I Got a Job!

I know, I know, I'm a total sellout, trading in the freedom of the open road for the mundane confines of responsible employment. But in this case, I think it's worth it.

I'm working for a non-profit called optinnow.org, which is a project started by Opportunity International, one of the biggest microfinance organizations in the world. The idea behind the project is to find poor entrepreneurs who are struggling to get their business off the ground and put them into contact with small donors in the developed world, who fund these startups with small loans starting at $25 dollars. These entrepreneurs get these small loans as well as financial counseling and advice on every aspect of running a business, from accounting to marketing to financing.

The loan gets paid back and recycled into another small business, and on and on, multiplying the effect of every dollar given. Whereas most non-profits are successful if 60 or 70% of total donations actually goes to the poor, Opportunity boasts a 163% rating, which means it is self-sufficient, and growing rapidly. I believe it is the future of non-profit organizations.

So, what does that mean for me, you ask? Basically my job is to travel across northern Colombia talking to struggling business owners, translating their stories, needs, and goals into English, and documenting their situation with photos and videos. My goal is to create an emotional connection between this person in the remote reaches of Colombia and some web surfer thousands of miles away, and to show them how a relatively miniscule donation on their part can be the start of a whole new life for someone who desperately needs it.

I'm pretty much excited beyond all reason. Here's a video of what they do:

Cartagena

We arrived in Cartagena, Colombia a couple days ago and it's been a blast. It is a fascinating city, one whose historical importance is not properly emphasized by the history books it seems, maybe because it lies in a country that has been considered too dangerous for tourists.

In the centuries before the Panama Canal was constructed, thus rerouting practically all traffic between the world's two great oceans through its concrete walls, this city was the departure point for the riches of the New World on their way to Spain. Back when the U.S. was a minor colony of the British Empire, unimaginable quantities of gold, silver, and many other minerals and precious substances wound their way up through the Andes to Cartagena, which has the nickname of "Gateway to the Americas," where it was put on fleets of Spanish galleons for the trip to the metropolis.

The stories of the attacks on this city are amazing. The French and the English always coveted the Spanish possessions in the New World, and when it proved too difficult and costly to take entire colonies, they settled for capturing its fruits. Sir Francis Drake, who the Spanish call a pirate but the English think of as a national hero, invaded the city on his world tour of Spanish colonies, during which he held numerous cities ransom with the help of a large fleet and well-trained army.

The legend says that Drake walked into an abandoned Cartagena and, upon entering the governor's office and finding a letter warning the city of the "pirate" Francis Drake, became enraged and ordered the destruction of the cathedral, which had been under construction for years. Apparently even pirates have some pride.

But that's enough history.

Today the city is a really vibrant place. It has so many influences - the Caribbean flair, the South American richness, the Andean melancholy - all played out on the pervasive Spanish backdrop. It's a city that's hard to define, lying at the borders of so many cultural and geographic regions. But this diversity, as it always does, gives it great depth and complexity.

I'm staying in the old town now, a wonderful little maze of ancient houses, bouganvillea-covered balconies, and exquisite little squares. It's the kind of place that's easy to get lost in, yet somehow you don't care. Unlike in many other Latin American cities, the historical center is still functional here, with businesses and commerce and pedestrians lending it an energy that is hard to ignore. The street vendors are assertive but not aggressive, which is nice, and despite the strong tourist atmosphere it's easy to find restaurants and shops that are authentically local.

We'll see what happens.

Pics from Bogotá

My two weeks in Bogotá are coming to a close, and now I'm heading off to Cartagena on the Caribbean coast. Here are a few of the highlights from Bogotá:

In the supermarket here they keep the milk bags soaking in....milk. I guess they think the milk will think it's still in the cow and stay fresh longer.

The breakfast Vicky makes me every morning......awesome!

A land of contrasts.....

Tamales, one of the specialties of Colombia. Super tender chicken with a yellow pasty substance made of rice and potatoes and spices.

View of the city from Montserrat, a mountain right next to downtown.

The entrance to my school, with the ever-present military guards.

An exhibition at the National Museum had copies of famous statues that you could touch, showing how the greeks of ancient times were used to kissing, touching, and hugging their statues as a form of worship. How many people can say they've felt up the Venus de Milo? I can.

I found the Holy Hand Grenade! At the Gold Museum, which has over 30,000 gold artifacts from all over the Andes.

Botero, a Colombian artist born in Medellin, is known for his comically fat figures. Pretty funny if you ask me.

Super modern shopping center. I felt right at home.

Asian-Argentinian barbecue. What will they think of next?

Every sunday morning they close the main avenues and everyone goes walking or biking. Or in this case, aerobics.

The starting line for a cuicui race. Just riveting.

My friend Isabela and I, coming back from our Sunday walk.

Someone Read My Blog?

Ok, I am really freaked out right now because, to my amazement and horror, I found a reference to one of my posts on another blog. So now I´m thinking, what, does this mean people, like, you know, read those things? I mean, the audacity of some people, right? Here I am, just pondering my most private thoughts on my own personal blog, and this person just comes along and....reads it? I suggest everyone immediately go and protest this travesty by clicking on the following link: Daily Life in Rio de Janeiro

Tidbits from Bogotá

Nothing too exciting has happened to me yet, which is why you haven't heard from me. A few observations though.

You can definitely tell that foreigners are a rarity here. The other day I was having tea (don't mock me!) with 5 or 6 expats (people living outside their home country), and every person that walked by stopped a few feet from us and just stared. And these are relatively educated, wealthy, worldly residents of the capital. Whereas in Brazil my eye color might elicit a moment of hesitation, here I need to avoid eye contact altogether if I don't want the person staring at me in shock with mouth agape.

It's a much smaller country than either Brazil or the United States, and I don't mean in the obvious geographical way. Whereas in these countries you tend to think of yourself as a member of a confined region with its own distinct culture, Colombia feels like one big neighborhood. There are only 5 or 6 major cities, and you'll probably have family or at least friends in all of them.

Although there are different regions within the country, each with its own food, accent, and, of course, dancing style, you don't get the phenomenon that occurs in larger countries of regional sub-cultures who don't feel at all part of the same nation (say, downtown Manhattan vs. rural Texas in the U.S. or Alphaville vs. Acre in Brazil). Local cultural variations here seem to be considered legitimate expressions of an overarching national culture.

One unexpected thing I have seen here is the intense emphasis on physical beauty for women. I knew that Colombian women had a reputation for beauty, but I assumed that, this being a third-world country, it was more of a genetic blessing than a national pastime.

But no, you see in shopping malls young girls, maybe 16 or 17, with their faces (or boobs, or butts) bruised and bandaged, and the crazy thing is they're proud of it. Sure, there's tons of plastic surgery in Brazil and California (I do mean tons), but we're not proud of it. We don't advertise it. It's more like a mark of shame that we failed to have perfect proportions upon birth.

I've heard so many stories from expats about surgeries suggested to them by Colombian friends, everything from nose straightening to liposuction to eyeliner tattooing. And none of this is considered frivolous, superficial, unnecessary, or, I don't know, none of their business. There is no shame involved, it's almost as if we were talking about interior decorating or clothing.

That's all for now.

Security: Brazil vs. Colombia

I've never seen such a highly guarded city before. Every day there must be thousands if not tens of thousands of heavily armed guards everywhere. In front of government buildings, hotels, transportation centers, large corporate buildings, but also just on random street corners, basically looking bored and scratching their butts. I just want to ask them, "what are you protecting? the curb?"

And these aren't friendly neighborhood police officers with their billy clubs and whistles. Oh no. Many of them have assault rifles and are dressed either in full military fatigues or the more fashion-conscious urban SWAT team uniforms. The assault-weapon-to-person ratio (a widely accepted index of quality of life in Latin America) is higher here than in Rocinha, the favela where I used to live in Rio de Janeiro. I guess that compared to here, all those slums are mere retail storefronts. Colombia, on the other hand, is wholesale.

It's interesting comparing the security condition of Colombia to Brazil.

Going by the numbers, Colombia's situation seems far worse. While Brazil has pockets of urban squallor where government sovereignty enters only faintly or temporarily, Colombia has entire regions controlled by private armies, who extend their influence beyond these regions through bribery, extorsion, kidnappings, and bombings.

Brazil's drug trafficking groups and militias possess high-powered assault weapons, including automatic and semi-automatic machine guns, and here and there a grenade or other infantry explosive. The drug armies of Colombia, on the other hand, possess almost every tool available to modern militaries, including land vehicles, boats, planes, anti-aircraft artillery and rockets, radar systems, anti-personnel mines, and communication systems.

Yet when you compare how people feel about their personal security on a day-to-day basis, I'm sure Colombians would come out far ahead. The difference is that in Colombia the danger is confined largely to "la selva," the jungle, where the heroic military does battle against the evil drug lords (as the commercials here inform us). Even when there are acts of violence in major cities, the chances of being affected by them seem slim to none.

In Brazil, on the other hand, the "drug war" is seen (by the middle and upper classes) as simply one aspect of a larger class and race war occurring everywhere and at all times. Your assailant is just as likely to be a kid on the corner demanding your purse with a homemade shank in his hand as a big, bad drug trafficker. And yet it's all part of the same threat: the amorphous, mysterious combination of drugs, poverty, socialism, and black resentment.

How the World Sees U.S.

Holly Johnson - Americanos
Uploaded by btz1933

"Americanos" by Holly Johnson

There's a place where a
kid without a cent
He can grow up to be president.
A magic kingdom filled
with Barbie dolls

If you've got the time we can
make it a good time.

Americanos - blue jeans and chinos
Coke, Pepsi and Oreos - Americanos.
Movies and heroes in the
land of the free
You can be what you wanna be.

They know how to advertise
Sell you anything at any price
Need it or not
that's what you got
yeah.

Take no bull from anyone
we just wanna have some fun
We got the Queen of Soul
created Rock'n Roll
yeah!

Americanos - blue Jeans and chinos
Coke, Pepsi and Oreos - Americanos.
Low riding Chicanos in
the land of the free
You can be what you wanna be.

Satellite stations across the nation
That's cable TV for you and me.
I'm cleaning kitchens
washing pots and pans

Everything's organized from
crime to leisure time.
High schools and swimming pools
kings, sharks and fools.

Americanos - Blue Jeans and Chinos
..................

First Impressions of Bogotá

First Impressions

I've been in Bogotá a few days now, and I've found it to be a fascinating place. The people are embarrassingly nice, the food is amazing, the culture in general rich and unique, and a certain mystery permeates the city, inviting you to dig deeper.

A few observations.

When people say that Colombians are nice, they're really not joking. They make Brazilians look like Mr. Scrooge. And this is in the big bad capitol where life is relatively fast-paced and life is more anonymous. I've heard that in the countryside time actually goes by so slowly it stops, and you can drop an egg and it will just float in space. It's true, I tried it.

Today I asked a traffic cop - that lowly symbol of human signage who regards you as just another potential traffic law violator, how to get to the bus lines. I walked about 100 meters in the direction and, since I hadn't really understood what he said, turned on the wrong street. Well this guy had kept an eye on me, just another annoying tourist, and ran about a city block distance after me to tell me the right way.

When you stop by a store or restaurant to ask for directions, they make it seem like you're practically doing them a favor by listening to their response. They also insist on giving you several different versions and repeating them as you try to walk away - I guess Colombians and Brazilians aren't so different after all.

It is cold here. Gosh darn it. I wear my ski jacket in the house and use like 5 blankets. Vicky has to wake up at 5 to turn the water heater on so we have hot water a few hours later for our shower. By hot water I mean 2 minutes max, and I have to continuously turn the cold faucet down during those 2 minutes as the hot water runs out.

The city itself is actually quite organized and clean. It is laid out on a grid system: the calles run from east to west, and the carreras from north to south. This means that any location can be identified by its calle and carrera. Basically this intersection plus the building and apartment number is the address. If you're really fancy you can even use the Pythagorean Theorem to find the distance to your destination. And you thought all those years of math classes were for nothing.

I had managed to convince everyone that I was a full-blooded Brazilian, which was pretty funny, but also nice, as I was spared some of the gringo skewering (at first). I had my first salsa class today, which took place at the school and included the other students in my class, a German guy and girls from Austria and England. Needless to say, the second I started dancing my cover was blown, and I had to admit I had ´merican in me, which explained everything. Oh well.

Safe Arrival

Hey, just wanted to let everyone know I arrived ok and now I´m chilling at my host family´s house in Bogota. Her name is vicky and she´s super cool, very friendly and talkative (excellent for comprehension training). Today is Sunday so the city is dead and tomorrow is a holiday of some kind so classes start on Tuesday. I´m excited because I´m learning really fast and vicky told me that there´s huge demand for English teachers here. Apparently they negotiate contracts to fly them to colombia and provide housing and everything. I´m hoping the fact that I´m already here and fairly independent will strengthen my bargaining position.

Besides that I´m absolutely loving it, such a rich and interesting culture, so many things to explore and learn. I can already tell I´m going to have a lot of things to blog about.

Stay tuned!

Tourists

I hate them. They are the bane of my existence, seemingly pursuing me to the most remote and unwelcome places, torturing me with their mindless, inane comments, their very presence grating on my soul.

Why do I hate tourists? Why are they so evil? What is the word limit on this post?

First of all, because they serve no useful purpose. They don't contribute anything, they don't help anyone, they offer no constructive input. Not only that, but in the vast majority of cases they actually help to cheapen and destroy everything they come into contact with.

They are like parasites, sucking the vitality out of any authentic place they find, inspiring a cycle of standardization and commoditization that replaces organic creativity with factory-produced crap.

The locals who actually gave the place its uniqueness are pushed out by rising property values and costs of living as the yuppies move in and buy vacation houses, which they occupy a couple weekends a year. Visa and Mastercard pop up in every window as Coke and Pepsi appear on every ashtray, beach umbrella, and store sign.

Cultural events eventually begin to revolve around national holidays and other traditions evolve (or stop evolving) to fit the stereotypes of snap-happy gringos eager to fill another photo album with the same exact pictures everyone else takes. The local economy is bent to the will (or to the wallet, I should say) of the transient overlords, leaving behind productive and creative pursuits for the sake of parading the herds before whatever façade they want to exist.

But most of all I hate their attitude. They say they "know" a country after driving across it by bus, which is like saying you made love to a woman after bumping into her on the subway during rush hour. If they spent more than 3 weeks or a month in a country (a country!) then they really consider themselves experts, judging the relative merits of Barcelona vs. Madrid or the Peruvian Andes vs. the Chilean Andes.

These people love to say things like "OMG there's nothing to do in Bolivia, you shouldn't even go there!" or "I saw Recife, Salvador, and Rio - I've pretty much seen everything in Brazil" or "I've been in Argentina two whole weeks. I'm so tired of this country." They say these things to hide their profound ignorance about every aspect of these countries and their cultures, and also to cover up the fact that they can't wait to get home because they're terrified of everything they experience.

You know what I really want to say to these people?... Shut up. Yeah you. You've experienced nothing, you know nothing, you are nothing. Ok just kidding on that last one. But no really you suck.

I have such a strong belief that each and every country contains literally a lifetime worth of experiences and knowledge and discovery. Going from tourist trap to tourist trap in air-conditioned buses (or worse, the air-conditioned bus of the mind, also known as "complacency") is like eating just the decorative foliage on each platter of a huge feast and then declaring that you've experienced the best of each dish.

You know, I've decided that I'm never going to be a tourist again. Yeah, you heard me. As of now I foreswear any and all tourist activities. As soon as I finish this mojito and this beautiful woman finishes massaging me as I watch the sun set over the hotel pool, from that very moment on I will never be a tourist again...

Goodbye Brazil

As my time in Brazil comes to a close, I feel a strong need to write a post entitled "Goodbye Brazil," thus continuing my long and venerable tradition of summarizing deeply meaningful experiences in ill-fated attempts at being witty and/or quirky.

What's difficult is that I've realized that Brazil is a part of me. My experiences here have shaped who I am so fundamentally that I can't really think about them objectively. It's like if someone asked you, "what was the most important thing you learned during your childhood?" The only real response is "all of the above."

But I think if I had to summarize it, I would do so like this:

I think that the reason I love Brazil is that it is a reflection of humanity (that includes me). We humans are complicated, we're constantly evolving, we're bundles of contradictions; we're violent, loving, prejudiced, backward; we desire what isn't good for us, take for granted the most priceless gifts; we are torn between the new and the familiar, between modernity and tradition; we are beautiful, exquisite beyond words; capable of immense destruction and perversity as well as the most noble ideals; we are creative creatures, constantly mixing and matching in endless variety, compelled simply by our nature to give birth to new forms of expression; we are social beings, who crave community like the air we breathe; we want the best of all worlds, to have our cake and eat it too, to fulfill our potential in every area all at the same time and preferably right now.

That is me, that is Brazil and its people, that is humanity.

I could go on, but I think that is essentially it: to see Brazil is to see yourself, stark naked and without pretensions, in all your glory and all your shame, whether you like it or not. The secret is not to like everything you see, nor to make the reflection conform to your expectations, but simply to experience the sublime pleasure of being human.

I think everything else pretty much falls under that.

American Cities in Brazil

Here is a fascinating video on the communities of immigrants from the former American Confederate states who settled in Brazil after the Civil War. Extremely weird.

I found this video on a really cool blog called Adventures of a Gringa in Rio, which is written by a 24 year-old girl from New York living and working in Rio.

Brazil Sends Troops to the Amazon

Who said Brazil doesn't care about the Amazon? Here's an article describing how they're sending 30,000 troops to help protect this precious reserve of biodiversity. Their motivations, however, may not be as sincere as you think....... (mua ha ha)........

Ecowordly.com: Why is Brazil Doubling Its Military Protection in the Amazon Rainforest?

Modern Brazil

I went to MASP, the museum of modern art in São Paulo, this week, and there was one part of the permanent exhibition that stuck in my mind. It was the part on myths and heroes, with paintings by some of the classic renaissance artists and their descendants.

What stuck with me was the blurb at the beginning of the collection, which explained with a matter-of-fact tone that modernism - which apparently is the nuclear explosion in whose apocalyptic aftermath we all live - essentially killed the idea of the hero. Rejecting the idea that had prevailed for centuries (millennia?) that there actually existed men with perfect character and unfailing courage, whose lives we were supposed to imitate, modernism exposed these heroes as simply human: full of the decay, depravity, and imperfections so characteristic of our race.

What this made me realize is that this is one of the fundamental differences between the industrialized world and Brazil. In Brazil, heroes are still going strong, and so are villains, and actually much of the mindset which modernism so ferociously eradicated in the northern hemisphere remains deeply rooted in all levels of society here.

In short, Brazil essentially exists today in a pre-modern state. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Now let me be clear. I'm not saying that Brazilians are stone-age neanderthals or that this country is somehow inferior to its more industrially developed counterparts. Not at all. What I'm really talking about here is the difference in mindset and worldview between these cultures. What I'm talking about here is a psychological difference, and not a question of who is better and who is worse.

Let me explain.

In the United States (actually I should say cosmopolitan U.S.), we are totally steeped in the principles of modernism. From the very earliest of ages, we are taught its principles in school, in church, on TV, in the movies, and in print media like the incontrovertible pillars of reality that we believe them to be, right alongside the Law of Gravity and how to tie one's shoes.

What are these principles? That our success is our own responsibility, that there is a clear relationship between work and reward, that we have to be constantly improving ourself in every way, that we need to impose order on a disordered world, that we need to maximize our efficiency in order to compete, that we require a minimum level of material comfort to be happy, that things like the corporate ladder and the military-industrial complex and campaign finance and laissez-faire are permanent facts of our existence, completely out of our control.

Now most of you were probably offended by that list. Most of those things to us norteamericanos are seen as self-evident, beyond questioning. I'm not even saying those things are necessarily wrong, just that they don't give the full picture.

In Brazil they have preserved some of the best ideas from the age that came before industrialism, before we expected to spend a good portion of our lives in factories and later offices. Ideas like the sacredness of family (what a concept!), an appreciation for the so-called "finer things in life," the art of actually relaxing, a sense of tolerance for the inefficient, the weak, and the uncompetitive. These are things that the "modern mind" forgot about a long time ago.

In short, traveling to Brazil for me is like stepping into the past. Some things are romantic and quaint, remnants of a past age when things were simpler and more pure. Other things are repugnant, remnants of the same age when things were harsher and more intolerant. Either way though, it is a new perspective, which is always a good thing, regardless of your age.

Oxygen

"Oxygen" by Willy Mason

* I wanna be better than oxygen
So you can breathe when you're drowning and weak in the knees
I wanna speak louder than Ritalin
For all the children who think that they've got a disease
I wanna be cooler than TV
For all the kids that are wondering what they are going to be
We can be stronger than bombs
If you're singing along and you know that you really believe
We can be richer than industry
As long as we know that there's things that we don't really need
We can speak louder than ignorance
Cause we speak in silence every time our eyes meet

** On and on, and on it goes
The world it just keeps spinning
Until I'm dizzy, time to breathe
So close my eyes and start again anew

I wanna see through all the lies of society
To the reality, happiness is at stake
I wanna hold up my head with dignity
Proud of a life where to give means more than to take
I wan't to live beyond the modern mentality
Where paper is all that you're really taught to create
Do you remember the forgotten America?
Justice, equality, freedom to every race?
Just need to get past all the lies and hypocrisy
Makeup and hair to the truth behind every face
That look around to all the people you see,
How many of them are happy and free?
I know it sounds like a dream
But it's the only thing that can get me to sleep at night
I know it's hard to believe
But it's easy to see that something here isn't right
I know the future looks dark
But it's there that the kids of today must carry the light

[Repeat **]

If I'm afraid to catch a dream
I weave your baskets and I'll float them down the river stream
Each one I weave with words I speak to carry love to your relief

[Repeat * , **]

- thanks Olivia! ;)