Tudo Certinho: A little bit of this, a little bit of that

At the risk of displeasing some of my constituents, i.e. Justin, with boring stories and lackluster writing skills, I give you another blog post in the life of Naki Mendoza.

You ever realize that after Monday and Tuesday the next three days on the calendar are WTF? Of course someone is gonna holler back that Thursday’s abbreviation is actually “R,” but it’s a clever enough observation that someone pointed out so let’s just leave it at that. This morning I found myself bemoaning the fact that it is only Tuesday. Usually the weeks go by very quickly being action packed with meetings, interviews, and such. But oddly enough things have been crawling by in the 36 hours of the week thus far. I had a pretty solid weekend that just ended that was sprinkled with the typical dosage of culture and fun times. Women have their pampering days when they treat themselves to manicures, pedicures; kids have their outings to Toys ‘R Us; and for the first time in a while I pampered myself to an equivalent self-indulging outing – I went suit shopping. In need of a touch up on my corporate threads I took a nice leisurely stroll through the mall trying on and decorating myself with different suits before finally settling on an Egyptian cotton navy blue pinstripe suit which came out to less than US$100 after the 20% store discount. Quite a deal I might say. Of course, me being far from a baller, the last time I splurged on suits was nearly four years ago in Thailand. The fact that the last time was so long ago and coincidentally also in a developing country speaks to either the quality of the local textiles or to my status as a non-baller. I’ll let you decide.

Suit shopping Saturday was followed by culture day Sunday. My co-worker Jessica and I went to a small town a little more than an hour outside of Bogotá called Guatavita. While it was in Guatavita where I enjoyed a very hearty menu del dia of broiled chicken for only US$3, the town is more famously known for being the present day actual site of the mythical El Dorado legend that the Spanish conquistadors were endlessly in search of. El Dorado, according to Spanish legend, was a city of gold. It was what Jay Goossen would consider West Virginia to be in comparison to western Massachusetts in other words. Well, in actuality the legend stemmed from Guatavita’s lake. Nestled in a mountain is a crater-sized lake that years ago had a gold-ish complexion to it prompting the local indigenous population to conjure up stories that a god, decorated in gold, descended down into the lake. As such, the locals paid homage by throwing gold offerings into the lake and bathing themselves while decorated in gold paint as part of certain rites of passages. Rumors and embellished stories reached the Spaniards who went on an endless pursuit of such a city of gold. Today, what remains is a very picturesque lake, but nothing more really. If it weren’t for the mystique, the legend, and the significance that the stories had in shaping Latin American history anyone hiking through the mountain would merely stop for a few pictures and comment, “wow, nice lake.”

Guatavita panorama

Despite being an extremely popular tourist destination it is not the easiest place in the world to get to. The bus that you take to Guatavita itself drops you off on a highway at the bottom of a mountain from which point you must proceed 7km uphill either by foot or in the back of a pick-up truck that you hitchhike on. The latter was how Jessica and I got up the mountain. Going down was much more pleasant as we befriended some people that were driving all the way back into Bogotá and were nice enough to offer us a ride in their car. Two of them were sociologists with specializations in transnational prostitution so we got an hour lecture on the global sex trade and the vulnerability of uneducated young Colombian women to the viciousness of this industry….in Spanish.

This weekend are Colombia’s legislative elections. Senate and lower chamber congressional seats are up for grabs. Then in May is the big presidential election. President Álvaro Uribe, in office since 2002 and lauded by many Colombians for bringing the country back to prosperity through his crackdown on guerrillas, insurgents, and paramilitaries, was just denied the chance to run for a third term by the Supreme Court. The Constitution only allows two consecutive terms but because of the country’s progress under Uribe he was interested in an exception to that small and tiny constitutional rule. Access denied. So in a few months Colombia will have a totally new government. Logistically, this weekend being an election weekend prohibits all restaurants and bars from serving alcohol. IDK, no hungover or drunk voters at the polls is the rationale right? It is also my last weekend in Colombia because we will soon be wrapping up the report that we are working on and on March 18 I am hopping on a jet plane to Paris. I’ll be there for a little over a week before shipping off to my next project, the location of which is still TBD. Or maybe it is determined, but I just haven’t been told of it. I am thinking of going to Cartagena (beach town on the northern Caribbean coast) this weekend or if anything staying in Bogotá and burning the city down to the ground one last time if flights are too expensive. But either way, the election and the conservative nightlife they usher in will make it a relatively tame last weekend in Colombia.