The Fall of Lafam

Listen to this, Its my Favourite Ever

On Monday 6 Fernando drove me aaaaaall the way to the Lafam clinic downtown, where I waited on tests, processing, tests, processing, tests, and processing all day long.  Because I sometimes misunderstand Spanish, I take advantage of the (as far as i’ve noticed) conversational Colombianism of repetition, and after clarifying multiple time with all 6 different staff members that I would have surgery that afternoon, they over-dilated my pupils and I didn’t get to put lasers in them after all.  Instead my appointment is delayed until the 23rd.  This reminded me very much of South America.  But at least the doctors here where mini-skirts, or no skirts, perhaps accounting in some part for the disorganization of their male colleagues.

Besides, this might be better because I can join the LG team instead of sitting around, blind in a city of darkness.  I bought a ticket for Medellin on the same flight as the rest of the team.

M and J met me at the doctors office.  M is super-beautiful.  When we chatter I always wish I were more fluent than I am.  I told her about the day in Tocaima as they waited patiently for me.  After receiving the disappointing news that I was to wait for surgery, I took J to Crepes and Waffles, the tastiest restaurant of all time.  Later we visited his aunt around the corner, teased his cousins, and watched a Hyper-American High-School-Dream show called “Never Give Up”.  Booyah.

Later I walked through the dark of Bogota from the Transmil to stay at E’s house.  In some kinds of darkness even light seems threatening, and traffic in Bogota tears past like fleets of bats from the chasm of hell.  In the night in a strange place, the light doesn’t wrestle darkness, but only twists itself around it, contorting buildings, warping the sidewalks, and disfiguring usually friendly faces.  The light doesn’t illuminate, but hides in the corners streets and stranger’s eyes.

Here now listen to this

After explaining myself for 20 minutes to the 8th Bogotano, I arranged to meet E at the Transmil.  Then we drank wine, ate chocolate, and discussed anything.  We talked about love, culture, Uribe, London, and England.  Her house is full of old books.  The kind of place my mother might never emerge from.  The living room is dominated by an amber curiosity, and the clean-cut shoulders of a rectangular piano jut out into the surrounding space.  It is broken, and reminds me of Gabriel Garcia‘s piano from 100 Year of Solitude.

E described her father’s death on the staircase in the house, and told how her mother joked about how white he always was when the paramedics picked him up.  Her father, part of the Medellin MacCormick clan, was an intellectual who wrote for El Tiempo.  She returned to Bogota from London to care for this old house, which is so full of strange books and rare movies, moving them all alone would probably cost the value of the house.  The first MacCormick arrived in Medellin 4 generations back.  He was an Egyptologist, and a bit of a Pipi Loco, so his descendants filled the whole earth.  This reminded me of what Ruyard Kipling said.  No matter where he travelled he was certain he would find a Scot.

The iron frame of E’s house has been expanding for the last 7 years, and her garden has been there since this part of what is now considered downtown was still farmland.  She speaks of the farms here like Victorian old-timers do of what is now the Mayfair Mall parking lot.  I always get pangs of desire, to return to 1900 with an air-ship.

Look, see – This is funny too

The mattress was full with familiar smells of Bohemianness, so I made friends with the bed and fell asleep.

Tocaima Snaps

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Tocaima

Tramps and Hawkers

On Sunday 5 Fernando drove me aaaaaall the way back to the M’s house, where I met with Hugo and prepared for a trip to Tocaima.  I don’t know how or why, but on my arrival in Bogota 4 years ago my Hypocampus put north to the south and east to the west, so that I’m often cripplingly disoriented.  I really wish I could transport myself back through time to slap myself into alignment when I stepped off the plane SMACK

Me and “uncle Hugo” took the Transmil!  This system moves the most people in the world for the least money.  Hugo thinks it is confusing and disorganized.  I think its God’s gift to mankind.  A kind of transportation Israel, that all other cities were meant to become like.

We met with a whooole bunch of people to take to Tocaima, and coordinating everything took an extra while because, as J said, the sub-conscious part of him put diesel into the odious, stenchy vehicle we were meant to take at first.  So instead we got to rent a nice, clean, new mini-bus!  Ooraa J’s super-ego!

So the team consists of two Canadian employees and their Canadian spouses, G, M and V, the Fruandes family, J the psychologist and Hugo, and finally me – who although not officially invited on this company trip was determined not to be dislodged.  As J says, I am a very sticky fellow.  But not without use, for the day I translated a whoooole lot of Spanish.  This is a skill I am learning to excel at.

We were squished like the last bit of toothpaste through Bogota’s traffic, so that when we reached the city’s parameter I felt like the first half of the time was spent on the first percentile of the distance between here and there.

But suddenly we rocketed from the claustrophobic city like the Millennium Falcon from the depths of the Death Star.  We drifted gently over a peaceful lake of leisurely-paced sewer, and crossed into the mountains that are the bowl-rim around Bogota.

Here we saw mining and landslides and movie-making and every kind of strange and exotic natural and spurious formation, some of which was being used as the set for what looked like an excellent western film.

Once you pass by, the mountains drop-off like the edge of a lake, and the peaks echo away to either side like the monoliths of distant memories. These scenes that leaf by me on the road are a journal in my mind, and I study the pages eagerly.  An old crush once told me that mountains are sickening, because they bore with them the reminder of our insignificance. But Ecclesiastes and Job free us to seize this smallness and claim it as a liberation.  There is nothing we can do to ever diminish God’s grandeur.  There is a lot of freedom in that.  So I considered the end of Job, and the motifs of Ecclesiastes, and J and I sat in the back and discussed love.

G’s father, Don Israel, owns a large mango farm where he grows I think 13 different crops.  If you love butterflies, then go to Tocaima and find a puddle.  The pathetic dull brown mud is incredibly contrasted by butterflies of every kind.  We also discovered the remnants of jungle snails as big as their marine cousins.  I am told that when the Lord lead the snails up out of the ocean to feed upon the garden, their bodies never unlearned their creamy origins.  So it is on ground even as dry as Tocaimas, that the snails still gush pathways along the forest floor.  Fortunately for Don Israel, these fist-sized creatures can’t climb trees, or bend stalks over backwards, so that they only eat the soft jungle-weeds that pillow the ground.

The mango trees on here are so heavy-laden by their own success that the branches practically crack beneath the weight of their own fruit.  As I walk with Don Israel I can sense how much he loves this land that overlooks the plain, and he urges us to take pictures of the fruit his land bears.

When we returned to Bogota I stayed with Fernando’s family again, ate ice cream with the girls, and watched the superbowl!  Our team lost, but I consoled myself knowing that, all teams being American, my preference was based arbitrarily on the present company, and I would have taken sides with the other just as frivolously.