Inspiring Incongruencies

Final Scholar Duties Underway

2009-09-17T14:28:00.003-05:00

Upon my return to the US, it is time to complete my scholar responsibilities. After making four pre-departure presentations to local clubs and over 30 presentations to audiences across Colombia, I should now be pro at speaking in front of large groups of Rotarians and community members. The test is as followed on completed/scheduled presentations throughout Southern California:

August 12: Claremont Sunrise Rotary Club - breakfast meeting, Methodist Church
Upland Rotary Club - lunch meeting, Upland Hangar

August 13: Pasadena Sunrise Rotary Club - breakfast meeting, The Brit Pub

August 14: Del Mar and Solana Beach Rotary Club - breakfast meeting, Double Tree Hotel

August 18: Encinitas Coastal Rotary Club - lunch meeting

August 22: Presentation to friends and family - 3:30 pm at my home in Encinitas

September 1: La Jolla Rotary Club - lunch meeting, La Valencia hotel

...and more to come once I relocate to Atlanta!

Life is a River...

2009-07-08T16:42:00.001-05:00

Today I sat down with Gilma to have our usual afternoon snack break and had a particularly interesting conversation. With my impending departure so near, I have been waxing nostalgic in every interaction with my friends here; today was no exception. When describing how I feel somewhat anxious that I do not have and definite plans after September, she lightly scolded me.

"Alina," Gilma said. "Life is like an inter tube ride down a river. You get in at the beginning, put your head back and relax looking up at the sky. Once in a while you hit some turbulent areas where you get swirled around among the rocks, but you just have to hang on. Paddling does not help; your path and destation are already pre-determined. When you make it through, you will have learned how to better navigate and enjoy the calm stretches. Don't fight the current, let it take you wherever you are meant to go."

Imagining my bottom stuck into a black rubber inter tube and floating through life isn't the most comfortable of visuals, but her analogy certainly was comforting. So instead of attempting to beach myself on the shore until the rainy season ends and the water ebbs, I will ride out the present turbulence, enjoying every moment as it passes. Gilma knows best.

Rotary Final Report

2009-06-19T21:14:00.007-05:00

At the end of an Ambassadorial Scholar's year, Rotary asks us to submit a final report to our host and sponsor clubs, scholarship coordinator, and Rotarians who were especially instrumental during our term. They ask for two pages, an utterly ludicrous writing space in which to reflect on an entire year's accomplishments. Sorry if it is a bit long, but hopefully this will serve as a good summary of how I interpreted my position as an Ambassador of Goodwill.

One year is not nearly enough time to experience Colombia. A country of richly diverse regions and welcoming people, I want to know it all. My term as a Rotary Ambassadorial Research Scholar has allowed me extremely unique and special opportunities in which to accomplish this.

When I first arrived in Medellin, I could communicate well in Spanish but it took me almost three months to adapt to the different paisa accent that they speak here. Colombians are very proud of their “correct” Spanish, meaning that they believe their use of the language to be most similar to that in Spain. They think that their accent is one of the easiest to understand (contrary to my initial experience), and I do agree that it has a beautiful, sing-song nature. Now, after twelve months of practice, I am imitating their speech so well that I am sometimes mistaken as a native. This is a huge compliment to my language skills, especially because I have been working almost my entire life to learn the language. My desire to sound like them has proven my respect for my host culture and my attempts to ‘fit in’ as much as possible. And, of course, it enabled me to communicate effectively with anyone and everyone, drastically enriching my overall experience.

Instead of participating in an established academic program, I chose to conduct research at the Facultad Nacional de Salud Publica, part of the Universidad de Antioquia, because I knew that it would give me more valuable experience on how to conduct international investigations and the chance to publish an article in an international journal. Working with Gloria Molina, the head of the research department, and Gilma Stella, my research partner, has been a fantastic way to learn from experienced professionals how research in Colombia takes place. Our project is entitled “Mecanismos de mercado y competencia y su relación con el acceso y la calidad del los servicio materno, en el Contexto del Sistema General de Seguridad Social en Salud. Colombia, 2008-2009.” It looks at the effects of market competition on access to and quality of maternal health care after the health care system was restructured in 1993. This has allowed me to travel around Medellin interviewing doctors, nurses, health administrators, and the users themselves at different clinics and hospitals. I have learned more about the Colombian health care system than I know about that of the US, and feel empowered having the resources to publish suggestions to the problems we have observed.

One academic year has been too short an amount of time to design, develop, and implement such an in-depth research project, and so we will not finish completely by the time I leave Colombia. We have finished collecting all of our data, analyzing the interviews, and creating the mental maps that will help us in writing up of the article. I will finish a rough draft of the article before my departure, and then we will continue collaborating via email during the arduous process of publication. This will help me achieve my professional goals because as I start applying for PhD programs in the upcoming year, my candidacy will be much more likely to be accepted after having international research and a publication under my belt.

Overall I have been very impressed with the Facultad Nacional de Salud Publica. The dean, German Gonzales, is the past president of my host Rotary Club and has helped me get involved in activities to which I would usually not have access. I have participated in many international health conferences, met with visiting health professionals, sat in on undergraduate and graduate classes whose content is applicable to my research, and enjoyed the dynamic, collaboration among faculty and students. What has awed me most is the very horizontal relationship between professors, docents, and students; the teachers are always available to meet with students and respect their ideas as much as any other professional. At the Facultad I have given several presentations to groups of students and teachers about Rotary and my sponsor country, taught English conversation classes, and been an active member of a weekly painting workshop.

During periods when my official research was slow, I worked in shelters for displaced people as part of a supplementary research and community service project. My interest in Medical Anthropology spurred me to carry out an ethnography looking at the experience of pregnant women during displacement and how the stressful events they endure affects their health and the health of their baby. It has been fascinating becoming close with them and learning firsthand how the continued violence is ruining so many innocent people’s lives.

One of the women with whom I have worked has become an especially important friend. Katy is 39 years old and is pregnant with her first child. Her husband was kidnapped in the middle of the night by the paramilitary, leaving her to fend for herself without the support of any family or friends to support. Katy’s outlook on life is very different from most impoverished Colombian women; she is a feminist, well-educated, critical yet proud of her country, and very independent. Sharing hours talking with her has opened up a whole different perspective on Colombia than I see when with Rotarians or at school, and has been an instrumental source for my research. In return, I offer her continual friendship, an open ear to listen to her worries, and hope that her future will work out despite the hardships she has faced. This was one of the most salient ways in which I participated as an ambassador of goodwill.

When visiting the shelters I frequently conducted art therapy sessions with the children, asking them to draw pictures of their families, their fears, and their dreams. I also worked with the adults, giving them job training and preparedness talks. Because many of the displaced people leave the shelters without a way to support themselves economically, I am developing a micro-loan program for women heads of households so that they can start their own small businesses.

As part of my interest in public health and displaced communities, I visited some of the settlements of recently arrived displaced families with local institutions. Once with Profamilia, the local equivalent of Planned Parenthood, during a health brigade where they offered check-ups and antibiotics to children. Again in Popayan with a Rotarian who works for the Red Cross, going into several different settlements evaluating the efficacy of educational health programs that the Red Cross had been implementing for three years. Due to the lack of safety in these locations, it was frustrating for me not to visit them more often but necessary that I go when invited by recognized organizations. My devotion to interacting with all socioeconomic levels in Medellin, especially those people who are usually forgotten by their own government and fellow countrymen, is yet another example of my service as an ambassador of goodwill.

I lived with a former Ambassadorial Scholar who is from Medellin and rented out a room in his apartment to me during the entire year. He was a very good source of social contacts and explanations of cultural differences when I first arrived, and continues to be a close friend. It was nice to have the independence of living on my own and being able to cook for myself, as well as entertain friends and visitors.

My interactions with Rotary in Medellin were some of the richest experiences as an ambassadorial scholar. Club Rotario Medellin, my host club, is one of the largest and oldest clubs in the country, with some of the oldest members as well. I attended at least two meetings every month, enjoying my interactions with the members who all treated me as an adoptive granddaughter. Because the club has over 80 members, it gave me the opportunity to know a large variety of prominent community leaders. One of the most special friendships that I formed was with my host counselor, Waldemar Rey. He is a very kind, humble, and inspirational man who was constantly supporting me in my endeavors and encouraging me to explore different avenues than I normally would have on my own.

I visited 12 different clubs throughout the district to make presentations, becoming actively involved in the Club Medellin Nuevo, Club Medellin Nutibara, and Club Rotario Popayan. They invited me to participate in health brigades in marginalized communities, conduct eye examinations of children, attend fundraising events, and social “integrations” with their families. I attended and presented at the RYLA conference October 25 and 26, at a Rotaract Forum in Popayan April 26, and at the District 4280 Conference the first weekend of May. I visited the host club of another Ambassadorial Scholar in Cali for their end-of-year party Thanksgiving weekend of 2008, and attended my host club’s meetings with my grandparents and parents when they came to visit me in January 2009. The broad network of Rotary contacts I maintained throughout the year shows how I served as an ambassador of goodwill, since it was important for me to give back to the Rotary community that was and still is supporting me.

A very unique experience was when I was invited to travel on several occasions with the GSE group from New Mexico on their visit to my host district during April and May. It was great sharing perspectives on Colombia through the lens of Rotary with people from my own culture. They were very interested in the work I am doing in Medellin, and have encouraged me to visit their district and make presentations when I return to further cement the connections made between our two districts. I have developed a great respect for Rotary’s mission to promote all sorts of international exchange opportunities and hope to have more chances to participate in them in the future.

The thriving Rotaract and Interact clubs were one of the most pleasant Rotary surprises I found in Colombia. I participated in the three different Rotaract clubs in Medellin during the year, helping them with blood drives, soccer tournaments to raise funds, activities in old-folk’s homes, and children’s shelters in which they carry out projects. I also was involved with the Interact clubs in Medellin, marching with them in a peace demonstration on Colombian Independence Day and guiding them with fundraising ideas.

My experience as an Ambassadorial Scholar has greatly changed my outlook on Colombia because it has allowed me an insider’s view of the daily workings of the country. The Rotarians are very well educated and knowledgeable about local politics and history, always sharing with me their views and inviting me to participate in discussions on Colombia’s place in the world. They were very honest about the difficulties that Colombia has faced, and how they are working to overcome the extreme violence caused by drug trafficking—an almost impossible task. I appreciated how they looked to me for outside opinions that could help them get a different perspective that they have viewed from within for so many years. Their familiarity with the US was always disconcerting; it showed me how aware the rest of the world is of my home country and yet we as (North) Americans in general are so oblivious to the goings-on of the rest of the world. It made me sad at how ignorant the majority of my fellow countrymen and women are of places as wonderful as Colombia. This has encouraged me more than anything else to return to share with them the beauty of learning intimately about other cultures that are only known through negative news headlines. To me, this dedication to dispelling internationally propagated myths about Colombia is my main contribution to Rotary’s vision to advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace.

When describing Rotary to my friends, colleagues, and family, I say that it is an international organization comprised of people from very different backgrounds and cultures who are all dedicated to creating world-wide understanding and peace through their humanitarian work mainly concentrated in health and education. They comprise a family that defies political borders and cultural differences, welcoming anyone and everyone with open arms and a heart to help. The Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship is an opportunity for culturally sensitive students dedicated to propagate peace and goodwill through service and international studies. I tell everyone that Rotary gives people, members or not, the opportunity to really understand the world through personal connections.

I do not really think that the materials or training that I received from the Foundation and my sponsor/host Rotarians really prepared me in a new way for my success as an ambassador of goodwill, since when applying for the scholarship I already had lots of international experience. What did help was the training at the orientation on public speaking, since that is a very large component of the scholarship. It was also very helpful for me to talk with previous scholars from my sponsor district and others who went to Colombia, to learn what they thought were the strengths and weaknesses of their experiences so I could build upon their suggestions to make the most of my year. I think that one of the things that should be emphasized most to incoming scholars is the patience it takes to get through the entire pre-departure process, and how important it is to really get involved and make the most of Rotary in their host community as soon as they arrive.

My advice to future scholars about living abroad as a RAS is to integrate themselves as much as possible into their host culture. The goal as an ambassador is to really get the “real” experience, with which Rotarians are more than happy to help. It is important to find a stable living situation with people around whom you are comfortable, can offer insight into the host culture, and support a scholar during difficult, homesick periods. Coming home to a good environment makes surviving alone in a foreign country much easier. In terms of representing Rotary, it is always important to explain to people upon introduction your purpose in the country and make them aware of Rotary and the possibilities the Foundation provides everywhere. Become familiar with the scholarship opportunities available in your host district and encourage local friends to participate. Representing your sponsor club can be difficult if you did not get a chance to develop a strong relationship with them before leaving, but make sure to check in on their website and stay in email touch with sponsor counselors so that you are up-to-date on their activities in case your host Rotarians ask.

I am hooked on Rotary for life. After participating in Interact, a Rotary Youth Exchange program, and the Ambassadorial Scholarship, I think my next step will be to apply for the Rotary Peace Fellowship. In the meantime, I will travel around the US presenting to clubs, schools, and anyone who will listen about the amazing opportunities that Rotary offers and teach them about how my experience as an ambassador of goodwill helped me have a fantastic year living in a country of which most people are afraid. I have formed such strong friendships and long-lasting contacts with people here that I am considering returning to carry out further work in Colombia, continuing my doctoral research here, and visiting during the upcoming District Conferences. In the future, I would consider becoming a member of a local Rotary club depending on the dynamics of the clubs near me. Each club has its own identity and feel, which is a wonderful trait of Rotary International but can be limiting if a nearby club does not match someone’s service style.

I cannot wait to continue promoting Rotary on a daily basis back in the US and know that Rotary will be an important part of my life forever.

The Demise of Wanderlust

2009-06-17T14:35:00.004-05:00

Colombian eggs are delicious. Even your average supermarket dozen of AA eggs have enough flavor to make a free-range hen in the US jealous. The only drawback is that their shells are a bit thin. Perhaps Colombia has lenient DDT regulations.

Because eggs are such a versatile source of protein, they make a great breakfast snack when boiled for overnight bus trips. Kelsey, my college roommate and best friend, came down to accompany me during my last few weeks of travels and fun in Colombia. She had the bright idea of boiling several eggs and packing them in Tupperware containers to tide us over during the 14 hours of travel to our friend's house on the Caribbean coast near Cartagena.

Since it was the start of a three-day weekend, when we arrived at the bus terminal the place was teeming with families waiting to get on the road toward their vacation destination. Kelsey and I luckily got front-row seats with one of the best companies and wandered around, taking advantage of the last opportunity to stretch our legs for a long while. Due to her odd, atheistic fascination with Catholicism, we payed our respects to the Virgen de Carmen's alter before boarding the bus. While still on the freeway out of Medellin, I noticed that it had started to rain. I have grown accustomed to the daily showers implied by the tropical climate yet still marvel at the all-night downpours...like the one taking place outside. After watching a violent, K-rated Thai martial arts movie that takes place somewhere in barbaric Mongolia, we cuddled under a blanket and drifted off to sleep listening to the sound of wet tires carrying us toward the hopefully sunny coast.

Before I even had a chance to reach REM, I was awakened by the sound of the bus's breaks locking and within a matter of seconds, my body was jerked off of the seat, into the air, and slammed down into the aisle where I slid to a stop against the compartment door. Now high on adrenaline, I was sharply attuned to the babies crying, people rustling about in the pitch dark, and a feeling of panic settling in. While still too stunned to move, I hear Kelsey above me utter "Welcome to your worst nightmare."

After having memorized the highways out of the city from traveling so much, I am familiar with the likelihood of falling off a cliff and drowning in one of the two rivers on either side of Medellin, and so my first desire was to get out of the bus before it could start filling with water because I had no idea where we had landed. I put my hand up to the doorknob and realize that we are locked in. People start trying to push out the windows, but with no avail, the hammers usually in place for emergency situations were stolen long ago. Luckily right as our realization of trapped confinement sinks in the alternate conductor comes up from where he was sleeping at the back of the bus and unlocks the door, telling us to be careful when we get out because he doesn't know where we are.

Gingerly picking myself up off of the floor, I realize that my tailbone is throbbing and my shoulders are bruised but I can still walk fine. Kelsey complains of a huge bump forming on her shin and a twisted knee, but we quickly gather up our belongings and gingerly make our way outside. The entire front of the bus is crushed in so that we can barely squeeze through the narrow steps. Windshield completely missing, in front of us I see a body lying on the ground with a leg up in the air. It is still pouring.

Luckily there is a small house on the other side of the road and we make our way over to stand under the eaves out of the rain, the blanket wrapped around us. The rest of the passengers are surprisingly calm and come join us, some of them sporting broken noses but everyone pretty much intact, thank God. While we wait for an ambulance and another bus to arrive, us survivors try to piece together what happened.

To start out with, the driver must have been going fast for the conditions. He didn't anticipate the sharpness of the turn and tried to cut into the middle too much, slamming on the breaks which we heard locking. The back of the bus started going over the edge of the embankment, landing on a tree which is the only thing that saved us from plummeting down the 5 km drop. In a valiant effort, the driver then pulled us over the edge and back onto the highway, losing control of the bus which then slammed into the side of the mountain. Upon impact, the young boy who does all the grunt work (and doesn't get a seat/belt) was thrown out the front window and probably flew 15 feet before landing in the middle of the highway. The front tire popped, we started a slight landslide by scraping against the wall, and we eventually ended our journey. Because we were facing oncoming traffic on a curve, a truck coming up the other way did not see us and crashed into the back of the bus, thus pinning us against the mountain. Not the most ideal situation.

As passengers started trickling back into the bus to escape the cold and the rain, Kelsey and I remembered Highway Safety 101 lessons that tell you to get as far away from the accident as possible, avoiding further collisions or fires ignited from gas leaks. I luckily travel with Advil and water, so we were able to take the edge off of our pain. About twenty minutes later after the crash, several pairs of highway police showed up on motorcycles. Despite shining a flashlihgt on us and walking around the boy still lying on the street moaning, they didn't really seem to helpful or worried about our situation. It was awful to watch someone, badly injured, without having the knowledge or equipment to help. We couldn't detect a back board to move the boy off of the wet road, nobody had more than a few small plastic bags to protect him from the rain and only extra articles of clothing to wrap around his open wounds. Hypothermia anyone?? One of the passengers was a doctor, but they couldn't do anything besides comfort him despite their expertise. Hell, there weren't even flairs or a reflective triangle to put out in front of the accident to warn other cars and trucks to slow down. Someone just ran out in the direction of headlights waving, hoping they would stop. Oh, the unpreparedness of second-world countries.

Eventually the ambulance arrived and took the boy, who had stopped moaning and had probably entered immense shock, to the hospital along with the driver whose jaw bone was apparently sticking out of his skin. An empty bus came and told us they would carry us on our way; a shining, dry chariot offering salvation from more hours of damp waiting. They told us that we could not get our luggage out from underneath the bus, but they would bring it to us in Cartagena as soon as possible. And as quickly and quietly as we had arrived at our injured station at the base of the mountain, we left.

As I write this, almost 4 days later, I still do not have my luggage, which is trapped in the bus that they had to attach to a crane and somehow cart back to Medellin. Supposedly the storage compartment under the bus is controlled my the electrical system of the bus, which was shut down in the crash. But, typical Colombian bureaucracy-style, the bus is at the Fiscalia, a government department which is reviewing the case and taking ages to file paperwork because of the gravity of consequences. They have not told us if the boy survived. My back and right buttock are extremely sore, covered in bruises that defy natural bodily colors. It hurts to sit and I might have bruised my tailbone. The swelling on Kelsey's shin has gone down, and her knee hurts, but she can walk fine. We complain a lot. I like to think it is out of the jittery fear being in such an accident has caused, but it is probably because we survived an awful event and want to tell our cool story.

Despite all of this, I still have my life, my most valuable possession. Kelsey and I were able to spend a fantastic weekend with our friend on the coast relaxing in Caribbean paradise in the comfort of a family. We took a small plane home, arriving safely back to my apartment. I have taken buses around Latin America for 52 hours straight, traveling from Bolivia to the US without a slight scratch. But for some reason I think I will take busing slightly more seriously from now on. When we first started to tip over the edge that night, I thought my mangled body would have to be pulled out of the remains of the tin-can of a bus, never to see more adventures.

Every time I step into a car, bus, plane, the metro, a taxi--any mode of transportation, I am putting my life into someone else's hands. How many times each day do you entrust the Virgen de Carmen to watch over your journey and hope that she safely directs you home? Lady Carmen must have been waiting for us that night, baby in arm, to push the bus back onto the highway, a reminder that it was not yet our time to die. Perhaps she was hinting to me that I was taking my wanderlust too lightly, urging me to explore on slower terms. With only two weeks left in Colombia, I am at the perfect crossroads to slow down my speed and take time to figure out in what direction I will next travel.

The silliest part of it all is that the eggs survived better than either my our Kelsey's bodies. After a sleepless night we convinced ourselves we should eat something to keep our forces up, and cracked open the Tupperware containers while traveling through the flat cow pastures. Inside, we found the tasty hard boiled eggs perfectly intact. Maybe Colombian eggshells are stronger than I realized.

***Postscript***

Now that the traumatization (I know, I am turning English words into Spanish, but it can be so much more useful sometimes) of the bus accident has worn off, I can analyze the situation with a bit more perspective. The fact that my Rotarian and Colombian friends alike barely reacted to my experience shows a general Colombian acceptance of death. Perhaps I am over-analyzing the situation, but I would say that because paisas have lived with death at their doorstep for so long they have come to terms with the fact that at any moment life could be taken away from them. Every family tells their own tragedy, for several years at the peak of the violence ('92-'95)in Medellin people were never safe even in their own homes, and everyone has spent years traveling on the same dangerous roads. One of the main difference between a developed country and a developing country is that when there is a dangerous patch of road causing an accident, the developed country will have a road crew out on the scene the next day fixing the problem to prevent future accidents while in the developing country the government might order a sign to be put up but never really get around to changing anything. (This anecdote was told to me by several Colombian friends reflecting on their own culture, again proving how resigned they are to potential danger).

I don't know if it is better or worse to not be afraid of uncontrollable death, but one of the advantages that I see in how Colombians accept their risks without second thought is the value they in turn place on life. Paisas will go out of their way to spend an extra hour drinking with friends even if it means being tired the next day for work. Extended families will sit around all day doing nothing exciting just to be together. And, typical to Latin cultural stereotypes, I guess, nobody is hesitant to express their fleeting or deep-rooted emotions--honest with each other about anger or lust just in case they don't have another chance to express themselves.

Instead of being somewhat insulted that my friends did not feel more responsible for my near-death scare, I finally realized after the entire year one of the biggest cultural differences between myself and my host culture: an overall acceptance of death.

More on Maternal Mortality

2009-05-26T18:29:00.002-05:00

After being caught up through my research on the causes for unnecessary maternal mortality here in Medellin (due to market forces and organization of the health care industry), it is crucial to stick my head above the beautiful Colombian clouds once in a while and learn about the larger international issues impeding pregnant women's access to health care in other countries.

Nicolas Kristof is a very illuminating Op-Ed columnist for the NYT (I might be slightly biased after hearing him speak at a foundation event in Atlanta and admiring his approach to saving Africa), and lately he has been writing a lot on the issue of maternal health care in West Africa. He takes an interesting look at the lack of medical (personnel) resources in rural clinics and how international aid plays into the picture in the article "This Mom Didn't Have to Die." Kristof delves deeper into the issue on his blog On the Ground, responding to the link between maternal mortality and female education and financial situation in the post "A 'P.S.' on Maternal Mortality and Abortion," and also looks at the larger issue of malnutrition affecting women's health in his most recent post "Malnutrition and the Economic Crisis."

I am relieved that in Medellin I have not found patients dying in childbirth on hospital tables, but knowing that there are women in so many other countries who need a voice to represent their need for improved maternal health care overwhelms me with the possibility of a life's work. As Kristof notes, a woman should not die because her life is considered less than that of a man.

Coffee Talk

2009-05-17T16:42:00.004-05:00

Colombia is coffee territory. A cup with breakfast, at 10:00 am, after lunch, at 3:00 pm, and then maybe after dinner, Colombians drink an impressive amount of coffee. Not just because it grows in their backyards or keeps them going through long work days, but also because coffee breaks perfectly compliment their social culture. Yes, working is important, but staying up-to-date with family and friends is more important and so the excuse of going downstairs to the cafeteria for 15 minutes is the perfect way to gossip and discuss whatever is on their mind. (Larger companies even have a female employee whose job description is to carry trays of tinto around through the office at one-hour intervals so that the workers can stay sufficiently caffeinated.)

Although I don't drink much coffee because I am very sensitive to caffeine (realizing that this is a sin while living in Colombia--shouldn't I make an exception for their exceptional coffee?), I do accompany my friends for the conversations. (Or maybe it is because otherwise I would be left alone in the office... ) Either way, my two favorite coffee partners are Gilma and Felipe, who have the most interesting banter over their cups of java. I think several of the topics covered recently warrant a brief description here because they have increased my insight into politicized opinions that you can't read in the newspaper.

Colombian World Travelers: After an arduous process to get his U.S. visa, Felipe boarded a plane on Thursday for Chicago to attend a public health qualitative research conference at the University of Illinois, Champagne. About one in 22 Colombians get their visas approved by the U.S embassy in Bogota, seemingly on a random basis. Once they do get it though, it means that obtaining a visa for any other country is almost guaranteed.
Listening to people's dismay about being denied a visa to visit a sick family member abroad or frustrated that they can't take their child to Disneyworld for their birthday makes me realize how lucky I am to be a U.S. citizen. It's not just because I can easily move through international borders by flashing my passport, but because I can travel to other countries without being automatically discriminated against because of my nationality.
I have heard appalling stories from my friends of them getting mistreated in a range of countries just because of the negative international perception of Colombians. A Colombian woman traveling to the Netherlands to meet her fiance's family being detained for five days in a holding cell without bathing along with a Nigerian man (people scoff to think that anyone would consider them as disgraceful as a dirty African man). One of the most respected professors at the university being tortured and almost raped by immigration official in Panama because she brought in unprocessed coca, eventually released only because her husband was a cousin of a foreign minister in the Colombian government.
It is obvious that 'Colombian' is most often synonymous with 'drug lord,' and it frustrates me to see time and time again that the world is still so uneducated as to judge people based on stereotypes. But I almost feel guilty when I tell my hosts how easy it was for me to go to the Colombian consulate for an hour and live in the country for a year when my own natal land would reject their visit without hesitation.
But what Gilma told me is that this negative international reception of her country(wo)men means that not very many Colombians have a desire to leave their country. Why spend so much money on travel just to be treated poorly when they can be shown the respect they deserve by driving to a city a few hours away? She would prefer to avoid humiliation and miss out on life experiences than be made to feel guilty for her nationality.

Saving in Colombia: Not only is it hard for a Colombian to be approved for a foreign visa, but it is extremely difficult for an honest, educated worker to save up enough money to leave the country. Professors and doctors make just enough money to live comfortably in Medellin; paying for an apartment and take holidays to the coast with their families. The people who buy cars on finance work their entire lives to pay it off--worth it just to cruise around town and impress the ladies. I have friends who borrow money and take out loans just to find the $10,000 needed to go to English classes in the UK for a year...imagine what they would do to attend a 4-year college in the U.S!?!
And yet, many of the Rotarians and people with whom I have become friends here come from families that can afford international travel, two cars, and a house. I don't ever question the way in which they reached their economic standing (hey, old money still keeps Colombian families going), but I have heard some crazy stories of people quickly building up an economic empire based on lucrative, illegal businesses. One of Gilma's nephews worked in the shop his grandma ran out of their house along with other family members. Pretty soon they had earned enough money to buy a bus, and then a few taxis, and then an entire transportation company, and then a dairy plant in another department, and so on. When other aunts and cousins started raising eyebrows, the grandma told them that they just needed to work harder and save money. But any Colombian knows that working two honest jobs does not allow anyone to save enough to run that many businesses. If it really is so hard, imagine how appealing it would be to get involved in money laundering!

Government Exploitation: In the last post I explained the Uribe's recent abuse of power to make money off of poor Colombians. Felipe explained to me one day how all developed countries achieved success by exploiting other people; the U.S. had African slaves, the Europeans had serfdom, and the Spaniards had indigenous people. But because the indigenous population in Colombia was fairly small, and the imported African slaves only live along the coast, in order to compete in the current world markets the Colombian government has has to exploit its own people. But although most Colombians live in poverty, they are too proud to admit that they are being used by the government to complain.
Both Gilma and Felipe claimed that Colombians don't live in as dire poverty as in most other countries where people are surviving off the same meager income. They bathe once or twice a day and so always smell nice, keep their houses from looking decrepit by painting them every Christmastime, turn a one-story shack into a two-story bungalow after working a few years, hang flowers from their eves, and value education. I think that this mostly has to do with the abundance of natural resources in Colombia; they get more rain than almost any other country, can grow their own food in a small plot next to their lean-to, and look at beautiful landscapes to ease their pain. But cultural pride could play a small part...
Anyway, as in a lot of countries that suffer from corruption, the people grow poorer as the politicians and people with power grow richer. In Colombia it has dangerous to consider how the government has abused the people's rights because of the precarious and polarized nature of Colombian politics. Anyone who starts questioning their situation and becomes a humanitarian sides with the liberal leftist cause, which is then automatically considered to be equivalent to a guerrilla sympathizer, which is then considered anti-Uribista and thus puts the person's life in danger. Although the country has become more democratic than it was at the height of the civil war, those who do not subscribe to dominant politics are still considered to be a social risk. Understandably, the country is still combating against various armed forces controlling the drug war, but when will Colombia guarantee its citizens their deserved human rights?

City Recyclers

2009-05-17T16:01:00.004-05:00

Do you ever throw something out that could still be useful to someone else and think about where it ends up? In any Colombian city you can find people called recicladores, or recyclers, whose profession is to sift through trash piles collecting anything that could possibly be recycled or reused. They are seen pulling heavy wooden carts piled high with their findings through the busy streets, often skinny older men who do not look to be in adequate physical condition for the strenuous nature of the job.

Contrary to what I first thought when arriving--that these people were unorganized individuals trying to make a few pesos off of everyone's old junk, the recicladores first created their own union/association in 1962 in Antioquia, now called the National Association of Recyclers, that monitors price controls for recyclable materials such as metal or glass, and also represents the rights of the workers. They even have their own website! It says that after WWII when the Colombia encountered a lack of containers, metal, and paper, people started looking through the trash, reusing what they found to make up for the deficiency. Some would specialize in glass bottle collection, others in pieces of scrap metal, selling their 'wares' to recycling companies that then turn trash into something new and useful. (Since there are also recycling companies in Medellin that pick up the recyclables that people separate in their houses, I wonder what sort of competition there is between these services and the recicladores). At first there was a stigmatization of these workers as being crazy or street beggars, and so the creation of the association gave them the national recognition necessary to dumpster dive without being hassled. Recycling is thus a legitimate profession falling somewhere in-between the formal and informal economies, and the income earned offers an attractive alternative to selling candies on buses. I have even met women in the displaced communities who come from a family that has been working in recycling for generations, and she goes out every morning with her sons to collect what they can.

In the past week these reclicladores have made national news: Uribe is trying to pass a national law to consolidate the companies that buy recycled material, thus creating a monopoly that sets a price cap on what the recicladores can earn. The Colombian president has realized how profitable this business is, and, like with many other industries, wants to (ab)use his power to buy his (large) share and make a few hundred million pesos off of the poor people. There have been fierce debates in the Senate where members question Uribe's interests in the new bill, but he has enough supporters (who probably also have a financial stake in the issue) that it looks like he will get the outcome he wants. As my Colombian friends say, this is just another example of how the government works hard to make the poor people poorer so that politicians and their friends can get richer. Do I smell corruption?

So sorry recicladores, it looks like your Colombian trash will not be worth as much as it used to.

The Perfect Sunday: Fincas and Relativity

2009-05-13T11:05:00.009-05:00

Since arriving in Colombia I have been waiting for a certain invitation. As you have read before, a typical weekend past-time for middle/upper-class Colombians is to spend time at their or a friend's finca. Luckily I know many such friends, who invite me for a relaxing weekend get-a-way out in the countryside. But until last Sunday, there was one finca I had never visited but had heard a lot about: that of my Rotarian counselor Waldemar and his wife, Lyda. Waldemar was always telling me about his love for his ganado (cattle), riding horses through the open pastures, and spending holidays with his family at his modest finca. But because of the prolonged rainy season, bad road conditions, and some health problems, they he and Lyda were not going to their finca as often as other parts during their lives.
Sunday was different. The GSE group is now in Medellin and my host club, Club Rotario Medellin, was in charge of their activities for the day. Being the director of the entire program for the district, Waldemar was also responsible for entertaining the four of them and so decided that a trip out to the finca was the perfect option of typical Colombian hospitality. And he invited me!
We met at 8:30 in the morning at Waldemar and Lyda's apartment, and then piled into rented luxurious SUVs with hired drivers to comfortably transport us the 2 hours past Fredonia into Colombian paradise. Despite being a successful orthodontist and community figure, Waldemar is one of the most humble people I have ever met. Thus I was not surprised when we pulled up to a modest house situated on perhaps the most beautiful 100 acres of land in Antioquia. He has over 100 heads of cattle, and planned a "cultural experience" for us to watch three young calves be branded and their horns cauterized. Despite the bad smell and guttural sounds the calves made, it was actually quite a fascinating experience, much less traumatizing than I expected. The ranch-hands had horses ready for us to ride, so before lunch we took an exciting (to put the horses' lack of guidability nicely) romp through streams and high grass out to a gorgeous lookout point where one can see beyond 30 km of the Cauca Valley, Cauca river, and parcelled land below. We returned somewhat muddy but in high spirits to spend the rest of the afternoon lounging in the pool, eating the beautiful spread Lyda had prepared (she is a published chef) involving over 10 different dishes, and sitting in rocking chairs on the porch discussing politics and human evolution. I was even able to paint for an hour! By the time we lazily made the return journey back to Medellin everyone was slightly sunburnt, full, and successfully relaxed.

(The most interesting lunchtime conversation topics involved how one of my good friends in the club is so wealthy that she asked her husband for a helicopter to transport an elephant to one of their 13 fincas, how her multi-million dollar jewelry collection was stolen by a mafioso who threatened her husband's life after he sent out a private detective to find them, and then how her husband was kidnapped by the guerrilla and played mind tricks on them to get whatever he wanted--like making them hunt down and eat an anaconda. Speaking of kidnappings, I learned that at least two Rotarians from my club had been kidnapped by the guerrillas and lived to tell about it...I always wondered if their riches and public positions ever endangered them.)

But as wonderful as these luxurious country events were, I came home that night with an insurmountable respect for my Rotarian hosts. After spending over four hours in the car with Lyda and another Rotarian, Carlos, (a jolly old man who is never once been quiet for more than three seconds when in anyone's presence), I felt like I had just read an entire Encyclopedia Britannica set. They discussed the history of British monarchy personalities, the Pope's recent visit to the Middle East (did he end up taking his shoes off when visiting the mosque in Jordan?), traveling to every continent, the technological advances of Brazilian telecommunications, the perks of being a Rotarian when in other countries (special treatment in airports, accidentally walking in on a meeting in Switzerland, sightseeing with Canadian Rotarians throughout Spain), the theory of Relativity, egg and dairy processing plants in Germany, and, of course, the usual catch-up on old acquaintances and family gossip.

Now these Colombians have access to many more privileges and opportunities than most of their fellow country(wo)men, but to me represent the definitive Colombian trait that differs them from other Latin Americans I have known: the thirst for knowledge of the world that transcends their existence beyond their national bubble. My admiration of their conversational skill, storytelling wit, and the ease with which they moved from one intellectual subject to another makes me want to dedicate my life to studying. And like many other times since arriving in Colombia, actually makes me look forward to being old. After living for so many years my hosts have accumulated a wealth of knowledge and experience, which combined with nimble memories, makes them some of the most interesting people I have ever encountered. Anyone who considers Colombians to be uncultured, uneducated, and living in the jungle like monkeys should think again; I honestly consider them to be perfect examples for the future of humanity.

A Day in the Life of a Researcher

2009-05-13T09:22:00.002-05:00

When do I work?

It might appear that I spend all of my time traveling around the country or walking through the city without much aim besides exploring. Admittedly I have been 'out of the office' for quite a bit of time since December. This is possible because of the flexibility that being a contracted researcher for the Facultad Nacional de Salud Publica allows; I can do my work in spurts and make my own schedule. When I am in Medellin I have been known to walk into school at 9 in the morning and leave at 7 at night after coding interviews or organizing mental maps all day. Or, I hole myself up in my apartment correcting transcribed interviews and doing supplementary reading. But, since I am still involved in the data-collecting phases for both of my research projects, I am often running around the city to hospitals or displaced shelters (my fieldwork sites) to conduct interviews.

To give you an idea of what a normal field visit day might entail, read on.

On Wednesday morning at around 9:30 I walked into the office I share with other "investigators" and sat down to check my email at one of the work stations. A few minutes later Gilma, my research partner and important friend/aunt-like figure in my life here, struts in proudly (as only a woman shorter than myself can), announcing that she has arranged five interviews for us back-to-back during the day. (After being received with skepticism every time I have tried to call offices asking for an appointment with a nurse or administrator in my foreign accent, we decided that it was better for her to arrange our interviews). Gilma walks up to our desk, starts collecting the necessary consent forms and interview questions, tests the tape recorder, asks everyone in the office if they know where new batteries are, and then pronounces us ready to go.

Gilma is about the age of my parents but does not lead the lifestyle of a typical middle-aged Colombian woman. Originally trained in nursing administration, she worked for 20+ years in quality control overseeing hundreds of government health care employees. Because of her experience, she has traveled all over the country evaluating hospital operations or giving lectures on the new privatized health care system that is still causing national confusion after it switched over 16 years ago. (My project with her looks at how the relatively new market competition is affecting quality of and access to maternal health care in Medellin, evaluating the desired efficacy of the health care system.) She literally knows everyone everywhere, has never married, dedicates her free time at school to learning Arab dance and painting, is always late, hikes with a walking group on the weekends up the mountains surrounding the city, is fiercely independent, and has four daily coffee dates with friends which makes it very hard for us to work on a tight schedule. But out of all of the Colombians I have met, she has the most expansive view of how the country operates, and I absolutely love working with her because she is determined to teach me something new during every conversation.

Anyway, so we walk out of the Faculty and up the street to the headquarters of one of the biggest insurance companies in Antioquia, Comfama. The man we interview is one of her old friends, (of course), and has the most comprehensive understanding of the health care system than any of the professors teaching Social Security at school (Gilma included). We sit in his white office for almost an hour, being served tinto (piping hot Colombian coffee) in small plastic cups, and wowed by his organized, outlined explanation of the problems he notes with maternal health care throughout the city and proposed solutions.

When done, we hurry over to the Faculty of Medicine and interview a woman in charge of NACER, an academic initiative funded by the government to reduce maternal mortality in the city. The professor is another one of Gilma's old colleagues, and has a much different perspective on the subject. She lists off new figures on hospital noncompliance, stressing how every singe maternal death in the city over the past five years has been preventable--a perverted fact heavy with socio-political implications. She is extremely helpful in offering us bibliographical references and access to their data, of which we will surely take advantage once we start writing our article.

Then we head back out the the street and catch a taxi to Alpujarra, the government center of the city housed in squat twin towers. Gilma leads the way through the security guards, into a crowded elevator, and up to the 7th floor where all of the state's health sector resides. We barely find the other old friend we are supposed to interview because every two feet we have to stop for her to greet someone. She's like a superstar walking through the ministry halls saying "Chiu belleza," "Hola reina, tiempo que no nos hemos visto," "Avemaria, mira quien he encontrado aca!" hugging and exchanging picos (the mandatory cheek-kiss hello/goodbye), catching up on gossip and making more lunch dates than she can attend in a month. The interview is somewhat inconclusive since the woman has worked in the ministry for almost 30 years and is so burned out that it seems like she does not even want to remember the problems in maternal health care she has seen during her career. It doesn't help that she is a bit microphone-shy and prefers to talk to us off-record. When we are done it takes almost as long for us to leave the building as it did to come in, and I end up finding a chair to rest on while I wait for Gilma to make her round of good-byes.

Next, we walk six blocks up to the administrative office of another insurance company, Saludcoop, and interview a woman in charge of maternal health who almost makes us fall asleep with her boring comments. She literally speaks so slow that she forgets what she is talking about mid-sentence and we have to remind her of the useless fluff she's saying. Although this might seem like a waste of a half-hour of our time, it important for us to show how little the people directing maternal health programs in the city and companies providing health care services actually know about the subject, which might be why there are so many improvements needed.

Once done, we breath a sigh of relief as we push through the throng of workers heading to lunch as we make our way back toward the other government building. This interview should be a bit more tricky to carry out since we don't actually have a set appointment, but Gilma is convinced that we can interview the Secretary of Health because of her connections. The security guards initially don't let us in, so we go to a public phone and Gilma calls a random man working in the office telling him that he has to come down and approve our entrance. Although confused, she is so convincing that a few minutes later he talks to the gruff guards and we stroll into the building, toward the elevator, and up to the Secretary of Health offices. By this time I am not surprised by the entire floor comprised of a maze of cubicals, and I wonder how these people who have some of the best jobs in the city put up with such a compartmentalized workspace.

Luckily the woman we want to interview is sitting at her desk working, but she won't let us interview her until we get permission from the Secretary since anything she says directly represents the state government. Gilma marches past the bullet-proof glass of the Secretary's office and stands waiting for a woman sitting at the reception desk to wake up, but over the course of five minutes of us staring at her she only nods through her dreams. Heading back out to the main office area, Gilma asks some other random person for the Secretary's cell phone number, and borrows my airtime minutes to call her, while at lunch, to ask permission. Gilma passes the phone over to our interviewee who just stares at us with astonished deference. As the director of the maternal health program in the city, this woman has an incredible grasp of the situation citing specific patient examples up to paraphrasing parts of the law to explain the gamut of problems she is attempting to address. Without her interview, our research would lack the scope of analysis we wish to achieve by looking at every level involved in maternal health.

Again it takes over 15 minutes for us to leave, Gilma being approached by random people who noticed her presence in the office as they trickled back in after finishing lunch. When we finally make it back to the Faculty I am so overwhelmed by the whirlwind of events that just took place that I can barely remember everything we learned. Luckily it is all 'on record' and after the girl that helps finishes transcribing the hours of interviews, I can pore over everything in more detail as the research cycle continues. Now who still wonders if I actually do work?

Where the $$ Goes

2009-05-11T23:33:00.002-05:00

I walked out of my apartment this morning and started along La 70, one of the most important commercial streets in the city only four perpendicular blocks from my doorstep. Instead of the usual traffic and street vendor sounds competing with the birds and business bustle, jarring, hacking, less than unpleasant noises of construction accompanied my morning stroll. Today was one of the first days of the new "renewal" project that the city will carry out over the next nine months, improving the road, making the sidewalks more consumer-friendly, and planting new breeds of trees. Now, I have always been fond of La 70 because it seems much better maintained (not to mention greener) than most of Medellin's other main avenues, and would never considered it in need of a face-lift. But according to a recent newspaper article a neighbor posted to my building's message board, the alcaldia seems to think that investing $10,500 million pesos, or $4,730,000 USD, along 14 blocks is a worthy project.

As a strange coincidence, later on this afternoon I was reviewing one of my recent interviews with a displaced couple living in the barrios populares (slums) creeping up the surrounding mountainsides, and they talked for a while about the frivolity of many of the city's recent public works. The new Parque Explora, an admittedly amazing interactive science museum that's free for people of strati 1,2 and 3; the five libraries located throughout the different comunas with public computer and internet access, and renovation of buildings in the centro were all mentioned. This couple was saying that although these places are all a great way to improve the culture of the city and poor populations, they feel like the city is overlooking the more basic needs of their people. Those who don't have access to the health care they need, are suffering within the high unemployment rate, and watch their children receive mediocre education in public schools see that those billions of pesos could be put to a better use. They ask themselves what good is a new, free museum and library if they can't even pay for the bus fare to get there?

Point taken.

I do see the social and economic benefits of investing in these projects (from the city's perspective); creating jobs, cultural opportunities, and a stimulus for further spending in depressed areas that would benefit from an influx of visitors. This is all part of one of the main social campaigns in Medellin to combat the rampant violence: trying to get people to take more pride in their surroundings. It has definitely worked. The daily homicide rate has gone down in the past 5 years, and people now feel safe to leave their houses at night or visit parts of the city that were previously literal war-zones. Paisas in general are committed to solidarity, so even slight public incentives to bolster respect for their mini-metropolis easily results in larger social changes.

But after living here for ten months and getting to see behind the city's closed doors, the beautiful new facades seem like band-aids over much bigger problems that the government is not addressing. Poverty, unemployment, hunger, and homelessness are still rampant throughout Medellin and have not been solved the progressive organizations dedicated to the people affected. I have found that the people here are apt to list off the ways in which they are working to combat structural issues without admitting the low impact they have on the overall population. At first I was awed by the work being done, now I am just wary of their optimistic enthusiasm. Walking through orange cones, stepping over holes in the sidewalk, and listening to jack hammers every day for the next year assuredly will not improve my disposition.

Rotary 4280 District Conference

2009-05-04T21:32:00.000-05:00

My year culminated the weekend of April 30-May 2 in the annual District 4280 Conference. Rotarians from all around my host district gathered in Pereira for 3 days of meetings, parties, and planning the next year's focus.

We were greeted Thursday night by a presentation of each flag from the many states of which the district is comprised, followed by typical dances from different parts of the country. This was followed by a cocktail party with live music and lots of social warm-ups reconnecting with Rotarians I had not seen for several months.

Friday was full of presentations by Interact, Rotaract, the GSE group, talks on leadership qualities, redistribution of districts in Colombia, and a pep rally talk given by the Rotary International president's representative from Merida, Mexico. In the afternoon they bussed us to a bull fight just for us and typical party complete with two live bands and a delicious buffet dinner. Several of the macho Rotarians got into the bull ring to test their abilities, and each club dressed up in matching outfits typical to the region from where they came. There was even a dance competition where the winning parter was awarded a cash prize, during which the entire party stood on top of tables to cheer--admittedly one of the most fun nights I have enjoyed while in Colombia.
Everyone arrived late on Saturday morning to listen to an inspiring speech given by the leader of the Afro-Colombian movement and candidate for Senate presidency, reflections on district-wide projects helping children with congenital heart diseases and HIV/AIDS awareness. I also had the chance to make a speech urging clubs that I don't know to invite me to visit and thanking everyone for the opportunity to participate in their Rotary family. After the closing events I went out to lunch with several conference organizers and the couple from Mexico, learning about their different opinions of spousal involvement in Rotary between the US and Latin America. That night we put on our finest for a gala dinner which lasted until 5 in the morning (the Rotarians out-partied me since I got tired and returned home at 3), during which everyone let loose and danced like teenagers.
It was great to see so many familiar faces come together from my visits to clubs around the country, and they were so appreciative that I have been completely dedicated to getting to know them throughout the year. I admired how well they mixed business with pleasure--talking about project objectives and brainstorming over shots of aguardiente (the typical way to accomplish anything in Colombia). Being an ambassador in a country with which I have completely fallen in love is easy, especially when Rotarians have shown me so much hospitality and encouragement. I love my job.

Left my Heart in Popayan

2009-04-29T12:51:00.001-05:00

Three years ago when I was traveling by land from Bolivia to San Diego, one of the main cities I knew I had missed out on was Popayan. Known as the "White City" for its old colonial architecture with mandatory white walls, it serves as an indigenous center for Colombia. Popayan seems to have suffered more than other Colombian cities, almost completely destroyed by a huge earthquake on Holy Friday in 1983 during which the cupola of the main cathedral collapsed on the congregation praying all afternoon, then absorbed in guerrilla violence given that it is located along one of the main drug transportation routes, and now recently experiencing a bout of theft and local disruption after the fall of the pyramid schemes. Despite these deterrents, I have been determined to visit Popayan since arriving in Colombia, especially since the Club Rotario Popayan just so happens to be part of my host District 4280.

So Thursday morning I flew to Bogota, then boarded a small propeller plane landing early afternoon at the tiny airport in Popayan and waited for my host mother (for the weekend) to pick me up. Using my contacts with Rotarians in Cali, I had organized a home stay with the family of an Interact student who had recently gone to Dover, Delaware to study English. (Rubi and Gloria, his mom and aunt, were extremely hospitable for the four days I stayed with them. They would start cooking me a huge breakfast of juice, eggs, meat, an arepa, and hot chocolate as soon as they heard me get into the shower, bring me water and piece of bread in the afternoon, and trusted me with a set of keys while I romped about the city. Their incredible hospitality almost made me wish that I had chosen to live with a family the entire year.)

During the afternoon I got the whole historical, religious, architectural, cultural, etc.al tour of the city with the Global Study Exchange group. GSE is a Rotary program where two districts in different countries exchange 4 professionals and a Rotarian "team leader" for a month. The team travels around the district staying in the homes of Rotarians, learning about the different projects in which all the clubs are involved, and receiving an all-around royal/rockstar treatment. When they return to their host country and district, they present a project related to their area of work about what they learned during their trip. Guadalupe (owner of an imported shoe store), Angella (director of communications and media for a hotel chain), Thomas (accountant), and Joe (construction broker) are from various parts of New Mexico, and a superbly fun group serving as great "professional ambassadors." I enjoyed the time I spent with them because in the short days they had been in Colombia they were already starting to fall in love with the country just as I have.

After wandering through some of the 20+ churches in the city, visiting the museum of religious art, and the house of Colombian poet and father of one of 13 presidents to come from Cauca, Guillermo Valencia, with two Rotarians who served as our tour guides, we headed out to a Tepanyaki dinner with the rest of the Club Rotario Popayan. As much as I have enjoyed visiting the clubs in and around Medellin, I found something special in the Popayan Rotarians. They are mostly young, around 30-35, several are bona fied anthropologists, and many work with social health issues as their primary job. Which means that I had more in common with them that we could discuss in a weekend, and they were essential in opening up my eyes to the public health problems in the south of the country.

Now, most of you are aware that I have 'partied' with Rotarians before at cocktail parties and other such social events, but the Rotarians of Popayan know how to get down and boogie. They took us to one of the very few clubs in the city, teaching the GSE group how to salsa dance and buying us bottle after bottle of aguardiente caucana--the local drink which they insisted was part of the cultural experience. I was somewhat embarrassed arriving home at 2 in the morning without getting to know or spend time with my hosts, but what could I do, it was Rotary's fault!!

Friday we all met up, somewhat hung-over, at the Federation of Coffee Growers of Cauca, a committee of which all small and large coffee producers are a part and ensures their protection in the form of fair prices, education about coffee growing, and provides social projects for the community. Listening to the director speak about the creation of the Federation in 1939 and its growth over the years depending on the international competition, how they created the personality of Juan Valdez, and hearing the testimonies of the coffee growers themselves in a short promotional video, I was very impressed by how well the Federation has served the people. We went down into the new laboratory where Rotary has provided all of the latest technological equipment to test the quality of the coffee they are exporting, and learned about every step involved from testing the size of the bean to "tasting" coffee to see how it roasts and reacts in water. They taught us how to distinguish different kinds of coffee flavors depending on the land and region in which they were grown, smell the aroma of roasted beans verses the fragrance of the coffee once water is added, and slurp up small teaspoons of steeped coffee to engage all of the taste buds in our mouths. I never realized what a scientific and complicated process coffee production is, and now have a new appreciation for the fields of coffee I see growing all over the country and the bags of Juan Valdez coffee I see in the grocery stores. (Starbucks just so happens to buy large quantities of coffee from these exact growers).

From the laboratory we went to a beautiful lunch in an old hotel in the center, then to the Universidad de Cauca to learn about some of the HIV/TB research the Rotary club also supports through donating scientific equipment. The region of Cauca has the highest incidence of both diseases, and it was interesting to see the medical approach to curing the epidemic. Afterward, we went to the Red Cross of Colombia's Cuaca site, where we were greeted by a parade of cargo-less trucks harmonizing their horns as they advertised the gas strike enacted until Uribe lowers the gas prices more. Supposedly in Cauca the gas prices are highest in the country and so they have good reason to stop transporting goods until they can receive more profit for their services. At the Red Cross we talked with the leaders of a project supporting families affecting by the many land mines in the area, used to protect fields of illicit crops and transportation corridors of the paramilitary and guerrillas. The Rotarian working for the organization showed us a slide show of the community health projects carried out throughout the region, and I was impressed by their long-term vision of changes they know will require 3-5 years to take hold.

Later on that evening, with our heads spinning from everything we had seen throughout the day, we attended the Rotary meeting for the week. The formality of the Rotary protocol and suits was a strange juxtaposition to the casualness of our previous interactions, but it was interesting to hear in context all of the activities in which the club is involved. Both the GSE and myself presented our slide shows, which captivated the club and served their purpose of opening up the cultural exchange for them to see from where we come and our perspectives on the world.
The next day I was on my own with Rotarians and my host brother, Julian, who had arrived from Cali after finishing his law midterms. We headed out to the town of Silvia with the Rotarian who works for the Red Cross, driving about an hour along roads that 2 years ago would have been far too dangerous to travel along. The town was nothing special, a large plaza and big church with broken stained glass windows, but the real attraction was that Julian has a friend from the university who is a guambiano indian. Liliana and her husband, Jeremias, took us into the guambiano territory to fish for trout, hike through the gorgeous landscape, and tell us about the Colombian violation of indigenous rights. Training to be a lawyer, she travels all over the world presenting international projects on constitutional reform to protect indigenous cultures residing within nationalized political systems, and was impressively critical of her own background while firmly defending it. Jeremias is a journalist and has worked in Mexico, Oklahoma, Bolivia, and Peru with his "original brothers" on solidarity movements publishing articles and even running his own indigenous-focused radio show. They were truly inspirational, and opened up a whole new perspective on Colombian culture than to what I have previously been exposed. Despite indigenous groups being the focus of most of my undergraduate Latin American studies career, I have not had much opportunity to interact with indigenous communities in Colombia. After exchanging emails, I hope to go back and spend more time with the guambianos to understand their contemporary situation.

Saturday night and Sunday morning found me hanging out at a Rotaract conference coinciding with my visit in Popayan, and so I was able to meet, party with, and present to over 50 Rotaract members from the Southwest of the district. This was a great opportunity to hear about the projects in which they are invovled and establish more contacts with these young Rotarian aspirants.
After so many days (and nights) of straight activities I was exhausted by the time I arrived at the finca of my host family, and needed a day to relax on the patio enjoying the beautiful views. I know that I have talked about finca culture before, but I really think that it is one of the most healthy and enjoyable parts of Colombian lifestyle (for those who can afford it of course). Sitting around eating fruit from your personal orchard, conversing with family, reading, and hiking through countryside is to me the perfect way to spend the weekend.

Revived from fresh air, sun, and a type of granadillas that only grow in Cauca, I woke up early Monday morning to visit displaced communities to the south of Popayan with volunteers from the Colombian Red Cross. We visited the house of a community leader running the equivalent of a Boys and Girls Club, talking about how involving the youth in neighborhood decisions has decreased violence and better overall education. They told me how a river clean-up project organized by the Red Cross has greatly improved the health of the settlement, and by teaching people the benefits of pride in their living spaces has made the area a much happier environment for all. By walking around looking at people's gardens, clean drinking water projects, and knowledge of how to use a Red Cross-provided first aid kit, I saw the huge impact of long-term community health projects in action. People had assimilated what they had been taught and taken huge initiative to find ways to live more dignified lives in destitute poverty. It was so invigorating to see enacted many of my beliefs on the importance of implementing cultural sensitivity and adaptable education confirmed in real public health work, making me want to find some way to become more involved in the Colombian Red Cross.

When I again boarded the propeller plane home that afternoon, I felt overwhelmed with the inspiring people and projects I visited in Popayan, determined to return.

Rotary Info

2009-04-29T12:40:00.000-05:00

For those interested in more information about the Rotary clubs in which I am involved, here are the sites for my

Sponsor club, Claremont Sunrise Rotary, District 5300: http://www.claremontsunriserotary.org/
(you can find me here)

Host club, Club Rotario Medellin, District 4280: http://rotaryclubmedellin.org/ and http://rotary4280.com/
Check out the projects in which they are involved and their members.

Thank you to all!

America's Demands for a Drug War

2009-04-29T11:31:00.000-05:00

The world is watching as Mexico battles a horrendous drug war on the south side of the US border. Colombians shake their heads whenever the problems in Mexico flash across the news, all too familiar with the daily violence and killings. They wonder why another country in Latin America could suffer their same fate without applying the lessons Colombia has already learned. As the Obama administration formulates their position on Mexico, I see them taking a huge step forward just by acknowledging the part that the US plays in terms of demand, as is addressed in some recent articles from the NYT:

Since taking office, Mr. Obama and his aides have been working assiduously to carve out a Mexico policy that talks of “shared responsibility” in combating the drug problem. The president is likely to use his visit here to acknowledge that illicit drug consumption by Americans plays a role — an admission that experts predict will go a long way toward building goodwill on this side of the border.

“For the last 30 years the United States has come down with the big sticks of eradication and helicopters, and the elephant in the room of our own consumption, and the tough proliferation of arms, were just never addressed,” said Julia Sweig, director of the Latin America program at the Council on Foreign Relations. “I think just beginning to talk about those things is going to buy him a lot of space down there.”

...

Obama lamented the bloodshed, saying it's been "sowing chaos in our communities and robbing so many of a future both here in Mexico and in the United States."

But he said America must do its part to help stop it.

"A demand for drugs in the United States is what is helping to keep these cartels in business," he said.

In Colombia the distinction between drug production and drug consumption is obvious: the majority of Colombians are not involved in drug use and thus the demand is generated externally. They look toward their allies up north in the US, UK, and Europe, watching young adults consume their most profitable crop at parties without thinking of the consequences their "fun" is having on innocent people elsewhere. It is this lack of consciousness that propagates the problems in countries such as Mexico and Colombia. If people snorting coke were to read articles like "Wider Drug War Threatens Colombian Indians," perhaps there would not be as much demand for illicit crops, dropping the price of the product, thus lowering production and alleviating some of the violence. I am glad that Obama acknowledges the US's involvement in the chain, and hope that the actions he takes will help avoid Mexico's demise into the same history as Colombia in 20 years.

Drawing the way to their future

2009-04-29T10:54:00.000-05:00

The article "Postcard from Medellin" that came out on the TIME website on April 23 gives (what I think is) an accurate insight into the way that the armed conflict in Colombia is irreversibly affecting the country's youth. One of the most important points the author touches on is noting the reasons children join the guerrilla or paramilitary forces. Along with forced inscription including kidnapping, the desire to seek vengeance against the group who has killed their family is, from my experience, the most powerful force driving civilian involvement in the conflict. When a young child watches their parents and siblings being tortured to death, not only are they left with no fragment of their former life but also with the mentality that they have nothing to lose--why not fight for revenge? This has created a culture of violence so entrenched in rural Colombian society that I see no way of it changing unless the conflict ends and people are given generations to breed out the hatred as integral to their blood composition as hemoglobin.

Although I am not working with former child soldiers, the art projects that I conduct at the shelter yield equally as powerful results. When asked to draw a self-portrait, very few of them portray themselves smiling, and many draw incomplete family portraits because they don't know where their father or older brothers are after watching them be kidnapped and taken from the family home. The part of the story that the reporter leaves out in the article is what happens to the boy's mother who appears on the guerrilla hit-list. This is a common war tactic, where every week or month the armed forces post a list of names on a public building warning people who will be the next targets of violence. They then either choose to stay and risk murder, or they flee to a nearby municipality or settlement, thus becoming displaced. Anyone who collaborates by advising a neighbor that their name is on the list or giving them a few pesos for the bus fare becomes an enemy of the armed forces and the cycle persists. Where will it end?

The Hunt

2009-04-19T15:05:00.000-05:00

While I was not raised with religion, Easter Sunday has always meant a big family meal to celebrate the arrival of Spring. Of course as youngsters my brother and I chased after the home-made colored eggs hiding around the house and gorged on chocolate bunnies. always enjoyed the creative activities my mom the artist made up for us to decorate the house.

So you can imagine how lonely I was anticipating Easter to be in a Catholic country where the main event of Holy Week is praying all day Thursday and Friday. Most of my friends were still out of town or catching up on homework, and despite my offer to cook a grand lamb meal nobody seemed interested in learning about my Easter customs. I thus decided to create an Easter celebration for people who I knew would not refuse: the kids at the shelter for displaced families at which I have been volunteering and conducting research.

Taking advantage of a short trip home for grad school visits and interviews, I brought back a duffel bag filled with bright plastic eggs and special Easter candy I knew I couldn't find in Colombia (pastel colors are not really that popular no matter what time of year). Saturday night found me sitting on the couch, watching a movie, and stuffing almost 200 eggs while resisting the urge to sneak handfuls of peanut M&Ms (I swear the Easter colors taste better).

On Sunday morning I headed over to the albergue, rounded up the children and explained the hunt rules after handing out plastic bags to each one, then headed over to a nearby park with several adults to hide eggs. The joggers and old people sitting on park benches didn't quite know what to make of the four of us walking around leaving orange and pink eggs in the tree branches, under leaves, and in the crevices of statues. When we finished I watched a chain of over 20 children holding hands walking excitedly up the street, huge smiles on their faces rapt with anticipation.

I lined everyone up from oldest to youngest, and the children 7 and under got a 2-minute head start while the rest of the group shouted suggestions of where to look. As soon as I opened my mouth to allow the older kids to go, they shot off in all directions with speedy youthfulness, elbows out for offensive tactics and blanketing the park with super keen eyes zeroing in on all the eggs. For their first egg hunt, they immediately adopted the necessary skills for maximum egg collection that it took me years to learn!

By the end most of the little kids were sitting down opening their eggs and eating the candy inside while the older children continued to find any and all remaining eggs. The people exercising in the park or just passing through had all stopped to watch the kids scampering around, and several children from surrounding houses had even come out to participate--making the hunt much more of a community event than I had ever anticipated. Before we joined hands again and walked away in a chain laden with heavy Easter egg-filled bags, the children individually came up and thanked me for the activity. One little boy even insisted that I kneel down so he could give me a sticky kiss on the cheek.

Instead of feeling homesick on Easter, I was overwhelmed with the satisfaction of having been able to share a longstanding tradition of mine with Colombian families who quite literally own nothing, getting people who are usually too afraid to leave the shelter outside on a beautiful day. It was the first time in a long while that the children had received something they could keep and did not have to share, and although in retrospect I should have brought toothbrushes to counteract their sugar consumption, the hunt created a sense of community I had never previously felt among this group of people. In the most unexpected way I noticed that I had become an integral part of the displaced family, and could not have imagined a better way to spend an Easter Sunday in Colombia.

A Street-Side Addition

2009-04-18T18:05:00.000-05:00

After writing the last post about "Street Culture," I have found a new category to add to the list of street inhabitants: Street Animals.

While walking through the Centro on a Saturday, I noticed that the newfangled item for sale are dyed chicks (as in baby chickens, not human females). Fuchsia, turquoise, and orange are the most popular colors. Kids love them, young ladies think they are just adorable, and if Colombians celebrated a commercialized Easter they would be found sitting plumply among chocolate eggs wrapped in pastel foil and bunny stuffed animals in children's Easter baskets. I was walking with my friend Marcela, from LA but with paisa parents: culturally American but Colombian by blood, and she stopped and gaped at the peeping, fuzzy mass on the sidewalk. Her reaction was not out of marvel for their cuteness, but rather out of shock at the awful mistreatment of such helpless animals. She started to rudely ask the vendor about what kind of dye he uses, how long it lasts, and if it is harmful to the chicklets, only stopping once he appeared to feel sufficiently guilty about his wares. The next man we saw selling chicks out of a box hung around his neck didn't even look at us after he heard the suprised *gasp* at there being more colored chicks less than a block away. I went up to him and asked if I could take a picture, saying that I was from a local newspaper and writing an article on cruel animal treatment in the street. The woman standing there buying a purple chick just smiled at me sadly, continuing with her purchase. An interesting contrast was that a man several feet away was selling fake, real-colored chicks, with what seemed little luck since his box was still completely full. What can I say, color sells.
The next animal surprise was a man selling matching visor and jacket combos for dogs. He had even brought with him a puppy stuffed animal being sniffed by a live terrier. An interested customer could take their pick from the Nacional green and white (local soccer team), fatigue, an array of pinks, and the rival red of the Medellin soccer team. They only cost $10.000 pesos.

But by far my favorite of the day was a man selling different colored bra straps, some even with rhinestones, in one hand, and a tiny quarter-sized turtle crawling around the other hand. He was rather good-natured about my attempts to take the perfect picture despite my focusing issues, and seemed like he just wanted to get rid of the poor fellow. I actually considered taking this one home, until I remembered how the girls who used to live down the hall in my freshman dorm kept two turtles for a semester and being able to smell them through the walls. I doubt my current roommate would appreciate having a stinky turtle in our apartment, no matter how small.

Street Culture

2009-03-26T23:03:00.000-05:00

Street Food
Of course, whenever you think of streets in developing countries the smell of sketchy meat cooking on the corner wafts into your sensory memory. Welcome to Colombia! Chuzos, or meat kabobs (usually chicken), are accompanied by a small white corn arepa and a mayo/ketchup sauce. You can also find a wide-array of fried food being sold anywhere in the country, including empanadas (corn flour crust stuffed with meat and potatoes), buñuelos (fried cheesy dough with a slight sweet twinge), or arepas con huevo (thin arepas cut in half and fried with an egg inside). There are even small establishments that will deliver the food straight to your car, an informal version of a Colombian drive-thru. But my favorite, and healthier option, is always the fresh fruit. You can buy a cup of guayaba (guava) and mango with salt and lime, sandia (watermelon), papaya, piña (pineapple), or fresas (strawberries). It costs 1,000 pesos or about 35 cents, and, whoever is running the little stand will pick out a whole fruit and cut it up in front of you, fresh! You can also buy whole papayuelas, granadillas, apples, oranges, bananas, and avocados in bulk or individually. Men will be pushing wheelbarrows topped off with stalks of bananas for sale, and then there are always the men pushing long carts with a wide array of your daily fruit and veg through neighborhoods shouting their own song featuring the special of the day. Or, if you are feeling a bit more adventurous, you could even ask for a juice in a water or milk base, resulting in a tropical milkshakesque delight. I already know what I am going to miss most about Colombia...

Street Performers
One of my favorite reasons for choosing to walk through the city is to be able to stop and watch the street performers. Jugglers, unicycle riders, mimes dressed in fatigues, or saxophone players dressed as Santa are all an easy source for amusement. My favorite was a man who had dressed his Jack Russel Terrier up as an old woman and danced with her to classic music, and at the end the dog did a back flip landing in his arms to great applause. Most of these performers will stand in busy intersections and try to collect a few coins from the people waiting in cars at a red stoplight. I find that taxi drivers usually collaborate, as well as most other people if the show was good. Performers will also board inter-city buses to serenade you with their gangster wrap or off-tune guitar ballads, and I must say I am a sucker to any kid who puts himself out to a captive audience rocking his socks off.

Street Owners
From where I come, people usually consider the street public property. And I guess it still is here. But any time there is a wide stretch of street in an area where people want to park, people suddenly appear out of nowhere demanding money for parking in their strip as if they owned the street. And nobody seems to complain, given that whoever they tip 500-1000 pesos makes sure their car is safe for however long they are off entertaining themselves off the street. When I have asked friends here if there is some sort of cooperative or organized rotation of street owners, they say it is just first-come, first-serve. Competitive business, eh?

Street Dwellers
Given the large amounts of displaced people, impoverished people, and just plain poor people, you can find people sleeping in the stoops of even the nicest of Medellin's neighborhoods. I hate that my heartstrings are stretched out and don't feel a sympathetic pull whenever I walk by a dirty blanket with mismatched socks sticking out like Dorothy's wicked witch, but it is so common that the street dwellers and their begging whine just blend in with the rest of the landscape.

Street Cleaners
One of the aspects of the city that impresses me the most is its continual cleanliness. Several decades ago Medellin was the pioneer of a street cleaner project, contracting people to walk around the city with huge trash bins sweeping up trash, debris, leaves, and ugliness. Not only does it create lots of jobs, but it means that the morning after a riotous futbol match you can't find a trace of confetti nor a single beer bottle.

Street Workers
Any major city wouldn't be complete without prostitutes, and Medellin has its fair share. Driving through certain streets at night you can find women of questionable biological sex flipping their platinum-blonde hair and cocking their wrists against their curvey hips. Or, walking through parts of the Centro during the day you can conveniently find similar women waiting outside of cheap hotels. Colombia has a huge problem with children being exported and sold as sex slaves, and Medellin is known for their 12-year old street workers. Thankfully I haven't had the opportunity of meeting one myself.

Street Art
Compared to Berlin or San Francisco Medellin does not have incredible graffiti, but there are some walls that are tastefully decorated. I find that there is less 'tagging' and more artistic portraits or scenes, actually adding class to otherwise scraggly streets. Of course walls are also a free source of advertisement, so whenever looking for a new dance studio, mechanic, or concert just look to the walls around heavily trafficked intersections.

Street Vendors
Did you know that Colombia pirates the second largest amount of movies and video games, after China? Well they do, and you can find hundreds of copies of the latest blockbusters for sale on the street, $5.000 pesos each. Belts, flowers, shoes, shoe repairmen, stolen belongings at garage-sale prices, snail slime (supposedly it has healing powers), vegetable graters, watch bands or batteries, jeans--you name it, they sell it. I love wandering through the Centro and listening to the vendors hawking their wares, wondering what use anyone would have for that.

In the street, anything can happen...

2009-03-26T22:00:00.000-05:00

“Everything I have seen reinforces the idea that this it is a type of place where we can show our investments and its results, and how these can make a great difference”. --Bill Gates, President of Microsoft Corporation, during his visit to Colombia.

“Being in Colombia makes me think what happiness is. In Europe, where we supposedly have everything, people do not smile as they smile in this country, where apparently they have so little.”

--Rupert Eden, journalist of the newspaper and the magazine Voyeur of Barcelona.

Transported by Taxis

2009-03-20T18:29:00.000-05:00

I know I might sound spoiled by admitting this, but I really miss having my own car.

(North) Americans are known for loving their personal transport, and in the context of Colombia I definitely fit that stereotype. Cars here are extremely expensive to buy (think high import taxes), insure, fill with gas (Colombia is the country with the second highest gas prices in the world despite neighboring Venezuela), and park (even outside of the city). Which makes them a luxury. But I still miss being able to travel independently.

The past few days have shown the effective change of weather to 'winter,' and it seems like every single time I want to travel anywhere within the city it starts raining as soon as I step out the door. Which means that I have taken up the Colombian past-time of standing under eves for long periods of time watching the water dump down on the city, excusably late for meetings and utterly frustrated. I wish that I could just get into my car whenever I want and travel door-to-door without having to pay someone else, give directions, or worry about safety beyond the normal perils of the road (arguably more life-threatening than anywhere else I have driven).

Mind you, Medellin does have a fairly well-organized transportation system. The metro is amazing; running efficiently, cleanly, throughout most parts of the city, and most importantly, close by my apartment. There are always buses careening through the streets, but despite my best efforts to understand their routes, I have not been able to find any consistency and often find myself further from my destination than when I started. And most importantly, there are always taxis.

Taxis have been my saving grace. When I am dressed up for a Rotary meeting and don't feel like changing modes of transportation three times in high heels, I will call a taxi. If it starts to rain and I absolutely have to be somewhere soon (and in a dry state), I will duck into a taxi. Or, if I have to transport a finished painting and I don't want to smudge anyone else's clothes on the metro, I will hail a taxi.

Another bonus is that Medellin happens to have the lowest taxi prices in the whole country. The minimum price is about $1.30, and rarely will I spend over $5 getting from one end of town to the other. Tipping is not customary so I don't have to add in an extra few pesos unless the taxista was entirely helpful, say, unloading my groceries into the elevator. Many taxi companies rent out their vehicles to associated drivers, and I have been told that it is not rare for a taxista to spend more on gas and payment to the company than they earn from customers. Sad indeed, but hey, I do appreciate their cheap labor.

The only problem is that the combined friendly nature of paisas and the lonely nature of taxi driving often lead to many undesirable or uncomfortable conversations. Every taxista has some story to tell, comment to make about the weather, or even worse, compliment on my eyes. (I have taken to wearing sunglasses, even at night, to avoid the gawking). The short, autobiographical story posted below is an example of such an encounter:

Voice of an Angel

2009-03-20T18:25:00.000-05:00

The door was shut efficiently behind me. “To the Stadium, please. San Juan with 73.” We rolled out of the driveway, past the square fountain and parked cars, onto the rainy highway asphalt. When the clouds of afternoon fog unfurl every afternoons it is impossible to see the skyline of downtown, suffocating under tropical downpours.

“Where are you from?”

“Los Estados Unidos.”

“Oh, really? You must be rich then.”

“Ha, not really. Not everyone from there has money. Nor do we have this much rain. Most of my state happens to be desert.”

“Then you must have lots of snakes.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Almost nine months.”

“You’re basically from here, then. No wonder why your Spanish is so good.”

“Thank you, but I have studied it for a long time. I should hope that it is good.” Red tail lights in front of the taxi blurred across the windshield as the lunch-time traffic heading toward the center slowed down into a digestive halt. The ticking of pesos on the taximetro decelerated at an equal rate.

“So do you go out to party much?”

“Depends.”

“You should totally go to Corner 67. It is the best place in the city.”

“I think my friend invited me there last weekend for a capoeira performance. Where is it?”

“Down on the 33, behind Pintuco.”

“I like to go out on weekend trips so don’t make it to the discos all that often.”

“Right. So when are you leaving?”

“July. Sadly enough.”

“And when are you coming back?”

“Who knows. Depends on my money.”

“Do you have a lot of friends there?”

“Yeah, it is my home. But I also have a lot here.”

“Are the women very beautiful in your country?”

“Of course there are some. But percentage-wise, more here. And women here take better care of themselves going to get their nails done and wearing make-up and all. You should appreciate it.”

“You must be intelligent.”

“How do I answer that question? I like to study, and the more one studies the more they learn how little they actually know.”

“Then you are a teacher or something.”

“Actually a professor at the Facultad Nacional de Salud Publica at the Antioquia.”

“Man, that place has a lot of guerrillas.”

“Just last week they had to stop classes because the student leader groups were threatened by the guerrillas.”

“Yeah. They have so much money that they pay their people to go study there. Get specializations and stuff.”

“In what? What fields would help the guerrillas?”

“Oh, anything really.” The big shopping center to the left was full of umbrellas competing for head room and yellow taxis lined up waiting to take home purchased wares. It gave me the urge to ask him to stop early so I could wander through the stores smelling like chemically dyed fabrics with their invigorating music wooing the adrenaline rush you get when buying new things for yourself.

“You must like to eat a lot of fruit.”

“Ha. That’s a silly question. I do indeed, I love all the tropical fruits you have here.” For the first time since getting into the back seat the driver adjusts the rear-view mirror so our eyes can meet, and for extra measures he turns around to give me the look-over.

“Yup, you do have an apple face.” What does that mean? In shape or color or texture or some double meaning I don’t understand? Maybe I started sweating a lot more than I realized during the meeting and my skin got shiny like the waxed surface of imported apples.

“Is all of your family there? They must be mad at you for coming so far away.”

“I don’t have any family here. But they don’t mind, I will only be here a year and nowadays it is normal for young people to live in other countries. In fact, in order to get a good job you have to have international experience.”

“Do you want to get married? Or do you want to be independent forever?”

“Actually I do. I have a boyfriend and maybe we will get married in a few years. I would like that…”

“Where is he from?”

“He is from there.”

“But where does he live?”

“Here right now. He is a teacher of economics.”

“Oh. How fortunate you are! You have everything figured out.”

“Almost, I guess.”

“Do you like children?”

“Yes, a lot. What about you?”

“No, I don’t. I’m psychotic.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t like anyone, I have psychotic tendencies.” He paused as we entered the first large roundabout entering the strip of alternating stores selling motorcycles and interior garments. What a perfect combination. The two items that someone thinks is the best way to attract the opposite sex. “I was abused as a child. My mother used to hit me. She would take a long pole and hit the parts on my body that were bony. Here on my elbow I have a scar.” His right arm sticks out from the seat ahead above the middle console with the sleeve raised to show me what looks like a perfectly normal elbow. I notice that he has one of those thick leather watches on, a black band with square, black face. The hands are too small for me to be able to read the time. It must be around 2:30. “It made me hate people. I used to abuse other children because my mind was so ruined. I had indulgent tendencies and didn’t know how to make good decisions. Being abused affected me until I was old, like 22 or so.”

“And now?”

“I started listening to 710. On the radio.” A finger points to the dark, quiet radio. The only sound we aren’t making is that of tires trying to find ground under puddles and the squeaking of the clutch as he shifts gears. “The Señor saved me. I found the word of God. Every morning there is a program that has changed my life.”

“Who talks? I mean, what is the program about?”

“God’s love. It has changed my life. I am going to tell you a story. When I was 23 I was driving my taxi late at night at one of the barrios up top there. I had a beautiful young girl in the back seat. She got in at a corner bar where she had been drinking with her friends. She was so beautiful. So we started driving away, and I asked her where to. I didn’t hear anything so looked back and she was fast asleep on the back seat. Now this was before I had found the Señor, and I was full of bad things. I kept driving until I reached a forest. It was all dark around and just trees, nobody else. I pulled off the road and stopped the car. She was still sleeping so beautifully, didn’t even wake up when we stopped. So I went around and got into the back seat next to her. I reached over and slowly started unbuttoning her shirt.” I can see his eyebrows raising in the rearview mirror, the only discernable part of his expression besides a forehead and black tufts of hair sticking up. “I slowly unbuttoned her shirt, and then stuck my hand down. Touched her breast. Then I moved down to her waist. She was so beautiful. Moved my hand down into her pants. But I didn’t do anything. Right then, I heard this voice. Coming from the left window. It spoke my name, it knew who I was. It said, “What are you doing? Don’t do that.” We were out in the middle of the woods, you know, so there wasn’t anyone around. But I got out of the car and walked around, trying to find where the voice had come from. Nobody was there, of course, so I got back into the car and started unbuttoning her shirt more. The voice spoke to me again, and that second time I got scared. It was the voice of an angel and it was saving me. So just as I had unbuttoned her shirt I buttoned it back up again, arranged her comfortably in the back seat, and drove away. That voice saved me from all of the bad things. I drove back to the neighborhood where I picked her up. Didn’t stop where the men she was with were still drinking.”

“And she didn’t wake up through any of this?”

“No, she had drunk a lot. So I went passed the bar and stopped a few blocks up when I saw a young boy in the street. I asked him if he knew the girl passed out on my back seat, and he told me her name and that she lived a few blocks up. He came with me and I brought her home to her parents. I didn’t do anything. But I am sure that it was an angel that saved me. And the next morning, when I got into my taxi to work, I found 710, and have been listening to the program every morning since then. That was about ten years ago, and it has helped me to resist so many temptations.” By this time we had both been so engrossed in the story, me by horror and he probably by vicarious excitement of his past life, that we missed the usual turn to get home.

“Turn here at the right, quick.”

“Sure, sure. We will turn right here onto San Juan, and then onto 73, right? We’ll be right there. I am going to tell you another story. One night I was working at 3 am, driving through a barrio that is very dangerous. Up ahead, like where that silver car just changed lanes, I see this girl standing on the street with her hand out like this.” His fingers again stick out beyond the seat where I can see them, pointing in a more sensual version of how a woman would flag down a taxi late at night. “I pull over because it is dangerous for me and her and I wonder what a 9-year old girl is doing in the street at that time. She gets in and I ask her where to take her. ‘Where to, she repeats. Wherever we are going.’ I looked over and asked ‘what do you mean where we are going?’ And she tells me that I might want her, starting to take off her shirt and pulls down her pants to here.” I slightly bend forward so I can see his hands drawing a line across his legs right above the knees.

“She didn’t have tits, hair, nothing. She was nine years old! She said that I could have her if I wanted. I asked her how much she wanted, and she said however much I would give her. Now, she totally repulsed me, a girl that young made me feel sick because she was so undeveloped it wouldn’t be any fun. I told her that she wasn’t my type, I liked older, more voluptuous women. And then took her back to where she got in. Gave her 4.000. Now, I was curious because she said that she had a sister with a baby, and that was why she needed the money. I wanted to see if she was telling the truth. So I drove around the block a few times, and then came back. I caught a glimpse of her running up some steep steps into a house with a bag in her hand. I could tell that she had bought a bag of milk, some toast, and a small package of disposable diapers. Should I keep going over San Juan?” So revolted by the story, more by the fact that he had let her undress next to him than that there was a 9-year old working as a prostitute, that it took a few seconds for the relief to sink in that I was almost home.

“Yes, just a few blocks more.”

“I didn’t do anything. I could have had her. But I was able to resist with the help of the Señor I now have the strength to resist these things. For ten years I haven’t been touched by the same desires as before. My only weakness is women with money. When I see a car like this,” he points to a shiny blue SUV lumbering onto a curb to park, “with a woman driving, I lose the control He gives me. I don’t know why. Women with money just turn me on. They are so beautiful.”

“Turn to the right, this is the block. Now pull over at the black gate, perfect.” I reach into my purse and accidentally pull out a 1000 note rather than the 10000. They look so similar, one with a peachy background and coral lettering, the other beige with burgundy. And all folded up to fit into a wallet, it was an honest mistake. “Thank you.”

As I hand him the bill he looks into the rear-view mirror again and states, “I made you nervous, didn’t I.” After quickly pulling out the change he turns around with it in his hand, saying “But see, you are more than beautiful, so you didn’t have to worry.”

“Yeah right,” I respond, and step into a puddle slamming the door shut behind me.

Displaced Misery

2009-03-15T12:36:00.000-05:00

Newspaper articles, prime-time stories, and movies all focus on the drug-related violence taking place in Colombia. A cocaine drop-off was intercepted by the Coast Guard in Miami. More kidnapped victims were released after spending six years chained to a tree in the jungle whittling rosaries out of seeds. Obama's administration applauds Plan Colombia's success at fumigating 100,000 hectares of coca fields along the border with Ecuador in 2008 (which was less than the 120,000 hectares of new fields planted during the same year). Does it ever seem strange that the people at the forefront of the information about Colombia involves paramilitary, guerrillas, and government officials? What about all the other (innocent) people involved?

The majority of Colombians have probably never even seen drugs before, let alone become involved in them in some way. But they do know that foreigners from the US and Europe consume large amounts of the cocaine and marijuana that feeds the violence affecting their country. It isn't the fault of Colombians that drugs are addicting and white people can afford them. Yet they still suffer the consequences of the growing demand for such stimulants.

A hidden and very serious effect of the narco-trafficking and resulting drug wars is the second-largest population of internally displaced peoples IN THE WORLD. Sudan, with over 5 million internally displaced people (IDPs) is first, IDPs making up 14% of the overall population. Colombia has around 3.5 million IDPs, constituting 7.8% of the population of the country and 1.5 times the population of Medellin. People have fled from over more that 90% of Colombian municipalities, either in response to or in anticipation of violence targeted against them by armed groups. But when you think of the Lost Boys and UN refugee camps set up for displaced Sudanese, you also think of some schools, clinics, and services dedicated to people fleeing violence. It makes them a much easier group to count, access, and to whom international organizations can administer aid. In Colombia, displaced families flee to the large cities, other rural areas, and sometimes across international borders into Venezuela or Ecuador but in general are so dispersed throughout the country that it is impossible to keep track of them all.

As the second-largest city in Colombia, Medellin hosts over 110,000 displaced people. They come mainly from the nearby district of Choco, are disproportionately Afro-Colombian, arrive without anywhere to stay and without knowing anyone, are unaccustomed to city life, highly uneducated, and more likely to end up living on the streets than anywhere else. Because of the intrinsic complications of secretive groups inflicting violence on civilians, it is too confusing to try to figure out whether the paramilitary or guerrillas are the primary cause of displacement, but at this point there are too many problems to undertake with this population that pointing fingers is the least of any one's worries.

When IDPs arrive in the city, they are encouraged to register their situation with UAO, an over-worked sector of the government set up to aid displaced people. However, because many people have been horrifically threatened and fear being discovered in their new location by entering their name on a national list, they do not register for the services of which they are in dire need. This serves as a problem because the majority of them aren't even entered in the national SISBEN registry and effectively invisible as far as the state is concerned--they do not exist. However, everyone, unregistered as it may be, are referred to one of four 'albergues', or shelters set up by private organizations, where they live while trying to acclimate to Medellin, find work, and contemplate their dire future.

Like in every other place in the world, women carry the burden of inflicted violence. One in every three displaced Colombian girls has a baby before she reaches 20 years of age, and one in five displaced women will be raped during their lifetime. What happens to these babies and what are the government or other entities doing about this huge problem? As a researcher, I have undertaken this difficult question but have yet to come up with any definitive answers. What I have learned so far has been through working one to two days at one of the shelters that can house up to 80 displaced people for a maximum of 3 months.

Most of the people living there are single mothers with anywhere from 3 to 8 children, although some come with spouses in complete family units or as a couple having left children behind. The environment is of idle fear, board children, and a sadness so palpable that every time I breathe I feel like I could drown in each person's sad story.

Rather than getting caught up in the past, I try to help the adults focus on their future by offering literacy classes. Most women haven't received an education past 1st grade; their children are better than them at arithmetic and spelling. I also try to the best of my foreign knowledge of the Colombian system try to research technical training programs available to them, and give classes on the correct way to dress and act when approaching a fast food restaurant or vendor of cell phone visits asking for work. Despite my best efforts, they seem so lost in their hopelessness that very few have responded with any action.

Sometimes I find myself wishing that I could only work with the children--at least they apply what I teach them during art classes and singing games and have more hope for their futures. But I know that several other people come to play, wooed by their sly smiles and ever hug-ready arms, leaving the adults abandoned and feeling even more despaired. In return for this work, they are also more willing when I ask if I can interview them for my research.

My project focuses on the experience of pregnant women during displacement. This involves how their lack of permanent home affects access to maternal services, what effect displacement has on family dynamics, and their worries about bringing a new child into such a difficult situation. It is heartbreaking to listen to a 22-year old girl younger than myself explain how she is pregnant with her 4th child fathered by a man who was drafted by the guerrillas and she might never see again. The other children all have different fathers and are living with her mother. She had her first sexual encounter at age 11 with a man who was 30, then pregnant by age 12 from a different partner. When I asked her why she doesn't use any sort of family planning she said she got pregnant again so she could be sterilized by PROFAMILIA, the national branch of Planned Parenthood, because they won't perform the procedure on anyone with under 4 children. Luckily, that same PROFAMILIA offers excellent, *free* maternal services to displaced women and so the actual pregnancy should result healthily for mom and baby alike. But what happens after the child is born, she moves out of the shelter, and again has no future?

I am trying to learn from my informants what difficulties displaced women face in Colombia in order to internationally make people aware of this issue that otherwise is undetected on the radar of human rights and health organizations. I wish that I could come up with some sort of solution, but the main problem that needs attention is education--the solution for many of the world's suffering people. As one foreigner I cannot override an entire system, but can elucidate the experience of IDP women by sharing it here and hopefully publishing a book on my findings after I complete my research term. Please interact with my postings to help me discuss and expand my research in forums other than those available to me in Colombia, and would appreciate any feedback readers might have.

Ciclovia Sundays

2009-03-15T11:41:00.000-05:00

Running, biking, rollerskating, rollerblading, patinando, paseando, strolling, strutting, scooting, swishing. On Sundays between 7am and 2pm, Medellin brings out its best as over 37.000 people get outdoors to enjoy 29 km of streets-turned-pedestrian runways. Luckily the route starts right outside my front gate, and I can join the troops on the large loop around the stadium. Entire families will come out while young children wobble on training wheels while parents tug along a dog or grandma. Hairy men by themselves will sweat more liquid than I drink in a week as they slowly jog by. Young couples will never let go of the other's hand as they talk and stroll along. Each week presents new obstacles as I run at my own speed; avoiding older women learning how to ride a bike, kids in speedos running across the track to swimming lessons, puppies on the loose, sunglasses vendors, and your usual oblivious children. After anyone finishes their exercise, they will slump into plastic chairs around the fruit vendors and munch on a yellow hunk of pineapple or scoop out their salpicon (fruit salad with ice cream on top), drinking fresh-squeezed oj. Ahhhhh. The pleasures of living in the tropics.

Despite the city's horrible pollution, I am impressed with the local/national health-promotion programs in Medellin. The institute of sports and recreation, INDER, organizes lots of events to get the population out of their apartment blocks and moving around. Other countries could learn about disease prevention from the ciclovia, mass aerobics classes they offer throughout the mornings and evenings in different parks, sports clubs, portable gymnastics classes for children, etc. etc. It seems like everyone does some sort of exercise at least once a week, no matter how old or young or in shape or lazy. I guess the wonderful weather here supports outdoor activity, but it is great to live in a place that encourages physical activity.

Another preventative aspect of the country is that all (national) health insurance companies are required by law to offer a certain number of recreational locations throughout the country. Members pay a ridiculously low entrance fee such as 1.000 pesos, and non-members pay a slightly higher but still economical price. This includes water parks (think water slides and massive pools), nature parks with camping and boating, endless tennis courts or soccer fields, and perfect picnic destinations. It means that if a family is traveling anywhere in the country, they have affordable access to the outdoors. No wonder why there are so few overweight, unhappy people in this country. The majority of Colombians exercise!

Ambassadorial Duties

2009-03-15T09:03:00.000-05:00

As a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, I am required to participate in my host Rotary club (Club Rotario Medellin), make 10-15 presentations throughout my district to other clubs and any other group of people who would be interested, partake in Rotary events happening throughout the city, teach people about Rotary and my scholarship, and spread 'peace and goodwill' throughout Colombia. All of these activities require a large amount of self-motivation and confidence since I frequently have to walk into a room of the wealthiest, most influential, and intelligent people in Medellin inspiring them to continue putting 'service above self'. For those of you who knew me before I went to Italy on the Rotary Youth Exchange, I could barely look my relatives in the eye and have a normal conversation I was so shy. Although remnants of that anti-social girl still poke through my current personality, constantly representing my sponsor Rotary District 5300 and my entire country has been a great exercise at not only being comfortable with but actually enjoying public attention.

One of the most helpful factors is the result of the energy I invested during my first months here meeting as many Rotarians as possible. It means that whenever I attend the meeting of a new club to make a presentation I am greeted by familiar faces who are always friendly and supportive. Moving to a foreign country on one's own could be a lonely experience, but Colombians and specifically Colombian Rotarians are some of the most welcoming people I have ever met and have never once felt excluded.

My presentations usually consist of a brief introduction to where I come from (Encinitas/Southern California), my family, my sponsor club, and then I explain my experience with Rotary through being a member of Interact in high school and going on an exchange to Milan. I then move into how I developed an interest in public health, starting with working in the Peruvian Amazon with an indigenous community, conducting diabetes research at the LA Free Clinic, and interning at The Carter Center. I emphasize the efficacy of projects with simple solutions such as filtering water with a cloth in Africa to prevent Guinea Worm, and how while internationally Rotary is one of the most successful organizations in this sense, local clubs should use similar tactics when developing community projects. Usually my presentation ends with thunderous applause and Rotarians coming up to me with business cards offering me access to the country club, a tourist agency to plan my next trip, visits to prisons, a weekend getaway to a finca, among other random opportunities. Rotarians help me keep a fairly busy schedule, to say the least.

Two weekends ago I participated in a seminar given by the district governor-elect and her club on the district's goals for the upcoming Rotary year (starting July 1), and it was more fun for me to float around between clumps of Rotarians visiting with people from all over the city than it is for me to go out to a discotec with young paisas. The minimum age to become a Rotarian is 30, but the average age of my host club is about 72 and most other Rotarians I know are around my parent's age, meaning that the people who I hang out with most in Colombia are double, triple my years. I find that they always teach me something new about Colombian culture, engage me in interesting conversations about politics or globalization, and are interested to hear about my opinions of the country.
Of course the Rotaract (18-30) and Interact (high school age) clubs help keep me up-to-date with the latest trends among Colombian youth. Last Saturday I worked with the Rotaract Club of El Poblado to organize a blood drive in the center. We thought that the location, at the base of the most important financial building and near a shopping mall, would be a difficult place to attract the 40 people we hoped would donate because of the fast-moving pedestrian traffic all around, but were proved wrong. As I stood outside handing out pamphlets and trying to entice people towards the gurneys and needles, I was surprised at how many people not only were aware of the benefits of donating blood but routinely offered up their veins. Compared to the blood donation culture of which I am aware in the US, Colombians are extremely well-educated on the difference it makes. By the time I left for lunch at noon, our slogan "Give blood, give life" had yielded us a line of people waiting to be attended by the nurses.

I have also enjoyed sharing the Rotary culture here in Medellin with my many visitors. My grandma and her new husband, farmer friend MK, and boyfriend James have all attended a meeting with me and been wooed by the gumptious old Rotarians over typical food and interesting presentations from outside speakers. As an ambassador, I feel like I am successfully accomplishing the task of serving as a liaison between US and Colombian culture, creating opportunities outside of myself for everyone to participate in cross-cultural experiences. If only I could be an Ambassadorial Scholar forever...

Living my own Short Story

2009-02-12T10:18:00.000-06:00

In 'Cien Años de Soledad' (One Hundred Years of Solitude), written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and that takes place in a mythical Colombia, the handsome, rough character Maruicio Babilonia is constantly surrounded by yellow butterflies. A symbol for love, they flutter around Macondo even after his death when someone is reminded of his effect on the endless family line the novel follows.

When I take the eleven flights up to my apartment, large, black moths the size of my open hand nudged into the corner of the stairwell often startle my ascend home. I worry that the same persistance of such a symbolic creature might present some ominous augury. Although not superstitious, if I were to ever write a fictitious autobiography the character charading as myself would be pursued by the same dark creatures.

2009-02-12T10:04:00.000-06:00

Lifting. Twisting. Pushing. Jumping. Resist.

Capoeira.

After an impromptu invitation one night, I am addicted. Twice a week I throw on my exercise clothes, trot the two blocks to the athletic compound near my house, run around the stadium a few times, then duck into class. The teacher is a chico my own age who works in a circus. The students make up the most multi-national crowd I have seen in Colombia: estadounidense, four Germans, Korean, and Swiss. And despite years of learning how to play and challenge my body through Karate, Gymnastics, and Yoga, each new activity combines my knowledge into practice and leaves me sore until the next session. I love hanging out upside-down, watching the masters twirl in the air effortlessly, and stading around in the roda clapping to the beat of two instruments. It's the perfect way to work off the stress of a long day. Capoeira offers an social, inexpensive, healthy alternative to going out for a drink at a bar with friens. And it makes me want to go to Brazil.

Move over boyfriends, it's Valentine's Day in Colombia!

2009-02-12T09:22:00.000-06:00

It's that time of year: romantic colors spice up dreary winter grays, cupid lurks along the ceilings, chocolate invades every store (although I can't complain), and 'love is in the air;' sigh... Although I commonly shirk the consumer-driven celebration of Valentine's Day, this February finds me embracing at least one of the traditions.

I cannot count how many people, throughout my dating history or otherwise known, of whom I have warned the perils of buying imported roses. Who has seen 'Maria Full of Grace? Don't you realize that 16-year old pregnant girls work in the greenhouses cutting off thorns all day for bosses who won't let them take five minutes to go to the bathroom? Think of all the pesticides to which they are exposed, not to mention the exorbitant amount of refrigeration and fuel used to transport bundles of flowers that arrive at your local grocery store without a bruise! How could you support such nonsense?!?

But this year is different. Colombia just so happens to be the world's largest exporter of flowers. Which means that pretty much every store, household, restaurant, and roadside corner is filled with large sprays of birds of paradise, lilies, azaleas, orchids, oh I could go on forever. Everything that is not perfect enough to send to pining girlfriends in the US gets sold here in Medellin, at a ridiculously cheap price. Although those same pregnant girls are picking the flowers sold locally, at least I don't have to pay for the consumption of fossil fuels and import taxes. My guilt has abated and I succumb.

MK and I decided that since we will not be able to spend Valentine's Day with our respective boyfriends, why not treat ourselves to a bit of color around the apartment? So this morning we woke up at 6am, hopped into a taxi and brushed through the drizzly streets (rare on a Medellin morning) to the famous 'Plaza de Florez.' Although not quite the magnificent selection I have seen in the past, we were able to find a dozen of magenta roses, blushing pink lilies, several stalks of my favorite heliconia, and these weird conical flowers called 'maracas' for $5. If I owned more vases large enough to fit the 3-foot bouquets, I might have bought enough floral decadence to create my own personal botanical garden!

Although not much can dampen my flower-high spirits, I am somewhat disappointed that despite the fact that Colombia also grows and exports a sinful amount of chocolate, Nacional de Chocolate, the main company making edible chocolate (they usually drink it for breakfast) has a monopoly over the entire industry. I guess their candy bars aren't that good anyway, and instead of gaining weight this V-Day I can satiate my senses with the smell of guilt-free roses next to my bedside...

You gain some, you lose some

2009-02-03T20:49:00.000-06:00

I have always been weary of changes I cannot control. Who isn't? But like most people, I acknowledge change as a necessary part of life so accept it with more than a hint of remorse. So I knew that a new year, new semester, and new schedule were bound to reorganize my Colombian existence, bringing with them a flurry of unexpected social adjustments.

In the past month, two of my best paisa friends have left Colombia to study in Europe. One is off to London on an year-long English adventure, the other to Holland pursuing graduate research in mechanical engineering unavailable in Colombian universities. They were the people I called at night after a long day, the friends who invited me to interesting cultural events of which I was never aware, corrected my Spanish, and gave me the best hugs when I was missing home. I am so happy that they have the opportunity to expand their educations abroad--a luxury most Colombians dream about their entire lives but never have the visa to finalize, but miss the way their friendships made me feel at home in Medellin. Because the majority of the people I know are traversing their "odyssey years," I consider myself a pro at saying "see you later" to friends with whom I am required to make a huge effort to reunite with in person. Though just because I am accustomed to such goodbyes does not mean that they are ever easy.

Luckily, life is a balancing act and as soon as Medellin (and me with it) lost Carlos Angel and Esteban we gained two equally worthy friends. The first is a paisa who I met in Atlanta right before I moved away. He worked with CNN Movies for a semester, spending several months in LA...meaning that we have both lived a significant amount of time in the same cities. Just knowing that he is back in Medellin sends me into fits of nostalgia for a southern accent and Hollywood lights. Second is my dear friend MK, with whom I interned at The Carter Center. She is using her vacation from sustainable farming to traipse around Colombia for 10 weeks studying Spanish and posting on her blog what she learns about local food production. Together with her host mother, we have spent a weekend at a finca battling dragons in guava groves (along with an eight-year old friend), baked a GF rhubarb and mora streusal, and attended the first performance of the Medellin Filharmonic's season. It is wonderful to have a good friend around who understands my sense of humor and asks challenging questions about Spanish syntax while teaching me new phrases she learns in class.

No matter what quantity of friends surround me each day, I am constantly reminded how lucky I am to know so many amazing people all over the world.

Culture Clash (or crash)

2009-01-27T12:51:00.000-06:00

Obviously I have been in Colombia long enough to learn about, accept, and adapt to cultural differences. But that is not to say that there still aren't some Colombian 'ways' that either irk me to the point of constant frustration or just don't make enough sense for me to follow them.

The biggest and baddest of these is Colombian time. When making any plans involving a schedule I have learned to add thirty minutes to any denomination of time under 2 hours or 30% for anything over. This includes meetings with professors. Bus trip arrivals. Estimated travel time by any mode of transportation. How long it will take food to be prepared. Etcetera.

Examples: 1) When my research partner tells me she will pick me up at 6:30 am on the steps to the Metro so we can arrive at the clinic for our interview scheduled at 7, what she REALLY means is that she will pick me up at 7 after I have fallen back asleep and we will arrive at the interview at 7:20.
2) When I get on a bus and the driver tells me it will only take 6 hours to cross over the mountains, what he REALLY means is that it will take 4 hours to reach the mountains, 1 hour to stop and eat lunch, then 3 more hours to wind through the roads toward our destination.
3) When I ask multiple friends how long it will take to walk from one university campus to another they tell me "Oh it is really short and shouldn't take you longer than 15 minuts," what they REALLY mean is that they have no idea how long it would take because nobody walks that route, but 15 minutes sounds like a good, round number.
4) And, when I stop in at someone's house to drop something off and they offer me a meal saying it is already prepared, what they REALLY mean is that they have to go out and raise the cow, plant some rice, wait for it all to grow, then kill/harvest all ingredients before even starting to cook.

Being as it is that my anthropological training has instilled in me a duty to cultural relativity, (ie: just because people in the US are usually uptight about their schedules and don't keep you waiting for hours doesn't mean that Colombians are useless), it is hard to be continually forgiving when people are flaky and thus constantly throw wrenches into MY hectic daily schedules. I have learned to enjoy sitting around drinking a soda and doing nothing for hours just to kill unanticipated free time, but only when I have no other engagement filling my dance card. It causes me to be far less productive than I would like.

Despite the unreliablility of other people, paisas have a relatively grueling work ethic and I will admit that they accompish a lot during their long days. (Perhaps their extended labor hours--including half days on Saturday--are just to make up for all the time lost waiting). I wish I could say the same for the rest of the country, a lack of work ethic lending to the slow completion of national projects, but unfortunately much of the country suffers from commitmentphobia. Even some of the doctors and nurses complain about the fluidity of appointment dates and times; patients coming in hours or days late expecting to be treated. Imagine what could be accomplished if people could just arrive to anything on time...

After marveling at how tardiness does not seem to cause the same ire in anyone else here but me, I have come to comclude that people just don't have the same sense of time. Two hours isn't REALLY that important in the large scheme of things, so having that much more time to sit around and talk with family or friends, even random people in a cafe, is not going to have an effect on your life in the long-run. On the contrary, because relationships are so important in Latin American culture, having an excuse (however lame) to spend two extra hours with loved ones is the best use of time possible.

Perhaps then it is me who has my priorities reversed. Instead of worrying about not having enough time to finish my work and studies, I should be concerned that I am not dedicating enough of my working hours to the people I care about.

Inauguration of a New World

2009-01-24T12:41:00.000-06:00

If it is true that Obama's inauguration was the most widely-viewed event in the history of Television, Colombians definitely contributed their part to the final count. While I ditched class and responsibilities to watch the inauguration live, many of my friends and contacts caught up on his speech later on Tuesday night so they could participate in the buzz of conversation floating around Wednesday morning.

Back in October before the election I heard mixed reviews of our now president. Many of the Rotarians and professors, (very educated, upper class people often owning their own businesses), preferred McCain as a candidate because they thought he "understood Colombia better." I gathered that his meant he supported the Free Trade Agreement, and would continue Bush's policies of funding the Colombian government's military to fight the guerrillas and drug wars. Several Rotarians even admitted that they were rooting for McCain because they liked his running-mate, harboring some sort of perverse political crush on Sarah Palin. But although they saw McCain as better for the participation of Colombia in international business as well, they did admit that they thought that Obama would be better for the world, especially because he wanted to end the war in Iraq.

Non-Rotarians and more politically left-leaning friends thought that Colombia needed to improve their infrastructure before opening themselves up to free trade with economic superpowers like the US, and stated that they were ready for a change in politics--both in Colombia and abroad. Uribe and Bush were good friends and due to this, among other reasons, Colombia has progressed immensely in the past 8 years, but their policies are starting to stagnate therefore necessitating a change in leadership. The closer it got to the election, and the more likely it looked like Obama was going to win, I found the majority of Colombians already starting to accept Obama as a world leader.

Now, after Obama has taken office, people everywhere seem to be inspired with a sense of optimism that they all admit has not been perceived in a long time. They look to the US's ability to reinvent themselves as a model for Colombia to overcome their turbulent history. One of my colleagues even admitted that she cried throughout most of his speech because she was so moved by the importance of Obama's inauguration and his words. They admire his intelligence and that of the people with whom he has surrounded himself, his message to the world that the US president, serving as the country's icon, now sees that they are dependent on other countries and ready to respectfully participate in an international community. People will admit that when he was speaking they felt like he acknowledged them, sitting on their couch in Medellin, caring about their existence.

Colombians are fascinated that our country would choose a leader from such a mixed racial and cultural background, serving as inspiration for everyone that even people not born into hegemonic political families can be president. An email has been circulating with a slide show telling the story of Obama's family and praising the open-mindedness of his mother. Many of my friends attribute his policies to the way that he was raised, reflecting the importance of family in Latin American culture. The people in Tumaco, a coastal area consisting mainly of Afro-Colombians, celebrated the inauguration with three entire days of dancing fueled by their excitement that they could identify with such an important man. It surprises me that Obama is portrayed as an African-American and having proven how the country has progressed despite being founded on slavery, when really he is the son of an immigrant and mid-westerner.

But similar to what I am hearing from home, Colombians has extremely high expectations for Obama while realizing that he has an extremely difficult task before him. They sympathize with his responsibility for saving the world's economy, knowing that Colombian markets rely on the economic success of the US and therefore are counting on him just as much as anyone in North America to ensure that their way of life does not change drastically. It is also interesting how realistic they are in recognizing that the first four years Obama is in office he will be trying to repair Bush's messy work, and will need a second term to actually carry out most of what he is promising.

As usual, Colombians have impressed me. This time it is their awareness and involvement in international politics. However, the one thing that surprises me is that most of the people discussing the inauguration are over 30. My friends and other students or young professionals do not seem to be following Obama as closely, which saddens me because they are the ones who will be most effected by his presidency. I tried to organize an inauguration party at a time when people were available but none of my friends took interest. Maybe political lethargy has overcome those of my generation ubiquitously and not just in the US.

Overall the media is true when they proclaim that the whole world is watching Obama. The main point that Colombians insist upon is that the United States has just chosen a huge opportunity to redeem themselves and enact much-needed change, and everyone hopes that we fully take advantage of this 'once in a national history' occasion.

Never Too Cool for School

2009-01-24T10:00:00.000-06:00

One of the best parts of a long vacation ending, (along with sleeping in one's own bed, eating home-cooked food, playing with your lonely-but now-happy dog), is returning to work and/or school and catching up with friends. Thus when I showed up at the Facultad de Salud Publica after my month-long hiatus, I had to spend the first two days making my rounds through the brick halls greeting everyone for the first time in the new year and sharing holiday stories. For some reason even after six months I still have no idea of when the academic sessions begin and end, (maybe it has to do with the students striking and teachers not showing up for class?), so the school is still relatively devoid of undergraduate students until the start of February. Even with this portion of the school activity missing, the fact that my extensive social interactions still flourished upon returning made me realize how luckky I am to have chosen to study at a school with such a welcoming faculty.

Now that the end of year celebrations have expired, I can now FINALLY start working on my research full-time. During the last few weeks before break I ran around the city with Gilma, my research partner conducting interviews with nurses and administrators at clinics and hospitals.

Let me pause here to explain a bit about Gilma. She is about 40, an extremely independent and strong single woman, knows Colombia better than anyone else I have met, and has a wealth of knowledge about the country that she is always trying to teach me. We have taken a weekend trip together, and she always encourages me to take advantage of social or travel opportunities even if they conflict with our research responsibilities. In an odd way she simultaneously treats me like a good friend and an aunt.

Anyway, so now that we have finished the first data collection period, we sent off the digital recordings to a girl at the Facultad who is helping us transcribe them and are in the process of correcting and codifying the lengthly question and answer series. Just in the past few days I feel like I have more closely examined Colombian Spanish than ever before by reading exactly how people speak while having the punctuate the cadence of people's speech. Even though I am learning it is not fun typing periods and capitalizing words for hours a day. One of the most mundane tasks of doing qualitative research.

Watching the project gain substance has been extremely exciting and rewarding. I love the process of sowing a research idea into a proposal, conducting background research on the subject, creating interview questions, locating research sites and willing participants, then sifting through the collected results trying to extract meaning from it all. By asking our participants what factors favor access to maternal health care, how they perceive the population's understanding of their health rights, and in what ways they think the system could improve for maternal care, I am learning more about the Colombian health care providors than I know about those in the US. Even after our preliminary interviews it seems like health education for young women in the many low-income communities is the area of health services needing the most attention. This, and the extremely high rates of teenage pregnancy has inspired me to conduct some individual research in this area with my preexisting research contacts and contracts.

With my research on a tight schedule until our publication date in June, I decided that I have explored and exhausted all potential avenues Facultad de Salud Publica and am ready to branch out to the Universidad de Antioquia. I thought that after the long vacation period the 50,000 students at the largest public university would return to start a new term, but when I showed up at an Anthropology course on Ethnicity, Justice, and Human Rights and the professor started asking the class about definitions they had previously learned I realized I would be sitting in during mid-semester courses. Which might be better anyway; with the work load I have from research I am not sure if I want to take on course readings and exams as well.

After shopping around a bit I have found an Economic Anthropology course which I really enjoy. The professor is dedicated, the students engage in stimulating conversation, the readings are interesting and mainly by Colombian anthropologists, and the subject matter fits in with my academic interests. And nobody seems to mind me sitting in without having registered or attending class during the start of the semester.

But studying at a public, foreign institution has been one of the most impactful cultural experiences yet. On the first day of class I showed up five minutes before 8am, the scheduled course time. Students started arriving about 8:15, the professor strolled up and unlocked the door around 8:20, and class started at 8:30, half an hour late. I know that people in the US are known for their punctuality to the point of being considered uptight, but how is such tardiness conducive to a successful learning environment?

The campus of the UdeA is huge but beautiful, divided up into blocks for each academic subject which are surrounded by tropical gardens with vines creeping everywhere. A large library, fountain, and common cement area is the social nucleus for the university, along with the various cafes and food stands that line the halls. Instead of buying their books from a bookstore, professors leave copies of the readings in a copy office and the students are responsible for going before class to buy their cheap course materials.

Friends and rotarians have warned me to be careful at school because it is widely known that many students are plain-clothed guerrillas spying on (and starting) political movements among the students. On every wall is a mural of Che, posters advertising University clubs, and recently, pro-Palestine graffiti sponsored by the Anti-Imperialist Brigade. It appears that Colombian students have taken up the cause of the Palestinians and spray-painted pictures of protesting women everywhere I look. Every semester is punctuated with some sort of student strike, which commonly turn violent. (There were bullet-sized holes in the floor of one of the classrooms I was in that would probably tell an interesting story). Despite all this, I do feel safe, people are friendly, and if anything the Universidad de Antioquia serves as a fascinating comparison to the perfectly manicured lawns and women at Scripps.

With the new year comes the promise of unexpected experiences and renewed energy to explore. I know that I have to take advantage of it all because the next five months are going to fly by.

A New View

2009-01-20T15:08:00.000-06:00

Chapter 1: Medellin to Cartagena

Classes ended, my research put itself on hold, I attended the last Club Medellin Rotary meeting of the year, and was officially on vacation. First item on order was to catch up on sleep. Then some neglected sightseeing around the city and surrounding countryside. A trip to the airport to collect James, my boyfriend, who braved a long trip from Atlanta to spend his winter break with me. Lots more sightseeing (metrocable, Santa Fe de Antioquia, pueblo paisa, alumbrados, centro...etc). And suddenly it was Christmas.
You may or may not know that I have become close friends with a set of cousins. Three to be exact. They fight like siblings, hang out like college cronies, and have made me feel at home in Medellin. I was thus eternally grateful when they invited me and James to spend the 24th of December with their large and boisterous family at a country home in La Ceja. After never having succeeded at getting into the Christmas spirit, (even after sitting for hours on the couch with the tree lit and English carols blasting over me), the celebrations seemed like just another big party with additional generations. We ate green mangos, fried pork fat, and a lovely Christmas dinner. Watched the young children open presents after saying prayers and singing. Then danced to classic 70's Colombian music until way too late. Unlike the family traditions to which I am accustomed, the 25th is spent nursing a hangover and eating 'sancocho', a typical Colombian stew with chicken, yucca, potatoes, and avocado cooked over a wood stove. James was the hit of the day eating everything that the women offered him and surprising everyone by having enlightening conversations in broken Spanish. It was wonderful to spend the entire time in the bosom of a family and experience a typical Colombian Christmas--which makes me eternally grateful to my friends the cousins for successfully staving off an almost inevitable bout of holiday homesickness.

With my freedom from school and Rotary activities came the long-waited for opportunity to travel to parts of the country that are too far away to visit during the semester. James and I had an awful flying experience with Aero Republica (I recommend flying another airline if you ever visit Colombia), ending up in Barranquilla with free trip vouchers but three hours later than expected. From there we met up with Natalia, a friend of mine from Medellin, and another British boy (yes, James is English), and traveled together into La Guajira.
A desert strip jutting out into the Caribbean, La Guajira is a sparsely populated battleground between a Wayuu native people and smugglers importing contraband drugs, gasoline, and Chavista politics from Venezuela. Only eight months ago was the department overrun with guerrillas and train robberies, so of course it interested me as a destination. After spending the night in a friend of Natalia's boss, we took a 5-hour jeep ride along bumpy dirt roads until reaching Cabo de la Vela.

The next two days consisted of deciding when to eat freshly caught fish, exploring the barren Caribbean beaches, sleeping in a hammock, and laughing at James's attempts at communicating with toothless Wayuu women. If your idea of paradise involves complete seclusion, delicious swimming, seafood and a night sky laden with stars, La Guajira would be your slice of heaven. It was fascinating to not only see the lack of tourist infrastructure throughout the peninsula due to security problems, but how the Colombian government has neglected the region without running water and electricity. Luckily the Wayuu are known as very hearty and independent people, so they have survived such extreme poverty.

Yet no such trip into nowhere can be complete without some sort of surprise. After vomiting for six hours, I had to find a nice driver from a nearby camp to take James to the health clinic at eleven our last night and hoped that this new calamity would result in a funny story to tell later and not a tragic, life-changing event. The clinic of course was closed for the evening, but tucked beneath the cheery Christmas decorations on the door was the cell number for the doctor. We called, waited for him to come, but were disappointed when he had no diagnosis beyond extreme dehydration. Instead of putting in the prescribed IV himself, the doctor and driver had to go 10 minutes down the road to wake up the nurse and bring her to the clinic so she could struggle for over half an hour trying to find an appropriate vein in James's arm.

While feigning calmness, I was freaking out wondering if I really wanted to be responsible for the life of my boyfriend. James couldn't understand what the doctor or nurse were telling him and was bossily asking me to pour water in his mouth, cover him with a blanket, and ask the nurse if she knew what the F*** she was doing. My anxiety was exaggerated by the fact that the floors were covered in a film of sand, three dead flies were floating in the oxygen tank, and the doctor was referencing his medical textbooks from John Hopkins University looking concerned. Working in the public health sector of Colombia has enlightened me with a substantial amount of knowledge of their medical services, and what was offered in this tiny, forlorn town was far below the standards I know exist in the cities.

Luckily James stopped shaking and the color returned to his face until he was calm enough to take back to the beach shack and unstable hammock bed. We think he just had one of the most horrible migraines imaginable, because the next day he was fine. But I kept wondering what I would have done if it had been something more serious, or worse, if we I wasn't a demanding gringa with cultural and economic capital to demand top medical attention. It gave me good insight into the lives of many Colombians who live in rural places without adequate medical care, the people I am studying.

Before the day had a chance to break the following morning a local family picked us up and I watched the sunrise from the back of their pickup truck as we bounced back along the desert paths toward civilization. Looking out at the small houses constructed out of dried cactus stalks, the children squatting in front yards with stomachs bloated from hunger, and the herds of goats roaming freely, I felt like I was in another country...far away from the affluence and organization that I have come to know in Medellin. By asking the young man riding next to me what value the goats hold in his community, I learned that the when a Wayuu woman gets married her family expects to be paid at least 40 goats in a dowry package. Which is worth about $2000 USD. Not quite the same as the apartment, finca, and car that Colombian city women expect from their husband...

The 'civilization' we entered consisted of another small coastal pueblo called Manuare, known for their salt-processing plant. We trekked into the mounds of salt with our overstuffed backpacks and cameras snapping photos of a group of 20 men watching one tractor shovel salt into a hole. Although it was fascinating to see so much gleaming salt right next to the turquoise blue water, we were soon ready to hop onto a cycle taxi and slowly head toward a real city: Rioacha. The running water and fresh fruit were wonderful after camping-like conditions, and even though James was feeling better I was relieved to be near a real hospital.

After resting a night the four of us were ready to brave the 8-hour bus ride to Cartagena, going from desert to jungle to desert again all while keeping the Caribbean close outside the window. We arrived inside the walled city very hungry, sore from sitting for so long, and amazed at the bountiful time-between-Christmas-and-New Year's celebrations taking place. On the search for a hostel we passed a throng of GORGEOUS Colombian girls, and only after saying "Welcome to Cartagena" did we round a corner and bump into the Ms. Colombia beauty pageant.

The next few days we wandered around eating fresh shrimp cocktails, treating ourselves to amazing gourmet restaurants, getting lost in the narrow cobblestone streets that all look the same, and falling deeper in love (if that is even possible). It was wonderful to be so relaxed together with no plans or stress imaginable, and further confirmed my assertion that Cartagena is the most romantic city in the world--although I will admit that I have never been to Paris.

Pretty soon it was New Year's Eve and instead of buying the package dinner/entertainment for $200 we wandered around with a bottle of champagne enjoying the live bands playing on balconies. It seemed as if all the wealthy families in Colombia had come together on this one night, talking on their cell phones and eating their 5-course meals. At midnight we snuck into one of the largest parties and danced salsa on the sidewalk then headed up to a wall right on the ocean to watch the ensuing fireworks...a perfect way to welcome in 2009.
Eventually we had to emerge from our cocoon of non long-distance love and say a tearful goodbye at the airport, knowing that any uncertainty of staying together while living in separate countries had completely dissipated after a fantastic two weeks in Colombia. I enjoyed sharing with James the life I have created for myself here; places, friends, and my comfort with operating solely in Spanish. In return, he helped me see the country with a fresh perspective, noticing things I overlook due to familiarity and asking me uncomfortable questions about the poverty and suffering of people that is easy to look past on a daily basis. Two weeks in Colombia was long enough to make James to become as enchanted with the country as me, and I don't think it will be his last visit.

Chapter 2: Bogota, a return to the Caribbean, and Medellin

Despite having a long and tiring trip with James, my duties as tour guide were just beginning. The next morning I woke up at six to pick up my grandmother and her new husband up at the Bogota airport. Yes, my 80-year old 'Yaya' braved the kidnapping threats and showed up with five weeks notice as my next visitor.
Tired after an overnight flight, our first day in the capital consisted of visited the newly remodeled Gold Mueseum and Botero Museum. One of my only frustrations with Medellin as a city is that it lacks a diversity of culture, so spending hours looking at smelted artifacts, reading about the native Colombian cultures, and giggling at Botero's bloated figures was like drinking a glass of fresh water after running a marathon sipping at a bottle of tepid tea. The next few days we visited Monserrate to get a beautiful view of the endless extent of Bogota, the low dwellings eventually merging into the hazy horizon. We also visited a small lake called Guatavita and the extremely tranquil town planned around its banks. I loved hearing Dwight and Yaya exclaiming at the beauty of the countryside from their back seat in our guide's car throughout the entire day.

On the way back into town we happened across an imitation Taj Majal and a naked, male version of the statue of liberty that an Avianca pilot built as a theme park for people...random and hilarious but without comparison to Disneyland. Our guide also took us to a huge store belonging to one Swiss-owned dairy company where they sold all of their products and had bottles of yogurt and cheese wheels larger than me stuck into the lawn. It was like a surreal dairy heaven...

Thinking that Bogota was similar Medellin in that escaping the suburban sprawl and see the surrounding pueblos is a good use of time, we spent our last two days driving around in a northeasterly direction. We saw a salt cathedral built underground inside of an old salt mine in Zipaquira. It was more extensive than I imagined, encompassing 14 little chapels representing Jesus's walk with the cross and opening up into a huge basilica that seemed more like an artistic sculpture than a place of worship. Along the windy roads we passed hours of non-mechanized dairy farms, watching families go out into the fields in the afternoon to hand milk their plentiful cows and then wait on the side of the road with warmed milk cans for a truck to come by and pick then up. Later on that afternoon we touched down in Villa de Leyva, a town with one of the largest plazas in Colombia set in the middle of dry mountains and boasting of uniform white buildings with green balconies. It was very touristy, which meant that we had a wonderful French dinner and found beautiful jewelry in the small shops...food and shopping being the best parts of traveling abroad, of course.
The following morning we woke up early to head to the far-off destination of Laguna de Tota. After driving through rather boring towns for four hours we arrived at a dirt road that took us ALL around the lake to a white sand beach which wasn't really worth the bumps we endured to get there. However, every inch of land around the lake was farmed for green onions, and as we passed through field after field of green and white spikes sticking up towards the sky I realized that Colombian food does not only involve a lot of the vegetable for taste, but because they grow so many they have to put them in every dish just so the huge crops don't go to waste!!

During these road trips I visited three new departments, which for me validates the excessive driving because it introduced me to a whole different perspective of the country than what I have previously known (although I am not sure if my grandparents felt the same way...). Being at a higher altitude in the Andes reminded me much more of Ecuador and Peru due to the terrain and colder cultures--more of what I was expecting from Medellin. I noticed that the people weren't quite as friendly or outwardly confident as the paisas I know, proving to me how regionalized Colombia is. However, after getting a good feel for Bogota I wasn't jealous of the capital and glad that I chose the city I did to spend the year.

Then I was back in Cartagena, this time staying in a beautiful old hotel in the historical city center. I hadn't really minded the heat during my previous stay, but after seeing how much energy it drained from Yaya instituted a mandatory mid-day siesta. Again I woke up late, ate a fresh breakfast at the hotel, walked around the city (this time with a guide), and people-watched from a sidewalk cafe at night. We learned where Gabriel Garcia Marquez has a waterfront house, and was jealous of the inspiration that the famous Colombian author must entertain when living there (he wrote '100 Years of Solitude'). I guess the history of the city is full of real-life stories, being one of the main ports through which all of the riches gathered in the New World was shipped to Europe, attacked by pirates, and with a precarious decadence built on the productivity of a slave culture.

We also took a day trip to one of the Rosario Islands an hour off the coast, spending the morning floating in crystal-clear water and visiting the Oceanarium. In large open-water pens swim loads of turtles, big fish, show dolphins, and huge nerf sharks trained to perform for their food. The diversity of Colombia's terrain never ceases to impress me; going from capital city to mountains to lakes to coastal city to Caribbean islands, all in a matter of hours just blows my mind.

By the time I returned back to Medellin after three weeks I was utterly exhausted but still not allowed to rest. I took Yaya and Dwight to the big open market where we picked out fresh produce for the week, made similar tourist visits up the metrocable, Santa Fe de Antioquia, and explored the city center including the main museum in Medellin. But it was was nice to come back to my apartment where we could cook, hang out reading comfortably, and sit around a dinner table talking for hours after finishing a meal.

We also attended my host club's first Rotary meeting of the year, and I loved showing off all of my friendships with the 70-year old + members even if my grandparents didn't understand the jokes they told in Spanish. My Rotarian host counselor was extremely hospitable and drove us around the city, as well as invited us out to a great lunch with his wife that ended with us all laughing at traveling stories till we had tears running down our cheeks. As an ambassador I feel like I am fulfilling my duties of creating cross-cultural understanding, resulting in Yaya, Dwight, and James heading back to the US with rave reviews of Colombia and all the myths about violence and drugs having been dispelled with their travels.

And now after this long-winded account of my recent adventures I am back to laundry, research work, and sleeping in my own bed...all while entertaining one of my dear friends from Atlanta who has come to Medellin to study Spanish. Although ready to have my own space and normalized schedule, it is emotionally strengthening to be able to make jokes that are laughed at and be around people who know me well after extended periods of living alone and feeling out of place in a different culture . It is the familiarity of these things that I have missed the most during the past six months, and feel extremely blessed to be reminded while in Colombia how many wonderful people I have in my life.

Pyramids in the tropics...

2008-12-06T16:39:00.000-06:00

...no not like ancient Mayan or Aztec pyramids that you stumble upon while hiking through the jungle. Pyramid scams. Companies that collect gullible people's money offering them up to a 300% return, which of course after not very long turns into either extreme debt or unhappy people. Guess which happened here?

Especially in the southern regions of the country, cities have erupted into massive riots over the collapse of the pyramid schemes. The news shows unlucky customers looting company offices, taking even the doors off their hinges. Although they have been a source for constant jokes, the truth of the matter is that the Colombian economy is more effected by these pyramids than the international economic crisis. The people in charge of these fraudulent organizations are undergoing trial, but most people scoff at this gesture because so many government officials have ties to the pyramids that everyone doubts they will receive due punishment. Just one more example of the country's corruption and the population's lack of trust in authorities.

Colombian Winter

2008-12-06T15:53:00.000-06:00

Just as Bostonians or New Yorkers start complaining about the cold as winter seeps into the northern US states around November, Colombians this year have their own weather gripes. Usually Colombian seasons are divided into either summer or winter; summer = sun and winter = rain. Every two months the seasons alternate, and until 2008 the rainclouds and sunshine punched in and out like disciplined factory workers. This year however has brought considerably more rain than anyone (especially in Antioquia) has ever seen, and is a constant negative conversation topic. At first it was fun when every afternoon around 4:00 the thunder would roll out a monsoon-like downpour, stopping just in time for me to get back from the university. Around the end of October it started raining almost all day every day, bringing with it an untropicalesque chill to the air. Because the water table is overflowing and the earth is completely saturated, these continuous downpours are wreaking havoc all over the country.

Since the government directs the majority of their funds into military and police troops to fight the Colombian civil war, public works have been neglected for over 25 years and the roads are in pretty horrendous shape. This 'winter' has eroded away some of the main arterial highways between the large cities, causing huge travel delays for one of the only ways to get around the country. No fun.

Every day after a particularly heavy rain hits the city headlines mourn the death of at least five more people. Usually the displaced folk who build their corrugated tin houses precariously on the hillsides get washed away when the streams flow over. But one time a new housing development was engulfed by a landslide, taking the lives of several entire families. At the Facultad de Salud Publica there is an area of study completely dedicated to disasters, and their public billboard is constantly filled with new announcements of the tragedies taking place throughout Medellin.

During my trip to Coveñas I drove through the northern cattle lands, completely inundated with recent rains. Rice patties were rotting under the fields-turned-lakes, people had to transport themselves around town by boat, and government aid was nowhere in sight as public health risks escalated.

While global warming is melting ice caps and causing extreme droughts around the world, here along the American equator people are drowning in an excess of precipitation.

the Guinea Worm nears death...

2008-12-05T20:03:00.000-06:00

After interning with The Carter Center's Health Programs, the news releases this week that the cases of Guinea Worm are now under 5,000 makes me more excited than a gluten-free pizzeria. It is close to being the second disease eradicated, after small pox. Nicholas Kristoff and Jimmy Carter are two of the most inspiring people I have ever met in my life, so to see them collaborating on the news propogating the involvement of entities larger than individuals (such as governments) in the fight against international diseases rather than other countries, seems to validate my life's mission in public health.

Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush’s Future

I recommend watching the video

Policia

2008-12-02T16:30:00.001-06:00

It is most common to see two (young) policemen weaving together through traffic atop an official motorcycle. While riding along in the back of my friend’s car today I saw something new: two (young) policemen, but between them a third man with his arms up in the air, handcuffed together. Looking like they were about ready to fall off, what surprised me most was that it seemed so unsurprising that an arrested man should be transported to wherever??? in this fashion. I sometimes see these police pairs hassling youngsters dressed in baggy pants with died black hair who loiter in park corners, but usually they can be found leaning distractedly against a lamppost without any apparent purpose. Despite their widespread presence in the city, I take for granted the fact that in the US there is less corruption within law enforcement and I know that for the most part I can count on policemen to be actively ‘keeping the peace’ while on duty.

Thanksgiving in Cali

2008-12-02T16:26:00.000-06:00

On Thanksgiving morning I woke up to the rambling of a bus beneath me and a view of endless sugarcane fields out the window. My nose hairs burned from the smell of ammonia I had endured the entire night, and I still kept my hood up around my face trying to hide the fact that I was the only female to step on board since we had left Medellin, but I was almost at my destination: Cali.

I have been in relatively close contact with Hilary, one of the other Rotary Ambassadorial Scholars who is stationed in this third-largest Colombian city, and after hitting it off at a meeting in Medellin back at the end of July I resolved to visit her and her host club before she leaves in December. For this reason I rolled into town early on Thursday morning for a wonderful whirlwind visit to the salsa capital of the country. I greatly appreciate her hospitality, and now realize how helpful it is to commiserate with other Americans to pick up on all the different Colombian nuances they are experiencing. Through our long conversations about cultural differences between ‘here and there’, I gained a new perspective on my host country through eyes equally intrigued and insightful as my own.

Cali has grown immensely in the past 20 years, but in a way of which no Colombian is proud. They suffer from more corruption than almost any other city, and the government is still more dictated by mafia and drug cartels than public interest. In the 1980’s there was a destructive earthquake in a predominantly Afro-Colombian town along the Pacific coast, bringing hundreds of thousands of displaced people into Cali. As an extremely racist culture, everyone admits that the influx of a darker-skinned population has led to the demise of the whole city and caustic stereotypes.

While wandering around an artesania district and climbing up a large hill to a shut-down church with a great view of the city, I saw just how extensive Cali is in comparison to Medellin. With the vastness of the Valle de Cauca welcoming the city’s expansion, it appears much larger and bustling than my part of Colombia when really it is 200,000 people shy of Medellin’s population. I was impressed by the Centro’s old streets and colonial buildings mixed in with glass-plated sky scrapers and new bridges. The Archaeological Museum taught me more about the country’s indigenous population than anything I could find in Medellin, housed in a beautiful old church. After getting a good dose of phallic pottery and shriveled but intact mummies, we headed over to an indigenous art fair where I talked with women and men from all over the country about the complications encountered by their people and admired (as well as bought) beautiful beaded jewelry, woven baskets, and carved salad tongs. I even bought a bottle of coca wine—something of which I had never heard after living a year and a half in the Andes and proved to be quite delicious!

Instead of braving the frustration of recreating a traditional Thanksgiving meal in a country where turkeys are less common than toucans, Hilary and I headed to Crepe’s and Waffles for dinner for the closest food we could find to American. I had a delicious red curry shrimp and quinoa salad, topped off with an ice-cream sundae and a side of hot extra chocolate syrup. If I am allowed any bragging rights in my own blog, I will admit that before leaving Medellin I cut open a small pumpkin sitting on my dining room table as decoration since before Halloween and baked a delicious batch of pumpkin pie filling (gf without the crust!) from scratch following a recipe I found on the internet. November just isn’t the same for me without pumpkin pie, no matter where in the world I find myself.

Friday we got up early and headed out to Cali’s sport center to watch the Colombian National Games. I was introduced to the national sport of ‘Tejo’, which is somewhat like horseshoes with pyrotechnics. Supposedly an indigenous game, teams compete against each other by throwing a conical metal disk at a slanted bed of clay trying to knock it against a circle of gunpowder in the middle to make a large pop, spark, and plume of smoke to ignite the cheers from the excitable spectators. Although I still don’t really understand the rules or point of the game, it was interesting to see something so typically ‘Colombian’.

Next it was off to tennis, where I was itching to slide around on the clay courts with the young girls and boys sweating out the midday heat. After a break for lunch and a visit from an American Fulbright Scholar also working in Cali, we headed over to the stadium to watch Track & Field. Pole Vaulting, the Women and Men’s 800, Long-Jump, and Women’s 5000 were all exciting to witness with the backdrop of the Andes turning into shadows behind the grandstand as the sun set. Teams from the different departments in Colombia compete against each other in all the sports, and I am proud to say that my Antioquia did very well. It seems silly that I should have so much paisa pride after less than six months of living in Medellin, perhaps embellished by my fantasy that I have exercised alongside the athletes competing in the National Games during my morning runs around the Estadio, but it was easy to be partial while getting swept up in the competitive spirit.

The last, and most fascinating, sport we watched was swimming. But even after watching hours of Olympic swimming over the summer waiting for Phelps to compete, I have to say that I have never witnessed any nautical sport as intriguing as what I saw this weekend. Eight girls walked into the stadium in their swimming suits and caps, carrying one large fin. As they lined up on the starting blocks, they put on their fins, placed a snorkel into their mouth, and sat like mermaids at the edge of the pool. At the sound of the whistle they flopped gracefully into the water, keeping their arms outstretched in front of them and repeating an undulating butterfly kick for over 15 minutes (I lost track of the distance). Needless to say, now I want to bring a monofin back with me to the states to impress everyone with my sub aquatic mermaid moves.

It would be a sin to visit Cali without going salsa dancing, so us three American girls went to a classic club with our Colombian pairs and tried to forget that we hadn’t grown up with fluid hips. I hope that people aren’t complimenting my dance skills out of pity, because I do feel like I have greatly improved my Latin dance skills since arriving and no longer need to look at my partner’s feet but rather let myself be carried away by the beat of the music and the pressure of a hand on my back.

Saturday I woke up with sore calves and tense shoulder blades, but ready to relax at the most gorgeous finca I have yet encountered while enjoying an end-of-year party with Hilary’s host Rotary Club Cali San Fernando. With three pools, two of which were natural and fed by waterfalls heading out of the hillside, a large drink bar and dance floor, largest collection of orchids I have EVER seen, and trail down to the river and mountains beyond, I was more than happy to gorge myself on traditional food and wander around marveling at the natural Colombian beauty that never ceases to impress me. All the Rotarians were extremely friendly and welcoming of me as a fellow scholar, although I was a bit intimidated by the way that they raved about Hilary, hoping that I could be complimented with such a strong assessment at the end of my scholarship year. The evening naturally devolved into more food, drink, and dancing—where I was swept around through the evening by old and young Rotarians until my shirt was completely soaked and my face hurt from laughing so much. I absolutely love how Colombians—no matter what age—will dance to any music. Hip-hop, reggaeton, funk, vallenato, and of course salsa all inspire their bodies into motion. I have not seen one person in this country who lacks rhythm.

Sunday morning found me back on a bus for ten hours, riding through more sugar cane fields and up treacherous mountains. Although Cali has great dance culture, awesome graffiti, and less pollution, the weekend made me appreciate Medellin for its Metro, stunning surrounding mountains, strong cultural identity, and hot water.

Thinking Ahead

2008-12-02T16:24:00.000-06:00

As much as I want to immerse myself in the present, I do realize that this amazing year will eventually come to an end. In order to keep my options open I have dedicated more time than I would like to remember completing my application for Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. Let me clarify, in case anyone was doubting, how difficult it is to request transcripts, enlist old professors and bosses for references, and remember all those important activities in which I participated during college. Unreliable internet access made the entire process even more complicated, yet I finally finished and am rewarding myself with Christmastime travels. I have decided that I will be heading back to Atlanta after relinquishing my responsibilities as Ambassadorial Scholar, but am not quite sure if I want to gain more work experience in the public health hub of the US or continue my education. Time and scholarship decisions will tell, but for now I can return my focus to my daily Colombian life.

Jardin

2008-12-02T16:22:00.000-06:00

My new personal goal is to get to know as much of Colombia as possible. This means taking advantage of any three day weekends or school breaks, and so although all of my friends had other engagements for the last national holiday I was resolved to visit a new pueblito outside of Medellin. I thus got on a bus on a rainy Saturday evening to head by myself to the famous town of Jardin. It did not stop raining for the entire weekend, but that did not stop me from taking a 4-hour hike through the gorgeous countryside, tromping through banana groves, sloshing through muddy cow pastures, and getting caught on barbed-wire fences as I trespassed on private land. I walked up to a trout farm where I ate lunch with the family running the establishment, consuming the most tasty fried trout, patacones, hogao, and guarapo in Colombia. The parque was full of visiting city-folk, so I sat around with the old couples drinking hot chocolate and watching the kids riding by on horseback. When I tired of the perpetual cold dampness, I headed back to the finca-like hotel with a gorgeous view of the river valley. Inspired by the wet beauty of the landscape, I painted the patio while sitting and talking with the guests filtering through, as well as the caretaker and her polar-fleece sweater-wearing Chihuahua. Despite what people say about the dangers of traveling through Colombia, I find that wherever I go I am greeted by the most friendly people ever who look out for me and make me feel so welcome and well taken care of that I am never left truly alone.

Recent Rotary Activities:

2008-12-02T16:19:00.000-06:00

-Bello: Presenting with a Doctorate-seeking Rotarian on familial violence to an audience of mothers and school-age children. I talked about the hotlines and structural services available in the US, and how even though a woman being abused by her husband won’t necessarily be helped if she calls the police, Colombian family structures are so strong that anyone will always have an aunt or second cousin who would take them in if in need. We stressed education about what constitutes violence, whether it is verbal or physical, so that people realize what their rights are. In some parts of the country, over 60% of women report abuse in their home. Imagine what the figures would be if the cases that weren’t reported were included…I was also interviewed after the lecture by the local news station!

-Colpaul factory: Visit with my host Rotary Club to the largest factory in South America making medical supplies that is used within Colombia and exported to other countries. The company is a for-profit sector that supports the university teaching hospital (directed by a Rotarian) ‘Hospital Universitario San Vicente Paul,’ along with 13 parking structures located throughout the city. I don’t think I have ever seen so many plastic bottles and caps in one space in my entire life. Nor have I ever thought about how important sterilized water is in producing IV fluids…

Holy Matrimony!

2008-11-14T16:13:00.000-06:00

Dearly beloved...I was fortunate enough to return to the US last week for my first official family wedding. My cousin Ashley has been like an older sister to me since the day I was born; her three extra years giving her plenty of time to be one of my most prominent role-models. It was thus much more emotional than I expected to see her wed off and all grown up right before my very bridesmaid's eyes. She looked absolutely gorgeous, her (now) husband is an awesome addition to our family and makes her happier than anyone else could, and the ceremony contained a good balance between laughs and tears, but now that the whirlwind of family and avoiding reverse culture shock and 5 plane trips is over, I am left stupefied by the idea of...marriage!?!

In the US it is normal for a middle-class woman to get married at 26 years of age, like Ashley. We usually leave home at 18 to live at college, figure out how to live on our own and get accustomed to independence, graduate and start working or continue our studies to get a better job, meet the person of our dreams, and have a few years to date and possibly cohabit before sealing the deal. At least that is what I have grown up thinking.

Since coming to Colombia I am surprised at how few of my friends of a similar age are considering marriage before the age of 30.* Even those who have been in relationships for eight years and have a good job. This has struck me as surprising since in the past month I have been alerted every week that a new friend back home is engaged, and makes me wonder why things here are so different. Considering people generally live at home with the parents until they get married, I thought that maybe this put some sort of imposition on one's personal independence. When you can never bring someone home and always have to include family members in one's romantic relationship things obviously progress in a different manner than if you have lots of space--physical and metaphorical. But when I hopped in a cab the other day on my way to school as it started to rain outside, I was intrigued to hear two women discussing why youngsters these days get married so late in life. They were saying it was because there was a cultural aversion to commitments, that the couple want to be established (with a car, finca, apartment, job, money, etc. etc.) before they settle down, like the comfort of being taken care of at home, and in general are basking in the different opportunities and freedoms their generation is allowed.

Which makes me wonder...is marrying young(er) another first-world privilege? Because it is easier for us to make our own way in the world, does that allow us the ability to choose our mates easier too? Or is this jut a reflection of the upper class status mentality? Obviously very few people can afford all of the amenities mentioned above, but even people of different socioeconomic standings get married later in life, if at all. The generations of my friends' parents and grandparents wed at age 25 or 25 and early 20's respectively, so what could have caused such a huge cultural change in such a short amount of time?

Or, to look at marriage in the reverse cultural standpoint, why do people in the US deem it so acceptable to get married before the age of 30? Since divorce has become such a hazardous social epidemic maybe we should be afraid of commitment until we no longer crave single 'freedom' and 'know what we want' (if that is not overly cliche). If young North Americans thought it strange to tie the knot before completing three decades perhaps they would be more likely to keep their families together for the long haul.

For whatever reason, all my girlfriends at the university--who are all at least 26--started screeching when they heard that they were older than my now-wed cousin...

*Mind you, more women have children before the age of 30 than are married. Teen pregnancies and starting a family out of wedlock is a huge issue in Colombia.

Frustrations

2008-10-27T17:30:00.000-05:00

Forever caught up in the review process, I have yet to start the research I came to Medellin to complete. While still involved at the university with some English classes, my beloved painting workshops, and participating in PAHO international health conferences (maybe they will offer me a future job?), I am getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of academic structure I have right now. Not sure if I should have signed up for more classes or projects from the start, I now am waiting until the start of the next semester in January (after a long Christmas vacation) to feed my mind. Even though the emphasis of the Ambassadorial Scholarship is to become involved in the community and Rotary activities more than academic life and studies, I feel like I am missing out on a key possibility for helping me understand the culture and field of public health here. Ready to unwind the red tape suffocating my research intentions, I am still just waiting.

Coveñas

2008-10-27T17:11:00.001-05:00

For the much-needed 'puente' (three-day weekend) celebrating 'el dia de la raza': aka Columbus Day, I had many travel options. Wanting something relaxing and further away than I would normally be able to visit in a weekend, I chose to go to the Caribbean coast with the friends of a friends's boyfriends brother. Coveñas is a 10-hour drive from Medellin, which was an awesome road-trip to do in a car because I got to see the change in landscape from the Andes to the jungle to the marshy cattle-grazing prairies. Although I should have anticipated the intentions behind 15 friends migrating to the beach for a weekend, I was not able to keep up with their 24-hour partying gala. Instead, I played the true gringa and lay by myself on the beach, sober, with my book avoiding the sun and taking power swims for exercise. By excluding myself from some of the activities I unintentionally offended their group culture, and felt more strongly than ever the cultural differences between my US upbringing and paisa friends. The vallenatos were on full blast until 4 in the morning, the rum and aguardiente never stopped flowing, and the ceviche/shrimp coctail vendors walking up and down the beach had loyal customers for 3 days straight. It was like Spring break for hard-working 30 year olds. Awesome, yes, but not when I was needing to sleep in and recover from the accumulated sleep-deprivation of many grueling weeks. More than anything it made me realize I still have a long way to go before I adequately adapt to living in Colombia, and the entire weekend served as a wake-up call to remind me that after being here for 4 months I have lots of close friends whose company I always enjoy and with whom I should be focusing my rare spare time even if it means spending a week at a finca rather than lying on an idyllic Caribbean beach with desconocidos.

Rotary Activities

2008-10-27T16:33:00.000-05:00

Not to worry, the reason why I haven't posted for over a month is because I have been managing an action-packed schedule filled mostly with Rotary events. Including:

--RYLA Seminar (Rotary Young Leader Awards): An international seminar offered by Rotary clubs to promote youth leadership in the communities. Last weekend I attended one held by the Club Rotario Envigado entitled "Democracy and Youth Participation." It involved two conferences given by government officials, a visit from the Envigado mayor who himself attended RYLA conferences as a teenager, 4 interactive workshops on human rights and the culture of democracy, lots food, and even a Rotary-sponsored party complete with DJ and beverages. Although most of the students who attended were from Interact (14-18 years old), and the level of the discussions and information presented was at a lower level than I had hoped, I still learned a lot about the different constitutional rights to which Colombian youngsters are entitled and what positions of leadership/representation within the schools and municipalities they can hold. My presence was important to inspire these aspiring youngsters to utilize the possibilities Rotary offers through international scholarships, emphasizing that they shouldn't get discouraged by their economic or national situation. As a highschooler I was very involved in committees and events supporting diversity and open discussion, but I don't remember ever hearing teenagers so impassioned about their rights with resolve to change the system. Perhaps it is a result of the general apathy that has overtaken the US, but it made me realize more than anything how lucky I was to grow up in a country, and more specifically a community, where the young population has the ability to participate in the system.

--Visiting Rotary clubs all over the city to make presentations: Club Rotario Medellin Nuevo, Club Rotario Medellin Occidente, Club Rotario Nutibara, Club Rotario Itagui Santamaria, Club Rotario Envigado, Club Rotario Sabaneta

--Become more involved in my host Club Rotario Medellin--the largest and second oldest club in the country. Many of the members are some of the most wealthy and powerful people within Colombia, but all are very friendly, tell hilarious jokes, and make a huge impact within the community. I now show up at meetings every Thursday and not only remember people's names but have ongoing conversations with them and am always greeted with big smiles. This week the governor of Antioquia came (with his very own secret service) to speak about development projects in the department including bettering education and safety, hydroelectic plants, reforestation, mining expansion, and increasing public participation among other things. The club also gives out an annual award of around $75,000 to people who have contributed immensely to the community; this year's cash prize went to environmentalists who established Medellin's famous botanical gardens and have created large natural reserves to protect the valuable flora and fauna found in the area.

--Attended a regional seminar for new and old Rotarians to inspire within them the spirit of Rotarism and review project and monetary goals for the year. Afterwards went to an "integration" party with members of my host club at the most gorgeous finca I have ever seen that reminded me of a house out of an old movie complete with famous art and full service.

--Become familiar with the 4280 District Governor by attending meetings at clubs throughout the city. Also took a day trip to Ciudad Bolivar where there is a small but strong club; stopping throughout the coffee region to take pictures, try local treats, avoid the massive landslides almost making the roads impassible, falling more in love with the gorgeous Colombian scenery, and learning about how a year ago the same region was dominated by guerrillas and too dangerous to visit.

--Started a new project at a house for HIV-positive children with the Rotaract Club Medellin; I will be teaching them art lessons and taking them on visits to museums throughout the city.

--Volunteering once a week at an amazing organization for children with Spinal Bifida, run by the district governor elect, where I also lead art projects and participate in music/stretching activities for babies and tottlers affected by the disease.

--Attended an induction ceremony for a community police program sponsored by the Club Rotario Nutibara; establishing an important relationship between the police forces and the Rotary clubs in the city to get logistical safety from them for projects carried out in dangerous communities or for transporting children. I was very impressed with the calibur of men and woman in the program since most of them speak at least one language, are well educated, extremely dedicated to the police force, and have undoubtable faith in the public institution.

--Helped run a massive eye-examination program also with the Club Rotario Nutibara offered at a clinic in a lower-income neighborhood; reviewing over 15o children in one Saturday morning for eye problems, referring around 30 of the worst cases to an optomologist (also the club president!), and then outfitting those in need with donated glasses.

I love my 'job'.

Morning Musings

2008-09-22T21:52:00.000-05:00

Going about my morning business I consistently notice several things:

1) The water flowing through the 'canalizacion' down the mountainside settlements, through my neighborhood, and toward the center of the city to join up with the big river always smells fresh and perfumed like laundry detergent even though it is muddy brown in color. My senses automatically equate the sudsy smell of detergent with cleanliness so it always takes me aback when I look down into the tumultuous tides and realize that lots of someones upstream deemed the tributary a good laundry resource. And then I realize how lucky I am to always have lived with a fresh (running!) water source; never worrying about dirty sediment getting stuck in the wrinkles of washed clothes. But then again I rarely think about what sort of smell my post-laundry water is being observed by someone downstream...
(Speaking of laundry, having not used a dryer for the past two and a half months I realize how much more energy efficient it is to live in a warm climate. However, I wonder if the extra electricity that I use turning the lights on at 6:30 every night since it gets dark so early evens out my usage...)

2) Waking up to the sound of horse's hooves clip-clopping atop asphault never ceases to surprise me. Carts drawn by men or horses make their daily rounds through neighborhoods selling flowers, fresh avocados, and an array of produce. I just wish that they didn't always bring along their megaphones for the incessant drone of "Piña por mil, aguacate aguacate. Mandarinas: diez por mil."

3) Usually one thinks of the area surrounding a university as catering to the student population. Immediately around the Facultad there are lots of papelerias, restaurants and ice cream shops, but one street up is the longest stretch of funeral homes with hearsts parked outside that I have ever seen. It is quite depressing to walk by them every day thinking about the sad families sitting around inside deciding upon coffins and staying up all night with the bodies of loved ones. I just hope that this 'death row' doesn't inhabit this exact location because so many college students are passing away...

Emphasizing the Aesthetic

2008-09-17T20:29:00.003-05:00

Medellin (and Colombia) are known world-wide for their beautiful women. Imagine your stereotypical Latin beauty with long dark hair, cinnamon skin, wide smile, salsa-dancer hips, and the ability to devour you with one glance...and you are basically conjuring all the paisas flouncing about Medellin.

Now just like anywhere else with famous females, Colombians place a HUGE importance on appearances. Since Medellin is home to many clothing factories and fashion comes cheap, girls here are obsessed with shoes, shirts, jewelry, bags: shopping. They get their nails done every week, (also very inexpensive and a common practice by men too), straighten their hair in empty classrooms during lunch, and hog the bathroom mirrors. It's not like the women here need to make themselves more beautiful, it's just...fun (?).

(To be fair, several of my male friends have complained that they are not admitted to normal clubs around the city if they don't keep a clean beard or are wearing ragged clothes. I wonder if this is some sort of class discrimination or an extension of aesthetic importance.)

I can feel my inner tomboy getting swept away with the desire to partake in this public runway. But it also makes me wonder: how important is the fact that so many of these women are well-educated and working important jobs--is it more important than what meets the eye?

While previously living in Latin America I remember being struck by the way in which male attention served as a barometer for my appearance; every day that I leave the house I know if I have put on an attractive outfit or applied the right combination of make-up by the number of cat-calls I receive before arriving at the Metro station. "Tsssssssss...mona, que linda!" (yes, they ironically call those with an inclination toward a lighter complexion and features 'monkey'). It all sounds incredibly shallow, I know. But I do find that people, especially Rotarians, generally receive me better when I dress fashionably and doll myself up.

I have conducted several self-led experiments in which I have donned a dress and heals to one Rotary meeting then a less fashionable outfit to the next meeting, making sure to engage in just as interesting of conversations while demonstrating equal levels of self-confidence and outgoing bubbliness. The obvious result was that when looking more feminine and pretty people were not only noticeably more receptive and friendly towards me but also more complimentary of the content of my presentations.

What message does this send to women? I realize it is a big generalization, but the conclusion would be that in order for our ideas to be taken more seriously we have to first attract people's visual appreciation.

R-E-S-O-L-V-E

2008-09-17T20:29:00.002-05:00

Things to do before turning 25:

--Graduate from college (check)
--Work for an ex-president (check)
--Live paycheck to paycheck without adequate health insurance (check)
--Drive cross-country (double check)
--Live in another country on my own for a year (check)
--Accumulate a hefty stack of stories I would not want to tell my future children (check)
--Run a half marathon (...check)

What better way to get to know a new city than running 21 km through downtown and unknown neighborhoods?

After talking the talk for two years, I finally bit the bullet and ran the run. Without really training, I knew I would be disappointed in myself if for the third time in a row (1. San Diego Marathon Spring 2007, 2. Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta Spring 2008) I backed out of the opportunity to push my physical limits in a test of human insanity. So on September 14 I completed the Mediamaraton Medellin (half marathon of Medellin).

Since my arrival I have been jogging 4-5 times a week around the Estadio right down the street, a safe and well-landscaped place to get outside in the mornings and stay in some sort of shape that doesn't resemble a blob. The furthest I have run in the past year is probably 6 miles, or half of a half marathon. But when I stepped out onto the course Sunday morning (after a good breakfast, a week without alcohol, and a few days of major mental psyching), as soon as I crossed the starting line I couldn't stop running for the next 13.3 miles. Something about the mass movement of 17,000 people, comraderie among strangers, and the beauty of the city in the morning helped my body settle into a comfortable rhythm for a little less than two and a half hours.

The race started and finished literally three blocks from my front door, which made the entire experience seem like a friendly neighborhood activity. I was impressed by how many serious runners showed up from many different countries; co-ed teams from Peru, a few gringos like myself, and the expected Kenyans (who took first and second). In general the large-scale, city-wide promotion of athletic activity has been very obvious and successful from what I can tell, and it paid off with the number of participants and fans that showed up for the 1K kid's race, 5K family race, and the 21K competition. Throughout the race I saw several fathers running while holding their sons' hands, a father-daughter team, and lots of couples striding along together. Although I was somewhat disappointed that I didn't have anyone I knew with whom to share my first big race, it was fun to feel like part of the Medellin community I call home.

My goal I set for myself was to finish, but not push my body to the point of injury just to get there, and I fully surprised the doubtful Alina by mustering enough energy to sprint across the finish line with only minor soreness and tired feet. Somewhere between KMs 12 and 13 I became fearfully tired, but adrenaline serves as a powerful natural drug and I relied on its rush to get over the hump and push my body through the second half of the race at the same pace as the first. If you can't tell, I am very proud of myself and have set my sights on other half marathons in the near future.

Now back to my To-Do List:
--get published
--start post-graduate studies
--skydiving??

Loneliness

2008-09-17T20:29:00.001-05:00

Living alone has its benefits; privacy, independence, tranquility, and nobody judging my frequent OCD tendencies. But after a month and a half of living in an apartment owned by someone else that I cannot personalize is starting to take its toll. Eating meals with a book makes my food taste less, hearing things that go bump in the night wakes me up with a heart-thumping start, and cleaning up after myself all the time just seems silly when nobody will notice if I leave a dirty plate in the sink for a day.

I do have two new roommates, Isabella and Hector (mama and baby respectively) who live on my bathroom walls...but seeing as they are tropical salamanders they don't really offer much as far as dinner-time conversation goes but do poise interesting voyeuristic questions.

Of course I am busy at school all day, have Rotary meetings at night, and friends to explore the city with on the weekends, but nothing is quite the same as having someone--anyone--to vent to after a tough day or as a safety precaution know if I don't come home when I should. I am torn between over-involving myself in Italian classes and volunteer hours or finding other foreign roommates to get me through future months, but for the time being I find myself wistfully appreciating the amazing support networks I have back home.

Speaking the English

2008-09-17T20:29:00.000-05:00

In the course of two months I have managed to be converted into 'Resident English Speaker' at the Facultad Nacional de Salud Publica (FNSP). Who has done this converting? My friend the Dean has seen me fit to rent out like the latest version of Rosetta Stone; a trend picked up by a different faculty member each day.

It all started with the suggestion that I start weekly English conversation classes as part of a community service project. Due to the large number of students and professors who study English but do not get much practice at listening or speaking, I serve as their perfect link between books and real-life necessity. On Mondays and Tuesdays I now spend my two lunch hours animating my students to practice formulating gramatically correct simple questions like "Where did you hang out last night?" or discussing national environmental concerns. As wonderful as it is to know that I am helping people with their English communication skills, I selfishly love meeting new interesting friends and leading discussions that benefit my own knowledge of Colombian issues.

Along with assuming the position of Mizz Teacher, I also serve as chief English document consultant. At first it was exciting to be called into a new office and asked what a professor in Germany was requesting in the most recent installment of an academic email conversation. It makes me feel important, not to mention that I am learning infinitely valuable information about the international public health community. For example, I have worked on important national proposals to the WHO for a project linking topics of academic research and government policy making (with a lot of funding money on the line). Several people are relying on my comments on another proposal so they can participate in an international qualitative research exchange learning project with the University of Chicago. But because the FNSP has been so generous to open up so many other opportunities for me, I find it difficult to turn away any English solicitor even though I am frequently distracted from my own projects with the high volume of work being presented to me. And as much as I try to fly incognito, it's not like I can just blend in as one of the other students when everywhere I go the 'Gringa' flag waves high above my blue eyes, light brown hair and different accent.

Maybe this is a good lesson for familiarizing myself with personal linguistic limits, because I have also found myself in some rather humiliating situations. Two weeks ago I was asked to translate the entire two-hour presentation of a professor coming from UC Irvine for an international conference on Occupational Health. Although I received his 60 slides with ample time to familiarize myself with the correlation between hypertension and job tension, followed by an hour-long one-on-one explanation of his life's work, I still lacked the depth of medical terminology to adequately convey the importance of the research. It turns out that his daughter attended Pitzer College and is currently pursuing her Doctorate in Anthropology by completing field work in the Caribbean, so we not only immediately had a common connection but a mutual respect. Unfortunately, by the end of four hours of translating for the presentation, social interaction, and professional panel, I was ready to burst into tears. I felt like even though I tried my hardest, I had botched up an important cross-cultural opportunity for Latin American specialists to impress upon a famous North American doctor their valuable research, reflected poorly on my Alma Mater, and had failed as an Ambassador of Goodwill.

In the future, I will know to pass on these sorts of requests to those professors who I know have a much higher level of multicultural and multilingual competence (and who have also pursued several degrees of graduate education to understand systolic ambulatory blood pressure) than myself, while gladly accepting projects that hone my forte of ruthless peer reviews. I guess that despite feeling more comfortable each day in my second tongue I still have a lot of Spanish to learn before I can consider myself fully fluent.

Running the Run-Around

2008-08-29T17:21:00.000-05:00

Upon entering the country for the second time, an immigration official stamping my passport casually told me that I would have to go to the Department of Security within the first two weeks to get a foreigner's identification card otherwise I would technically be staying in the country illegally. Oh. Why didn't the consulate of the other immigration official who let me into the country in July tell me anything about that?

This meant that I spent all of last Friday running around the city trying to get all the necessary documents in order. First to DAS at 7:30 am to pick up the official list. I then walked around the Belen neighborhood to 4 different laboratories until I found one that would test for my blood type so early in the morning. (The woman pricking my finger thought that my name should be a web address because of how silly of a last name "Shaw" is: www.alinashaw.com). Two copies of that certificate, two copies of the biographical page of my passport, two copies of my visa, two copies of pretty much every other important document that tells anything about me. Six photographs, with a blue background and no gloss. I could only pay the $40 processing fee at one bank in the city which is not accessible by Metro, so I trekked up there and went through the most insane security I have ever seen at anywhere but an airport: I had to leave everything but my wallet in a locker outside the main room and then go through a device that checked for explosives by blowing spurts of air at me. Oh yeah, and make two copies of that receipt. I can only imagine what people applying for visas and green cards in the US have to go through...

By the time I went back to the office Monday morning and finally started getting my piles of paperwork processed, I was halfway expecting that I had forgetten one document and have to wait in the long line all over again. But luckily my perfectionism paid off and I just had to sit in a swivel chair for half an hour while a woman entered all my information into an old-fashioned ledger and cut and pasted my card into existence. As a final touch she made me go into a back room and proceeded to fingerprint every part of my hand she could blacken with ink. Each forefinger four times, every other finger at least twice. Palm, all fingers together, heel. I was about to ask her if I should take off my shoes and socks so she could print my toes just to cover all our bases. But she didn't seem to be in the mood for humor, not with the stack of everyone else's papers waiting at her desk to become part of the national identification process. At least I know that if any of my fingers gets chopped off accidentally they will have its print on file so they know to whom it should be returned...

So I now have a temporary card and cedula number I can give to the pharmacist when he asks me if I want to be entered into their free-stuff lottery. Despite the hassle and the three days of lost work, I guess for the sake of my own safety it is good that the Colombian government can track me throughout the year.

An example...

2008-08-29T16:11:00.000-05:00

As an example of the previous posting, I just thought I would share the bountiful load of produce I picked up from the street market today (all for about $10.00), and the Colombian-style meal I made:

left: guavas, red onions, avocados, green plantains, tomatoes, beets, red bell peppers, limes, red grapes, criollo potatoes, and fresh beans.
right: a soup/stew made with beans, a diced plantain, half a tomato, an onion, several cloves of garlic, and spices with slices of tomato, avocado and corn bread on the side. (not shown is the fresh guava juice I blended up to accompany the meal). yum!

Although I don't think organic certification really exists or would matter here, I do know that every piece of produce came from nearby. Some of it I even bought at a little store down the road that just sells fruit and veg and whose tag line is: "Direct from the fields to your house!"

**I just wanted to acknowledge the fact that my mother is the person kind as to internationally lend me Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. A year and a half ago we got into a very heated discussion (one might even consider it an argument) in the car while my parents were visiting me during family weekend at Scripps. I was saying that organic certification has lost most of the potency it once held since the organic food industry is just as corrupt with problems and it is now better (for your health and the world) to support local. My mother, on the other hand, maintained that organic was still a safer bet since the consumer knows that pesticides aren't used.

I think that the deeper undercurrent raising our personal investment in the topic was based on the fact that my parents lovingly raised us on extremely healthy, home-made food into which much consideration was involved. And by repudiating organics my mom felt like I was disregarding the sacrifices they had made to feed me as best they could--which I definitely wasn't since I think they did an amazing job at solving our family's odd but serious health issues by changing our diet. Before we remodeled our old house, we even had a huge garden that provided us with most of our produce. Fifteen years ago organic was the cutting-edge of health food, and they were right in there with the rest of the crazies preaching about the harmful effects of pesticides on the nation.

That February night in 2007 I challenged my mother to research the new local food movement and see if she couldn't update her knowledge on the current food situation. The last time I visited my parent's kitchen in July, they had a cornucopia of local produce spread out on the counter that they had received from their weekly subscription to a local food co-op. They recently had ordered half a free-range buffalo from Montana to replace the red meat they usually bought from the market, and made me try the local honey they use in their morning tea whcih supposedly helps build up immunity to airborne allergens. When I looked a the hallway bookshelf, I was greeted with the spines of different non-fiction books on the local food movement and sustainable farming. Out in the backyard my parents had even started growing all their own herbs, eggplants, fruit trees, and tomatoes! I quickly realized that my mom and dad had truly taken our conversation to heart and learned enough to adapt their lifestyles to the concepts I had preached even more than I have done for myself; making me somewhat of a hyppocrite. But really, it was just one more example confirming my belief that I have the coolest parents ever and feel increasingly lucky to have been raised by them!

Foodstories

2008-08-28T19:30:00.000-05:00

Latest on the reading list: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and her family.

Now I know it might be silly to be reading about the faults in the American food system (I am somewhat obsessed, if I haven't mentioned it before) while living in Colombia, but it has actually sparked some interesting thoughts and conversations. Sorry for the massive quote, but I love her writing and would quote the whole book if I could:

Strong food cultures are both aesthetic and functional, keeping the quality and quantity of foods consumed relatively consistent from one generation to the next, and so, while the economies of many Western countries expanded massively in the 20th century, their citizens did not...Food culture in the US has long been cast as the property of a privileged class. It is nothing of the kind. Culture is the property of a species. Humans don't do everything we crave to do--that is what arguably makes us human. We're genetically predisposed toward certain behaviors that we've collectively decided are unhelpful; adultery and racism being examples. With reasonable success, we mitigate those impulses through civil codes, religious rituals, maternal warnings--the whole bag of tricks we call culture. Food cultures concentrate a population's collective wisdom about the plants and animals that grow in a place, and the complex ways of rendering them tasty. These are mores of survival, good health, and control of excess. Living without such a culture would seem dangerous...At its heart, a genuine food culture is an affinity between people and the land that feeds them. (emphasis my own)

One of my favorite parts of traveling is immersing myself into a new food culture and learning as much as I can about the fuel that drives people. In Medellin, people always seem to be sitting down to eat a meal, snacking, drinking coffee, or discussing the best place in the country to eat a certain something. I think it's because food is yet another excuse to talk--either while eating or about eating, and paisas sure do like to talk. But I do have to admit that the food here is exceptional, so they have reason enough to raise some noise about it.

During my first month here I was too excited to try new dishes and as many different kinds of arepas as possible to really think about where it all came from, but I slowly started picking up a granadilla or looking at a piece of steak on the end of my fork and asking it "where did you come from?" Living in the middle of a city means that food generally comes shrink-wrapped with pretty labels stamped on the packages, but I love wandering through side-street markets with the hand-pulled carts stacked high with dirty piles of potatoes, corn, cabbage, red beans, huge grapes, bananas, and papayas. It makes food seem more real to buy it while it is still covered in earth (the whole point of Kingsolver's book).

Since my fruit and meat never answered, I turned to my trusted friend/research advisor/learned man Octavio. When I asked how far food generally has to travel to get to Medellin he looked at me as if I was joking. After realizing that I was serious he slowly chuckled and said "Oh, about 10 km." Now I think this must be an exaggeration since we were sitting within a 10-km radius of city (cement, buses, apartment buildings), but I do know that Medellin is located within the 'cafetero' region which is lush with farms and various crops. I learned that everything from cows to cotton to coal and rice to broccoli to strawberries are all grown nearby, and therefore transported into the city fresh every day in one form or another. Within the entire country the main thing they import is wheat; in pretty much every other way Colombia is self-sustainable.

People here don't need to ask themselves from where their food comes, they grow up knowing what farmers in what regions produce the vegetables in their soup and pass the fields that feed them whenever they leave the city. This affinity betwee the people and the land is exactly what Kingsolver discusses, and from what I can tell it has yielded a culture that is overall very healthy and happy. To me this seems like a luxury, but it really shouldn't. With the amount of fuel costs that go into transporting our food these days every city should be focusing on growing compatible crops in their open spaces. I could go on and on, but I think Kingsolver explians it with much more wit and research so recommend reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle or anything by Michael Polan.

What I am trying to say is that I feel lucky that I have chosen a place to live where my daily food purchases don't have to involve a moral struggle like they did in the US. I can eat healthy, gluten- and guilt-free for very inexpensively, and by choosing to shop at the local stands closest to my house know that the easiest consumer choice is the one that also supports the local farmers. It's a win-win situation!

Oil and Linen

2008-08-28T18:55:00.000-05:00

I am taking painting classes!

Finally after 3 years of only dabbling in doodles and travel-sized watercolors I smell like turpentine and have streaks of green and yellow paint in my hair. I don't know why it has taken me so long to get back into it; time, money, the usual excuses. But I was starting to feel like I could no longer describe myself as an 'artist' or 'painter' since my creativity was expressed in other ways. (Like cooking?).

A group of women get together on Wednesdays at the Facultad Nacional de Salud Publica for two hours to take free painting lessons offered by the University's Department of Well-Being (like a student events office--I think). When I first heard about it last week I didn't want to get my hopes up too high, but after showing up at the first class and seeing how serious these ladies take their art, I realized that I have found the perfect way to get my painting juices flowing again.

Of course I couldn't start painting that first day since I brought no supplies with me, but on Saturday I set out by myself on a mission to get everything I need to start making pretty pretty artwork. The teacher suggested I go to a shopping center called "El Rio" which is near "El Hueco", one of the craziest, compact, churning shopping districts in the city. Imagine the grand bizarre (for those of you who have been there), on third-world steroids. Shops after shops piled on top of each other selling anything from pantie-hose to watch batteries, from foreign perfumes to prescription glasses. I absolutely love wandering aimlessly, anonymously through the tight stalls marveling at how much random stuff exists in this world, (most of it made in China), and on a Saturday afternoon it was absolutely teeming with shoppers--to the point where I couldn't even feel my pockets people were packed against me so tightly.

But since I was out with a purpose, the confusing maze of stalls was overwhelming as I entered one shopping center after another asking for a place that sold art supplies without seeing anything that looked like a paintbrush or pallet knife. My wild-goose chase finally led me to 'El Rio', and as I wove between men carrying boxes packed with sanitary napkins that they almost almost spilled all over me as I blundered through looking for 'number 148' I crossed my fingers behind my back hoping that my efforts would yield something better than kiddie paints. At the end of the hallway I looked up and the display of paints, brushes, canvases, and craft supplies seemed to glow and hum like the apparition of the Virgen de Guadalupe must have appeared to Juan Diego. They had everything I wanted, and at a great price--I paid about $8 for a 30cm by 40cm canvas! (Ok, I know this is starting to sound like a cheesy television ad...but I was really excited!).

I eventually walked away with a huge bag of British and Chinese paints (just for a cost-quality comparison), the rest of the supplies on my list (in Spanish because I realized my artistic vocabulary is rather low: I thought a canvas was a 'lienzo' not a 'bastidor'), and three new friends. The older men and girl my age working the stall were all facinated by the fact that I was a foreign artist buying out half their stock, especially since they couldn't guess for the life of them where I was from: (Argentina? No? Then definitely Spain. No? You're American!?!), and a huge sense of accomplishment. The feeling of being independently competent in a foreign culture is entirely rewarding when it yields such sought-after results!

Now all I need to fiure out is what to paint...

Substance

2008-08-28T16:07:00.000-05:00

I realize that after all these entries of the fun activities I am doing (or not doing, in some cases), you might be wondering about the research work which I came here to do. The truth of the matter is that after a month and a half, I am wondering the same thing. Not because I lack initiative or anything like that, but rather because the process of getting business done around here seems to take forever. Every time I seem to ask about a specific topic in which I would be interested in researching, five people jump in and offer five different perspectives of how I and where I should go about working. Although this is extremely helpful and I am learning a lot, it has also left me very confused.

I spent the first few weeks learning about the health system, wandering around the hallways of the public health school meeting tons of different professors and grad students hearing about the work they are doing, and trying to get a feel for a place. In anthropological work you can't just jump in right away without getting your bearings...it takes time to learn about possible research options and then decide on one that will probably turn into something else anyway. So eventually I decided on a group of contracted public health professionals who are in the conception stage of a project that sounds really interesting.

Just today we turned in a draft of the theoretical background to get full approval and funding from the university after diligently reading, writing, and revising for two weeks. The title of it is "Bienes Preferentes y Bienes Meritorios en salud y mecanismos de mercado en el contexto del Sistema General de Seguridad Social en Salud: Caso atencion materno-infantil, Medellin 2008." A mouth-full, eh? It basically deals with looking at the faults in the health system due to the fact that the government contracts out services to hospitals and clinics who then administer the services, which results in those sites operating in their best economic interests rather than for the good of the people. The specific part of the population that we are looking at is pregnant woman, and the ethical issues that come into play when an unborn baby doesn't get the chance to live because their mothers receive inadequate attention. The legal and economic foundations for the work have turned out to be much more in-depth than I originally anticiapted; which has proved difficult yet beneficial in that I have had to teach myself a crash-course in health economics.

We still have to work out the methodology and break-down of research responsibilities, but I am looking forward to leading discussions with health officials from the city, doctors and nurses, as well as the women themselves. I am not sure how, as a medical anthropologist, I am supposed to fit in with the other public health administration majors etc., but it seems like the faculty here have a very holistic approach to their research which fits in well with my own training. More to follow....

As for my independent research, I have a meeting next week with the dean, head of the investigation department, and research advisor to whom I will present my grand plan. Deep down I know what I want to investigate: the mental/emotional effects of being displaced by drug-related violence, but the problem is that I don't know how to go about conducting this research in a safe manner. Since being here I have felt somewhat disconnected from the reality of poverty that the majority of the population experiences. Rotarians, friends, and university contacts alike are all very or relatively well-off compared to national standards; something that doens't provide me with a very comprehensive understanding of the people. I think that in order to really fulful my duties as an embassador (so that I return to the US with as much information and experience I can possibly accumulate in one year), as well as live up to the service-oriented ideals of Rotary, I must find a way to access the impoverished communities and work on their behalf.

Colombia has the second-largest population of internally displaced people after Sudan, and Antioquia--and Medellin--is one of the districts that hosts a large influx of them. These people move into the city and settle in the most precarious places, and suffer from many environmental factors. (Every day on the news there are reports of 5-10 people--read displaced persons--who die during the torrential rains because their corrugated-tin homes are washed into the bloated rivers running down the sides of the mountains all around the city). These people also bring with them involvement with informal economies and their own set of violence, which makes their new settlements dangerous--especially for outsiders like myself.

I also have this somewhat fantastical impression that the (medical) anthropologists who have written the most interesting and widely-read ethnographies are those who took the most personal and professional risks. At this point I don't really have professional training or an established career, (nor is my scholarship about accomplishing personal career goals), but my idea is that if I could find a community of people with an untold story from an important helath perspective, maybe this could be a big break that in a year could get me into my preferred PhD program. But at the same time maybe I am young and overly optimistic and shouldn't jeopardize my chances by making stupid decisions now. Or maybe I am just blowing things out of perspective.

Either way, I have a lot of thinking or planning to do, and any advice or insight would be much appreciated.

Festival del Maiz

2008-08-28T14:00:00.000-05:00

The master calendar makers who invented three-day weekends have my utmost gratitude. Here in Medellin they are called 'puentes,' or bridges, that extra day uniting the weekend and start of the week with a unanimous vote to completely skip over Monday by refashioning it into an extra day for sleeping in, strolling around a park, or, as in my case, recovering after a riotous trip to the countryside.

Saturday evening witnessed five of us cramming into a little car with sleeping bags, backpacks, and high expectations. 1. Me. 2. My dear friend Esteban. 3. Esteban's cousin Marcela who grew up in Culver City and just moved down here for the year after graduating from high school. 4. Daniel, a microfutbol friend of Esteban's who lived in Irvine for four years (although this isn't a defining feature of his), and 5. Ronald, aka Flaco, another microfutbol player with the best paisa banter I have yet encountered.

As it grew dark and excessively rainy we wound our way up La Avenida Las Palmas, out of the city and into the country. Around dinnertime we stopped for the best arepa de chocolo con queso I have ever savored and still leaves me salivating just thinking about the moist, wood-fired warmth and buttery crispness. Then it was another four hours of roadsicknening curves and fun chatter through eroding hillsides leaving huge potholes in our way and delaying our arrival to Sonson until 10:00.

Nobody in the group had previously visited the small town, but it was supposed to be very typical of the region with old colonial houses, cowboy culture, and gorgeous surrounding hills. We were somewhat surprised by the crowds mulling around a secondary plaza near our chosen parking spot, and became increasingly curious about the amount of people after realizing that three hotels were already completely booked up but had couches we could sleep on for 15.000 pesos. Perhaps there was something going on about which we were not aware?

After walking closer and closer toward the main plaza I noticed corn stalks tied to every lamp-post, window shutter, in bunches across the portals of bars, as well as strewn across the sidewalks. People were wearing ponchos and hand-made cowboy hats; most of them inebriated and some prancing around on horses trained in high-stepping. By the time we reached the center of the action we had figured out that our unplanned visit just so happened to coincide with the 75th Festival de Maiz, ie: the biggest party the town had ever known.

Realizing that this was too fun of an opportunity to be dampened by a steady downpour of cold rain, we started trying to catch up with the rest of the town in their celebrations and knocked on random doors in search of a cheap bed. Eventually we found a tiny hotel with enough room for us all to sleep at a reasonable price, and changed into more water-friendly clothes while discussing the craziness in which the entirety of Sonson was enveloped. Now, I know it might be somewhat unsavory to talk about the extreme party culture here, but I feel I have to explain the state of absurdity to which I have seen people drink themselves in order to incite your opinions on why old and young alike would do such a thing?

(Before you proceed, I would like to say as a disclaimer that my friends and I were out for a cultural experience rather than drinkfest, and that despite the absurdity I was completely safe the entire trip and never felt uncomfortable.)

Throughout the evening I saw various verbal street fights, people falling off of horses, and someone's grandparents making out (I personally found the latter more endearing than inappropriate). At one point I enlisted the help of my friends to pull an older man out of the street who had fallen over a road block and passed out, lucky enough to be lying after a speed bump which made cars slow down enough to see and swerve around his body. After we placed him on the sidewalk he violently jerked back into the street, this time rolling down the road which was very steep and slick with rain. His 'woman' was trying to coax him home, but when "Carlos" responded with garbled burps she gave up and left him to the sniffing dogs wandering around.

My mind is analytically trained to ponder the causes behind what I experience, and so the question still pursuing me after witnessing this is: what are these people trying to escape by drowning their minds in alcohol? I know that the town isn't extremely economically prosperous; are these men (and women) just tired farmers who have overwhelming financial and family responsibilities? That area of the country also suffered under the presence of guerrilla forces, and maybe they had seen enough violence or experienced enough tragedy to need the escape of aguardiente in order to stay sane the rest of the time?

Either way, I was overwhelmed by the pompousness of the children roaming the streets and staggering couples, happy to crawl into my sleeping bag and listen to the salsa songs blasting into the night from the bar across the street the entire night. The next morning everything was much more tranquil; the men from the night before passed out in bars with chairs overturned on top of them and the proprietors picking up their limp arms to clean the bar beneath them. Even if their livers were complaining I got a great picture.

Now daylight and somewhat sunny, we wandered through the cobblestone streets admiring the bright colors and greeting the untended horses eating leftover oranges and arepas. Although I think I appreciate corn more than most people given my dietary restrictions and obsession with food histories, I didn't think that the entire population of a town could be so obsessed with one grain. The town seal of Sonson shows a lovely mountain framed by two ears of corn; imprinted on the plaza's sitting stools, painted on the sides of buildings, and forged into the storm drains. In honor of the festival, people were wearing necklaces strung with kernels of...corn, with a small dried arepa serving as a medallion. There was even a parade honoring the different cycles of corn cultivation, ending with a young and beautiful corn queen riding in the back of a pickup truck and waving at the hungover crowds with the grace of a fairytale princess. If I subscribed to a gluten-free pagan religion I might just choose this corn goddess as my deity.

Eventually we had explored the entirety of the small town and piled into the car for the anticipated ride home--this time able to appreciate the absolute gorgeousness of our surroundings. I know some of you are probably tired of hearing me rave about the natural beauty of Colombia, but seriously people, what beats a semi-tropical terrain dotted with waterfalls cascading down the hillsides, old ranches boasting orange and blue porches with terracotta pots overflowing with fuchsias and supertunias hanging from their eaves, and kids running through flower fields with horses? Every curve provoked a communal gasp--even the native Paisas were impressed.

I was really surprised at how well-patrolled the roads were; with police stops every 20 miles or so and young men in military garb posted every 5 miles. Most of them were wearing red bands around their arms, something that used to be an indication of the ELN (one of the prominent paramilitary groups in the ocuntry). But my friends assured me that this zone was safe now and that it must be the sign for some special police force. Either way they were friendly and made the unpopulated road feel much safer...you know just in case we had car troubles or something.

By the time I stumbled, exhausted, into my apartment at 7 that night completely overwhelmed with the immense diversity of Colombian culture and geography, I was already starting to plan a trip for the next puente.

Rotarian Stardom

2008-08-27T20:52:00.000-05:00

During my first Thursday back in Medellin I was posed with a heavy decision (not uncommon in these busy days of mine): to attend a forum preceding the 6th annual National Conference of Public Health sponsored by the Universidad de Antioquia--which my friend the dean Dr. Gonzalez invited me to a month ago, or to go to the weekly Rotary meeting. As you can probably deduce, my reasoning led me to choose the forum since it only happens once while the Rotary club meets every Thursday.

Y'all have heard of Juanes, right? "Tengo la camisa negra" pop star from Colombia (born in Medellin)? The Bono of Latin America? Heart-throb of the century? Well, even if you haven't, hopefully you can tell by that description that he is a pretty big deal down here... and I have to admit that I have been a fan of his myself for not only his catchy music but also the humanitarian work for which he has become a spokesman over the past few years.

So, if it isn't obvious already, Juanes came to the Rotary meeting...not me. I not only missed out on one of the most interesting Rotarian alliances of the year--his non-profit wants to do get support by the Rotary Club of Medellin)--but I also missed possibly the most exciting photo-op of my scholarship (imagine me with Juanes as my Facebook profile pic!). The only consolation I have for being so unlucky is that the visit truly was improptu, and the club had to cancel their scheduled speaker just to accomodate the rockstar.

And I would have been blisfully unaware of my scheduling blunder had my professor/research advisor/Rotarian friend not come back to our office after the meeting and said, "Alina, Alina, Alina...you'll never want to miss another meeting after hearing who came today." I don't think I will.

Arrival of the Olympics

2008-08-16T13:09:00.001-05:00

I have a confession to make. I guess it's not that embarrassing though, so I'll tell you: while recovering from intense jet-lag and trying to find company in a television set (David is traveling on business in the States leaving me alone in the apartment for a month), I have been addicted to late-night Olympic events. Oh, how fun it is to watch gymnastic floor routines and 200-m dashes while almost falling asleep! And how proud I feel when I see fellow Americans competing in Beijing so the world can hear our national anthem playing while they bask on the podium!

It is a different kind of experience displaying my US allegiance by shouting loudly at the TV while excitedly jumping up and down in a foreign country. Colombians don't excel in very many sports, (mainly inline skating, power walking, shot put, and wrestling as far as I can tell so far), and so the channels broadcasting the Olympics spend a lot of their time going over highlights from the day and focusing on other South American and Caribbean athletes. Last night I was extremely frustrated while channel 17 showed the 20K power walk for literally the entire hour and a half race while I couldn't find other Olympic coverage anywhere else on cable. Imagine how I swore at the anchors when after a short advertisement they returned to the rubber-legged men swinging their hips like salsa dancers for the umpteenth time!!!

While it is interesting to get a different perspective of the rest of the world's Olympic viewing style, more than anything it makes me appreciate being American. No matter what random sport is taking place, I don't have to root for someone that comes from my same continent like many smaller countries. As a nation, America (individuals, companies, and the government alike) has an insane amount of money to spend on athletic training and facilities. People from all different countries come to train or coach in the US. And the result is an overwhelming dominance in our exceptional performance and abundance of athletes we produce.

Just watching the Opening Ceremonies was telling in how we had almost as many people competing as China--the world's most populous country. Obviously the athletes competing: population size ratio is not standard criteria. The Colombian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, and Bolivian Olympic teams literally got three seconds of airtime while Kobe Bryant alone got three minutes. Now that just doesn't seem fair. The Olympics are supposed to be a unifying competition bringing athletes together from around the world to represent their home countries, and everyone should be acknowledged for the sweat and blood they have poured into qualifying to be in Beijing.

But enough of my chatter, men's swimming is on and I want to see if Phelps is going to add another gold to his impressive count!

Deviation from Reality

2008-08-15T20:12:00.000-05:00

Although it has been almost a month since I last posted, that does not mean I have not been busy...just in a different way than how I spent my first four weeks as an Ambassadorial Scholar.

As some of you are aware, my paternal grandmother passed away two years ago. She always made the extra efforts to be close to her grandchildren, and I spent a lot of time with her baking cookies, visiting botanical gardens, picking fruit from her backyard, and learning our family history from her fascinating stories. Despite the long months my family spent together cleaning out her house and reliving the memories from her life, we never organized a formal farewell. "Grammy" loved Hawaii and determined at a young age that it was the only place in the world she deemed worthy of visiting despite the (physical and literal) pains of traveling. This meant that I was lucky enough to spend almost every other summer of my childhood exploring a different Hawaiian island with my parents, brother, grandmother, aunt and uncle, and cousins. For such a large group, we were always perfect travel companions and friends; snorkeling together at tranquil beaches, hiking through dense bamboo forests to access hidden waterfalls, and peacefully tanning like bookworm lizards . The last family trip that we took together was in 2003 on Kauai, and we all envisioned that the best way to lay Grammy to rest was by dispersing her ashes into the tropical Pacific. Despite the fact that I live on a different continent while the rest of my family lives in Southern California, it was extremely important for me to be with them for this event.

For this reason I spent the first days of August trekking between the Medellin, Miami, Los Angeles, and Lihue airports; experiencing massive culture-shock when I stepped into the perfectly manicured streets of Kauaii and was greeted (in English) by splendid first-world vacationland. We spent our entire time relaxing; cooking wonderful meals for each other, taking short day trips along the NaPali coast, and basking in Gram memories. At Secret Beach we all convened to spill her ashes in turquoise tide pools, placing fresh plumaria flowers on top of the water to trace her journey into the ocean. I was surprised at how little pain from her death remained while missing her presence so vividly; my mourning eased by recalling all the happy grandma memories I have stored away. If anything, we were living out the message that Grammy stressed most vividly to my family: stick together and remain close friends--exactly what the eight of us were accomplishing by aligning our busy lives to spend the week together. I knew that wherever she is now Gram was beaming down on us and wouldn't want us to be anything but content standing on a Hawaiian beach together in her honor.

With the birth of my cousin's baby a year ago to commence the next generation of Shaws and the upcoming marriage of my other cousin, we all know that our family is happily expanding into new faces and traditions. This was the last time we had to be together in our old format, and I think that everyone quietly relished the simple fluidity of each other's company. After spending my first month in the new anonymity of Medellin, it was both comforting and somewhat disconcerting for me to be reminded of my obvious roots.

I sometimes like to think that my personality and life I have created for myself is a result of my independent drive and accumulation of vast experience. But after seeing the conglomerate of traits I have inherited from both sides of the family mirrored in my parent's countenance and decision-making during the past weeks I knew that I will never be able to break out of my family's strong mold. Not that I would want to anyway since overall I consider myself extremely fortunate to come from such an amazing line-up of people.

Now back to my real life of public health research as an American scholar/superstar in a foreign country, if it can be considered as such. Grammy would be proud of me.

July 20: Colombian Independence Day

2008-07-23T11:58:00.000-05:00

Although without as much tradition as the 4th of July (making me appreciate barbecues, fireworks, and home-made ice cream), Colombians usually celebrate the day with a military parade and family activities. However, as you might have seen through international media, on Sunday Colombians used the national holiday to coordinate worldwide Freedom Marches in the major cities here in the country as well as abroad in Paris, Mexico City, and others. Here in Medellin, the Interact clubs of the city joined together (and included me) to peacefully march in solidarity against the FARC, kidnappings, and the return of violence. We all met wearing white shirts in the Plaza Botero and started chanting among large Botero sculptures, white balloons, proud Colombian flags, and press cameras. Continuing along a main avenue, we chanted "Uribe, amigo, el pueblo esta contigo" (Uribe, friend, the people are with you), "No mas FARC", and "Los queremos libres, saludables, y vivos" (We want them free, healthy, and alive--referring to the 700+ captives still in FARC posession). Eventually we ended in one of the main plazas for a public concert with local groups and a popular Colombian band, although I unfortunately could not tolerate the tropical heat nor clausterphobic crowd after standing for five hours straight and so left before the main act started. It was intoxicating to be part of such an important cause, and although people seem to think that the demonstrations do much to alter the activities of the FARC, it does show international rejection of them as terrorists.

Refugio de los Ancianos

2008-07-23T11:44:00.000-05:00

Established as a joint project between the Rotary Clubs of Medellin and Thousand Oaks, the Refugio de Ancianos-San Cristobal is a home for elderly people without family or the resources to be taken care of during their last days. On Saturday I went up to the hills above the city with the Rotaract Club of Medellin to spend the afternoon with the 20 or so residents. We brought up four hairdressers-in-training, who worked diligently for several hours giving each and every willing person a much-needed haircut. Not only was the view from the house incredible, but they had a beautiful garden of tropical flowers, several large porches, a well-equipped infirmary, and a very attentive and caring staff. Everyone was very excited to talk to "la gringa" and very aware of the role Rotary has played in the Refugio. I was proud to be part of such a successful Rotary project and look forward to returning with further activities to bring to my new friends.

Humane Responsabilities

2008-07-23T11:04:00.000-05:00

As an avid admirer of Paul Farmer, physician, medical anthropologist, and leading public health advocate, I brought several of his books with me to Colombia as helpful informants for my research. I am currently reading
Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor which explores examples of structural violence through essays concerning health issues in third world countries. Right up my alley.

In the introduction, Farmer poses a very salient point:

"Anyone who wishes to be considered humane has ample cause to consider what it means to be sick and poor in the era of globalization and scientific advancement."

It should be noted that in this book Farmer is obviously talking to a first-world audience whose daily concerns do not include sickness and poverty. Obviously the people who are Farmer's subjects of study do not have the luxury of contemplating what it means to be humane. Although I do not think that society should be preoccupied with how others 'consider' us but should rather make it a priority to incorporate humanitarian concerns into our participation into globalization efforts and the implementation of scientific advancement, it is interesting how Farmer bases the statement in the importance of external validation.

In an age where political correctness is our code of conduct and human rights offenses are defined by media coverage, the public lens is an important rubric by which to qualify our actions. Take Greg Mortenson for example, who has been building girls' schools throughout Afghanistan for almost ten years fighting the Taliban with education. He was obviously a do-gooder long before he wrote his book Three Cups of Tea, but has found international acceptance of his cause through a best-seller with loads of impressive reviews (including recognition by Nicholas Kristoff in an Op-Ed column that appeared in the NYT on July 13). By using the word 'considered', in my opinion Farmer holds people less accountable for their humanitarian actions than the global situation demands. As established in Pathologies of Power, the current global juxtoposition represented by disparities between the ubiquitous poverty-based suffering in third-world countries and the resources of prosperous nations demands that everyone take interest in the sick and poor.

Mondongo

2008-07-23T10:38:00.001-05:00

Tasty nibbles of cow innards mixed with fresh cilantro, bananas, avocado, and other stewed veggies are slowly cooked into this traditional Antioquian dish--accompanied by a warm arepa of course. When my friends asked me what kind of meal I wanted to have for my birthday dinner, I requested the most typical dish seeing as I still have much gastronomic exploring to accomplish before I can call myself a paisa. As excited as I was to discover which of the four bovine stomachs I would be trying, I made the unfortunate mistake of eating an absolutely humongous lunch and so could only finish a medium-sized bowl of mondongo. Nonetheless, the jar of sangria complemented the meal spectacularly and completed what I think was a very typical Colombian birthday surrounded by good company.

It seems like I have spent an extraordinary number of birthdays away from home and family, yet always find a wonderful bunch of people to help me celebrate. This year I woke up to my favorite flower, heliconia, displayed in vases all over the apartment and provided by my roommate and dear friend David. He just so happened to remember a side comment I made about the roadside stands selling the flowers during my first day here, pleasantly surprising me with their color and feminine shape around the otherwise uncluttered rooms. Later on in the morning while at the university, my family of public health researchers ditched their work to take me out shopping, treated me to a wonderful lunch, and then sang happy birthday in beautifully accented English while I ate ice cream and chocolate. Dinner at Mondongo's (the most famous restaurant specializing in the dish), a long walk through the neighborhood lit by a full moon, and then a late-night bout of frisbee and guaros in the park accompanied a spectacular first day of my twenty-third year.

FARC: Beyond Wikipedia

2008-07-18T09:00:00.000-05:00

They are on the news: long-term captors of Ingrid Betancourt, synonymous with 'Colombian jungles,' and a prime example of Latin American liberalism turned dangerous. The international community can't decide whether to call these guerrillas 'terrorists' (Colombian government, US, EU) or a 'belligerent forces' (Chavez), but it doesn't seem to matter because the FARC still terrorize the countryside and subsist off of ransom money. Following many conversations about their current and past activities, I was always left with the question, "But why do they exist, what do they want?" (thank you James).

So here's my briefly outlined understanding on their story, from information gathered through conversations, research, and purely personal observation after my first week:

In 1948 the presidential candidate for the Colombian Liberal Party, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, was murdered. By the time Gustavo Rojas came into power in 1953 under the Conservative Party, the country was under military control. The radical liberals, who were still disgruntled (as an understatement) at their loss of national power, refused to disarm and retreated into the rural and less populated areas of Colombia to form their own autonomous communities. After Castro took dictatorial control of Cuba in 1959, communist leaders infiltrated these sympathetic liberal enclaves and influenced the Marxism-Leninism ideology by which they are still governed today. The FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), were officially established in 1960 as the military of the Colombian Communist Party in what is considered a guerilla* movement.

Now known as the FARC-EP (Ejercito del Pueblo or army of the people), they have increased their economic power by stealing livestock from farms and terrorising rural dwellers, becoming involved with the drug trade in the 80's (narcotrafico), and of course, ransom money off of kidnappings. They have thus turned acts of terrorism and human rights violations into an extremely profitable business (people in the US will pay exorbitant sums for Colombian cocaine as well as high-profile government contractors), and become more of an enterprise driven by the undying greed for wealth rather than a group of ideological guerrillas. As a professor with whom I was discussing the subject concluded: the only way to stop the violence is to legalize drugs and for the government to stop paying for the exchange of captives. But of course that is just one opinion.

What I have noticed is that everyday people and the news alike rarely mention the FARC or drug trade, but rather are concerned with those who have been effected by these acts of violence. For example, I have heard much talk about Igrid's state of health, her future political trajectory, and what's going to happen to the other 40-odd people who are still in captivity. I don't think that paisas (people of Antioquia) avoid discussion out of exasperation with the subject, but rather because they have moved on and the international media has not.

Which brings me to my second point, the extremely favorable impressions that the people here have made on me.** It does not matter where I am or with whom I am interacting, everyone is more inclusive of me and those around them than anywhere else I have ever been. While walking down the street my friends will stop and talk with a street vendor as if they had known him forever; university professors stop and talk to students and janitors alike without deference; and people in stores barely bat an eye when I tell them I am from the US--treating me with the same attention as a native.

I attribute this social warmth not only to the idyllic climate in which paisas live, but to the extreme pride they have in their city and nation. Everyone has a desire to develop the city, conduct profitable business, better educate the population, and not emigrate/immigrate elsewhere. After such a tumultuous past, Medellin is extremely focused on the future while maintaining an unbreakable bond between them strengthened by the difficulties they have all survived. A quite impressive demonstration of the social resiliancy of human nature.

*Within the organization of FARC, a guerrilla is defined as a unit consisting of two squads of 12 combatants each, totalling in 24 combatants.
**As a disclosure I do have to admit that most of my interactions have been with people who are more well-off than the majority of the population, I have attempted to make friends with some of the community leaders with whom I take afternoon classes and are generally from poorer neighborhoods.