Suba

Yesterday was quiet.  I went to the money exchange to change what I have saved so far on this trip to Canadian currency. It feels nice seeing and handling Canadian money again.  It feels like I`ve been gone away for a lot longer than nineteen days.  Last night on CNN they were interviewing three of Justin Trudeau`s cabinet ministers (all women, and for my Gentle Reader who does not live in Canada, Justin Trudeau is the current prime minister of Canada.  You would be surprised how few people outside of my country know this.  Not that I blame them.)  I was impressed by them and the whole idea that, especially now that our ten year Harper nightmare is over, things are being done civilly, gently and kindly in my country again and what a contrast to the bitter insult slinging that is passing for campaigning in the USA.  I do tune into CNN every night by the way, but after ten or fifteen minutes I simply haven`t the stomach for more of Donald Trump.

Yesterday I wandered again through that lovely network of parks in parts of Northern Bogota.  I have really been making an effort to not let people`s poor social skills here get to me.  So I spent time on three different benches.  I had to escape the first two benches to get away from smokers nearby and really looked carefully (but not too carefully! ) at those around me to just get a sense of them as individuals.   It seems to be working.  Following a visit in a cafe then a grocery store I found myself engaging with staff and other customers.  One to one many of these people are quite lovely and warm and interested in my country.  There is something about the zeitgheist of Bogota that seems to bring out the worst in people.  It is understandable.  This is a big city and people are constantly on the move and constantly coping with stuff.  There is also the collective trauma of the recent armed conflicts between FARC and the paramilitaries that for a while engulfed parts of Bogota and other cities in violence.

I see other factors as well that have caught my attention.  There appears to be in Colombia a very strong winner takes all mentality.  I don`t know about Chile under Pinochet, but Colombia with its rampant market economy and weak social infrastructure would appear to be Margaret Thatcher`s South American dream country.  When she famously declared that there is no such thing as society I think this is what she might have been referring to.  I watch TV every night here and on many public programs there is a push towards encouraging Colombians to take better care of the environment and to take better care of one another.  I`m not sure if the message is getting through.  There is something about the history of this country that seems to inhibit people from working together outside of the traditional matrices of family and work and I really wonder if there is perhaps limited hope for this country.  People are very car dependent here and it is an already given that motor vehicles and driver`s rights always trump the rights of pedestrians.  When I saw a traffic cop directing cars to keep going through even though it was a walk signal and pedestrian right of way I commented on this to the lady standing next to me.  She agreed that it was stupid to ignore pedestrian rights but what can be done about it?  There seems to be a deeply ingrained mentality that if you are not driving a car you are somehow inferior and you ought to know your place, which is on the curb watching sadly as car after car goes by preventing you from getting across the street.

Today I ventured a bit further than usual and climbed the Suba hill which was interesting.  I was told there is a big park on top but I couldn`t find it.  The side that I started on is quite wealthy with lovely clusters of condos and townhouses, all gated communities of course.  When I got to the top and towards the other side of the hill things changed noticeably and I found myself in a noticeably poor nieighbourhood.  I would have gone further but there were stray dogs around and I didn`t want to take any chances.  The view is magnificent and the climb was arduous, but I figure that if I keep climbing hills like this while in my sixties it will vastly decrease the likelihood that I`ll need to wak with a cane when I am one hundred and will also increase the likelihood of my lasting past one hundred.  There are beautiful tropical flowers all over the place.