Colors in Colombia
nube_medellin2 on Flickr.
The most beautiful river on earth!
The Crystal River in Serrania de La Macarena, Colombia
Some of you might know that I am from Colombia and although I hate clichés and I fight REALLY hard for some of you to understand that my country is not full of shit and we are not all drug dealers and not everybody lives in the junlge surrounded by bad guys with weapons poiting to our faces, I have to admit that this is not a perfect country and we have issues. Bigger issues than most of you might even know about. Everything began a few 200 years ago when we declared ourselves a free country and no longer a colony for the Spanish kingdom. Back then the power fights and manipulations were not that obvious, and I might miss a lot of facts but the thing is that I don’t really care about then, I’m trying to make a point about now.
I was actually trying to deny the whole issue until a few days ago. I was having lunch with my mom and the lady that helps us clean our house because my mom has no time and I’m a spoiled brat so I barely even make my bed… The thing is, she is from a part of the coutry called Caquetá, which I’ve heard is really beautiful and such but I’ve never been there because it’s a red zone. What I mean by red zone is that is a place where the most prominent guerrilla here, called FARC which stands for “fuerzas armadas revolucionarias de Colombia” or “Revolutionary armed forces of Colombia” is located. The thing is there is not only FARC there, there are also paramilitares, which is another group of people, but this are more into drug traffic than actually fighting for a real government…
The thing is, I always knew there was an issue and I’m not only talking about armed forces outside of the law, I’m talking about the educational levels, malnutrition and poverty that is all over my country, and I’ve seen it with my own eyes more than once, because my father was always worried about my siter and I knowing the reality of the place we were born in, but that we also learnt to love it anyways… I think this had the opposite effect on my sister since she’s living in Argentina right now..
But I was ignoring what was right in front of my eyes, until this lady, she is called Ana, she was telling my mom and I her own experience with the FARC and the paramilitares and she was so weird about it, like it hurted but it didn’t really mattered ebcause there was absolutely nothing she could do to change the fact that her family was forced to leave behind their lives and their lands to move to Bogotá… But what bothers me the most is that she is not even closely the worst case scenario.
We have modern cities, we have people making more than a million dollars a month, but we also have raped women and children, we have kids dying in the streets, people being forced to leave everything behind and come to the capital city, Bogotá to wonder the streets asking for a little bit of mercy from the city people, and what’s worse, people taking advantage of this situation and posing as people in need to make an extra few pesos (money here).
I’ve seen it all. But I’ve also seen the smiles of kids that live by a river when we played with them, when we gave them a few candies. I’ve seen the kindness of some coutry people that let us stay in their back yards with our fancy tent and stove and air matresses when we were on vacation.
There is a load of bullshit happening here right now. But there’s also a lot of amazing things going on too.
I love my country, and though I don’t want to settle here when I grow up, I will never deny my roots because this is a beautiful place, even if some people out there refuse to acknowledge this fact and keep giving us the worst image ever in the rest of the world.
This is just me, talking about the place I was born, a place that I love with all my heart, and that I really, truthfully, have hope for.
I just wanna leave already
I’m trying to convince my parents to send me away to someplace for a few days or so for vacation. If this works out, and if I get enough money and stuff, I get to choose to go to either Colombia or Spain. Anyone help me pick? Which do you think sounds cooler?
Cartagena de Indias, Barranquilla and/or Cali, Colombia
Or
Palma de Mallorca and possibly Barcelona, Spain.
