Chapter Two - Dogs All Along

Imagine Bogota as a city midst a green cauldron of mountains and a transparent cloud of smog hovering above.
Our first week is a time of continuous waiting for a starting shot. Before the volunteers would be brought into their own seperate provinces to begin their job as a teacher AFS Colombia had organized orientations, speeches, and a tour of the capital. Raul, a man from the Colombian Red Cross in Bogota gave us a lecture on security issues in Colombia. In the big cities never take a cab from the street, about 2000 pirate cabs cross the avenues of Bogota waiting to pick up a foreigner, take him to the next bank and force him to take out whatever is left in his account. Is it safe to go to the Pacific Coast from Cali? He looked at the ceiling, then said firmly, no. The Amazonas? Hm. Rather not. And better not go through the streets alone at night, that would be naïve. The complete opposite the day before. An attractive Colombian woman of about thirty speaking to us about her country´s culture. We have everything, she said, a diverse landscape, rich soil, great people, famous musicians, writers, painters, the most orchids in the world, oceans, deserts, the Andes - but we don´t know how to use what we have. We have been devastated by war, it was terrible and many people in the USA still think it is to dangerous to come. But things are getting better now. Colombia is passion!
The country is changing rapidly.
In general, everyone we meet is worried about Colombia´s picture abroad, everyone wants us to have the time of our lives. In the plane I met a woman from Belgium wearing an ocher wool sweater. She tells me that she hast lived in Colombia for forty years, that things are getting better, that Uribe is a great president and she shows a picture of Belancourt on the face of a french newspaper, points at her and says ¨Ingrid!¨. She smiles.

It is Fiday evening now and we will be picked up for a Chiva tour that was organized by AFS Colombia as the highlight of our one-week stay in Bogota. A Chiva tour, that means that our group will be picked up by a bus which takes us to a club in the mountains surrounding the city where we will stay for several hours and afterwards the very same bus will bring us home safely - we hope - to our hotel. Outside the bus is colored in bright yellow and red and appears as one of those massive automobiles of the old times that not even walls could stop. But there are no windows and no carriage either - the entire sides of the bus are panorama views of the streets passing by. A glimpse inside gives away what the bus was really destined to be. There are four or five leather benches filling up half the interior space but in front there is a tiny dancefloor and a poll that promises a lasting experience. The ride begins. We are greeted by the tour guide with aguidiente, Colombian whiskey, that tastes like jungle war. The music shakes you to the bones. Redefine HipHop, redefine dirty - and all of that in Spanish. I cannot drink tonight because my stomach has been a coward since the previous night, but I dance upfront anyways. The ceiling is low and my head must still wear scars of my jumping that night. Along the way we scream our glee at people on the streets of Bogota, pick up friends and when we arrive at the club the roof is on fire. The disappointment follows with the next steps. Not a single Colombian in this club seems to be under thirty. Oh well. What do we care. We dance on the bar. There is even a dance group comprising two men and one woman that show off a slasa and dance persormance whenever people are tmepted to leave the establishment. You have never seen this much makeup on a female body (I feel like I will regret this statement sometime soon). When they start dancing to YMCA I strongly feel that it`s time to leave. So I go up to the upper level and try to catch some sleep, but the DJ thinks that this is obviously the right time to play some Electro. So I go down again and resume dancing, step on the bar, dance some latin with a Colombian girl, listen to a black rapper on the upper level who moves his hips like they are a cocktail in the making and his mind is the barkeeper tonight. Things that pass the time.
Around two in the morning we leave, upfront we drive the club's dance crew home. I am astonished that people decide to continue dancing on the way home, especially because some of the guys get close to the ten-beer limit or maybe exactly because of that. I take a seat at the very edge of the very last row and watch Bogota as we descend into the cauldron. It's a chilly night that tries to maintain the balance with the steaming city days and I zip my jacket up high though it is of no use and I am shaking nonetheless. Entire Bogota is illuminated and it's a sight that I need to drink up alone. At this moment I think that the lighted city looks like one of those coral reefs at night in BBC documentaries or like a map of the United States in one of those old cold war movies in which every light represents one town to be hit by a Russian bomb but right now, before the first explosion, every light is still on. Metaphors break too, you know.

The next morning my new Colombian family picks me up and we drive to Duitama in the province of Boyaca - it is only a 180km ride but a six-hour experience. There are street blockades, police controls, road construction sites, we stop everywhere along the way to eat, buy meat, cheese, desserts, eggs, meet a worker of my father's finca, there are animals on the street, cows, horses and dogs, dogs, wild dogs running around without any fear of traffic. I sleep, I look outside the window. The altitude is about three thousand metres and the clouds can almost be grasped with your fingertips. This evening my sister gives me a tour of Duitama and her face reveals her worries that I might not be suited for a small town life. Once we walk up one street and turn at the corner where I almost stumble into a pitch black dog, invisible against the grey sidewalk. For some reason I think this is a significant moment though I still do not know why. The dog does not look up.

On Sunday, the end of my first week, the entire family has lunch at grandmom's house. It's a feast and before we begin everyone raises their glasses to me and speaks with earnesty:
"Bienvenido!"
And my mother continues:
"We have our arms wide open for you."
I mumble a thank you and look at me shoes, then think better and look up again.

The starter's gun at last.