Bogota Journal: Sounds

Colombians are not quiet people.  They love noise. They love making  it, they love hearing it.  I would almost imgine that the vast majority of Colombians would be uncomfortable with silence and solitude.  This is a very social culture, but social within the limits of class and kinship. On the streets people move along singly, in pairs or in groups but always as though they and their companions are the only ones present.  Pedestrian and road courtesy are almost nonexistent here.

This morning my neighbourhood was serenaded by a broken car alarm.  Over and over again. Or maybe it was a bird I haven't yet seen.  These people are obsessed with security, which given the hard times they have been through would be understandable.  I would say the broken car alarm is the signature sound of Bogota.  The sirens are tolerable.  Unlike the police, ambulance and fire sirens in Vancouver, here they are not so shrill that you have to cover your ears.

The thin air remains for me a constant issue.  I take long walks in the city but I try to move slowly and when possible sit to rest on a park bench or in a cafe.  People one on one are often nice, often very pleasant but I think they find me a safe person being a foreigner and therefore not part of the social hierarchy here.  My art seems to be an ice breaker and often it gets people talking and vsiting if I'm drawing inside a cafe.

I wandered into a wealthy neighbourhood of brick Victorian style mansions in the Chapinero yesterday.  They seem to have been converted into a university campus with throngs of students everywhere.  Still, a very pleasant and leafy neighbourhood.

The ghost in my room, whom I have named Manuel, has been quiet lately, though I sometimes seem to feel his presence.

The birds around here are generally not much to look at.  The real beauties are out in the mountains and the jungles.  Around Bogota there is a robin-like bird, a bit larger than our robin and grey all over with bright yellow beak and feet.  It is quite unafraid of people and has a pleasant song, rather like our own robin.  There is also a local native dove that can be seen everywhere.  If I want to see hummingbirds or other dazzling bird life I would have to go further afield but this is not going to happen on this trip.  No regrets really, I have plenty to do here already.