photos

I know I've been pretty slack with putting photos up here (I do have heaps), and cause I really can't be arsed doing it right now I'm just going to put up a link to the blog of my workmate, Andres.

It's all in Spanish, but the photos aren't, so if you go to http://andrestriana.myaiesec.net/ you'll see some photos of the conference in Bogotá (the first week of the project), a few from our office here in Bucaramanga, and some from our rafting trip to San Gil...

best news I've had in months

I found a TV station here that comes from the Carribean that's going to broadcast the entire Ashes series live!!!!!!!!!!

This is what a friend of mine would call 'phenominchable' news!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you don't know what the Ashes are don't worry, it's not your fault - it's probably got a lot to do with the nationality printed on the front page of your passport...

Caving in San Gil

Hey, I know this is a bit late (I was in San Gil about 2 weeks ago), but I've been busy, so this is the first chance I've had to put this entry up...

This follows on from the rafting entry (we went rafting in the morning, then caving in the afternoon) ...

Caving: After a bit of lunch and rest we headed back up into the mountains for the caving expedition. I had managed to pop my ear when we capsized the raft earlier in the day, but a few painkillers from the chemist helped, and we went into the operator's office to register. When I was told earlier in the day that we were going 'to visit a cave' I had imagined something like Jenolan Caves in the Blue Mountains (if you don't know where these caves are and you give enough of toss to look it up, just go to Google - if you're Australian and you don't know where they are then I suggest you forget Google and simply go back to school). Anyway, I thought these caves would be big, well-lit, dry, and relatively elderly couple/expecting mother/life-long claustrophobic (a.k.a. me)-friendly. My first clue that the caves might be a bit more full-on than this was the arrangement of miner's helmets and protective jackets that were laid out in front of the operator's office; the second clue was the consent form we had to sign, which asked for our blood type, and specifically stated that claustrophobics, people who couldn't swim, people with pretty much any semi-serious medical condition, and expecting mothers weren't allowed to enter the cave. The final clue (and the giveaway) was a photo board in the office that displayed a range of photos of people in the cave. These people weren't walking around well-lit caverns with their children and their elderly relatives - they were crawling on their stomachs through tiny gaps, and up to their waists in muddy water. By this point I was pretty sure I wasn't going to enjoy this, but I though, "Fuck that, I've already paid, and I'm buggered if I know when I'll be back here, so why the hell not?” Maybe it was the pain killers that I took for my ear that were talking, or maybe I was still drunk from the night before and delirious from a lack of sleep - either way, I decide to go into the cave...

So, we got fitted out with our helmets, our protective jackets, and our harnesses (why did we need to wear a harness...?), and followed our guide down to the cave's entrance. Surprise Number 1: The only way into the cave was by flying fox (thus explaining the harness. In turn, we all leaped off the rock platform where the flying fox started, and made it safely to the entrance of the cave. It was here that the instructors gave us the run down of what we'd be doing: he also delivered Surprise Number 2. Surprise Number 2: The way out would have a lot in common with the way in, but with water, and without a harness. With the major surprises out of the way, and everyone happy to proceed, we said goodbye to the daylight and went into the cave.

The first part was fairly basic: just keep your head low and your eyes forward, and you’ll be fine. We went through a big part of the cave that was full of bats; we sat for a while with our helmet torches off to experience total darkness; and we got wet up to our waists where there was no other option. This was all fairly normal and what I had expected (at least after I had revised my original expectations), but what came next was a bit more of a challenge. The instructors decided it would be fun if we moved through the cave in total darkness, so we all turned our headlamps off and put a hand on the back of the person in front of us. Step by step we moved forward into nothing, feeling around above our heads for variations in the height of the roof, and completely dependent on the person in front of us for a description of the lay of the muddy, uneven floor; we continued like this for what seemed like a long time, but it was probably no more than 10 minutes. The instructors eventually said that we could turn our lamps back on, and they invited us to look back at where we’d been walking. What I’d thought was a tiny, narrow passage was actually a reasonably large space, and with even a small amount of light it would have been easy to navigate. It was frightening to realise just how much your perception of an environment can change with the loss of just one sense – unable to see, everything had seemed far more enclosed and uncertain, and the level of reliance each of us had on the person in front of us was both unnerving and empowering.

The next challenge was a part of the cave that was only a metre (or less) high, which meant that we had to push ourselves through on our stomachs; I was only on my stomach for a minute or so, but during those 60 seconds I was highly conscious of the fact that I was close to 800 metres below the earth’s surface…

The final part of the cave was the best. To get out, we had to swim about 30 metres through a tunnel, and then jump off a four metre platform into an underground rock pool. It was just like something out of an Indiana Jones movie (only we weren’t searching for lost artefacts, no one was chasing us with rifles, and Carlos was the only one of us with a pretty girl in tow), and I reckon it’ll take something pretty spectacular to beat swimming through an underground tunnel as the most fun thing I do during my time here in Colombia…

That night we celebrated Carlos’s birthday by drinking a bottle of vodka in the park… Colombian vodka’s not the best, but it’s no worse than the crap that we hand over the bar in the nightclub that I work in (Hi Troppo) … After we finished the bottle it was time to catch up on the sleep that none of us had had the night before, so most of us went to bed (I think Ranko, Jean and Amit took a bit of time to finish off the bottle of rum that Amit had brought with him…) … Oh, and an earlier highlight of that night was the amazingly slow meal we had (customer service obviously wasn’t this place’s priority, and the food was crap, so I’m buggered if I know how they’re still open… My guess is that the place is a front…) … The only thing that made the meal memorable was that we got to share it with a crazy old guy that spent the best part of half an hour staring blankly at us through the window…

quick update

The last few weeks have been pretty packed, and I'm short on time, so instead of trying to write it all down in detail, I'll just give a basic rundown...

The week after coming back from San Gil (I'll put up the caving story when I get time) I worked for a few days, then that weekend I went to Armenia with my favourite drinking buddy, Mayo. The 12 hour bus trip through the mountains was painful (you try sleeping when a bus is making 180 degree turns every minute or so), but it was definately worth it. Armenia is a small city in the heart of Colombia's richest coffee producing zone, and has some pretty amazing scenery, and really great people. It was a long weekend, and the plan was to leave on Monday night, but we decided to stay another day, which was good, cause it meant that I got the chance to got to go to Acción Social's territorial unit in Armenia, where my friends Victor and Nicolas work. It was interesting to see just how different things can be in the same country. The Coffee Zone seems a lot calmer (the territorial unit in Armenia maintains one Attention and Orientation Unit (UAO), (in Bucaramanga there are three), and everything seems a lot more organised...

This week at work has also been far more positive. I'm now spending most of my time actually working with people, not just in the office, which is really good. Since there was no real set role for me here when I came, I've been able to pretty much do what I want (within a certain framework, naturally). A real positive is that my Spanish is finally at a level where I can work relatively independently, so I'm now able to direct my energies into things that genuinely interest me. Most of this week has been spent conducting structured interviews with displaced people (the structure is provided by the government), and it's been a good chance to hear people's current reality and past experiences (most of which are horrific) direct from their mouths, and not just from a book or a policy document. These interviews have been a good experience, but I still find them very structured, and the amount of people that are always waiting to be interviewed means that there are constant time contraints. To remedy this problem, I've started planning some discussion/focus groups that I'm going to conduct in the UAOs. The idea is that the discussions will be informal, and the groups will be small. There will be no set 'yes' or 'no' questions, and all information will be completely anonymous (no names will be taken); I plan to provide a few general themes for discussion, and then just see where the discussion heads... Hopefully that way the things that are discussed will be what the people actually want to discuss, and not simply what the interview questions say they have to answer... Eventually, I'd also like to involve students from local universities in these discussions, but that's a more long-term goal...

I think that's enough for now... I'll add some photos when I get around to it...

Rafting in San Gil

San Gil's a nice city: it's got pretty mountains, a peaceful river, some nice colonial buildings, and a relaxing park. But really, who gives a toss, cause you can see this sort of stuff in plenty of places in Colombia. The real reason people go to San Gil is cause it's the adventure capital of Colombia. Early Sunday morning (about 5am) we met up with Kelly (a Colombian intern with the project, and also Carlos Leon's lucky girlfriend - trust me girls, the guy's a catch), and got the bus to San Gil (just over 2 hours from Bucaramanga). Once we arrived, we had a bit of breakfast to remedy some hangovers from the night before (mine hangover hadn't hit yet, cause I still hadn't slept), and checked into a cheap hotel while Carlos went and checked out some prices with the adventure tour companies. We eventually settled on a 50,000 peso (AUD$28) deal that was made up of whitewater rafting in the morning and caving in the afternoon, and headed down to the tour operator's office to register for our rafting trip.

Rafting: after a bit of a wait while the rafts were prepared, we were taken high up on the Rio Fonce. We had a quick chat about safety, learnt some basic paddle maneuvers, and ten minutes later we were on our way down the river with our instructor, Mario. The rapids on the part of the river we were on go up to level 3, and apparently when the river is higher (in October and April) they reach level 4. It started off pretty easy, in fairly calm water, but as we got further down the river the rapids picked up in intensity, and it got more fun. About half way down the river, Mario suggested that it would be a good learning experience to capsize the raft in a rapid so that we could practice our rescue techniques, and this was probably the most fun part of the time on the raft. After that we got to float outside of the boat for about 20 minutes which was really relaxing, and probably the highlight of the morning. It felt really good to be able to spend some time outside of the city after a full month in Bucaramanga - it was a similar sort of feeling to the relief I feel every time the train from the city gets to the Hawksebury, which for me marks the start of the Coast...

Next update will be caving...

long weekend

Right, since I've been receiving a few complaints that this blog has been full of "moralising and sociological bullshit" (to quote one of the highly sensitive individuals that commented on one of the entries), I've decided to include something that has absolutely nothing to do with the work I've been doing.

This long weekend a few of the other interns from the project came to visit Bucaramanga and to go to San Gil, which is a town that's just over two hours away, famous for whitewater rafting, caving, abseiling, rockclimbing and paragliding. On Saturday morning, Sam (Switwzerland), Ranko (Holland), Amit (India) and Jean-Maxime (the French part of Canada) arrived in Bucaramanga at about 6am, but since I slept in, I went and met up with them a few hours later. During the morning I took them to Girón, which is a small colonial town near Bucaramanga, and then in the afternoon we met up with Carlos Leon (from Bucaramanga, and the virtual dialogue manager for the project we're working on), Christian (another intern who's working in Bogotá), and Andres (the Colombian guy I'm working with) The plan was to head out to a town called Piedecuesta and use it as a jumping-off point for another town, but we ran out of time, so we decided to spend a few hours in Piedecuesta instead. There's not really that much to do in Piedecuasta, so we ended up going to a tejo club to have a few beers. Tejo is a game that's quite popular here in Colombia, and played mostly by men (I didn't see a single woman in the place we were in, so it's clearly not a place to go if you want to pick up - in fact, the only thing you're likely to pick up is a viral infection from the open urinal). It's a pretty simple game that involves lobbing an iron weight at a raised platform made of mud, in the centre of which is a small triangle of phosphorus that's placed on top of a small metal ring. The idea is to get the weight to hit the phosphorus so that it explodes and burns. Some people take it pretty seriously, but I think that for most men it nothing more than an excuse to spend the afternoon on the piss with their mates, away from the watchful eye of their wife or girlfriend. Either way, it was fun to try it, but I can't see myself getting hooked - it's not the most interesting game in the world, and once the initial thrill of making something explode wears of it's even less interesting. It's a lot like lawn bowls, in that the main attraction is that it's a game that even the least fit of us can play - and you can even do it while you get on the piss.