Colombia 2 (screw tranquilo)
Trip Start
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Trip End
Ongoing
Barranquilla,
Colombia
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
I know I've given you all my thoughts on that cursed word "tranquilo" but there is another word/concept peculiar to Latin America that inspires the same sense of futile rage: "ahorrita." Ahorrita means, quite literally, "right now," but like anything Colombian that pertains to time or a sense of punctuality, this concept is nuanced and can be so loosely interpreted as to contain the entire timeline of future human activity. In essence, it is a shameless ploy to assign some sense of reliability to sheer ambiguity. I have been ahorrita'd and tranquilo'd to near insanity here; I am still waiting for a project to start that was funded to begin July 1, and I am still waiting for a signature (it's just a goddamn scribble on a line, for fuck's sake!) from June 20th... I've read lots of cookie-cutter Peace Corps testimonials exalting their religious acceptance of tranquilo and ahorrita but you will never see me make that same senseless, idiotic personal journey. I am simply too high-strung and neurotic (and productive) to accept that the concept of time can be completely irrelevant.
Breath. I can't even write about it without feeling like fighting cock hopped up on PCP (and if you've never been in the headspace of a drugged-up, enraged rooster, I'm not going to recommend it as good heart-body-mind therapy; it's a miracle I haven't yet done something stupid and Irish).
That said, there is still much to occupy the foreign mind in Colombia that leave a small smile on the face rather than a pile of mutilated corpses. First of all, dogs. Dogs rock my universe. I think they're all little Buddha reincarnates, running around with happy thoughts of carnage and stinky things to roll in and humping. The dogs here are scrawny, diminutive muppet-like creatures and a lot of them, through some freak accident of cross-breeding, inbreeding, and... humping, have great mohawks that run the length of their patchy, flea-ridden bodies. And they run in packs, attacking car tires with a single-minded gleeful ferocity that fascinates me and makes me giggle. (Yes, I am aware that my opinion on such behavior has undergone a radical transformation from my bicycle days, when such mob activity made me wish for violent endings to these canine pastimes.)
Between all the bureaucratic wrestling matches (I won't go into it but Colombian immigrations now ranks among my least favorite things on the planet), I managed to slip away for a long weekend to Cartagena, pirate town of yore, home to fantastic food and colonial charm (strange that what is widely perceived as the most beautiful town in Colombia, and maybe South America, is nothing more than a living monument to colonialism... I don't think I'm going to go into that, either.). Anyway, I mow-hounded my way through town and found a new love: Argentine meat (and by that, I am honestly referring to culinary excellence and not... well, you know.) Cuban meat was a close second.
The old town center is a gorgeous work of narrow streets and old, balconied buildings. There wasn't even that much garbage on the streets, which is nothing short of a miracle for a Colombian town of any significance. The bay was a different story and should be classified as a toxic hazard but I think that's probably low on Colombia's list of priority problems. At night, the plazas would erupt into tourist meccas, which normally annoys the shit out of me but was strangely pleasant. Kids would dance their crazy asses off and there were people singing and selling kitsch and always the ubiquitous men with guns-this is Colombia, after all. My favorite was a man dressed as a mime with this wretched, skanky puppet of a sloth or a monkey. It looked like grotesque road-kill hanging on a string, and I gave him a couple pesos just for the sheer bizarreness of it. I think I scared him, though, because most people rightfully steered clear of the nasty little hunk of rag.
The only thing that made me uneasy about Cartagena (aside from the outrageous abundance of military, police, and other men with guns-the president was sworn in for his second term on Monday and this past weekend, the entire country fortified itself against a potential full-scale attack) was that I was almost overwhelmed by voyeuristic desire. I know what I am about to tell you is not going to inspire calm but I have this bizarre thing about looking inside houses and buildings; I walk by a house and all I can think about is how I'd like to break in and check it out, just to walk around and see how other people are living. Well, houses in Cartagena are elaborate affairs that unfortunately take place behind a walled façade. I just knew that there were mansions and gardens just inches from me and I couldn't explore them. I wished I had some good B + E skills to fall back on but alas, I am not a criminal mastermind.
Otherwise, I managed to burn the shit out of my entire body at the beach-there goes another bright red gringa!-and made it back to Barranquilla in time to witness some fine female pirate action. I met Luz Helena, the woman I live with, at her sister's house, where she and six of her sisters, her mother, and a sister-in-law were doing some serious damage to their second bottle of whiskey. (I was later informed that they only turned to whiskey because they had killed all the beer and wine.) They plied me with it but I took one look around and realized that was a can of worms I did not want to open (whiskey and I have a sick kind of love-hate relationship). I stuck with the kid shit-some weird flavor of soda-knowing that when the dancing was done and the whiskey gone, these insane, wild, pirate women were going to need to get home... and I've been in Colombia long enough to know that drunk driving isn't particularly frowned upon. I must admit, though, I was seriously impressed!
There. I know there's a lot I'm probably leaving out but I don't want to seem to negative and I've since discovered that me, PMS, and Colombia aren't the best combination. Screw that, Colombia has nothing to do with it; I'm just a cranky bitch when I'm PMSing and I'm liable to say things that I will seriously regret when I have my sanity back about me. For those of you who don't yet know, I lost the visa wars (they had the definite upper hand and I don't know enough Spanish insults and swear words yet, though I employed every one I knew, and threw in a couple I've picked up from other languages, too), and will be home at the end of August. Do what you will with that information.
