This tour is indeed on the downhill slide, in the home stretch, at the bottom of the ninth. For the past week and a half Sol and I have been looking at each other and saying, "Only one more Wednesday," "...after this, no more weekends," "...this time next week you'll be in Beerginia and I'll be in Buenos Aires drinking yerba mate with my friends!" The tour flew past us in a blur, and we are ready -- oh, so ready -- to head for home.
Two days in Cali (rhymes with "golly") last week. Didn't see much outside the boundaries of the schools we visited, but did see enough to know that it's a gorgeous place. When there's a breeze, the air is luscious. Little pocket parks fill up the spaces that streets and houses don't occupy. Benches! Shade! Grass underfoot! All things I've missed here in Bogota, which for all that it is a fascinating "built" environment, doesn't have much in the way of places to sit outdoors.
The schools in Cali were absolutely beautiful. In both schools, the rooms of the primary grades were open on one side. Wide open onto fresh air and trees and sky and birds. Wide overhangs, to keep out the rain. And of course, armed guards at night, probably dogs as well, to keep out intruders. Behind the fence, behind the razor wire, behind the security guards you'll find little gardens of eden.
They say there's no racism here. Like there is in the U.S. I'm not equipped to agree or disagree. All I can do is see what I see. I see no tall, fair people serving in school lunchrooms or pushing brooms. I've seen no dark people who look as though they've undergone cosmetic surgery. In all the schools I've visited, I've seen one student of obvious African descent. I've seen lots of nose jobs, not only on faculty but also on students -- no males.
Everybody acknowledges a strong sense of class identity. I have heard people speak of seven strata, ranging from zero to six. Zero is half of Bogota -- the slums to the south, which I haven't seen and which I will not see, because I have no business going there. (There are neighborhoods in Washington and Brooklyn where I don't go, either, because I have no business being there.) The schools I visit are fifth and sixth stratus. I think the teachers in these schools are probably fourth and fifth stratus, but I'm not sure. I don't know how permeable the membranes between strata are, whether you can slip from stratus #6 to #3 by messing up in school or making unsound investments; whether you can rise from level #2 to level #4 by hard work and shrewd business sense. People talk about the class system in the abstract, but I haven't heard anyone speak personally about their place in the scheme.
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My new friend Harry, the storyteller/doctor who helped me with my sinus infection a couple of weeks ago, told me he learned his English while he was doing a work-study in the U.S. He spent a few weeks in Galveston and a few months in, of all places, Oklahoma City. My home town. He has some interesting observations about his time there, but one of the most vivid stories he tells is about the day when he went walking -- all the way from the F.A.A. center by the airport, where he was studying something like aeronautical medicine, to Lake Hefner, several miles north. I can't imagine how he got there on foot ... alive. He said he walked for six hours that day, and the whole time he was walking he never saw another pedestrian. "To have a car in Oklahoma," he told me, "is like for me to have shoes. You can't get anywhere without it." How well I remember! I realize anew how much I appreciate living in the middle of Fredericksburg, where only half the destinations are uphill.
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I was itching to get to this blog today, and now that I'm doing it, I can't find the kernel of what I wanted to write about. Just a ramble today. If you've read this far, you might need to get a life.
I have a new album up on facebook -- pictures Jack took, moseying through Cali while Sol and I were hard at work. (But we're not bitter.) Also, some shots of the Museo del Oro and some streetscapes.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2022674&id=1420653855&l=57791e6811---
After today, no more Sundays. I just heard the church bells clanging, as they do every evening about sundown, which at this latitude is always 15 minutes either side of 6:00 p.m. That's a sound I'm delighted to have in my memory bank.
Last Sunday, before Jack arrived, I went for a walk to the other side of Plaza de Bolivar, into a quiet old neighborhood that used to be stylish but is now quite down at the hills. Old stones, chipped stucco, domes, carved doors, faded paint. At one point I heard a scratchy recording of opera wafting out of an upstairs window, and for all the world I felt as though I were time traveling through film noir. All the colors went black and white for the space of three or four exhalations.
I'll try to post at least one more time.
