and wear funny ears was not accepted, thankfully. Here's the final version of the cake, minus Fiona.

PS For those not in the know, Princess Fiona is the love interest in the Shrek films. I have found it a great help here to be able to say that my name is Fiona, like Princess Fiona in Shrek. But everybody still has a terrible problem spelling Christie.

Avian Visitors

2008-03-29T09:43:00.000-07:00

These macaws live in the zoo but get out during the day. They came to feed in the seminary trees on Tuesday this week.

Metrocable

2008-03-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

The metrocable is the pride of Medellin. It is a set of cable car gondolas that are integrated into the city's exemplary metro system, connecting the poorer areas on the slopes of the city to the centre. A new section of the metrocable opened a couple of weeks ago and I decided that it would make a good outing for my friend, Liz, visiting from Bogota. I am never identified as a foreigner, until I open my mouth, but Liz is blond and gets a lot of attention. In the queue for the metrocable, someone asked her if she was from Manchester. As people usually think she is American, she was quite pleased that they got the right country.

Fecundity

2008-03-18T08:46:00.001-07:00

I bought a granadilla the other day and it got a bit bashed on its journey from the shop to my fruit bowl. When I opened it, it was perfectly fine but one of the seeds had decided it was time to germinate.

And this is growing out of the plug-hole of the sink in my utility room.

First posting

2008-03-18T08:31:00.000-07:00

Due to public demand (ok, one or two people have asked)... here is my blog. Don't expect much real news here; I will be using this space to make the occasional observation about how weird and wonderful life is here in Medellin, Colombia.