Bogota Blogger

Settled in Turkey, and busy, I have neglected this site for months. But I still keep up with friends in Colombia regularly and read the Colombian news from time to time.  Turkey and Colombia have so very much in common, I couldn’t even begin to list them all. Some things I found charming or frustrating about Colombia are double or triple or more here in Turkey. And yet the countries don’t have much to do with each other–they don’t even have embassies in each other’s capital cities.

Maybe I would find other countries that are kind of 2 1/2 world-ish that are also like Colombia and Turkey–lots of people have suggested that.  But, based on my friend Jose’s experiences in London in the past seven months (he went there when I came to Turkey), I’m drawing some anecdotal conclusions about the similarities between the two.

Jose went to London to study English, and I helped him to get there. Basically he loves Colombia but feels the need to escape (that’s the correct word) if he is ever to have any opportunity to improve himself. He has a university degree and is hard-working, but those things don’t count for too much in the classist society that Colombia still is. So, he got a visa to study English in London and is about to renew it for another year.

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A few days ago, there was a lot of news about three FARC hostages being released, in a deal brokered by Hugo Chavez after the Colombian George Bush, President Alvaro Uribe, had told Chavez he could no longer negotiate for Colombia with the rebels. The rebels announced that they would unilaterally release Ingrid Betancourt’s campaign manager, Clara Rojas, and her 3 or 4 year old son, apparently a Stockholm Syndrome child, and another hostage who is a former Colombian congresswoman. This was all supposed to happen two days ago, and some Venezuelan helicopters were allowed to fly to Villavicencio, a town outside Bogota, to wait for further instructions about where to pick up the hostages in the jungle. Chavez went there, of course, along with some politicians invited by him and even Oliver Stone, a film director from the US. In order to show that he is still in charge, the Colombian George Bush gave them a 7:00PM Sunday deadline. And, he decided to show up himself at the scene, to get in on the credit taking when the time came.

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Last week there was some news about hostages that have been held by the FARC for years now, the most well-known being Ingrid Betancourt who was captured five years ago and three US contractors who have been held for four years.  There are many, many others, of course, who get little or no publicity. Venezuelan President Chavez had been negotiating with the FARC for the release of hostages, with the blessing of Colombian President Uribe, but Uribe cut Chavez off last week, and about the same time a video showing Ingrid Betancourt and the three Americans, which had been made recently, was found when some FARC guys were arrested in Bogota.

All the news reports say that this is the first proof in three years that Ingrid and the Americans are alive. But last spring just before I left Bogota, a hostage escaped, and he said he had been held with her and the Americans, and confirmed that they were still alive. 

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Not easy.

Colombians can visit something like 30 countries in the world without visas, and most of those are Latin American countries or obscure island ones, with a few exceptions (Israel, South Korea, Japan). Colombians can’t even visit Mexico without a visa, and Mexican visas are hard to obtain, because–my cynical theory–the US dictates to Mexico their visa policy because we don’t want any of those Colombians getting closer to our border and trying to come into our country to take what we got!

There are websites for companies who supposedly help people get visas to places like Canada or Europe, but I think many of them are not too trustsworthy and that the best way is to find out through research the policies and procedures and just do it yourself. Visas for Colombians are harder and harder to come by to first world countries, so most of those agencies can’t help so much in the end anyway. A program to study English in Canada or England is probably one of the easiest routes to a visa, but even that requires a lot of work and, honestly, a lot of cash (and a few connections).

So, I last year helped my Colombian friend Jose try to get a visa to go to England to study English. He had a friend who had a connection with a language school in London, and we started there. Then, since the school works with the British Council, all the paperwork collection and documentation was supervised by that agency. The good part was that the British Council knows what the government wants to see and tells the people working with them what to gather in order to present a case. Basically it comes down to studying fulltime (21 hours per week) for at least seven months, with the course and a month of accomodation paid for in full up front, proof of a long-standing Colombian job, ability to pay living expenses in UK, property ownership, and lots of other detailed stuff.

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I have left Bogota. But I still have a lot to say about it, and am going to try to start writing again consistently. I left because I got a new job in Turkey, so I was ready for a different experience, but I could easily have lived in Bogota for a few years more. There’s lots to do and it has many andvantages for a foreigner. I would love to spend more time in the city, and in Colombia, and in South America, but the job situation dictated that I should move, and that is what I did. I would not hesitate to go back to Bogota and/or Colombia some day to live, and I most definitely plan to return to visit (maybe next July), now that I have some connections there.

Comparing Progress in Colombia and Turkey

I see a billion similarities between Colombia and my new home, Turkey. And a lot of differences, too, but more similarities. They are both in about the same place economically and in many ways socially as well. One big difference is that Turkey hopes to get into the European Union so is likely to clean up its act at a faster pace than Colombia, but in Colombia I also see some movement. The natural resources of Colombia are just astounding, the human resources are just waiting to be tapped, and development could come very quickly with just a little effort and some reform policies that a certain minority segment of the country’s leadership seems aware of and ready to make, if possible. Turkey will get there first, but when Colombia finally starts to compete, it will have a lot of raw talent to back it up.

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In Bogota, and in most of Colombia, litter is everywhere.

Monserrate Full of Plastic Bags

On my first or second weekend in the city, some friends took me up Monserrate, one of the major tourist things to do in the city. It was a beautiful sunny Sunday day, and there are hundreds of vendors of all types at the base of the mountain where the train station is and where the trail starts. Then, there are another or so hundred vendors on the trail.

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Arepas are a kind of corn-bread, sort of, fried on a stovetop generally, that come in lots of sizes, thick and thin, but only one shape–round.  They are eaten all over the country but especially in “paisa” terrority of Antioquia and the Eje Cafetera.  Lots of times they are filled with cheese, or topped with cheese or butter.  I would think of them as bread-substitutes, but Colomians don’t really see them that way, and they don’t hesitate to have both arepas and bread with a meal.

Sometimes arepas are moist inside, whether they have cheese or not, and lots of people like them this way.  I prefer the extra-thin ones that are very flat and crispy, and I guess they are less popular, because they’re a little difficult to find. In my local Carulla I can sometimes find Dona Paisa Extra-Delgado, but only on a semi-regular basis. Often at roadside restaurants, which are common in Colombia as they used to be in the US in the days before interstate highways and chain fast-food places, arepas will be standard fare, either alone or as part of a meal. I suppose arepas could be eaten cold, though I’ve always had them hot, and I’m sure they’re better that way.  Maybe arepa is a little of an acquired taste, because I didn’t really like them much when I first came to Colombia, though now I eat them whenever they’re served and make myself one at home almost every night as sort of a snack–either with cheese or butter melted on top.

Today there was a march downtown and in the central business district of Bogota to protest kidnapping. Though kidnapping’s not nearly as prevalent as it used to be, last week the FARC killed eleven politicians they had been holding hostage, and said it was because a military unit had tried to free them. The president denies that the military was involved, but he’s not such a trustworthy guy either, so everyboy’s motives are suspect. People are sick of it, though.

Sometimes I look at conditions in the country and think that a revolution could really do some good. Then I remember: supposedly, there’s a revolution going on already. The problem is that the revolutionaries have strayed far, far, far from their cause, and are now basically just money- and power-hungry, no different from the ones they are supposedly revolting against. And the drug trade has made the money so much easier to come by. So, the only people who suppor the revolution are the FARC members themselves, so their cause is going nowhere. Maybe many years ago they actually had the people’s benefit in mind, but those days are long gone.

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Another restaurant in Zona G, where I live, that I have to call my favorite is on Calle 70 just above the Quinta. This is slightly up into the residential part of the neighborhood, on a block that’s off the beaten track just a bit. If I have to judge my favorite restaurants by which I patronize the most, this one really IS my favorite. It’s fun, funky, has good food, and most importantly is about 30 paces from the front door of my building–literally right around the corner. It’s called La Hamburgueseria.

Hamburgueseria is a hamburger joint, of course, but an upscale one. They have three other locations in Bogota that I know of–one is by the bullring, one is in Usaquen (lots of funky restaurants that have a few locations in town have one in Zona G and one in Usaquen), and they just recently opened on in Parque 93. That last maneuver actually caused them to drop a notch in my estimation, because Parque 93 is sort of the uber-trendy. I have a friend who is friends with the owners of the chain, and he says even they admit that opening a restaurant in Parque 93 is sort of selling out, because the other locations are all in neighborhoods that are actually more neighborhood-y and a have distinct personalities. But, I guess the opportunity to have a restaurant in a location that almost guarantees being packed from opening till closing every night was too much to resist. And, I guess the people who hang out in Parque 93 deserve to be exposed to a little bit of a funkier culture. After all, how much TGIFridays and El Coral Gourmet can you take?

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I went to a reception to celebrate the publication of a book of poetry by Maria Gomez Lara, who’s seventeen. Her book is called Preguntas para el Azar, which translates roughly to Questions about Chance (or Luck, or Randomness, or Fate). The reception was held in an old colonial house in La Candelaria called Case Poesia de Silva (Silva Poetry House), named after a famous Colombian poet. They have all kinds of readings and receptions and seminars there, and Maria goes frequently to their happenings.

Oh, did I mention that she was my student this year? 

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