(this says it's a 2009 entry but I didn't get around to writing it until May 2010...shmem)
Cali, Colombia. From an Andean foothill about 1,000 feet above the city, it looks like this:
I work in the south of the city, which is much better off, economically speaking and all that that entails, than much of the rest of the city. I'm almost through my first full year of teaching at a private school about a 10 minute bike-ride from the safe 'n sound lushly vegetated 'n gated apartment complex I live in. I can look left right now and see only trees out my fourth floor window. I can listen and hear naught but my rotating fan and a plethora of birdsong.
Bubbliscious.
Colegio Bennett. Been working here for almost a year and a half now. It's quite a gorgeous little campus, gated guarded and vegetated.
I show up before 7am, hopefully. I teach children Social Studies, if they're lucky enough to be in 8th grade, and English should they be in 9th or 10th, and in my ever stimulating classes. They never complain about how much I make them learn about poverty, oh no. Or about reading. But there are some gems, some awesomes.
Often I bike home. If not it's the bus. At 2:30 I'm free to go, one of the beautiful benefits of Bennett.
Something that's always interesting about Cali, and this parallels with much of the capitalistically undeveloped world, is how inescapable reality is. Yesterday I stepped out of school, and before even leaving the practically private street, I was asked for money by a mother accompanied by her daughter, who she reminded with an air of respect after I parted with about 50 cents, "Ve, son profesores." Mel reminded me right afterward how stupid it was to take out my wallet in front of a stranger like that, no matter how nice she seemed. My naivety, as it so often does, resented the implication of its existence.
On the drive or ride home, you'll pass by the signs of commercialism, an overabundance of shops and restaurants. You also get to glimpse at who's left out - the black boys selling gum or juggling swords or dancing for change in the middle of hectic intersections, the 30 something to middle aged mestizo men and women selling convenience store type goods on so many sidewalks, the people with no clean clothes and no shoes, the drug addicts who may or may not be old, but sure as hell look it, asleep on the street.
...
Urban cattle. Another strange semi-regular sight.
...
This bridge is a 2 minute walk from my house. It's surrounded by commerce. On one side, the megastore La Catorce which Mel and I shop at all the time. On the other, a shopping center we've under construction for a year now. It's almost all up and running. We joke about going shopping there.
The bridge itself shows a good view of the foothills of the Andes to our west. The higher up the hill you go, the lower the economic status of its people. Many of Cali's poorest have wound up here, displaced by the army, paramilitaries, and/or the guerrilla. Or total lack of economic opportunity due to the similar forces.
Under the bridge, like many in the city, there's always interesting graffiti.
Look carefully.
This wasn't an everyday sight. But it wasn't a total shock, either. Or shouldn't have been.
I see things like this, then I get home. I have a porter open a gate for me, and I enter my luscious compound of safety, wealthy families, and happy little children who I adore and who think I'm cool because I ride a skateboard. I say hi as I walk by, I walk up four flights, and I "unwind" from a "hard" day with a beer in my hammock.
I love my life.
