In quarantine here in Bogotá, the days flow into more days.

But sometimes the routine of sameness is broken up. At a certain moment, live amplified mariachis playing in front of my building can break into song without warning.

Mariachis, and Bogotá has many, have a long tradition here. It used to be that mariachis congregated in one area of the city, along Avenida Caracas in the 50’s blocks. Anybody celebrating an aniversary, a birthday or a surprise event could drive up and hire a group of mariachi musicians right off the street, and the mariachis would follow the hirer to his of her home where they would suddenly burst into song outside the window of the surprised. This usually happened at night to increase the surprise.

Quarantine has changed all that. Nobody is driving to Avenida Caracas to hire mariachis anymore. The business model has changed.

Now the mariachis are wandering the streets of Bogotá playing in front of random buildings, looking for customers in broad daylight, hoping aginst hope that someone will hire them and pay them for their music.

They are not alone.

Other musicians of all variety have begun doing the same. At any time of the day, there can be a sudden eruption of music on the streets outside. Today there was a very powerful drumming ensemble. I had never heard this sound nor this vibration before and was unsure at first about what was going on. My cats were equally unsure and raced to the windows. These were amplified drummers looking to impress, and they did, and again looking to drum up business, and again in need of money.

Colombia is going through one of the longest quarantines in the world. 2 other Latin American countries, Peru and Argentina, are in the same boat. In Bogotá, we started our quarantine early, mid-March, and we are still going strong. Colombia’s President Duque said this week that 57% of Colombians, out of a population of 50 million, are still living their lives in self-isolation. And our quarantine countrywide, just now, has been extended till the end of August. Occupancy in ICU’s in Bogotá is hovering at about 90%, and our peak is not expected for some more weeks.

Vehicular traffic on the street outside my building is minimal; there are at times delivery trucks, taxis and some cars. Quarantine has been a boon for food and supermarket delivery services, so there are often motorcycle deliverers, bicycle deliverers and even pedestrian deliverers coming and going. I see people walk their dogs, and some people, though not many, going out with shopping bags and coming back from the supermarket with their shopping bags full.

Sometimes our quarantine has been strict, only one person per household allowed out at a time for essentials such as groceries, banking or pharmacy purchases. And sometimes our quarantine has been more relaxed though the city still maintains a control that only allows those whose national identification number ends in an even number to go out for needed services on even dates, and those whose ID’s end in an odd number to go out on odd dates.

And in this way, we go on. Days flow into more days.

Every so often, there are desperate shouts from those in dire straits walking the streets. Help us! they cry out. We need food, we need help! Men and women are wandering the city begging for help.

But we are in the middle of a pandemic with an uncertain future. Few are in a position to offer scarce money to all of those asking for help, and to those who might come tomorrow encouraged by those who got something today.

Others come by my building, shouting Eucalipto from the street. They are selling eucaliptus leaves. Colombians have a soothing belief in the power of eucaliptus to cleanse the body. I’m all in, but I haven’t gone down to the gate of my building to buy Eucalipto leaves yet.

People have been telling me for months that I have to go out.

 You need to leave your apartment, many have said. Go and walk about your neighborhood. Feel the sun on your skin!

 My psychologist has advised the same.

 For months, I felt no pressing need to heed their advice. But I went out last week for the first time in four and a half months. I put on my N95 mask, my doorman opened the gate of my building and I was free. I walked downhill, knowing full well that I would have to retrace my steps uphill to get home. My mask felt tight on my face, and that was good. I felt protected. I walked about my Chapinero Alto neighborhood in Bogotá, feeling my breath pushing out and pulling in within my mask, not exactly comfortable but not completely unbearable either.

I found a city transformed.

Restaurants that defined the Zona G, the Gourmet dining area of the city, are now not only shuttered, but decimated, their furnishings removed, their windows displaying For Rent/ Space Available signs. The local Starbucks store and other coffee shops were open for to-go only; their indoor seating areas were blocked off for all. Some other restaurants have banners plastered across their facades large enough for passing motorists or bus passengers to see their phone numbers and their now Deliveries Only presence. It’s clear that many restaurants are gone forever. And gone with them the employment they offered to so many. Seeing this new ragged restaurant reality impacted and saddened me.

Corner grocery stores were open. These mom and pop stores have no choice. They open or they go hungry. Taxis were still parked on both sides of 65^th Street; their drivers were still congregated in front of the small storefront where they take their coffee on break. Nobody was actually drinking coffee. The drivers wore masks, but there was no social distancing; they were just chatting as close together as before. These are the same drivers who might show up if I ever requested taxi service, those professing their taxi disinfected and their willingness to serve. I am not, other than in an extreme emergency, going to be calling a cab anytime soon.

I stopped in at a vegetable store that had clear guidelines on how to self-distance and shop posted at the entrance. Many stores here are completely open to the street with neither doors nor windows during business hours, so there is ventilation. I paid for my vegetables in cash – fresh avocados for the first time in months – and put the change into a separate pocket of my jacket where is stayed isolated for many days.

In complete contrast to the United States, since March there have been no passenger flights, other than humanitarian, within or to or from Colombia. There is no intercity bus service, the most common way for Colombians to travel. In fact there is no interstate, or interdepartment as it is here, travel without special permission for extenuating circumstances. Where you happened to be toward the end of March is pretty much where you are today.

And so for the moment, the days flow into new days, one day not at all unlike the day before.

The post Bogota quarantine: Nobody is hiring mariachis anymore appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Once upon a time, we had Paint by Numbers. Now suddenly, we have Life by Numbers. Numbers circulate in our daily 2020 lives just as much as coronavirus, officially SARS-CoV-2, does in our air; known, unknown, knowable, unknowable, ambiguous markers of the times we are living in.

Infections

These days, news publications and websites worldwide first and foremost publish the new daily number of infections from coronavirus. There are websites, worldometer one of the most popular, given over to just keeping track of new infections, deaths and recoveries country by country on a day-to-day basis. Millions check in every day to see how we’re doing. We try to make sense of the numbers, to negotiate whether we are feeling more, or less, vulnerable to the immediate risk to our lives.

Deaths

In 1918, the year of the last pandemic, approximately 50 million people died. Our fears are well-founded. Though not even close to 50 million, the number of deaths from coronavirus is staggering. The stories of these deaths will not be fully told for a long time. In this year of 2020, we are witnessing a reordering of the world. The number of ICU’s and ventilators available in a broad geographic spectrum close to where we live is now essential information.

False claims, lies, self-congratulations

On April 9, the Atlantic attempted to document the number of misguided assertions made by Trump about coronavirus. More recently, CNN reported on the latest number of Trump’s false claims. And just this week 3 New York Times reporters waded through Trump’s pronouncements during this pandemic from March 9 forward. They found 600 instances of self-congratulation, far outnumbering the 160 instances of empathy or appeals to national unity.

Time and money

$1,200 is the first dollar amount of assistance being rolled out to some 80 million Americans by the federal government. With that, those of us included in the distribution will be good for a couple of weeks, or being optimistic, let’s say a month or even two if we can keep our expenses to a minimum. If the 18 months or 2 years being touted as a time frame for the arrival of a vaccine tallies true, many of us will have been in self-isolation and in need of assistance for more than 540 to 730 days by then. Today welcome news was reported: Scientists at the Jenner Institute at Oxford University in England are preparing for mass clinical vaccine trials by the end of May. Tests have shown their vaccine to be effective in monkeys. If the trials prove the vaccine safe and effective in humans, the first millions of doses could be available as early as September, well ahead of general vaccine expectations just weeks ago. We can only hope.

Steps

I’ve been in self-isolation for 7 weeks and counting now. I’ve started a regime of planned walking about my 84 square meter apartment as a form of exercise. My goal is 4,000 paces per day. Some days I register 3,000 paces back and forth, some days 6,000 and some days 2,000. I don’t stress over the numbers. 2 of my cats are mystified about this new walking behavior. They watch me perplexed as I walk counting numbers aloud as a way to keep my mind active and distracted. Sebastian, my youngest and most playful cat, joins me for a lot of my pacing, racing in front of me, beside me, behind me. He makes the whole endeavor a lot more entertaining.

Breathing

15 X 3; I take 15 deep breathes at least 3 times a day to help disperse my anxiety. My anxiety attacks are generally greater in the early hours of the morning as I’m waking. Sometimes, I take 15 deep breaths before even getting out of bed. Once I get my day going, the anxiety diminishes.

Aging

I’m about to turn 70, another number. It turns out that based on the statistics available so far I’m a perfect target for coronavirus, male just hitting 70. I wrote an innocent piece on turning 70 on Occasional Planet not so long ago at all. I wondered then where I was going to spend my 70^th birthday. At the time, I had no idea. It turns out that, in all probability, I’m going to spend my 70^th birthday in self-isolation in my apartment in Bogotá, most likely pacing back and forth from room to room counting out loud as Sebastian tries to trip me up.

Shopping

Right now in Bogota, Colombia, where I live, men get to go out for essential services such as grocery shopping on odd days in the month, women on even. My outings are solely confined to taking my garbage out and going down to the gate of my complex to receive deliveries. The doorman wears a mask, the deliverer wears a mask and I wear a mask. And of course, I wash my hands in soap and water for at least 20 seconds after each foray into the great outdoors.

Disinfecting

2 X 35 X 99.9. Today, I felt privileged. I had ordered 2 Lysol containers of 35 disinfectant wet wipes apiece online. The wipes guarantee the elimination of 99.9% of viruses. I had read that these wipes were now the equivalent of disinfectant gold and I ordered them without believing that I would ever get a delivery. Lo and behold and on a Sunday afternoon no less, the wet wipes arrived. And I gave a deep sigh of relief, and thanks, that things might truly yet return to some form of normal.

Work

I’m lucky. I can work from home. This week I gave 6 English classes using Zoom, did 2 translations and 1 commercial video voice-over. And I got to work from home on my art, my writing and my cartoons. Many millions of others don’t share the luxury of being able to work as I do. For untold numbers of people worldwide, the risk of contracting the virus is outweighed by the need to go out to work in order to put food on the table.

Vaccine?

The key number for all of us right now is how many days, how many weeks, how many months, now many years until we have a vaccine. Choose a number. The truth, despite the good work being done at Oxford University’s Jenner Institute, is that nobody knows.

The post Life by numbers appeared first on Occasional Planet.

A friend asked me on Whatsapp today how my cats were doing. They’re doing just fine. Early on, I fretted about having enough food for them for an elongated period going forward, but then I realized that I was able to order in. Ordering in just about anything is not new here in Bogotá, Colombia. I’m thankful that it’s still possible. The most fraught moments are the actual exchanges at the time of delivery. I sanitize as best as possible every new product entering my home, and then I do it twice just for good measure. And then I wash my hands vigorously. And then again, just for good measure, I wash my hands twice for probably way more time than the 20 seconds recommended.

My cats are doing fine. If anything, they are happier that I am home 24/7, and I commiserate with them more. They are indoor cats and thus basically under a permanent quarantine, for their own good, In fact, their reality day to day forever going forward is not at all unlike mine at present. They are indoor cats. Now, I’m an indoor person.

My cats and I have a daily habit where every morning I take them one at a time to an open bathroom window to breathe in the outside air and see what’s going on in their nearby outside world; cars leaving the parking lot, birds flitting around from tree to tree, neighbors coming and going. These days we make an odd picture from our bathroom window; me in a mask holding my cats one at time as they breathe in an air that I have come to distrust, watching an altered landscape where no cars leave the parking lot. My cats focus on insects that fly past from time to time and on birds that make an all too brief appearance at a sadly untenable distance. I focus on the sky, on the fact that today is cloudy or sunny. It’s a good beginning to our day. Without my cat window in the morning, I might never pay attention as to how today is different from yesterday.

As a freelance writer and artist, spending long hours working from home is not new for me. It’s always been part and parcel of my day to figure out new ways to connect to my creativity. Because of that, I might just be more prepared for self-isolation than many. And in fact, in these recent weeks, I’ve been involved in self-chosen creative projects pretty much from when I get up in the morning to when I decide it’s time to call it a day. And if I, given my propensity to work alone, am experiencing anxiety and at times reckless panic thinking, how must others unaccustomed as I am to being alone for long periods be reacting?

Silence has pretty much imposed itself on the world that I see outside my windows. It’s a soundless environment. Occasionally I see neighbors walking their dogs for short periods. At times, one or two other neighbors seek out the public areas of my building complex simply to alter their environment, I imagine, or talk on their cell phones in some kind of privacy. A couple of parents were taking their kids out to play in isolation last week, but that has stopped.

The external silence is sometimes broken by the sound of a motorcycle, a deliverer bringing food or medicine to someone living nearby or right here in my conjunto. I find the resonating and distant sound of the conversation between the deliverer and our doorman/gatekeeper a kind of solace. Our airports in Colombia for both domestic and international flights are closed. So I was astounded this week one afternoon to hear the sound of a jet taking off in the sky. And then I realized that, of course, cargo continues, must continue. Who knew that the sound of planes coming and going might provide daily comfort?

I have come to love the Bogotá birds that announce the coming of daylight here at 4:30 in the morning. I don’t sleep deeply these days (go figure). The birds give me reassurance that a new day is beginning, just like yesterday and just like any other day. These birds give me joy. I love the light that they daily predict, their message that at five in the morning the shadows of night will begin to disappear; that at five in the morning, I can finally fall asleep. And I do, often for hours, knowing that we continue as a human race and that my confused dreams are no more than an attempt to make the bounds of meaning come together for another day. It’s what we’re all doing communally right now, trying to make the limits of meaning come together for just one more day. Then, those same birds come back at 5:50 in the afternoon to announce another evening, another continuum, another everyday night approaching to another tomorrow.

I listen to music haphazardly. Sometimes it soothes, and sometimes I prefer quiet. Yet even within those parameters, I find time almost daily to listen to at least one Bach cello suite by Yo Yo Ma. I listen on YouTube to all or part of the Six Unaccompanied Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach concert that he gave at the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2015. The music is calming and I love this performance for various reasons. It was recorded with live commentary for radio, so the concert has a sense of immediacy – it might just as well be happening today. It‘s a way of getting back life as normal. And there is great audible joy in Yo Yo Ma’s playing and in the audience’s reaction and appreciation of his playing. He performed all of the suites from memory, a feat that is simply inspiring, that one among us might just be capable of so much. It’s a reminder that we are all capable of great things. And the music is healing. Yo Yo Ma on the day of the concert had this to say about the curative potential embedded in Bach’s Cello Suites:

One of the reasons that I’ve played these Bach Suites so much is that I think they do have a very powerful effect that’s encoded in the music. For some reason, this music more than almost any other piece seems to elicit or give to the listener some kind of response that is helpful going through tough times. I’ve had more letters from children, from adults, from people who just say I was going through this operation I was just…things were really tough … this music was really helpful. So I’m really grateful to have the opportunity to actually play this music live, but also now on radio, because maybe this music can be helpful to people going through hard times.”

The post Quarantined in Bogota appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In 1971 after graduating college, I left Ireland. The zeitgeist and personal choice led me to the US, first to Ohio and then to Boston before I settled for a good long stretch of years in New York City. Eventually I was drawn to the more tranquil life of Columbia County in upstate New York; at least until the effort of shoveling snow for at times 6 months of the year finally persuaded me to move to the warmer climes of Florida. But I was never a happy camper in Florida, the absence of snow and snow shovels notwithstanding. And so, looking for further change, I began to make investigative trips to Mexico and Peru. By happenstance, two discount airlines just then began to offer service from Florida to Bogotá, Colombia. The fares were less than $200 round-trip, and before long I was back and forth to Colombia for long weekends and semester breaks from my teaching job in Florida. I had a summer semester free and decided I would spend it in Bogotá teaching English. That was mid-May of 2010. By June, I had decided to move to Colombia.

My first commitment was to live here for a year. I would teach some English classes, do some writing and continue my work as a cartoonist. And I did that. I packed my Florida essentials and had them shipped to Bogotá. And as often happens, one year became two, and then two became three. And three has just now become nine. Colombia’s tourism slogan the year I arrived was the only risk is wanting to stay. And there might be just some truth to that.

Over the years, I’ve learned a thing of two about Colombia. Here are the nine most important things I’ve learned in nine years living in Colombia.

1. Patience is a virtue.

In my first year in Colombia, I befriended a psychic; we worked at the same real-estate development company. It’s so strange to me that I’m living in Colombia, I said to Mariana over lunch one day. You do know why you’re here, don’t you, she added immediately. The reason you’re in Colombia is to learn patience, she said without missing a beat. Well, she was the psychic, not me. But being in Colombia to learn patience made perfect and immediate sense to me. If there was anything I needed in my life, it was patience. New York and my own personality had instilled in me a need to go go go, and perhaps the time had come to change to slow slow slow, or at least to slow, slow, slower.

In Colombia, the opportunities for learning patience are multiple. People jump lines constantly, on the pretense that they just have a simple question to ask that will take at most a couple of seconds to answer. This is rarely the case. Not only do people jump lines, but they also interrupt your conversation when you’re with any customer service representative in any situation. Una preguntita, señorita, someone will say over your shoulder while you are earnestly and intensely trying to understand, for instance in my case, why $3000 had disappeared from my bank account. (It happened!) The common response to this type of interruption in other areas of the world might be Please Ma’am, I’m with a customer, take a place in line. In Colombia, the immediate response is for the customer service person in question to begin to interact with the reprobate who is trying to jump turn. How can I help? What happened? Let me take your details. Trust me, your patience will have many opportunities to the taxed in Colombia.

2. Buenos días, Buenas tardes

Politeness reigns supreme. Colombian Spanish is somewhat formal; its reach goes back centuries. Usted is often used instead of the more relaxed day-to-day tú. Boarding an Iberia flight from Bogotá to Madrid a couple of years ago, I was surprised to be greeted by the flight attendants by a simple Hola. Bogotanos are exceedingly polite, and there is a protocol of niceties that is followed at all times. The morning greeting is Buenos días. The response is Buenos días. In the afternoon, Buenas tardes is answered by Buenas tardes. My flight was an afternoon flight, and Hola just sounded wrong to my ear. In Lima, Perú, I walked into a bookstore and the woman working there greeted me with Que tal? (What’s up?) I literally looked around to see if she was addressing a friend of hers behind me. She wasn’t; she was greeting me. And again coming from Bogotá, I was surprised by the familiarity.

3. Con mucho gusto

Con mucho gusto are three words that define Bogotá, and in fact all of Colombia. With great pleasure! You will hear Con mucho gusto daily in all kinds of contexts. Paying for a coffee costing 70¢ at the phenomenally successful coffee chain Tostao, you say Thanks/ Gracias. The response is Con mucho gusto. And this is the Colombian part; the communication of Con mucho gusto is heartfelt. To me, more than With great pleasure, I always hear We’re all in this together. Leaving my orthopedist’s office this afternoon, I thanked him again for a very successful surgery. He responded with Con mucho gusto. And then getting out of the taxi that brought me home, I paid my taxi driver the amount on his meter (taxis are ridiculously cheap in Bogotá!) I said Thank you. And with a sincerity that’s hard to communicate in writing he told me Con mucho gusto.

4. Su merced

Addressing someone as Su merced goes back centuries. It has long gone out of use in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries. Su merced basically translates as Your Grace. The expression communicates respect on the part of the addressee for the person being addressed. It’s an extremely formal and old-fashioned choice of words. But here’s the thing; Su merced is commonplace in Bogotá. You will hear strangers addressing one another as Su merced, but you will also hear couples addressing each other with Su merced as a token of respect. I mentioned this to a friend in Peru some years ago and his immediate response was I want to live in Bogotá!

5. Family is close to the heart.

To understand the closeness of family in Colombia, I always think of the mothers that I see daily on the streets and public transportation of Bogotá, and yes fathers at times too, bundling their newborn in handheld blankets. Strollers and baby buggies are generally for the wealthy few and perhaps even then optional. Touch with newborns is essential and closeness to one’s blood here is physical. Colombians carry their babies close to their hearts. I can’t tell you how many times Colombians have told me I could never live outside Colombia because I need to be close to my family. Of course the truth is that as a result of the history of violence in the country, thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Colombians have been forced to do exactly that, to abandon their families and seek refuge elsewhere. The resulting pain is hard to quantify.

6. Getting from point A to point B is challenging.

There is no metro or subway system here. Getting around town, you are going to have to use the same major and minor thoroughfares of the city as everyone else. Technically, there are requirements for getting a driver’s license in Colombia that include a knowledge and understanding of the basic responsibilities of being a driver in a country of just about 50 million people. And yet, all of that understanding seems to go out the open car window for 95% of Colombian drivers once they get behind the wheel of their vehicle. In other countries, as drivers, we put the rights of pedestrians above all else. Not here. As a pedestrian in Bogotá, when a car slows to a stop, and this is never the case with a taxi (so watch out for taxis!) to allow you to cross the street at a legally designated crosswalk, you may just feel that you have to express a gratitudinal bow, a tip of a hat, a thumbs up, a wow am I lucky moment to the car driver in question.

Why as a driver when you pass your exit or turn-off should you continue on to the next exit to get back to where you wanted to be when you can just back up against traffic for a block (or 2) even on a freeway? Stop signs are generally understood as mere suggestions, compliance optional. The best advice when confronted with traffic, whether as a pedestrian, passenger or driver in Bogotá, is simply to keep your wits about you.

Bicycles have become more and more popular in recent years. In Bogotá, there are some bike-designated lanes. There are other sort-of-suggested bike lanes. And there are places in Bogotá now where with bike lanes, official bus stop waiting areas and age-old trees there is literally very little room left for pedestrians to walk.

The latest addition to street congestion here is scooters. Pick-up, drop-off electric scooters are everywhere. Pay by credit card; pick up your scooter and go. Drop off wherever. Wherever literally means wherever; this is often once again in the middle of a pedestrian sidewalk. On the way to your drop-off point, use the congested roadways mentioned above, helmet optional. Zip here and there through pedestrian traffic, or take your chances weaving in and out along the roadways of the city already crowded with motorcycles, buses, taxis, delivery and private vehicles trying to get from here or there. Oh and remember what I was saying about driver education. Scooter users get to play just by having a credit card, no knowledge of rules of the road required. Living here, you are going to have to interact with all of the above getting around Bogotá on a daily basis, like it or not.

7. Colombia has strata.

Colombia has a rare 6-tier stratified economic system that’s hard to get your head around. Looking for an apartment, you will be told that it’s estrato 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6. The designation is mainly based on the neighborhood; the appearance of surrounding buildings and the materials used in the construction of the building you might live in suggest to a government scout the estrato of your district. The estrato of your apartment is a small but important detail in choosing where to live. Living in an estrato 6 building means your utilities will be billed at a higher rate than anyone living in any other estrato in the city. Essentially those living in estrato 5 and 6 neighborhoods pitch in to help those living in estrato 1 and 2 areas. The bottom line in terms of taxes and monthly bills is that the rich pay more, the poor pay less. The system was designed to try to balance things out. Does it? That’s hard to say. As with any system, there are abuses and ways to circumvent the original intent. UN-Habitat, a United Nations group dedicated to better urban living worldwide, believes that the Colombian system of strata over time has come to divide rather than define the glue that holds us all together. And there’s some truth to that. On dating apps, you will at times find people looking for someone in a specific estrato, 2, 4 or 6 wanting to connect only to someone in their own estrato.

8. Your cédula (national identity card) is everything.

Want to know how having a national identity works day to day? Come to Colombia. Your cédula keeps track of you wherever you go, whatever you do. Buying underwear a few years back, I was asked for my cédula. I gave it. Did Colombia really need to know my choice in underwear? I doubt it. Buying paint when I was redoing my apartment, the same thing. The government now knows that I bought white paint to renovate my apartment. The first question you will be asked at any bank, clinic, government agency, airline, pharmacy or supermarket is Numero de Cédula? The country is trying to track the use of drug money; I understand that. Did I buy three private jets within the last month? That might raise an alarm. No, I didn’t. But did I really repaint my apartment with the white paint I bought? Nobody knows that but me.

9. Gentrification. What gentrification?

I just read a post on a Smith Street, Brooklyn, NY website bemoaning the flight of essential services from a long established, but now happening, NY city neighborhood. A supermarket that had served the neighborhood for years has given up the ghost: likewise, a local hardware store. I have seen gentrification at work in various cities in Europe and the United States. Step back in time. Gentrification, per se, doesn’t exist in Bogotá. There are hardware stores, ferreterías, on practically every block. Whatever you need in terms of the maintenance or upgrade of your home or apartment is available close to where you live. Likewise, sasterías. Sasterías are tailors’ shops where you can have any modification, repair, change or enhancement done to any garment that you own within hours. There are shoe-repair shops every couple of blocks. There is a Cigarrería, where you can buy anything from wine to an onion, on practically every corner of the city. Panaderías, bakeries with in-house ovens are yours for the asking. The sense of neighborhood and the services that neighborhoods provide are very much alive and completely at the service of their communities in Bogotá. Would I trade this for Carroll Gardens, New York, or Google’s Seattle, or any neighborhood in San Francisco right now? No way. In Bogotá, I’m doing fine: all the services that I need are just a stone’s throw away. And my peace of mind, as MasterCard might say, is priceless.

The post 9 things I’ve learned in 9 years in Colombia appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Bogotá, Colombia, has been celebrated and emulated worldwide these past 10 years for its innovative Transmilenio system of articulated buses. Reports regularly appear in print that cities far afield, including New York City, are interested in replicating Bogotá’s Transmilenio system. Here at home the system has done well in imposing order on a chaotic urban environment. Transmilenio buses run along designated lanes separated from daily traffic, and generally offer speedy, if at times very crowded, massive ubran public transportation.

All has been well and good for over 10 years. New Transmilenio lines have been successfully added to the system, most recently arriving almost, but not quite, to Bogotá’s airport. The system works efficiently, daily and consistently. Not quite a subway, not a streetcar exactly, not simply a bus, the Transmilineo initiative in Bogotá is a great urban compromise in transportation, an attempt to offer a speedier and lower cost alternative to a 20 or 50 year investment in subway construction. The citizenry of Bogotá, a city of no small size, has given the Transmilenio system a major thumbs up. The system is used by millions daily.

We were doing good.

We are accustomed in the United States somehow to believing that, anywhere other than here, radical changes in urban planning are happening daily, and that those changes are more citizen-friendly, more well thought-out and more successfully implemented than those here at home. Urban planners elsewhere are so much more adept in planning than we are in the US – so goes the thinking. Somehow, in the general mindset, we think that we are behind, less capable of initatiating change for the better than those anywhere other than here. These innovative changes, we believe may be happening in Spain, or in Canada or just possibly in an emergent economy such as Colombia.

Well maybe. Perhaps not. Do we lack perspective?

Back to Bogotá, to where we were doing so well. Here in Bogotá, Colombia, we have decided that we need to unify our non-Transmilenio bus system, our chaotic, broadly diverse, urban, antiquated, daily- polluting patchwork of buses into our very successful Transmilenio network. This sounds very good. Why not marry success to further success. Let’s have an integrated public transportation system unified under the already established Transmilenio brand.

What a great idea!

We could call this integration something unifying, something like Transmilenio Bus, for example. But no, no, no. no. Too simple. No.

Let’s complicate things. Hey, what the hell, let’s change the whole endeavor to something hard to pronounce like SITP. No, not the whole system, just the new bus part. SITP has such a ring to it! Try saying SITP fast three times in a row, in Spanish or in English. But wait. Why don’t we add the word Urbano to that!  Why not? Let’s call this new associated Transmilenio bus system the SITP Urbano. Okay, we’re good. We have come up with a name that is really hard to pronounce and without reference to what we were looking for, the already established Transmilenio brand. But what the hell, we have a new bus system, the SITP Urbano.

Let’s build the buses, give them their SITP (I am never sure if it is SITP or SIPT) logos, add their unifying blue color, and give them a sophisticated new electonic access system, and get them onto the streets of the city as fast as we can. But wait, shouldn’t we have a public education plan in place first, tell people what we are doing, build up to an official launching?  Nah. Shouldn’t we have vending machines that issue the new sophisticated bus passes at designated bus stops?  Nah. Where will people purchase these passes needed for bus entry? People will figure it out on their own. They really don’t need us to tell them what we are doing. Our citizens are very smart!

Guess what. We have had SITP Urbano buses roaming the streets of Bogotá for over a year now and almost nobody knows how to access these buses. We add new routes regularly, monthly it seems. We now have quite a lot of blue SITP buses plying our streets, adding to our urban congestion, traveling their routes generally empty of passengers.

It does not help matters that the designers of the system forgot to provide an easily identifiable means of recognizing where these buses are going, an electronic destination or bus number easily visible at night, for example. No, a non-descript placard, impossible to read, propped up on the interior bus windshield proports to tell you, if you have hawk vision, where the bus in question might be going.

But never mind where the bus is going, how do you pay to get on one of these buses. No, you cannot use cash as you can on the buses being replaced. Nope, you cannot use a Transmilenio electronic card, used throughtout the Transmilenio system. And so?

I have tried more than once to figure out how to get on one of these buses. One of these empty buses passes right by the intersection adjacent to my building. Coming home, it would work out great if I could use it. It turns out I have to apply for a boarding pass on line.   You have to have a fixed address and telephone number to apply. And you have the option of supplying your blood type, sex, occupation, and place of work. Apparently, the system wants to know my life in great detail before issuing me a pass. If you are a casual tourist or visitor to the city, you are going to be out of luck!  You want to go from here to there, sorry, no can do unless you have a couple of weeks available to apply for a transit pass. Funny, this system doesn’t ring a bell in any other major metropolitan center. Up to now, I have been able to get on a bus in London or New York without being vetted first.

So, I can apply for a pass on line. Can they mail or deliver that pass to me electronically?  No. To pick up my boarding pass once approved, I will need to go as far as the airport or to a few very specific out of the way other Transmilenio stations. This of course is not a Transmilenio pass. It will not allow me to board a Transmmilenio bus, simply the convenience of retrieving my pass at one of their stations. This pass is issued by a completely different company from the one that issues the pass that I need to get on a Tranmilenio bus. The Tranmileno authorities are up-beat, saying that a million passengers have already gotten their SITP transit passes. Well, perhaps those first million passengers went through the arduous process of getting a bus pass just for the fun of it, because one thing is for sure they are not riding these buses daily.

Is your head spinning yet?  I decided, as apparently have millions of other Bogotanos, that it was not worth the effort to figure out how to get on one of these new SITP Urbano buses. Nobody seems to have thought it worthwhile to offer a transitional way to board a bus already operating on the streets of the city, proferring cash say, or a widely available Transmilenio bus pass. Nope. Better to have these new SITP Urbano buses ride the streets of the city empty, taunting, like some kind of mirage ghost bus line of the future, than to encourage the citizenry to board!

“Bogotá Humana,” the Human City, is the motto of the present administration in the city of Bogotá, the same administration responsible for crowding the streets with a spanking new urban transporation system of SITP Urbano buses, unavailable to what appears to be about 99% of the citizenry.

Come on guys. There must be a better way to do this!

The post How not to upgrade a public bus system: Bogotá, Colombia appeared first on Occasional Planet.

They sell piggy banks on the streets of Bogotá, and I imagine across Colombia, daily.  Handmade in the red clay of Rolland Garros, these piggy banks proliferate.  They are cute, desirable, large to small, a great variety of piggies, and you have to smash them to pieces to access your savings.  My personal piggy, bought on the street, is now very heavy, solid, and so far resistant to my desire for a new sweater from Zara!  But wait, something so simple as a piggybank might just support a booming economy?  Savings – what a concept.  Every penny might count.  From a very young age, we might encourage saving money, taking responsibility, making a connection between desire and reality.  Is Colombia onto something basic?

Lest anyone think that I am being third-world biased in introducing Colombia by way  of clay piggies, let me state here and now that I have never encountered a bank as sophisticated as mine in Bogotá, Helm.  Entering an branch of Helm is like entering an exclusive boutique hotel.  A (money) concierge greets every arriving customer.  How might he or she help?  A money deposit?  Let me direct you to our automated deposit machine which counts (or rejects) your every bill, and provides you with a photographic record of your deposited check.  A banking problem, let me seat you for our next available associate.  While waiting, enjoy our ambiance of contemporary furniture, lighting, color choice – mainly very hip orange and white –  and typography.  Feel free to avail yourself of our free water bottles and candy.  Everything communicates that your patronage is important.  What a concept!  We want you to know that your money means something.  And Helm’s on line site savings account logo features, you guessed it – a clay piggybank.

Perhaps these two contrasting images of Colombia, are the same thing, expressed differently.  Money counts.  Street vendors of piggybanks want you to begin saving money.  The extraordinary number of banks in Colombia are also invested in wanting you to save money.  It is a very competitive world.  Most people here don’t have a checking account; they have a savings account.  Point made.  There are an incomparable number of bank branches on block after block here, of that much I am sure, focused on savings.

I am not writing a scientific article here, numbers of penny savers in Colombia versus numbers of penny savers in the United States.  How could one ever figure that out?  I’ve tried, and statistics are hard to come by.  Number of home or property owners per square foot or square meter in Colombia versus number of property owners in the United States, good luck.

However, one of the most surprising things about this country for me is that even the most unassuming neighborhoods here have offices, apartments, and store fronts For sale.  For rent is the norm in many countries, but strikingly the number of For Sale signs in visible windows (the most popular advertising venue here by far) in Colombia is impressive.  Vendo!  En Venta!  This country divides its municipalities into economic strata, 1 through 6 (6 being the most exclusive), hard to get a handle on.  However, even in Estrato 1 (the lowest of the Estratos), in the most unassuming neighborhoods, the concept of ownership runs deep.  The piggy banks of every street corner take on power.  Every penny saved here is a penny saved toward destiny, toward control of destiny.  Pride of ownership, even in the poorest of neighborhoods here, has value.

Now that instability in terms of property ownership has established itself worldwide, and now that the questioning of economic foundation has become mundane, savings are hardly the beacon that stand out as the road to salvation anywhere.  And yet, piggy banks line the streets of Bogotá.  Here, in Colombia, in a country far off the mega-dollar landscape, a penny saved is still a penny earned.  The foundation of growth is still strong here.  Piggy banks are as common here along the Calles and Carreras as lottery tickets are along the highways and byways of first world countries.  Chance versus discipline.  To buy a small or large ceramic piggybank and start to deposit change daily versus an investment in the odds of the national chance of Who WantsTo Be a Millonaire, well it seems to come down to that.  Not that you can’t do both.  Just, count your pennies first.  And start saving.

The post The piggy banks of Colombia appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Colombia’s government wants to know the color of my underwear. When I went to buy underwear at a store here in Bogotá recently, surprise!  The sales assistant asked me for my cédula, my Colombian national ID card number.  Why?  What is this?  The government in interested in my underwear?  Well, apparently, yes!  To complete the purchase of my undershorts, I needed to provide my cédula.  For the sales assistant, the request for my ID number tripped off her tongue as easily as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  So in went my information to some obscure database, and I left the store shaking my head but secure in the knowledge that should I ever forget, the Colombian government would be able to remind me of my underwear size and color preference.

My actual cédula contains my photograph and a thumbprint, as well as my blood type, name, date of birth, security holograms, and my all-important ID number.  My religion, or lack of, is not mentioned.  I am, however, required by law to have my cédula with me at all times.  There are military checkpoints on many roads within Colombia.  When stopped, driver and passengers must produce their cédulas.  Failure to do so can mean a period of 24 hour detention or a fine.  And in different cities, I have often seen police or military officers ask street vendors, or simply street oddballs, to produce their cédulas.

Recently, when exiting a bus at the main bus terminal in the southern town of Pitalito, a military officer needed to check the cédula of each person getting off my bus against his database on a hand-held computer before the passenger could enter the terminal.  The funny part was that nobody was actually required to show their cédula, simply to give the officer a number.  So any number, your cousin’s, for example, – should you be a guerrilla, would have worked.  The officer took one look at my face – gringo! – and he just waved me on.  No cédula needed – which says what about what!

Colombia is not unique in its dependence on national ID cards.  All Latin American countries, many European, and many other countries around the world require national ID cards.  The United States does not.  Freedom reigns.  If you never need to enter an airport, open a bank account, or get a driver’s license in the United States, all is fine.  A Colombian friend said to me today, a cédula is just like a driver’s license or a social security card.  Well, yes and no. Nobody in the United States has ever asked me to attach my social security number to my Gap purchase.  A credit card number, yes – and often!  But a national identification number?

Perhaps the United States is different.  Or….. perhaps not.  I took a plane back to the US from Colombia last year.  I was ‘randomly’ chosen for secondary investigation at the Orlando International Airport.  The investigating officer emphasized the word ‘random’ several times.  However, it turned out that he knew my place of employment, the name change of my place of employment, my sources of income, and specifically how many times (many!) I had traveled to Colombia within the last year.  “You are correct,” he told me when I thought I had traveled to Colombia 14 times.  He wanted to know how much money I had in my wallet – I was not permitted to check.  I was interrogated for the best part of 30 minutes.  I was not allowed to pick up my luggage.  The investigating officer had to do it for me.  Apparently at the end of the half hour of investigation, all was well, as the officer’s final words to me were “Welcome home!”  It was an odd kind of welcome in a country that supposedly wasn’t keeping track, national ID or not, of who I was, or where I was traveling to, or what I was up to with my life.

Home – I was home!  But back to my underwear.  What’s going on in Colombia?  Why does the Colombian government need to know boxers or briefs?  Well, I am told that the government’s interest is not so much in my color or choice of what I wear underneath my trousers, but in keeping track of how much money I spend over the course of the year.  The government already has a record of my income from my employer.  Am I overspending based on my salary?  The government wants to know.  Am I somehow overspending my average budget for underwear?  Perhaps.  Clearly, I live in Colombia, and money laundering is an issue.  Thus, the small fry must provide an ID number along with the big fry.  Ultimately, the goal is to keep track of a porous economy.  Trickling down the line, the price of my underwear is recorded and the world is a safer place for you and me.  That is the proposition!

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Is your city’s bus system really outrageous?  For perspective, you might want to compare what goes on in your area with what happens on the streets of Bogotá, Colombia.

A penny earned is a penny earned – so goes the old model of public transportation in Bogotá.  A motley crew of private buses ply the streets of Bogotá daily in search of passengers.  Passengers simply hail a bus as they would a taxi.  To exit a bus, you simply ring a bell at the rear door.  A bus will stop anywhere, often twice or three times on the same city block.  The driver will take your cash fare and make change with one hand, while moving the bus back into traffic with the other.  Bus drivers get paid by the number of passengers they carry, so the more passengers carried per day the better the deal for the bus driver. This leads to something called the Penny War, where one bus will race past another to screech to a halt simply to grab the next available passenger.  A fare is a fare, and one more passenger is one more penny in the driver’s pocket at the end of the day.  These buses carry millions of fares a day, so the pennies add up.

In terms of convenience of access for passengers, the system can’t be beat.  You can walk out of your office and hail a bus right there and then.  The driver loves you when you are on the sidewalk.  But once on the bus, you are on your own.  As a passenger, you will need to hold onto your often tiny seat (if you have one) to avoid being displaced into the air as the penny rules, and bus drivers swerve, speed, and jerk their buses to sudden stops at any given moment to pick up a new passenger.

For every bus that stops on a dime, traffic behind the bus must also stop.  More often than not, the buses, taxis, and cars behind will try to pull out to the next lane thus creating a symphony of honking horns from the drivers who are forced to adjust to the incoming traffic.  This can happen block after block after city block.  Many of these city buses, minivans, and vans, in service today are decades old, in poor repair, and spew exhaust fumes into the air with immunity.

However, change is afoot.  This change began just over a decade ago when the city fathers had the good sense to copy an articulated bus transportation system from the city of Curitiba in Brazil.  Bogotá’s Transmilenio is a mass urban transportation rapid transit system that went into service in 2000.  Its buses are uniform in color, and have exclusive designated bus lanes.  The system operates along the center of the Autopista Norte (the North Freeway), for example, where bus stations are accessed via elevated pedestrian walkways.  Generally speedy and almost always crowded, the Transmilenio operates as an above ground subway system.  “Love the speed, hate the crowds”, pretty much sums up the relationship many Bogotanos have with the Transmilenio.

The Transmilenio is a combination of public and private enterprise.  Public money pays for the development of roads and stations, while private companies run the buses.  The city gets a small portion of the profits to help maintain the system, which has been in a constant state of expansion.  Avenida Dorada has been upended for the last couple of years as the line to the airport is built.  The latest plan envisions a Transmileno line along the center of one of Bogotá’s busiest arteries, Carrera 7.  At the end of each Transmileno line, there is a Portal, a large terminal station, from where feeder buses transport passengers at no additional charge to surrounding neighborhoods.  Numbers are hard to pin down, but the Transmilenio today appears to carry close to 2,000,000 passengers a day.

In 2009, a decree was signed into law to radically transform the ‘penny’ buses, and thus the streets, of Bogotá.  The Integrated System of Public Transport (SITP) is designed to alter the city landscape.  13 new entities are being created to run the new system of street buses.  Older buses on the city’s streets are to be replaced by new.  The end of the Penny War is in sight.  The incentive to run red lights to catch the next prospective fare is being removed.  Bus drivers will be paid a fixed salary with benefits, and will no longer be dependent on the number of passengers on their buses to put food on the table.  Bus drivers will no longer have to fumble for change with their right hand while driving with their left.  A smart card is planned and cash will no longer be accepted.  The number of buses on the streets is also being reduced to eliminate redundancy.  Sleek bus stops are already being built across the city.  Supposedly, buses will stop only at designated bus stops.  Passengers should no longer enjoy the special privilege of being let off their bus in the outside traffic lane and having to scurry through moving taxis, cars, and buses, to reach the safety of the sidewalk.

Public transportation in this large metropolis is in a state of flux.  Great changes are in the air.  With the bus system, some of these changes should be evident before this year is out.  The Penny War should be over and done!  But old habits die hard.  Earlier this year, the city launched an advertising campaign along busy Carrera 7 to encourage buses to stop only at the newly built bus stops.  However, so far buses continue to stop where they will, and passengers continue to hail buses where they will.  We just have to believe that once salaried, the bus drivers will be able to put aside their decades old habits of treating the streets of Bogotá as their own personal racetrack and that passengers, once aware that their comfort and safety have been given center stage, will be willing to walk to the nearest bus stop before boarding their bus.

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