Pasto - Carnaval de Negros y Blancos

Think this pictures encapsulates it best. Eight hours south of Cali, Pasto hosts its main claim to fame, their "blacks and whites carnival" - a three day orgy every early January - full of painful chemicals thrown into one's eyes, spray foam packed out pores, and music bored through one's lobes, all while vicious liquids runneth over one's liver.

This fellow above is Patti. He's a Brit, and has a constant positive energy that's surprising for one of such skinniness, crackheads aside. He put it out there on New Years I believe that he and Mel and I ought to trio this three day festival. We hopped on to the idea, and upon meeting at the bus station found ourselves four men extra. The more the merrier and the more protection in the siege of silly string, talcum powder, espuma, and face paint this carnival turned out to be.

10 am round. I was basically devoid of energy at this point,

after a redeye bus and some sort of nap in the morning hours.

Upon venturing out into the town, we realized that lots of children had foam spray cans, and that when they attacked passersby, grown men turned out to be packing the same stuff, retaliating with gleeful and childlike mischievousness. So obviously we armed up fairly early on. And attacked each other as much as anyone else around. This was a dangerous place for digital cameras. And unprotected eyeballs. And open mouths...

This fall happened because I was being blinded by foam, turned quickly and smashed my shin into a low barrier. Then I got turned into a snowman.

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The Central Park, ground zero surrounded by tented drinking establishments. Slightly safer from the constant barrage, but not much.

Oh Pedro.

Day two we took a trip up out of the city, this is cloud and smoke rising from the nearby volcano, which had been belching rocks and lava days before we arrived. Swam in a natural hot spring, took a nice little break from the kidlike warfare.

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There were parades every day. The best part, maybe, was that the crowd, all of us, were just as much part of the scene as the marchers, as everyone on the sidelines sprayed each other with foam, or sprayed those parading, or sprayed the cops walking or motorcycling by. No one, absolutely no one, was exempt. It was an anarchist's dream, utter playful mayhem.

The last day was THE parade, and it went on for hours and hours. And hours. Started off with people on foot, then huge heads and crazy walked in contraptions, and by the end of the day, after I could've have possibly imagined more creativity, came the massive floats. The entire day was a skip back and forth between the edge of the street, the store ten feet back, and dancing and foam/powder fights in between.

(thanks Pat and Gabriela, for the plethora of pictures)

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Finale

And...the spectacle watching the spectacle.

And spraying the spectacle and chucking handfulls of talco at the spectacle.

Our wonderful adoptive Pasto friends. These two and their whole crew befriended us all instantly and danced with and fed drinks to and regaled and cajoled and did all those great things hosts do, yet having just then met us. Thanks you's.

Basically what our world looked like by the end of the day.

A Walk Home from Work

(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.

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Urban cattle. Another strange semi-regular sight.

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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.

Genius