Bogotá- Part II: Where rich and poor are walking hand-in- hand;

... and it came Sunday...

Nathalie invited me to accompany her in beautiful but sadly, really poor part of Bogotá. From Carrera 7 with Calle 163 you have to climb, climb up hill, where there are small, simple houses glued to a hill. Some of them do not have nor water nor electricity and to go up to your house you almost have to bite your knees. Nathalie is attending a CineClub and they are going to make a movie about a “Lost torn tennis”. Still full of impressions from the last day at the Feria de Arte, with all this fu...rich people that are buying stones for 60.000 USD it made me feel sad. Here not even a km away some of the people do not have even to buy food and so close by the others are throwing the money through the window. There is a really high rate of unemployment and it seemed to me that on this Sunday afternoon they were all kind of a drunk. But anyway the people seemed kind of happy, sitting in front of their houses, talking with relatives, listening to the music, singing, kids playing around. The goal of our workshops was to get to know the place where the movie will be taken. The “pueblito in Bogotá” fascinated me! Like images we have from the movies, old cars, loads of laundry drying outside, lonely dogs wandering around, kids screaming and practicing their improvised playing tools. It made me feel sad, when I thought that those kids might never finish their school, girls having their babies at the age of 14 or sooner and be forced to live from day to day and searching their opportunities in robbery.

We left the ”pueblito” cause it started to rain like hell. All hungry and with cold we dig in a hot, tasty Ajiaco (chicken- vegetable soup) prepared on open fire. We did not have any desire to go home and Nathalie was determinate that we are going to play Tejo. Tejo is kind of a typical Colombian game. Hm how to explain it. Look at the photos.
You have a playground with to sides and kind of a mud, where there are a little triangles that explode if you hit them with a small metal weight. We were playing terrible when I finally hit one. Hurra, we were happy. The place where we were playing was one of those typical small places, with a bar, playground for Tejo and what it can not be missing ”Rockola” a jukebox ;) with all the worst Colombian music you can imagine. But, carinos Colombianos no offence I love your music!!!

So after Tejo, we just wanted to do a short visit at Alejandros house, but his sister had a birthday so we could not say no to the cake and wine:). It was getting more and more late, we were watching photos, when finally it was to late to catch a bus;) So we all had to stay in Alejandro s house:) Imagine 7 people squeezed like sardines on 2 small mattresses. What a night!;)

Ok, I think I came to the end! What I wanted to say that Colombia, especially Bogotá it is a place where rich and poor are walking hand-in-hand. You can not imagine how poor and how rich one people can be. It hurts.

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