The Million Dollar Ride

And I don’t mean a stretch limo joyride decked out with leather seats, champagne, and HD plasma TV monitors. In Colombia, what is colloquially referred to as the “million dollar ride” is when a cab driver pulls a weapon of choice on you, typically after concluding that you are a gringo (but still happens to many native Colombians), and takes you on a ride to the nearest ATM to withdraw as much money as possible to bankroll his night out on the town. A prevalent system in place here to avoid that is to call cabs from your apartment/office/or point of origin. It’s a real simple, fast, and efficient process. I dial 4111111 and reach an automated message telling me my request has been processed. It goes to a dispatcher who radios to taxis on the road that I need to be picked up and a cab driver calls in that he/she will pick me up. The cab arrives (usually no later than 10 minutes after the call) and I give them my code which are the last two digits of the phone number I called from. It ensures that the right person is picked up and the arriving taxi who called in the pickup has info on record so no foul play can go down. It is always more advisable to call a cab than to flag one from the street. But let’s face it, you can’t always call a cab from a point of origin. If you get caught in the rain leaving the mall or are heading home from a bar, well, almost definitely you are hailing a cab from the street.

Whenever I get in a cab that I hail from the street, my unofficial litmus test of sketchiness to gauge the likelihood of a million dollar ride is to check for two things: first, the cabbie’s ID sheet. It’s a laminated piece of paper hanging from the backseat with all his license and registration info. However, a lot of cabbie’s don’t have them visible for the passenger. Second thing to check is if the driver has a rosary hanging from the rear view mirror. Colombia being an overwhelmingly Catholic country, more drivers have rosaries than they do visible ID sheets. If they have neither a visible ID sheet nor a rosary, adios, next cab please! Yes, you can argue ten ways from Tuesday that religious people do bad things and yes I am perpetuating the common stereotype that Colombia is a crime ridden land of thieves and cocaine cartels. But it’s my blog and I can do what I want.

Speaking of stereotypes, here’s a video to watch when you have 7:52 of free time. (Watch the whole thing because it is meant to disabuse the stereotypes.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uzfXVyqTzI

Speaking of religion, in Colombia you know that you don’t need a cell phone to talk to God? By that I am referring to the catchy little sign outside my neighborhood church reminding people “Recuerdas que estás en la casa de Dios. Para hablar con Él, no necesitas tu cellular” (Remember that you are in the house of God. To speak with Him, you don’t need your cell phone). Bouncing around from Germany to Russia to Colombia with stops in Paris and Manalapan, NJ in between, and going long stretches without seeing close friends and family, few things in my life are necessarily constant. I try to keep up with my faith and go to church as much as possible as one way to ground myself in something constant in this whirlwind of a life I am living. It has also led me to some interesting experiences at some of the services I’ve attended around the world.

I search for English speaking Catholic masses wherever I go, most of which are easily just a Google click away. But being in Colombia now and having a familiarity with the language, I’m not pressed for English-speaking services. Not surprisingly, most of the English speaking Catholic services I’ve attended are dominated by Filipino ex-pats. Afterall, that’s essentially what the Philippines is – an archipelago of 95% English speaking Catholics. This was the case in Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris, and Moscow. A very interesting service I went to in Moscow was conducted half in French and half in English. The priest would say something in English then repeat it in French (or vice versa) but with a smooth eloquence that didn’t come off as repetitive. Even more interesting was the representation of the crowd. The French part of the mass was catered for not necessarily French from France, but for the large French West African population. The English, likewise, was meant to cater for not the Americans, but the Filipinos and Nigerians in attendance. More so, every group (French West Africans, Filipinos, and Nigerians) had their own choir and they alternated the songs that they sang in their native language. Adding more to the flavor, the songs were enhanced by a “local touch.” The French West African songs had a distinct, smooth, reggae beat to it. The Nigerians meanwhile added rhythm through a soft beat of the bongo drum.

Here in Colombia the services are much more traditional, the congregation much more homogenous. Every single one of the 7 services on any given Sunday is jam-packed standing room only. The church that I go to just down my street is an interesting mix between developed world modernity with its new-age architecture but a twist of developing world congregation. By that I mean the standing room only capacity for each service; the chaotic rush of people from all angles of the church at the same time to receive communion; and the life of the town that a church becomes on a Sunday morning with vendors galore and family gatherings all seeming to gravitate there.

So it’s interesting….I go to church around the world in an effort to root myself in something constant, something consistent, but even that is a tough task as I am always running into something new, something different, something refreshingly insightful that makes me appreciate the local surroundings.